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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. It's a Tuesday episode, so this is our friend and producer, Hugo Lindgren. Hugo, how you doing?
- [00:15]
B
I'm doing well. Bradley had a beautiful Fourth of July. Are you feeling very patriotic even though you're in Europe?
- [00:20]
A
Well, you know, sure, but because I've been in Europe for the whole thing, I haven't really experienced it, per se. What's it been like there on the ground?
- [00:31]
B
I mean, just like, about what you'd expect. I mean, a lot of fireworks. I don't know. The. The World cup has kind of, like, infused the country with this kind of good spirit. And obviously, the US Team is doing well, although by the time people hear this, they might not be doing well, but they're playing tonight against. Against Belgium.
- [00:48]
A
But they got the. Didn't we get the.
- [00:50]
B
Like Ballingan has got? It was reinstated by. Allegedly by the president. I. I guess there's some difference of opinion whether the call really was what made the difference or if, like, Infantino just knew that. Knew to do it without having to be called. Who knows?
- [01:05]
A
Well, what's. I mean, you're a soccer fan. I'm not. I have. I was watching it when it happened. It didn't seem to me like a really big bad thing, but, you know, again, I don't. Was it. Yeah.
- [01:16]
B
No, I mean, it.
- [01:18]
A
It.
- [01:18]
B
It's. It's. The rules are. Are. Are complicated. It was a. You know, it was a pretty hard step on the back of the guy's heel, but I think a red card did seem excessive for that. So. But. But on the other hand, there's tons of bad calls during a game, right? So, like. Like, it's just sort of the nature of the thing. Right.
- [01:38]
A
Does it happen where it gets reviewed and then overturned later?
- [01:43]
B
No, it's not normal, and there's no real mechanism for it. Although there is a weird precedent where they. Where they overturned a yellow or red card for Ronaldo and managed that would have actually kept him out of this World Cup. It didn't happen in this World Cup. So there's some weird precedent, but it's a bad precedent. It's like, yeah, they bent the rules one other time, so. So if we.
- [02:01]
A
If we beat Belgium tonight, will it feel tainted?
- [02:04]
B
I don't think so, because, again, there's so much corruption in and around soccer, and yet the game. The game overwhelms it all every time. You know, like, it just. It. It's bigger than any attempts to meddle with it. Or at least it has been so far.
- [02:20]
A
And how do you feel about the U.S. is Belgium better than us?
- [02:24]
B
Historically, yes. And I guess the last time we played them, it was 5, 2. Belgium. I think Belgium is a long time ago. No, no, they did a friendly like last year. I think so. So Belgium is very good. They have. They're sort of reaching the end of what's considered a golden period for them, like a generation of players who were really top in the world, and so they're kind of on the downward slide, but they're still a real powerhouse, so.
- [02:50]
A
So they're like the Denver Nuggets and we're like the Orlando Magic or something, I guess.
- [02:59]
B
I guess. I don't know if that's exactly accurate, but look, the US Is good. Obviously, by the time people are hearing this podcast, all of it will be moot. We'll either have beaten them or have lost. But I do think the American team has played well. They look good. It is good, just from a soccer fan perspective that their top scorer is going to be able to play, but it's. It's weird. It's definitely weird.
- [03:22]
A
All right, well, hopefully it starts 3am Denmark time, so I don't think I will see any.
- [03:28]
B
I don't think you're staying up for it, Bradley. I don't think you're enough of a soccer fan. No, I don't recommend it.
- [03:32]
A
Paris was crazy for the French game the other day.
- [03:36]
B
Well, I believe it. And. And. And it's hard to not get excited about the French team. Like, they. They are just fantastic to watch. And, you know, they. They barely came out ahead against Paraguay, but they. But they did. And, you know, it doesn't really matter what the score is. Yeah. Just going to ask you. We're talking about something that has nothing to do with your. At least the main part of the conversation with your Europeans. Yeah.
- [03:59]
A
We're going to do two things today. One is I'm going to give just some. Some reflections on the trip so far, and then two is. Is my substack for tomorrow, and then I've got one or two recommendations at the end. Might be a slightly shorter episode than usual.
- [04:12]
B
Great. Okay.
- [04:13]
A
Well, let's get going. Yeah. So, you know, I went to Paris for my mom's 80th birthday, so happy birthday, Nadine. And we had a phenomenal time, really, which is a great way to celebrate her and a great way to celebrate. And kind of had a few thoughts about Paris that aren't maybe that different from my, you know, other views that I had about it before, but. But you know, what.
- [04:37]
B
What is your pre existing. What are your priors on Paris?
