← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Eric Jorgenson - Author & Angel Investor | How One Book About Naval Ravikant Changed Everything
01:20:52
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- [00:00]
Scott Clary
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- [01:54]
Eric Jorgensen
First real writing project was evergreen and my goal was like find these truly important evergreen resources. It gave me faith in sort of the Internet as like a meritocratic place to create content. And if I just keep doing things, I will become better. As a result, the whole world becomes a little brighter. Eric Jorgensen, the man who turned wisdom into a startup.
- [02:12]
Scott Clary
Author of the viral hit the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, Eric distills brilliance into blueprints. He curated a roadmap to wealth and happiness and freedom that has impacted millions.
- [02:22]
Eric Jorgensen
What authors need is someone to help them professionalize the ideas that they have, package it up in the right way, and get it out into the market. Nobody gives a What you want them to know they want, what serves them. Deliver things that the reader wants. You can't start with too specific of a final vision. You just start with whatever raw material excites you. And I think it's part of why my books are so unique.
- [02:42]
Scott Clary
He sees business not as hustle, but.
- [02:44]
Eric Jorgensen
As leverage and distills timeless insight into practical frameworks.
- [02:48]
Scott Clary
An entrepreneur, product builder, and lifelong learner.
- [02:51]
Eric Jorgensen
Eric's obsession with compound thinking and digital leverage has made him one of the.
- [02:55]
Scott Clary
Clearest minds in modern business. If you're chasing freedom, he's already drawn the map.
- [02:59]
Eric Jorgensen
We forget how insanely unique we all are. And from that point of view, nobody else in the world could write your book the way you're going to write it. You never know who you're going to help with your unique story and how it gets shared.
- [03:21]
Scott Clary
Eric I'm excited to do this. It's gonna be a lot of fun, I think, to kick it off. Very easy question. Easy, but difficult question. If you look back, you've had a lot of different seasons to your life, your career, a lot of ups, a lot of downs. What would be a major inflection point when you were childhood, early adult, major inflection point that sort of pushed you on the path that you're on today.
- [03:45]
Eric Jorgensen
Probably the single biggest one was they kind of build on each other. But joining my first startup, my plan was to do three degrees in five years at college. And then I got basically an internship after year, between years four and five that just suddenly turned into a job. I was going to go do like three months with this guy that I really admired, Bo Fishback. I was going to intern for him at a nonprofit. And he is like, my first day of work, he's like, welcome. I'm gonna quit my job and go start a company. Like, do you wanna stay here as I'll hire you here, or do you wanna come with me to the startup? And I was like, fuck it, let's go start a company. So I just never went back to school for my last year and I just kind of threw a duffel bag in a car and started my life.
- [04:33]
Scott Clary
What was the first startup?
- [04:35]
Eric Jorgensen
It was called Zarli. It was like before, yeah, 2011, before Uber was doing rides. You know, we were doing rides at the airport. It was. It was like a marketplace for everything from the very beginning, before Uber, before Instacart. And then we just watched these kind of verticals get all picked off. But it was an incredible ride. Spent about 10 years there, moved out to San Francisco got just, like, pulled into the world. It was fantastic.
- [05:00]
Scott Clary
When did you. I mean, like, we're going to. We can go through the whole backstory and origin story, and that could probably be an hour in and of itself. But when did you actually start to get into the world of writing, of. Of, you know, writing your own book, of authors, of publishing? When was that point in your life?
- [05:19]
Eric Jorgensen
I've kind of always been a self educator. Like, I remember getting in trouble for staying up late reading, and never quite having the sense that the classroom was teaching me everything that I wanted to know. And in college, I was listening to podcasts on the way to school or on the way to class, and being like, this guy I'm listening to on the podcast knows more than this professor. Like, what am I doing? Like, how am I allocating my time here? So just picking up biographies and starting to read and then getting into the real world and realizing, like, a lot of what I'd learned in college was not necessarily what I needed to know to succeed in the real world. And I did. My first real writing project was. I called it Evergreen. And my goal was, like, find these truly important evergreen resources. And so I had a little tiny newsletter, like, 20 people who were friends. And I would email out a topic and I'd be like, all right, this week I'm trying to learn about network effects or cost cutting or competitive advantages, and everybody would, like, send me a resource, and then I would spend the week deep diving all that stuff, and I'd write a little summary of what I learned and link back to all the original stuff. And it grew like crazy, like, probably 10 or 20,000 subscribers within a year.
- [06:35]
Scott Clary
Which is not bad. That's actually not bad at that point in the Internet.
- [06:39]
Eric Jorgensen
And I just learned so much doing it. And that. That really showed me. It gave me faith in sort of the Internet as, like, a meritocratic place to create content. And if I just keep doing things that are good for me and sharing the results, then people will appreciate it. I will become better as a result, and, you know, the whole world becomes a little brighter. And that led to the book and everything else.
- [07:01]
Scott Clary
Do you find that there's some relation between writing and, as a hobby, as a pastime, and, I mean, optimal performance, being able to problem solve, think through complex ideas. Any. Any correlation?
- [07:13]
Eric Jorgensen
Sometimes for sure, but not always. I think there are people whose, like, superpowers go with or come along with writing, and there are some people whose superpowers are just totally, like, on a different axis. And you Know, if you're not a writer, you can be successful without writing. But if you're a person who either thinks by writing or whose advantages come from, like, very methodical thought and sharing, that, like Paul Graham, I think, comes to mind, is maybe the most obvious example. There are. You know, Patrick Collison very famously has, like, a writing culture inside stripe. But, like, I don't think Elon's doing a lot of writing. I don't think Steve Jobs probably did a lot of writing.
- [07:52]
Scott Clary
Elon plays Diablo.
- [07:55]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and, like, does meetings ironically. Like, everybody's, like, talking about meetings. Not he's like. He's just in meetings all the time. So I. I think there's. There's a lot of ways to win, but I think for a certain kind of person, writing is part and parcel of. Of thinking clearly and communicating those thoughts clearly and building your coalition or scaling your culture or reaching your customers, and there's a lot of good that comes with it. And to your point, like, it's clarifying. You know, it helps you find out when you're. When you're bullshitting yourself, basically, or when you're about to. And you catch yourself.
- [08:28]
Scott Clary
When did you. When did you. So you have gone through, like, sort of multiple versions of entrepreneurship. Where did Scribe come into your story?