- [04:40]
A
I mean, positive, right? I mean, he's positive in that it's a incredibly beautiful city. And this is kind of the first point. You know, it's the most, in many ways the most beautiful city in the world. And I was thinking about why. And some of it is there's obviously a French sort of both, you know, talent for. And priority on just style in general. But I think also their timing was great in that they. They built this just incredible city. These beautiful architecture, at least sort of what most of tourists would identify as Paris. Obviously it's a big that, you know, goes out and out for a while, but. And I think they had a good combination, which is they built a lot of these just remarkable structures when labor was incredibly cheap and when the people in power, you know, could more or less do what they wanted to do. And Houseman was sort of this great urban. Master urban planner. And so they. They had. They built it at the right time, but then at the same time, because since then, or maybe even started then, their regulations around things like building are so strict that unlike a place like New York City, which has just incredible creative destruction, which is, I think, part of what makes New York unique and great, but at the same time, it's constantly changing. Paris doesn't change that much. I mean, it does have a downtown with skyscrapers, but comparatively few. Right. It is sort of like Denver when it comes to a downtown in terms of the number of skyscrapers, at least those that I was, you know, that I saw. But that's the least interesting part by far. I mean, there are a few interesting big buildings, but it's just like, you walk down the street and like, there's just these stunning. What feels like monuments to, you know, and it's just like, holy shit, like one after the next after the next. But I think it's a combination of they built it at the right time when it was economically feasible to do so, and then they had a regulatory climate that maintained both it in terms of not being able to tear it down or building, you know, big things in its place or right next to it. And at the same time, it's a wealthy city, you know, and not everyone is wealthy, but overall it's a wealthy city. So the resources have been there to maintain it. You know, you can go to other parts of the world, like I've never. Havana, for example, but it strikes me as a place that is probably architecturally Beautiful, but in total disrepair. Right. So there are, you know, so Paris has just had the right combination of, when they built it, it was cheap, and then since then they've been prosperous and they have been strict. And the combination of those things has really made it just incredibly stunning. It's just like there's a wow on every street. So it's amazing that way. However, and here's maybe a slightly more controversial opinion, which is, I think it's really overrated as a food city. Not that there's not a lot of great food and a lot of great restaurants, but there is this just sort of assumption that, you know, everywhere you turn in Paris, the food is just incredible. And I've been to Paris now maybe like, you know, six, seven, eight times in my life. And not that I haven't had great meals, you know, but overall, it's just not my take. Right. Like, I made a list of cities that, to me, that in my experience, are better food cities. New York, L.A. mexico City, Rome, Bangkok, Lima, Barcelona, and then maybe Tokyo and maybe Lisbon. All is better food cities than that. You know, obviously there are places that I haven't been to.
- [07:54]
B
So no Madrid on that list, or
- [07:58]
A
no, Madrid is great. But I also don't think Madrid is the place where every single thing you walk into is just going to be really good in the way that, say, Barcelona is in Spain or Lisbon might be on the Iberian Peninsula. The place that's supposed to be an incredible food city that I haven't been to and I assume probably will never get to is Beirut. Everyone says, and you think about it, of all different types of Middle Eastern food, in my experience, Lebanese is the best one. But obviously going to Lebanon is not feasible. And I don't know what even still exists in a city that has just had to deal with so much. And then the third thing, as I was walking around and I felt this way both in Paris and then I was kind of continued the thought process today in Copenhagen is just kind of the overall push and pull between regulation and autonomy, between tradition and innovation, between culture and stricture.
- [08:56]
B
And.
- [08:56]
A
And it's interesting, right? And Europe generally, and obviously Europe's a big place, and Southern Europe has definitely different cultures than northern Europe and so on. But overall tends to lean, in my view, more towards regulation, more towards tradition, more towards, you know, maintaining a culture in different ways. And the US tends to lean more towards autonomy, towards innovation, towards kind of individualism. And you can make good arguments on either side. And the reality is, in a perfect world, you would Just find the right mix of each, because all six of those things have both value and harm. I would not want to live in a place full time, at least that really does prioritize regulation and tradition and culture, even though it really does make places like Paris incredibly beautiful. Maybe if you've already kind of lived longer and succeeded professionally and so you can just enjoy the good things without having to try to operate within their system, that would be better. But at least that's my take. I mean, what do you. When you go to Europe, do you think like, oh, I wish I lived here, and again, you're a big place, or do you think, super cool to visit? But it is. There's sort of a. There's a mentality, a culture, a kind of societal ethos that doesn't work for you?
- [10:28]
B
Well, I think the two cities that I feel most comfortable in European cities are Madrid and Stockholm, but I don't think I'd want to move permanently to Iowa.