- [08:39]
Eric Jorgensen
Scribe. Okay, well, so Scribe, the company started maybe 10 years ago. Like, Tucker, Max and Zac O' Braun founded the company originally, and they built it up over, you know, eight or ten years or so. And then I became a customer of scribe in 2018, 2019. So I had written. I drafted the manuscript for the almanac Naval, and I was like. I just had tweeted, like, what do I do with the manuscript? I think I got a manuscript. Like, what do I do with this thing? How do I turn it into a book? And Tucker, Max and I had been sort of, I don't know, Twitter friends. We've been reading each other's blogs for a while, and he was like, let me help. I know just what to do. I was like, all right. So I got on a call with Tucker, and he sort of gave me, like, the lay of the land of publishing. And.
- [09:23]
Scott Clary
And before this, you had, like, no idea. Like, when you were. So before this, you were just consuming Naval's content. You just were like, anyone else on Twitter, he writes great threads. I love what he's doing. Then you tweeted this that. Was it, like, serious? Were you, like, serious about turning this into a body of work? Or was this kind of just, like an off the cuff, late night tweet.
- [09:41]
Eric Jorgensen
It was pretty. It was pretty off the cuff. It was pretty off the cuff. I had been following Naval since 2010. Maybe, like, he was presented to me. It was like, if you want to understand Silicon Valley in the startup world, read everything from Naval and read everything from Paul Graham and like, you will have a good sense of the tent poles of like the startup world and you'd be off to a good start. I was like, all right, great, done. So I've read all of everything. And that was when I started. And so I'd been following him for 10 years. I'd learned a ton from him. And then know, one night I just tweeted, you know, it was right after he did the. The podcast with Shane Parish on the Knowledge Project. I thought that was one of the most incredible podcast episodes I've ever listened to. I listened to it like three times in a week and I was just brokenhearted. That wisdom of this caliber that I think is like timeless, universal, applicable wisdom that can help almost any plant person on the planet was like lost in this, like unsearchable kind of niche media subculture that was podcasting especially, and still is podcasting, but especially in 2016, maybe when that thing came out, 2017. And so I just. The tweet, I think was, you know, if I collected some of Naval's most important ideas and the book of Navalage was my pun that I was very proud of and like, it's clever. Would you. Would you want it? And then, you know, this. That's my 10:30pm brain. And then went to bed and I woke up and Naval had retweeted it and 5,000 people were like, oh, my God, yes, please do this. And by the way, also 2,000 people were like, shut up, this is a bad idea. Which just for posterity is important to say. And I was surprised that Naval had been like, yeah, sure, go ahead. Like, I'll give you whatever you need. I was like, oh, okay. This went from like, you know, off the cuff remark to like, I got a job to do. And I just chose to take it seriously. And you know what? I thought was going to take three months, ended up taking three years. And I just went maximum effort. And I am not known as being a perfectionist in most areas of my life, but I became a perfectionist about this.
- [11:38]
Scott Clary
I was trying to figure out the timeline. So that's how you got involved with Scribe and Tucker Mac and so. And Tucker, My God, Tucker. I mean, I've actually been going back and forth with Tucker to get him on the show. But the Tucker that I knew growing up was the guy that was writing like the most ridiculous stories, right? Like you. He wrote some ridiculous shit. And when I was in high school, I think if my timeline's correct, whatever, like grade maybe, maybe before high school. I can't remember when his book. He was writing the most ridiculous stories of his, like, adventures with his friends and like women and bars and dating and all this shit. And then he like went. He went dark for a period of time. Like, I heard nothing from him. And then Scribe was the company that he. And it's so interesting because I would assume that even when he started Scribe, like the type of author that you became, where you were amalgamating ideas, that's not even the normal type of author. He was serving. He was just serving people that were publishing books, like, with their. Their own quote unquote insight.
- [12:35]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah. And Tucker is. Tucker is a brilliant writer. Like, weird start to his career, but like an Internet og. I mean, before blogs existed, he was basically writing blogs. He was one of the very first like blogger to book like Transitions. And he, you know, he's one of. I think. I think only him and Malcolm Pladwell have ever had four New York Times bestsellers on the list at the same time or some crazy stat like that. He sold millions of copies. He's an absolute savant. He's a brilliant writer. He's brilliant at helping people find their voice. He's an incredibly. He's an incredible truth teller. And so he will. That's such a service as an author. And so many people would. I mean, the origin of Scribe was just, I think his friends calling him and being like, how do I write a book? What do I do with the book? How do I know who's bullshitting me? Is this a book idea? Is this a real book? And you know, the beautiful thing about Tucker is like, he tells the truth so often and so clearly, even when it's hurtful, that, you know, when he's like, no, dude, this is good, that he truly thinks it's good. And I think people really needed that. And he. It was an incredible vision that he had about the publishing industry having come through it as an author to be like, nobody needs these big traditional publishers. Like, what authors need is someone to help them professionalize the ideas that they have, package it up in the right way and get it out into the market. And they need to be able to own their rights and retain full creative control and all the final decisions over their book and they need to own their royalties. And it's a very simple, it's a very simple insight. It's a very simple model, but it's not the way publishing has been done for the last hundred years. And he was one of the first to see that 10 years ago and really turned this into an industry. This now served, you know, thousands and thousands of authors. He's absolute visionary in that.
- [14:27]
Scott Clary
Well, it's just democratizing, it's democratizing the industry. And I think that like, I mean if you, if you look at your favorite authors that work with some big publisher names and we all kind of know the big names, unless you're a huge name, that first deal that you're going to get is not a great deal for you like that. Unless you are like, I mean like realistically, I know people that write their first time books and it doesn't matter which publishing house you get. They're not putting the marketing and energy and resources towards you. You're trying figure it out yourself. They're helping you with maybe some distribution. That's, that's really it. But you are selling that book yourself. Don't expect to go to insert big publisher name here and they're going to sell a million copies because that's not the case.
- [15:07]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, you, you are ultimately the CEO of your book regardless, you know, and so you may as well capture the full upside. And actually it's even worse than I think what you said is, is correct. But it's even worse than that which is that a lot of the entry level deals for traditional publishers include authors guaranteeing the pub X number of sales. So like sure, you get a $10,000 advance but you're guaranteeing, you know, $50,000 worth of books being sold out of your own pocket. Like that's crazy town.
- [15:37]
Scott Clary
You're sort of ideating on the, the almanac. You take it to Tucker. He's like, did he say great idea? Because I think the, the 2000 for example, negative comments would be along the lines of who are you to summarize Naval's ideas into a book and basically profit off of his intellect and his wisdom?
- [16:00]
Eric Jorgensen
I mean Naval made it very, very clear publicly and privately. He's like, I do not want to earn money from this book. I want it to be clear that I'm not earning money from this book. And he says in the book like if somebody wrote something to make money, don't read it. And we have given the book away for free to millions that we sold a million and a half copies, but given it away to millions and millions more. So I kind of came into this as like, I know this project will make me better. I know that there's, you know, at least a thousand true naval fans like me who will enjoy something like this. I'm I cannot overstate how shocked I am at how many different corners of the world this book has found its way into. Like, my mind is blown that like yoga teachers in Bali are reading this book. I like I am just like truly thought it would be a really, really niche audience, but I'm glad to see.
- [16:54]
Scott Clary
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- [19:31]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah. So I think my process is weird because I'm starting with a huge body of work, but I started my napkin. Math is like, there were well over a million words of, like, source material that I worked from. Everything that Naval had ever shared publicly, like, went into the pot and I just tried to cook it all down and cook it all down. And the final book is, like, 40, maybe 50,000 words. And it just is like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle. And so it's trying to, like, pick up every idea, understand it, figure out which ideas it connects to, how to create a thread through them. And, you know, my first draft, it's, like, funny in retrospect. My first draft was, like, 150,000 words. It was, like a massive thing. And I sent it to my friends, and I was like, tell me what you think of the book. And they're like, they're. All of them were like, I really liked what I read, but I did not. I was like, okay, okay, thank you. Which parts did you jump to? What did you skip? Like, where. You know, where were you excited to flip to? And it was just a process of, like, cutting out anything that didn't really vibe with people. And that was heartbreaking because there's a bunch of stuff in there that I thought was really interesting that I loved, that I wanted people to know. And Tucker has got great lines that I've now adopted on this, which is like, nobody gives a shit what you want them to know. Like, they want what serves them. Like, who are you to. You're not prescribing, you're not lecturing. Like, nobody wants to be on the receiving end of a lecture, deliver things that the reader wants. And so much of so many of Naval's ideas really speak to, like, universal desires, as you said. And so it was really a process of, like, getting rid of niche things, getting rid of anything contemporary and making sure that it was, you know, I truly think we got this book to a point where any human being on earth can pick it up and take away at least one useful idea from it that can, that if applied can change their life. Truly, like, no matter what your circumstances are, this book can do something for you.
- [21:30]
Scott Clary
Did you have a process for testing which ideas resonated with an audience? That again, somebody, again, so someone like me. I have a huge body of work. I don't know what to put into a book. I have my own thoughts. I have, you know, I could do some tools of Titan type stuff like Tim Ferriss did. Pretty easy to do that. But is there, is there a, a framework or a process or even like a focus group? I don't know if people still do those, but maybe the focus group or just hit up your friends and texted them and we're like, hey, does this idea hit awesome? I'm going to include it.
- [22:04]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah. I mean, dude, I think this is the, the open secret of like so many of the greatest authors of this sort of decade. Like James Clear was a blogger. He spent years writing that book, tweeting, seeing the responses of different tweets, putting things in newsletters, talking to people, doing talks, seeing what resonated in different blog posts. And he was so methodical about that book itself. This is also Morgan Housel story. This is also Tim Ferriss story. In a way, this is Naval's right. Like the Internet had already made Naval popular for these ideas and I wasn't systematic in like, I'm going to make sure all of the most liked tweets are in this book. That's not how I approached it. It was much more curatorial of like, what's the most useful thing? How do they all fit together? And then just removing things that people found boring. And so I think process wise to your point, like you have a lot of data, you have a lot of information already just based on historical behavior, what people have found interesting. You could look at replays on the YouTube, on your YouTube, like day. You could look at what clips are performing. You can look at your open rates, you could look at on different subject lines. You could look at, you can export your whole tweet history and look at the likes and retweets on those things. There's so much data available to you as a creator who's like gone through this for years and years and years. And then once you're in book form, I really, I've become a believer in the, like the, you know, beta readers. And so I, I get to some point in the manuscript where I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna, I'm reaching my crossroads of like, I'm not. I don't have high conviction in the decisions I'm about to make. But I think this is getting good. But I feel like I'm slowing down on edits. So I'm gonna take a snapshot version of this manuscript. I'm gonna stop working on it. I'm gonna send it to 25 people. They're all gonna read the same version of the manuscript. I'm gonna have a call with each of them. I'm gonna ask them all the same questions, and I'm going to see what they recall. I'm going to see what they're excited to talk about. I'm going to see what parts they skipped. I'm going to. And then, you know, you can't overweight on any one person and you want them all to read the same thing. And then you just use your judgment to process all of that and try to get a, you know, diverse, ish group of people so that you got a different set of opinions. And I found that to be a really, really good way. And then just frankly having the balls to edit and edit and edit and keep cutting and remember that nothing's wasted. You know, maybe. Maybe you're writing two books at once and your scrap goes into the start of the next book. Maybe it goes into the blog, maybe it goes into marketing. But it really helps to know that you're not just, you know, lighting that work on fire when you pull it out of the manuscript, but you're doing a favor to the core book and you're building something. You're getting another asset out of the sawdust, basically.
- [24:43]
Scott Clary
How do you launch a book that's self published, take it to market, sell it, all of that?
- [24:51]
Eric Jorgensen
It's pretty simple. I mean, it's the same things you do if it's. If it's traditionally published. The difference is just that you own the whole upside. You know, it is a process of, like, gathering your people around you, preparing them for this book that's coming, asking for what you need, being organized. There's some things that you do that are like, it depends a lot on the book and the goal. And now, you know, in my role at scribe, I've gotten to take more and more authors through this. And it's always a process of trying to understand what each individual author is trying to achieve with their book. And the tactics, the specific tactics are changing sometimes like year to year or quarter to quarter. But it's a really, you know, you get listed on a few distribution Platforms, you sort of inventory your assets, where your audience is, come up with compelling offers, come up with messaging and you try to orchestrate a big launch. But then the real game is like, do you just keep marching and keep driving impressions on this book for weeks and months and years down the line? I think a lot of authors made mistake is like over index on the launch and, and then never talk about their book again after, you know, a month after they launch it. And it's like how many times you have to hear about a book before you actually buy it, let alone read it?
- [26:05]
Scott Clary
A lot. A lot.
- [26:06]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, a lot.