- [10:36]
A
And those are obviously opposite ends of the continent. Right. And presumably most people say that a place in southern Europe like Spain and a place in northern Europe like Sweden are very, very different. But. Yeah. So why wouldn't you want to live in either one?
- [10:52]
B
I think just the cultural stuff, and it sort of gets at some of the things you're talking about, which is there's just the customs in both places that feel like they would, especially after just living my life in New York, would just grate on me. And, I mean, there is a. There is a feeling of freedom in New York that I think that I've never felt anywhere else. And it's not that it's not available anywhere else, but it doesn't have the. Just the sort of intense presence that it does in New York for me.
- [11:15]
A
So let's put New York aside for the moment.
- [11:18]
B
Okay.
- [11:18]
A
In the rest of America, which, you know, you've been to a lot, most of it, right. To feel, I know the rest of them like, you know, Kentucky or, you know, Oregon, or it might not feel like Europe, but does it feel like that level of autonomy exists across the US or do you think New York City itself is just totally like its own country in a way?
- [11:41]
B
Well, I think New York is its own country in a way. But. But the. The thing about New York is that it has that. But then it also has just the. You know, the world is passing through it constantly, and when you get away from that, it does. Every place in the United States feels lesser. You know, I mean, they're great places
- [11:57]
A
to visit I guess my question isn't even better or worse. It's in New York overall, there's a general notion that, you know, kind of you do you. I know there are parts that are different. You know, you go to the Upper east side and there's sort of a WASPy ethos that people really strive to be part of. And I think sort of oddly, in a sort of political way, sort of the hardcore progressives in Brooklyn are not different in terms of the push for conformity. But still, it's still more about that. Do you think that is still more common in the US than it is in Europe, or do you think that I'm conflating New York and America?
- [12:33]
B
I guess I'm not sure. What do you think? I mean, do you think that the feeling of New York City is sort of roughly the same as the rest of America?
- [12:44]
A
I don't think New York City is the same as the rest of America. And I think that there's probably still more individual freedom in New York in terms of people just sort of letting other people be most of the time. However, my gut is still that America has more of an ethos towards autonomy than Europe does. I mean, as we're sitting Here celebrating the 4th of July and the 250th anniversary, the whole founding principle is. Is freedom, right? And freedom from tyranny and freedom from a monarchy and freedom from someone, some other country, telling us exactly how we have to live our lives. And by the way, it doesn't mean that in the US there aren't lots of institutions seeking to do that. I mean, Trump, obviously, but organized religion does that, and various forms of capitalism do that. And political parties do that on every side of the spectrum, the right and the left, and higher education certainly does. And so there is a human capacity to both demand conformity, to want to fit in and to abuse notions like God, to try to force others to do what you want them to do. So I think that is true anywhere in the world. But, yeah, I would still say that there's a greater autonomy level or scale in the US than in Europe.
- [14:04]
B
So you were in Paris, now you're in Copenhagen. How did those two places feel different?
- [14:09]
A
You know, I mean, Copenhagen feels, first of all, it's much, much smaller, right? The population of Copenhagen is 670,000. The population of Denmark is 6 million, whereas the population of Paris, I haven't looked it up, but it probably is about the same size as the population of Denmark, Right? Or bigger. So obviously, kind of it's. It's apples and oranges. I would say this Copenhagen and it's my first time here. Beautiful city, beautiful architecture, stylish in that kind of mid century modern Danish way for more homogenous kind of like as you would have expected, not completely, but more so. And it does feel. And again, this is probably just me projecting, but it does feel like there is a greater priority on conformity here. And that might mean kind of in some ways what makes our society work in many ways, but like it's the kind of place where you don't cross against the light, you know.
- [15:07]
B
Although weirdly, people don't do that as much in New York as they used to either. Isn't it strange?
- [15:11]
A
Do you think that's just because of the proliferation of E bikes and scooters and people are like, I don't want to get run over.
- [15:16]
B
I think it predated that a little bit. I think something just, I mean, I think just the United States became more like the rest of the country. I mean New York became more like the rest of the country. And one of the things, you know, it was always weird to me being LA and people would be stopped at don't walk signs, you know, like, I
- [15:31]
A
mean I still do you. I cross against the light all the time, of course.
- [15:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mid block everything, you know, like.
- [15:37]
A
Like, yeah, of course.
- [15:39]
B
You just. I mean it's not that it doesn't happen, it's just like less of a. Like it used to define New York and now it's like defined some New Yorkers.
- [15:46]
A
One, one thing that surprised me a bit is I was out in the suburbs today for a bit and the summers of Copenhagen. Yes. Yeah. Well, I was going to a place called the Louisiana Museum, which is in Copenhagen, not Louisiana and it's about a 20 mile drive. So.