- [26:07]
Scott Clary
And like, I mean like Atomic Habits has been around for forever, but now like people after hearing about it on 10 podcasts, like finally they'll go and get it. So I mean it takes a lot to convince because you're, it's somebody's time and energy, right? And that's really what you're tapping into. It's not the 25 bucks or the 30 bucks. It's like a week of somebody's life or a month of somebody's life or you know, the, the barometer I use for, for me, whether or not I want to consume a book is like, okay, is it worth me downloading this on Audible for like my 5 hour flight? Is that worth it to me? Is this what I want to spend my flight doing? And there's a lot of options. There's a lot of options out there. So you again, it's going to take a lot to convince somebody to actually consume that content. Was there any, were you going to say something or no?
- [26:51]
Eric Jorgensen
Oh, I can if you want me to. I think that goes back exactly to go for it.
- [26:57]
Scott Clary
Go for it.
- [26:58]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, dude, that comes back exactly to like, what is the reader's benefit? Like, nobody's going to sit down and spend six hours reading a book that you think they should read. They're going to send six hours, they're going to choose the book that they think makes their life the most better the soonest. Right? Like, what problem are you trying to solve? If this book is going to help me solve that problem, I'm going to pick that up right now, I'm going to take it to my flight and I'm going to listen to this thing and hopefully I got new ideas for how to solve this problem and improve my life by the time I land. Like, if that's how your book feels to people and you've trimmed out all the other bullshit, like it'll go, you know, I think, you know, you asked how to launch a book and I ultimately, like, I don't know how to sell books. Like, I only know how to write books that people sell to each other. Like, when you read a book, it's rarely because you saw an advertisement for the book or were just randomly scrolling and saw one impression out of it. It's because your friend who read it said, this book is awesome. It talks about solving exactly the problems that we were just talking about last week. I just read it. You should read it. Here it is like so in that way, doing the work to start the flywheel of word of mouth and start people talking about your book, recommending it, getting as an author invited on a podcast or newsletters, that's the flywheel that has to get started. And you just have to keep pushing to get that thing started, no matter how hard it is.
- [28:20]
Scott Clary
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- [31:44]
Eric Jorgensen
I mean I'm, I'm still blown away by the whole thing. Like frankly, fair. I, I, I feel like, I feel like it's a, a fairy tale like to some extent of like, you know, I just was trying to write a book for, for some nerds like me and you know, now, now we've sold a million copies. Like that's, and it's interesting how often that's the story actually, right? Like when you ask Tucker Max his like origin story of writing, he's like, I was just writing emails to my friends to make them laugh. And Tim Ferret, when Tim Ferriss sat down to write his book, he struggled until he was like, he literally started writing in an email window. It's like talking to a friend. And it just, you are very surprised how often really being really obsessive about targeting a small audience can turn into a big audience. Like with how connected everything is and how, how universal the problems are that we are all thinking about and all trying to solve in our own lives. So, yeah, I, I'm still, I'm still shocked by the whole thing, but I'm just so appreciative for how far it's gone and everybody who's been so supportive and you know, there's people who bought and gifted hundreds of copies of this book to like everybody they work with, everybody in their lives, their whole company, their whole client list. Like, it's, it's really, it's unbelievable. And I think, you know, that just speaks to like more so than anything, like what Naval has, how gifted of a distiller he is and how broadly and how thoughtfully he's figured out these little nuggets of wisdom to share.
- [33:24]
Scott Clary
One thing that you, you just said I thought was so prolific and whether or not you're, you're collecting these ideas from someone else and you're finding a new way to present them to the world, or you're, you're coming up with these ideas yourself and you're, you're distilling them down into a podcast book, whatever. I think that the hack, the strategy, like you said to, to great content. Well, first, the reason why content sucks is because we're writing, we're, we're communicating or we're teaching in a way that we think the other person wants to receive it. But I think that we're too caught up in our process and we're overthinking how they want to receive the communication or they want to receive the piece of content. I think that when we just get into flow state and create content for ourselves, we end up creating content for other people as opposed to almost like over architecting content for other people, which I think actually ends up creating a little bit too much distance from, from what they want and what we're creating. I think we can get in our own heads about it quite a bit. I think that screws up content across the board.
- [34:28]
Eric Jorgensen
I think so. And it either like as soon as you try to do that, you either end up becoming patronizing or elitist almost immediately. And like whether you're writing, if you wrote a blog post for yourself a week ago, that would actually be a really interesting exercise. Like when I thought about writing this book, I thought about what 21 year old me would really, really want and need to hear. You know, like, and I, that That is just such a clarifying thing. Writing for one person is so liberating and so clarifying because we've all had the experience of sitting across from somebody at a table, like a friend or family member, and them asking us earnest questions about things that we know. And we're like, you know, you spend an hour sharing things, you're like, I think I helped that person. They did a lot of nodding and smiling. Like, I think that was useful and I feel great about it. That is so much easier mentally than you know. Some authors really get stuck because they feel like they're. You may feel this way, especially with the audience size that you have. You feel like you're sitting on a stage every time you go to write and you're trying to write something that is going to like, please this whole auditorium of faceless people, that you're imagining.
- [35:41]
Scott Clary
The way that I so, the way that I look at an interview and I've never really spoken about this, but this is something that, this is, I think useful for some creators, hopefully. So when I'm talking to you and if I've over prepared and I know exactly how I'd like the podcast to go, when you are answering me, I see like one question in my mind. I can only think of like one possible question and that's the only direction I can take the conversation. If I under prepare, not if I under prepare, if I, if I know directionally where I want it to go and understand enough about the subject that we're going to be talking about. When you're answering me, I can see like three or four different ways that we can take the conversation. All very useful. But ultimately I'm going to lean into the one that is most natural. So it just feels like there's like this. Choose your own adventure. I have like five different options instead of like one or two. And I'm assuming when you're writing it's very much, it's very similar. Like you, if you don't, if you don't start with this very rigid structure, if you're just like free, like flowing writing, then you will start to probably think through ideas that you originally did not even think were going to be included in the book, but they're just going to present themselves the more you put words on paper.
- [36:51]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I think that's right. In my experience, both as a writer and a podcaster, like it's, it has to be emergent. You, you, you can't start with too specific of a final vision. You just start with whatever raw material Excites you and just be ready to sort of react and move. And that makes every episode that you do unique from a host perspective. It makes every episode I do unique from a guest perspective. And I think it's part of why my books are so unique. Like, I. I gave it to an early. A friend who I respect very much in an early read, and I gave it to him and he's like, what is this? And I was like, what do you mean it's a book? He's like, yeah, but like, what genre is it? I was like, I don't know. And he's like. He's like, I don't, I don't want to give you, like, this is not. This is neither good nor bad feedback, but I think you've invented a genre. And I was like, oh, that's very interesting. I had not considered that, but it's because I started, like, so blank slate. I truly, I didn't even know if it was going to be a book. I just started with, here's all of Naval's things he's ever shared. This is incredible raw material. Like, what can I do to help other people access these ideas?
- [38:01]
Scott Clary
Talk to me, Talk to me about this, this Black Swan event. This, this hitting the fan moment.
- [38:05]
Eric Jorgensen
All right, all right. So very quick. Like, publish the Almanac and Evolve 2020 had an incredible experience, life changing. Like, one of the biggest, probably the biggest inflection point in my professional life was publishing that book. And I was like, scribe was incredible. This model is the future of publishing. I became a huge fan of the company. I loved everybody I worked with there. I'm super grateful to Tucker and Zach for, like, helping me get that thing out in the world. And I was like, all right. So I became a huge evangelist and I immediately started working on my next book. And so a few years later, I came around to publish the anthology of Biology, which is similar kind of compilation about biology, Srinivasan's ideas. And I was about halfway through publishing that with Scribe, obviously, when there's just, like, rumors started swirling online that, like, Scribe had collapsed and disappeared and gone bankrupt. And I was like, there's no way. Like, I was there three weeks ago visiting them in the office, like, they're sponsoring my podcast. I'm working on a book. Like, I would know if anything was wrong, right? And so I started making some phone calls. And it turns out Tucker and Zach had. They had sold their shares about a year and a half ago publicly, had done this and stepped away. And the guy who took over the company, basically, without getting too, too deep into it. Like, did a bad job and did a.
- [39:19]
Scott Clary
By the way, it's very normal post exit. A lot of people screw up an acquisition, so.
- [39:24]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, yeah, that screwing up an acquisition is. Is one thing. I think there was like, Tucker wrote a very, very thorough post about this that is like, really, really incredible sort of business postmortem that gets into some of the, like, not just tactical mistakes, but psychological underpinnings of like, how someone, without really the right accountability structure can kind of go off the rails. And it seems like it turned into a very deceitful situation, which is why it was so surprising to everybody, like, employees, team, vendors, everything. So describe just like bankruptcy, like a brick wall in basically June of 2023.
- [40:06]
Scott Clary
Like chapter 11. Like, what. What was the. Or was it just close to it?
- [40:11]
Eric Jorgensen
Like, $0 left in the bank by the time anybody knew what was going on, like, nearly immediate bankruptcy. Because there had been like, this is all sort of alleged. And there's like, public records about the law.
- [40:23]
Scott Clary
Yeah, only. Only what is public? I don't want to get anyone in trouble.
- [40:25]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, the public stuff, the alleged stuff is like fabricating financial statements, lying, false inducements.
- [40:32]
Scott Clary
Very serious. It's not just up a business and not knowing what you're doing. It's like trying to cover it up, too.
- [40:37]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, there's like. And again, these are allegations. Accusations, like, we haven't. The trials are not all complete to know exactly all of what happened, but, like, be very, very careful who you sell your business to is like, a good moral of the story. And truly, like, what Tucker wrote is an incredible, incredible post that does what I've never seen another business post mortem do about, like, truly the psychology of the leaders and how different decisions get made at different points. It's an incredible piece of writing and it's very illuminating. But the bottom line is that this business went bankrupt, like, overnight, to everyone's surprise and in a catastrophic fashion. And I was one of the customers who lost money. Got, like, caught up in this as an author, and I was like, man, this. Like, this just sucks. This is so tragic. Me and hundreds of other authors are screwed. The team is screwed, which is full of people that I worked with closely through both of these books, and I loved and I admired. I believe this business model is very important to the future of publishing, and I rely on them as an author. So, like, is there anything I can do? And so I started making some phone calls, and I happen to know some people who have bought companies in the past and work in either holding companies or private equity or permanent equity. So these guys, Siva and Xavier of Enduring Ventures, have a background in publishing and in sort of distressed asset situations. They flew to Austin and they met the team, and they're like, man, these people are incredible. And they worked with the bank and they figured out how to put all the pieces together. Like, I'm not a. I'm not a deals guy, so I don't know all the details of it, but, like, they bought the. The brand and the. Some of the assets out of the bankruptcy, hired over some of the veterans from the team, and to my surprise, then after that was done, called me and said, we need somebody to come lead this company, and we think that should be you. And I was like, oh, okay, let me. Let me think about it. So that was the summer of 2023. Um, and it was like, you know, some long, dark nights and conversations with my wife to decide if this was, like, something that we wanted to take on. But I just. I was such a believer in the business and in this group of people, and the business was in such a tough situation, and I felt sort of uniquely able to make a real difference to this group of people's lives. And it's a vision that I've have believed in as a customer and to now get to kind of show up as a. As a publisher and as a author now with at least a little bit of experience and help other people go through this portal that I went through to become an author in the same way that, like, Tucker helped me, you know, five, six years ago. So it's a really crazy journey for the first year, but it's super rewarding already, and I think. I think we've got a great road ahead.
- [43:24]
Scott Clary
So just business strategy. How do you revive a debt company or. Or, I mean, bankrupt. I mean, it's pretty synonymous with debt. I mean, you can't get much more. You can't get in a shittier position than that. So what's. What's the strategy to bring this back to life? By the way, did you bring Tucker back in? Did they have any interest in sort of helping, like, build this thing back up?
- [43:47]
Eric Jorgensen
Tucker and Zach, no official roles, but they've both been, like, very helpful privately. And, you know, they just wanted to see. See the scribe brand and all this, like, value that they created, I think, not end in a smoldering crater, which is kind of where it was headed. And, you know, there are no perfect solutions or into any of the things when the disaster is this big, but I do think we made a lot of progress. I made it a lot of people's lives much better than they would have been otherwise through this, you know, we basically had to start a brand new company, just bought the brand, hired over some of the team and so operationally it's like starting a business from scratch. Emotionally you have a lot of work to do because the whole team has just gone through this incredibly traumatic event where they were their whole, the sky fell, you know, the world fell out from under them in a way that they had no idea was even possible. There's a lot of trust to rebuild inside the team, with the community, with authors. It's a mix of like you got to do something like your hair is on fire and you've also got to be patient and allow that trust battery to kind of recharge and just do great work with the work that's on your desk until you've got a reputation to re establish. So that's just what we focused on for the first year and a half.
- [45:12]
Scott Clary
Do you think there, I mean there's obviously a ton you're doing, but just some. Think of some like industry agnostic, transferable idea that you've deployed in the past year and a half when you've burnt trust with customers and with employees. Because that is a universally applicable problem that CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs deal with. What would be one idea that you think has worked particularly well?