- [16:05]
B
And what made you go out there? What's at the Louisiana Museum?
- [16:09]
A
Well, it is a, you know, art museum that is considered to be, you know, really, really fantastic. There was a slight problem which was I didn't check whether it would be open on a Monday. So it was not. But I.
- [16:24]
B
Did you walk around the outside of it?
- [16:26]
A
Yes, I did. But then in the. On the ride back passed a lot of mansions. And the reason I thought that was interesting is, you know, Denmark is always considered to be the happiest country in the world or number two or something like that. And the explanation that is usually given is that it's not that they have more, but that people have learned to be content with what they have. And that's what makes them happy, which makes sense to me. And it's sort of a theme that we talk about a lot in this podcast past a lot of fucking nice houses, man, which didn't seem all that, you know, if you were content, didn't
- [16:59]
B
seem that modest to you.
- [17:01]
A
Yeah, I'm not sure that you need that. So it, you know, what I saw firsthand did seem to undercut a little bit my, my stereotype. So, yeah.
- [17:10]
B
Interesting. I've never been to the suburbs of really any of those European cities, but
- [17:14]
A
it was just kind of by accident, but it was. Yeah. So who knows? But if anyone on this, any listener is an expert on sort of Danish culture and ethos and kind of why perhaps the stereotype that we have might not be true, I'd be curious to hear.
- [17:28]
B
Let me ask you one more question before we get on to our other subject. So what did you see or do in Paris that you haven't done before?
- [17:37]
A
You know, I went to a couple. I hadn't been to the Bourse, which was an old stock exchange that became a museum. That's really cool. I'd been to the LVMH foundation before for this. It's my second time there. I have not liked the art, particularly their time. The building is one of the most incredible buildings I've ever seen. And I spent some time on the roof this time and just the architecture of it and then kind of the view of Paris from it was pretty incredible.
- [18:02]
B
The.
- [18:02]
A
I've been to the Palais de Tokyo, but not in the museum itself because I went there during the Olympics, but they were using it for some skateboarding stuff, so that was cool. So all that, you know, some restaurants are a little different. Hotel was different one than I've stayed in before, but I wouldn't say that I had like a radically different Paris experience.
- [18:21]
B
And do you like just head out from your hotel and just walk around all day?
- [18:24]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think my, my dad and I were doing a lot of walking together and I checked, we walked eight miles on the. On one day and seven miles another. So cover a lot of ground. Yeah.
- [18:34]
B
Good. Good for Gabe, man. That's good.
- [18:36]
A
Yeah. For an 81 year old guy, man, he was doing great. He really was.
- [18:41]
B
All right, so back to some of our regularly scheduled programming with your next. With. Yeah, next subject. So it's, it's one of your favorite things to, to talk about people.
- [18:50]
A
Yeah, but it's, but there's a, there's a twist on this one.
- [18:53]
B
No, there is a twist, but I mean, the general subject, like knowing what you don't know is become sort of like an area of intense interest for you.
- [19:02]
A
Well, right. And the reason I wrote this piece was that, you know, it's not just what the piece is called. The perils of both knowing what you don't know and knowing what you do know.
- [19:14]
B
Okay.
- [19:16]
A
And the point here is that in many ways they're both. They're both risky in many ways. So I kind of noticed this a little bit. I started thinking about it after the congressional primaries in New York a few weeks ago where a couple of the races the DSA candidates won. And I get all these panic texts from people, what are we going to do? Why did this happen? And I give the answers that you're used to hearing me give. The failed political response by the center. How they can't adapt to the new world of policy and technology, how there's no infrastructure to have viable candidates from the center. But also just this notion that there's a lot of very rich people in New York who just believe in all of their hearts that the only thing that matters in politics is money and that they could solve every problem with money and elect anyone they want with money. And so they just throw tremendous amounts of money at things. And frequently that doesn't work. Right? And then so I found myself, you know, citing this and then telling the people I was talking to, you know, they don't know what they don't know. Right. As you said, that's kind of a common theme. And that's not just true for politics. I see this a lot in tech where you get some young founder and their point to me is like, no, no, you don't get it. I went to Stanford, I was in Y Combinator and recent invested in my fund. So when that stupid regulator sees how smart I am, they're going to do whatever I want. Which obviously is laughable. And those founders tend to fail, but it's fairly common. Or by the way, forget about early stage startups, look at the big hyperscalers. Like how open, anthropic seem to think that they could build all these data centers and just expect the general public to subsidize their energy needs was crazy, right? Like there's no political logic behind that whatsoever. They're going to now all of a sudden find themselves with significantly greater costs and needs of either paying for their own energy as is, or using different types of compute and chips or behind the meat of power, because no regulator and no elected officials going to destroy their career. And make regular people pay 40% more for their energy bills just to subsidize