- [45:40]
Eric Jorgensen
Building that trust back like tactically or strategically? Are we kind of.
- [45:43]
Scott Clary
It's an open ended question. Interpret it as you see fit. It doesn't matter to me. I think that just, I think the goal is to think of an entrepreneur that maybe, hopefully it didn't go bankrupt, but maybe they raised money from a bad investor or maybe they hired someone that burnt a customer, maybe they hired a VP that let down their team and they're trying to build that trust back. I mean that's, that's a really difficult thing that they don't really teach you in an MBA program. Is there anything that you can point to theoretically or tactically that you think is like a useful insight for someone listening?
- [46:18]
Eric Jorgensen
I think the thing that has worked for me is the most human version of the conversation that you can possibly have as quickly and openly as you can have it. And a lot of times that means just a ton of private one to one conversations because that's the most trust building thing you can, that's the most trust building forum, it's the most personal forum, it's where you can be the most candid and there's no substitute for, for that. And if you're, you know, if the business is in a space where that's even remotely doable, I would encourage people to do that. I've been really shocked how often, you know, just a face to face or even a phone conversation has helped. You can't, you can't take it personally and you can't win over everybody. But a lot of the people who come in extremely, extremely hot on, on email or text, as soon as you're talking to them live, as soon as you're actually like telling the full truth of the situation or pouring your heart out, you're just showing them that you're trying. People get very human and very understanding very quickly, which, you know, yeah, nobody, very few people truly like, want to be angry and want to hold on to that anger. And so you just have to like, yeah, show them the truth of what happened and show them that you're doing your best to do earnest work to rebuild that trust and that you're patient in, you know, allowing them to come along at their own pace and, and then you just have to over deliver on whatever the thing is that you're actually promising them that you will do going forward.
- [48:04]
Scott Clary
No, I think that, you know, you're living another, another Paul Graham idea which is do things that don't scale and then find ways to scale them. But I think that that solves most business problems. I mean like the high friction, most authentic radical candor like all of that, they're buzzwords, but they work. They're buzzwords for a reason, because they actually work. And when you're dealing with, I mean, again, not everyone has this like widespread systemic trust issue that a bankruptcy would lead to. But still on a, on a small scale, people deal with this every single day. And I think that in the age of Internet and, and texting and asynchronous communication and voice notes and email, it's very easy to forget the human component of business which solves most problems, in my opinion, at least from my experience.
- [48:47]
Eric Jorgensen
And the relationships that you get out of a tough, coming through a tough situation together. Like, man, think about the DNA of this company after, you know, 20 people just sat at their desks through an absolute forest fire, like doing work that they didn't even know if they would get paid for. Just to take care of authors and take care of each other. You know, that's the team that was there and then moved on to start this new company and that like those that is so easy to root for and be excited to work with those people and be a part of that like rebirth and resurgence of this valuable, this valuable idea. And I've talked to a bunch of people who are, you know, founders of similar businesses in the industry and they're like, thank God you brought that company back. Like that was, it was like an industry leading company two years ago and nobody knows why the problems happened. And so they just look at a company that didn't work out and they say, oh, that model can't work like that. Innovation is dead. And they're like, you have no idea how much like you saving a competitor helped us continue to grow our business like that is. I did not do that math, but that is really interesting to hear.
- [50:00]
Scott Clary
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- [52:41]
Eric Jorgensen
I think everyone could write a book at some point along their life if they find the right reason and they find the right time and they come into it excited. I don't think everybody should write a book right now. I don't think everybody who writes a book will necessarily write a great book. But I generally, I believe very strongly like, more podcasts in the world is better. More movies in the world is better, More books in the world is better. These people who like, it's a different version of the zero sum efficient market disease that is like, why would you start a podcast? There's already too many podcasts. Like, who the fuck decided there's too many podcasts? You today was too many more than last week. Do we have the right number of podcasts but not the right number of episodes? What are you even talking about? Is the creation of new knowledge and the sharing of new stories is a permanent state of humanity. It's part of what makes us us and it's part of what moves the frontier forward. And I think any human being, we are all so unique, we forget how insanely unique we all are. And from that point of view, nobody else in the world could write your book the way you're going to write it. And you never know who you're going to help with your unique story and how it gets shared. Like I interviewed a guy, a scribe author who committed fraud, white collar crime, went to prison, wife left him, rock bottom, started writing in prison just in a diary to like process, process his thoughts and like stay sane. And he realized in doing this like he, his mission was to just help one person, just help one person. Like if, if I can keep one person from avoiding this disastrous situation that I'm in, all of this effort will be worth it. And that's what drove him to publish this book. And he ended up at his like great aunts book club with like a bunch of little old ladies and he was talking to this woman who read 85 Year Old lady who just read his book and was like, you know, I lost my husband six months ago and I had a stroke three months ago. And I feel like at 85 I met my rock bottom. And your book showed me through your experience how much more I have to live for and how much better things can be and how optimistic I can be and how I can help others and how I can still enjoy every day. And you think at any point this guy who committed a white collar crime and wrote a book in prison thought he was going to help an 85 year old woman who was a widow who had a stroke. Like it is these stories. Every author has their own version of this story. And it's just no one is going to tell your story your way. No one's going to have your experience and be able to frame it in your exact way. And the way I look at it is you don't want to die with all of these things that you learned stuck in your head. And books are the way that we immortalize our lessons. It's, it's thousands of years old. It's the great conversation of humanity. It's this super lindy format that so many of us aspire to write one day and you don't have to wait until you're like, you know, 85, write a book and then keel over and done like it's, you know, you can write a book as you go and so many times it creates these inflection points in people's careers. So many times it helped you them, you know, transition careers or find their people or find a new community or build their business or find their spouse.
- [56:29]
Scott Clary
Like, or do like, I think like do like an audit of, of their own life. I Think.
- [56:34]
Eric Jorgensen
Listen.
- [56:34]
Scott Clary
When I write, dude, when I write, sometimes I'm like, man, what the. Like, I. I'm teaching myself. Like, I. I know this stuff already that I'm writing, obviously. But then when you put. When you put your thoughts to paper and you are like, teaching something or talking through a story and you're like, damn, it's much easier to teach, and I'm not even living the life that I'm saying other people should live, or I'm not even internalizing and actioning on the lessons that I'm telling someone else to action on. Whether or not it's a book or a tweet, it forces you to take a good, hard look at yourself. Because I look at my Twitter sometimes, dude, I'm like, man, that person is so smart. If only I knew that person. But it's the same with the book. It's the same with any kind of content you create. It just forced you to take a look inside and realize, like, who are you really? I think it is the best mirror you can possibly find.
- [57:22]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah. And it's an incredibly rewarding creative journey to go on. Like, for me, it was the first one. Like, podcast is tough, and I'm curious how you relate to this. Like, you're never done with a podcast. You know, it's not like writing a book or shooting a movie where you're like, man, I spent five years all in on that. But I'm really proud of it as a body of work. And now it's just on the shelf.
- [57:44]
Scott Clary
Podcasts are just like a constant, constant TV series. Like, it should never end. People that do seasons, seasons of podcasts, unless you are exceptionally famous and you have an audience somewhere else to tap into, seasons don't benefit your podcast. Seasons just allow you to grow slower. Like, if you could do a podcast per day, you would just grow quicker. Like, there's an endless amount of content that people can consume. I mean, if you even look at, like, John Lee Dumas, entrepreneurs on fire, he does a daily show that's 30 minutes. That's a wild amount of work. But people would. If he doubled it up and he did two shows per day, people would just consume because there's no amount. Like, maybe, maybe you'd see a slight drop off. But I would say that there wouldn't be a significant drop off. There's ample time for people to consume content they like. So the more you do, the more you do, the more people will consume. The faster you. You'll grow. The. The more commercially viable this podcast or project will be. And what that means is, like, there's no end in sight. Like, there really is no end. So that being said, the content you speak about, the. The conversations you have, the people you bring on, like, you better enjoy that shit. Like, you better enjoy it. And you bet if you don't, you're going. It's. You're going to burn out. Like, I would say you can't really write a book without enjoying the content, but at least there's, like, a finish line. So maybe I could write a book about a topic that I'm not exceptionally passionate about, and maybe I could finish it and publish it. I think the content probably subpar and the reader would probably pick that up, but at least I could get it over with. The podcast, you should never want to get it over with, because if you do want to get it over with, you're not doing it for the right reasons. So I think that whatever cadence you pick or whatever your topic you pick or whatever guests you choose to speak to, like, go into it with the assumption that it's gonna. There's gonna be a. There's gonna be a. A reason as to why you're doing it. Maybe it's a commercial reason, maybe it's driving traffic to a product you're selling, whatever it is, but go and go into it with the assumption that there is no finish line for this thing. So as long as. As long as there's a net positive for, you know, ad revenue or product sales, like, you can just ramp this up till forever. So you better at least enjoy doing it. That's. That's my takeaway. If you go into it with. With a mindset of, oh, I only want to do a podcast for the next year, I'd be like, you know what? Go find another medium to create on. I don't think this is a medium for. For you, it doesn't make sense. So enjoy it. But I also, like, this is sort of like dovetailing into another conversation for just content creators in general. Like, I don't necessarily think that you need to create content in a format that you don't enjoy. Like, I enjoy podcasting and talking. I enjoy writing. I'm fortunate that I actually enjoy a lot of little creative pursuits. But if you hate, if. If jumping on a call with somebody who's had a great career makes you so nervous that you're like, you can't even, like, fumble through a sentence and you just get this, like, you know this. You get like, star shock. And then you screw up the content or you. Or you hate yourself every time you go on to a Zoom Call or Riverside and you're just dreading it. Why don't you try writing on substack? Like, just pick something else that you enjoy. Because, I mean, yes, books do have a finish line, but if you enjoy writing books, I mean, I've spoken to Seth Godin. I've spoken to Steven Kotler. Seth has like 21 books. Steven has like 12 or something. I don't know the exact numbers. But the point is, there's a perception that you're going to finish it, but if you enjoy it, you're going to keep doing it. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're finished like that one book, but you're gonna do, like, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 20 if you enjoy it. So any creative pursuit. I don't think there's a finish line. I don't think there's a real finish line if you actually enjoy doing it. Because there shouldn't be a point in a creative pursuit outside of cognitive ability and Alzheimer's and dementia, God forbid, where you won't want to do this thing. Like most creative pursuits, in my mind, you should be 90 years old and still wanting to do it and still able to do it. That, to me, is the hallmark of, like, a good creative pursuit that is aligned with. With your passions, your hobbies, your. Your. Your perfect format. That's the way I look at it.
- [61:59]
Eric Jorgensen
I love that. That's how I think about books. By the time I finish a book, I come up with a list of 10 more that I want to write. Yeah.
- [62:05]
Scott Clary
So regardless of whether or not, I mean, like, with a podcast, I'll do another podcast next week. Just because the book is the same, there is no finish line. There's just like a little bit more time in between your projects, but you still do it for forever if you enjoy it. And then when you enjoy it, that's when you get into this flow where you actually create content that is not only useful to your audience, but ultimately useful to you. That's the best content. That's when you actually create content that resonates. That's when you're actually successful at this pursuit. So I think that, again, aligning your. Your passions, I mean, we can do like this little Venn diagram, icky guy, whatever, for content creation. But I think that it's the same, by the way, content creation and my views on content creation and wanting to do it till you die. I. I truly believe that that that mindset should Bleed into your job and the work you do. It's not always easy to love the work you do. But I think that ultimately, after speaking to so many people that have achieved financial success, financial success is one metric. But having a vocation that just is tied into what you're good at, what you understand, what you enjoy is this beautiful thing that I think most people should actually aspire to achieve. And I think that most people are actually using content to get there. They're using content to create a job that they actually enjoy. That's why we see. I think I just saw some data like 12 million influencers are based in the US now are people that over 12 million people that get paid to post content. It's because people just want to talk about and get paid for stuff they enjoy. That's really it at the end of the day.
- [63:41]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I think that's true. I think there's, I. The cool thing about doing the influencer gig is like, you can really make it your own and you can find you can be like as weirdly you as you want to be. And that's fantastic. I think there's a, there's a downside to that, which is just like, you know, we're memetic animals and like, if you spend 10 hours a day consuming business podcasts, you're probably just going to start a business podcast instead of going to start a business. It's like everybody goes to Tony Robbins and their conclusion coming away is not, I'm going to go apply those to become the best version of me. It's, I'm going to become Tony Robbins, I'm going to become a life coach, I'm going to open up my practice and it's like, no, you just, that's like the mimetic reaction you have to the inputs that you've given yourself. So like, like, let's not, you know, if you're not born to be a podcast or if you're not excited to do that. To your point, if you find it to be more work, like, be honest with yourself if that's not your calling.