Sam Altman. Right. So those are all sort of examples of people knowing that they don't know what they don't know. But then I also. Thinking about the opposite can also be a problem. Right. So take sports. This is an example that we've used before. But Moneyball, one of Michael Lewis book that came out in 2003, was about sort of the analytics movement in baseball. And in the movie, Brad Pitt portrayed Billy Bean, who was the general manager of the Oakland A's. And Oakland used the kind of analytics movement to be smarter and effectively use the money that they did have to spend because it was considered a small market team to overperform in theory, what they should have been able to afford. And that got sort of a lot of attention and excitement. And it was sort of like the revenge of the nerds in sports. And it kind of culminated many ways in the appointment of getting Sam Hinke as the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. And Hinkey was like the consummate Moneyball guy. And there was just like endless lavish profiles of Hinkey. You probably ran one of the New York Times Magazine and you were running it. And the gist of it was always like, he could make billions running a hedge fund if he wanted to. And he had this very clear strategy that was 100% driven by or almost 100% metrics, spreadsheets, analytics. And it was so clearly defined that it had a name, the Process. And this phrase, trust the process became a catchphrase. And saying it meant that you were smart. You knew that Hinke's models were far more important than some old scout's eyeballs. And even though Hinke's plan was to lose intentionally for years and years, and that sounded crazy, sort of from a logical standpoint, you, the super smart person, would say, it's actually brilliant because he's going to accumulate so many draft picks that he's going to put together a super team that's just going to dominate for years to come. And, you know, trust the process. Trust the process. Trust the process. The result of the process, it was a complete disaster. The Sixers, in that entire frame up till now, never advanced past the second round of the NBA playoffs. So I went back and counted 19 different teams. So two thirds of the league have done better than that. So. And of all the draft picks of everyone that Hinky picked, the only one that really became a great player was Joel Embiid. And even that is wildly flawed because Embiid is hurt so often that he has missed a full 50% of his games because of injury. So in this case, Josh Harris, who was and still is the owner of the Six Sixers, did the opposite. He knew what he didn't know. He trusted Hinkey. He trusted the process. He did it far too much for far too long and failed miserably. So sometimes not knowing what you don't know is a real problem. But sometimes knowing what you don't know and deferring to that can also be. And I've seen this in my own life, too. So sometimes I've definitely made bad decisions because I didn't know what I didn't know. But there are other times where, whether it's at work or personal, that I've tried to be very mindful of what I don't know and defer to others. And I was wrong. And so the first example I give in the piece is that when Lyle was in preschool, he was just this really. He's still a quiet kid, but he was extremely quiet then. And it was in part because his preschool was just a very poorly run, chaotic environment. And he didn't like this. He just never spoke. And as a result, they were convinced that he had a learning disability. They couldn't tell us what it was, but they were convinced that, you know, there was something. And when we applied to kindergarten, turns out they wrote in the application, was managed to get a copy from a friend. The parents are delusional and do not accept this child under any circumstances. And when he was first kind of hating school and not participating, and the school was telling us it was all his fault, we listened to them. They were the experts. The principal had literally been there for over 40 years, but we also knew our kid and we knew that this preschool was particularly bad fit for him. So finally we had him take the ERB, which is a standardized test, and he got a 97 out of 100. And we use that and decided to ignore the experts. We pushed ahead. Lyle got into a fantastic school, saying what he's at now spend there ever since kindergarten. He's a great student tending to his senior year. And turns out that they had no idea what they were talking about. And they just said that because he didn't fit into their system. But because we were trying to be smart about knowing we didn't know, we relied on their advice for far too long. Wrong. Finally we realized, hey, we know our kid and they don't. But it did take a long time and there was a lot of sort of emotional pain along the way to, to realize that. And then I made the same mistake again when I opened PNT Knitwear in 2022. And in my view was I don't reckon about running a bookstore. And so we hired someone with expertise and we trusted them to do their job. And along the way, I kept seeing decisions that really didn't make sense to me. And, you know, I didn't know anything at retail or publishing, but I do have some, some experience in building and running businesses. But I kept dismissing my own instincts and I kept telling myself, well, the people in charge, they know best, this is what they do for a living. And they didn't. And what I realized is the bookstore was being run according to someone else's vision instead of mine. We were wildly overstaffed. The culture became both toxic and completely disconnected from what I wanted the bookstore to be. And then we finally changed management. We rebuilt virtually the entire team, and guess what? We cut our losses in half. We built a culture that we'd always wanted from the beginning. And today we have a store that I'm really proud of. I think you're proud of it. And it's a place that seems pretty clear the community enjoys too. And so in that case, again, I thought I knew what I didn't know. I deferred to the experts, and I was wrong. It works both ways, right? That same year, you might remember that we built this telereligion social media platform called Exalt. And to me it was like religion was the last basht on the analog world. Covid proved that there was an appetite to participate in religious services online. And so my view was if we had a platform that could broadcast services, allow people to find different options, let people conduct Bible study virtually, sell religious products, organize real life social events, whatever else, it'd be a hit. Jordan, my partner at the venture fund, told me that that was not a great idea. I ignored him. I funded the business out of my own pocket. I should have known that was a bad idea when we really had trouble hiring a good CEO. But I ignored that too, and just found someone. I put millions of dollars loan money to the project we launched on the App Store and we were completely out of business a few months later. And in that case, I didn't know what I didn't know. I ignored a lot of people who knew better, and I lost a lot of money. And so the challenge here is sometimes you lose by not knowing what you don't know. And sometimes you lose because you do know what you don't know, and you defer too much to someone who else who gets it wrong. And so the question is, what do you do? And I don't have, you know, a single right answer, but I do have to make decisions in business and philanthropy and politics and as a parent and so many other ways all day, every day. We all, all do. And the best I can kind of tell is that you just need to be very aware of both risks, you know? So I try to ask myself if I'm assuming knowledge that I don't actually have, and if so, how do I get it, or if I'm deferring too much to someone else, and if so, am I sure they're right? And I think this is true. No matter what industry you work in, what your personal life is like, these questions just always have a way of presenting themselves. And even with that, I feel like I still get it wrong all the time because it's always a judgment call. But I'm now at least mindful of the risk on both ends and hopefully that at least reduces the frequency of my mistakes and makes me help better decisions overall. Or maybe not. I still really don't know.
- [29:01]
B
So tell me about the exalting. Is that failure? Do you chalk that up as one of those sort of good kinds of failure? I mean, obviously, as you mentioned, you lost a lot of money. You defied a bunch of people who you knew were smart and otherwise trusted and moving ahead with it. But that does sort of define you in a way. Like the you, you wanted to do it, you had a lot of conviction. Sometimes things like that do work out. Right.
- [29:25]
A
That one didn't sometimes. Right. I mean, that is sort of the history of Silicon Valley, you know.
- [29:29]
B
Right. Yeah. People, there's a lot of people saying no all the time and they're not right.
- [29:34]
A
Always right. So deferring to them doesn't like, I mean, just Right. What I didn't put in the speech that I could have is, look, if I had listened to the experts instead of having this podcast and everything else I do, I'd be working at some law firm because and told me after law school that I should go work at a law firm, you know? Right. And that that's what you do. Right. And you know, my entire life, in many ways has been driven by this very deep seated desire not to live a certain type of life. I didn't want to work at a law firm or an investment, you know, do anything Kind of conventional, linear. I didn't want to live in a suburb. I didn't want to go out to a country club. I didn't want sort of the pursuit of status or wealth to sort of define who, who I was, you know. And I have lived my life very intentionally in opposition to that, you know, for better and maybe sometimes for worse. But at the same time, that has led me to not know what I don't know and make mistakes. Look, I thought I could elect Andrew Yang mayor. That was wrong. And that cost me, you know, reputationally quite a bit. But then there were other times, like the bookstore or when Lyle was in kindergarten, where I thought I did know what I didn't know and defer it to experts. And that didn't work either. And so who the fuck knows? Like, it just, it feels like there is no answer other than to just try to be mindful.
- [30:49]
B
So do you think the next time a candidate comes along for mayor that doesn't quite fit the narrative, but you have a lot of conviction about, can you imagine what you'd do differently, like the next time or will you?
- [31:02]
A
Yeah, I mean, the first thing is I'm not totally sure that I would want to do another campaign for mayor, regardless of who it is, simply because, you know, politics has always been a rough business, but it is so toxic and so nasty and so personal and it is so lived now online and so exacerbated by social media that I'm just not really sure that I want to live through that kind of regardless of who the candidate is. But let's assume that for some reason that's not how I feel. Right. I think what I would do is one, a more silver eyed analysis. Although with Yang it wasn't a lack of analysis. It was at the polling showed at the time when we started he was wildly ahead. And one made two major things happen that I'm just not sure we totally could have predicted. The first was that, you know, we were in the midst of COVID where, you know, people were really focused on recovering from COVID and Andrew, with his energy and his business background and everything else, kind of felt like a good person for that.
- [32:16]
B
Sure.
- [32:16]
A
And then once the vaccine emerged, the zeitgeist shifted from COVID recovery to all of the crime that had built up during COVID under de Blasio. And Eric Adams, who had been a cop then, had his moment. And while Eric Adam proved to be a pretty bad mayor, he managed to win that election. I'm not sure we could have predicted the Zeitgeist shift. The second was the New York City media. And maybe we could have predicted this. Just really, really did not want Andrew to win. And they really were brutal on him in a way that they just applied a level of scrutiny to him and quite frankly, even to me that they did not tell a lot of the other candidates, especially Adams. And as a result, it was a polar game among Republicans reporters to just try to take down Yang at every stat possible. And so, you know, maybe we could have anticipated that, but we didn't. So I. I think I would try to just ask even more questions. I would probably be far less accepting of polling. I think polling is an extremely flawed, you, you know, tool, and I think that I would trust it a lot less. But, you know, it's. It's tricky because, look, by definition, as someone who's in venture capital, I make bets that are not conventional all of the time. Right. So that would. That would be sort of knowing what you don't know. But. So I don't know. I mean, I kind of feel like both things apply all the time to me across the board, whether it's companies we invest in on the venture side or campaigns we take on on the consulting side, whether it's an electoral campaign or a policy legislative campaign, or how we think about mobile voting or hunger or all the other things we have our foundation. So, you know, it's a lot. I'm going to always keep doing new things because that sort of is who I am and what makes me happy. But I know that the struggle between trying to define the right answer on each side, you know, will persist. And, you know, again, maybe there is a listener that has a better answer here. To me, the question's worth asking because in some ways, as I see it, their only answer is to be aware of the question in the first place and to be aware of the risk on both sides and to take the time to think it through.
- [34:35]
B
Do you know what Sam Hinkey does now?
- [34:38]
A
Hedge fund?
- [34:40]
B
Venture capital fund. It said he raised $50 million in April 2020.
- [34:47]
A
That's terrible because. So 21 was the worst vintage possible for venture. So if he was deploying in a 2020 fund, I don't know when he closed the fund itself. Maybe it was a year closed, meaning finished the fundraising for the round by 2026. If there's no news, that means he probably failed. I don't know. But six years is a very long time to go between funds raising, especially for something as small as $50 million. And if nothing Else came up in terms of like some major exit and company did really well that he was listed on the cap table for, you know, without knowing. And I'll do a little research, my gut is it did not work out.
- [35:29]
B
Would it shock you if Sam Hinkey turned out to be very successful at other things?
- [35:34]
A
It would. If he didn't learn from the Sixers, right? If. If his attitude for the Sixers, which it seemed to be going to never met the man, was, I'm smarter than everyone else. I know what they don't know, I've got it all wired and you're just too stupid to understand it. And if that's your attitude, you're going to fail at everything. Right. You might occasionally get lucky with something, but by and large that is a recipe for failure. If he learned, hey, I fucked this up completely. I was so focused on my own genius that I didn't ask the right questions and I didn't sort of question my own strategy and I was too arrogant and everything else then maybe learn. I'm sure his IQ was quite high. I don't know where he went to school, but I bet it's places with a very prestigious pedigree and whatnot.
- [36:21]
B
University of Oklahoma and Stanford.
- [36:24]
A
So Oklahoma is probably more of a mid level, considered sort of an average school. But Stanford is obviously Stanford. And for Stanford, was it business school?
- [36:35]
B
It looks like it, yeah.
- [36:36]
A
Yeah, that's the worst of the worst, right? Because I really do feel like elite business school schools. It's a business in and of itself. Right. Because it's a product that nobody needs. Right. You know, you don't need a MBA to be in business. Right. You need a JD to be a lawyer. Whether you should or not, it's a different story. But you do. You certainly need an MD to know how to be a doctor. So business schools seem to be their model of trying to convince you to spend insane amounts of money to learn from them for two years. And part of the way that they keep their customer base happy is to tell them constantly how important they are and how wonderful they are and how special they are. And I think it fucks these kids up completely because they enter the real world with a totally diluted sense of self. And they do things like what Sam Hankey did.
- [37:24]
B
He has a nice little bio line that suggests at least a little sense of humor. I'm Sam Hinkey, 87 Capital's founder. I spent a decade plus chasing a dream only I could see. That's been documented plenty. And then it Has a bunch of links.
- [37:36]
A
So the links to about his failures. Yeah, fine, that's something. Yeah. So maybe he learned and you know, maybe he's now applied. But keep in mind with venture, you know, like everything, humility is important, but it could also go the other way. Right. If you're a venture investor and you're solely, if you're overly focused on validation, what other funds invested in this thing, what are the experts saying? Where did the founder go to college or whatever else. That's also a really sure fire way to lose. Right. So if you're totally now afraid, that's not a good way to be a venture investor either. And at the same time with venture, even if you are really smart, intelligence is not enough. It's a hard fucking business. The vast majority of venture funds fail. And the reason ours has generally worked both in the investing side and even now more so in the new model is we just have this point of differentiation that is so unique, we're literally the only ones that do this. That it just creates the so many more opportunities that if it's a game on the early stage where you just have to get a couple, right, and you have a lot of bites of the apple because you have something a lot of people want, then your odds of success go way up. But I don't think that, you know, understanding of, you know, the, the, the, the triangle offense or whatever Sam Hickey might know about is particularly useful for founders. And so my guess is that differentiation does not exist.
- [39:04]
B
You mentioned you have some recommendations?
- [39:06]
A
I have two. Did you see the movie called Tuner? Nope. Recommend it. It is about a piano tuner, right? Piano tuner who becomes a safe practer because he can do it through listening. His sense of hearing is so great. But of course when you start, you know, doing things like cracking safes and robbing people, shit goes wrong. And all kinds of problems too. Yeah, I mean your own safe cracking career would certainly be evidence of that. So that was, that was number one. Number two, our friend Rob Hart, who has I think been on the podcast and spoken at PNT Knitwear and everything else. Rob is a novelist who I really like and he just finished the trilogy of. It's called the Assassin's Anonymous trilogy. And the premise is great. Which is rather than selling marijuana, anonymous. I've talked about a podcast before. Any sort of Anonymous. It's for hitmen and women who don't want to keep killing people. So that's sort of the premise is these people try to stop killing.
- [40:06]
B
That is a Story up your street if ever there was one. Yeah, yeah.
- [40:09]
A
And it's great. And takes place in New York. And this is the third book in the series. This one's called Three Hitmen and a Baby. If you want something fast and easy and fun, but well written and intelligent and kind of action packed, I would say that the whole trilogy is worth picking up. But start with the first one, which is Assassin's Anonymous.
- [40:31]
B
Now, I don't think we talked about it since you finished it, but you do like the new Dave Eggers book, right?
- [40:37]
A
Well, so, yes, I liked it. So interestingly, Hugh and I were talking about this the other day, I don't think on the air, and he said you kind of had a negative take on it. You hadn't read it, but you sort of had a, your instinct was negative.
- [40:50]
B
It was a little bit. Right.
- [40:52]
A
So then I started reading and I had a night where I just could not fall asleep. And I sent Hugo text at like what, 1:30 in the morning or something. Be like, you're wrong. It's really good. And it was at that point I was on page like 100. So I finished it and I actually really debated whether or not to recommend it on the podcast. And the reason I didn't is it was 100 pages too long and by the time it was over, I was just desperate for it to end. It's not that the ending was bad per se, but it just really could have used more editing. It was just, you know, it was a 450 page book that really could have been 350. And so I was sort of actually debating like, do you recommend a book that is a good, it's a good book and a lot of it I really, really enjoyed. But, but by the end I was sort of eager for it to be over. Is that something that you would recommend? And I decided no.
- [41:40]
B
Okay, I'm, I'm on about, I'm probably about 150 right now. So I, I, yeah, yeah.
- [41:45]
A
So you know, whenever you, if, if you do. Well, either way, if you do finish it, let's know you think. And if you not to finish it, that would also be noteworthy. Anything you want to recommend?
- [41:54]
B
No, I'm, I'm, I'm, that's my book right now.
- [41:57]
A
Okay. So the listeners, the episode putting out on Thursday is my niece Ellie Got and Lara Mullen, who is the daughter of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, together wrote a children's book about bipartisanship and dogs. And we had a lovely event Last week at P&T Knitwear to celebrate them in the event. I conducted a Q and A with them and we're gonna put that out. So, you know, if nothing else, I think where it is A might be worth listening to is less about their children's book, but more about kind of how 17 year olds see the world today. You know, I think you get a window especially cause it's one kid from suburban New Jersey, one kid from rural Oklahoma, you know, very, very different backgrounds. You do get a window into sort of what life is like and kind of what they're excited about. And some of it is that sort of, you know, youthful enthusiasm. But there's also a lot of anxiety. And these are from two kids who are, you know, pretty privileged in many ways and yet nonetheless still face a tremendous amount of anxiety because of the particular world that we live in today. And so, you know, if you're interested in that perspective, it's worth listening to.
- [43:03]
B
Excellent. I'll see you next week, Bradley.
- [43:04]
A
All right. Thanks, Hugo.
- [43:05]
B
Thanks.
- [43:09]
A
Firewall is recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradleyirewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substack@bradleytus.substack.com thanks again for listening.