- [64:47]
Scott Clary
But understand that, I mean, understand that you should go out and find your calling and find your passion and find your hobby and find and find something that actually sort of lights a fire in you. And I do believe that if you find that thing, whether or not you're writing a book or podcasting or you're building out some dog walking service, like, if you do that for a long enough period of time. And this is where I truly believe, like Architect your life so that if you are attempting to do something that is maybe less 9 to 5 and a little bit more aligned with what, what you want to achieve. Find a system or a structure that allows you to attempt that thing for an unreasonable amount of time so that you can eventually become good at it. Your first book is usually not going to sell a million copies for sure, but if you write two, three, four books, if you write a lot of content, if you've been blogging for the past five years, if you've been, you know, just. If you've just been in create mode, eventually you will become good at writing and you will create a great book, and then you will find a way to make a significant, you know, amount of money from that thing, and that will become your job, which now is just a creative pursuit that turned into your actual, you know, your actual work.
- [65:56]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I think there's, like, there's obviously a million right answers here, like, for your life. One is like, pursue your passion until it becomes your career. The other is find some shit that makes money, do it until you're great at it. And then being great at it will make you really excited to do it. And, like, even though nobody else thinks it's sexy or cool, even if you, your 5 years ago self didn't think it's cool, you could become the, like, insurance broker kingpin of Lackawanna county. And that's your identity. And you are stoked to get up every day and, like, broker insurance. And you're great at it, and you make good money and you have a good life, like, and nobody else is trying to take that throne from you because they're not even paying attention. Because it's not like the peak of some mountain that everyone's got their eyes on. That's a great life. That's a great life.
- [66:44]
Scott Clary
Before we press record, I guess the last idea that I thought we could discuss because you mentioned you wanted to speak about, I guess, investing or, or. Or invest. What was the topic that you mentioned before we press record, you said that this could be an interesting idea.
- [66:58]
Eric Jorgensen
Oh, aside from my, like, publishing, writing work, also run a small venture fund doing, like, crazy deep tech investments. I didn't know. I saw that you also do some.
- [67:10]
Scott Clary
Like, not as successfully as you, I don't think, but I will not know.
- [67:15]
Eric Jorgensen
For 20 more years. That's the nature of the game.
- [67:17]
Scott Clary
So when you. So when you decided to sort of take this on, do you actually. Did you raise a fund or no?
- [67:24]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, small fund.
- [67:24]
Scott Clary
A small fund. And you Focus on like deep tech, not private equity. So you do like early what, what, what? Like pre revenue, like seed stage what?
- [67:35]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, pre, pre seed. Seed. Maybe some Series A. The approach is very like find scientists and engineers who are building something off of a truly like unique technological innovation that have ideally this is the part where I start to sound insane. The bones of becoming like a mega cap company of the 2050s in this like beautiful utopian like it's very difficult to imagine what the world is going to look like of course 15, 20, 25 years ago or down the line. But I think it's just so critically important as a civilization to resource those people and get money to them and get attention to them and get talent to them and help them build these companies that could be truly revolutionary that I just get such excitement. It feels like living in a sci fi book and getting to write it along the way. So fun.
- [68:33]
Scott Clary
The win to loss ratio for traditional VC is already. People will invest in 10 companies knowing that only one of them is going to be successful. I can only imagine that when you're taking these like these, these moonshots, these like Hail Mary type investments with companies that will be mega cap in 2050. The, the, you know you're going to have like a fraction of a percentage that will actually be successful. How do you just, I mean like you haven't realized significant success yet if you're really like aiming for a 2050 mega cap company. But how do you, how do you vet these people? How do you vet these ideas? I mean that's a fascinating exceptionally high risk way of investing.
- [69:15]
Eric Jorgensen
So I think it is early, but I don't think it's as high risk. It is not as high risk as it is seen relative to this whole history of the traditional. The last 20 years of venture capital returns have been defined by software for the most part. And now I am not sure that software is going to. Software has been perceived as being very low capital intensity and people have been really excited about investing in it because of that. But it also has low switching costs and people are doing all the customer acquisition costs are getting crazy high and it is turning out to be much more capital intensive even at scale than people anticipated or modeled when they're making the seed and series A investments. Whereas hardware for a variety of reasons is a lot of times less capital intensive than people expect. Because you can get non equity dilutive loans, you can get grants sometimes from government programs, you can do all sorts of different things to capitalize these businesses in ways that software doesn't necessarily support. And because there's not the competition, that's all going for the same thing. By the time a company is 10, 15 years down the line, you could spin up a competitor to a software company relatively quickly. It's very difficult to catch up to a lead that one of these like vertically integrated hardware like deep tech companies have because they're 10 years into developing, not just know how, but sometimes manufacturing, sometimes unique. So there's a big customer relationship, significant moats, huge moats. If you look at like, what are the, what are the biggest companies in the world right now, like Tesla, SpaceX. Those were insane investments 15, 20, 25 years ago when they were getting started, nobody was even thinking about them. And I think there are a whole host of those getting started today. There's a credible competitor that we can even really name to SpaceX. Tesla's only other competitor is like existing legacy automakers that are all sort of doing the same thing. And those are extreme outlier returns. So I don't think it'll be an order of magnitude different. I don't think it'll be 1 out of 100 in our fund is successful. I think it'll probably still be in 1 out of 10. But I think the exit valuations that we will see relative to somebody who's just investing in a bunch of software today, I think we are going to absolutely blow the returns out of the water as long as we hold long enough to realize the, you know, the true value of these businesses over the.
- [71:55]
Scott Clary
Long run now is, are you investing in companies like X Prize, like, like solving these huge humanity problems.
- [72:04]
Eric Jorgensen
XPRIZE is like giving.
- [72:06]
Scott Clary
So Peter Diamandis and X Prize and, and Singularity University and, and what, what they do is they, they, they're like, I, I don't even know what the latest, you know, roster of different ideas that they're funding, but they're, they're going to say something like, hey, if we need to, if we need to grow it, it's going to be a ridiculous example, but I'll just give it, if we're going to try and grow a tree on Mars, who can solve this problem? And you're going to, we're going to give you a whole bunch of money if you can tell us how to grow a tree on Mars and build a company around that. Is it like that insane, ridiculous ideas or is it something a lot more. You said vertically integrated. So it's not, I don't think, think.
- [72:46]
Eric Jorgensen
It'S probably like two notches down from a tree on Mars that is like, like they should have commercial practicality, like in the coming five years, ten years. Like, but, but ideally, like doing something that has literally never been done before by the human race. Like, that's the engineering bar that you want to go for. And, and when you are doing that, obviously there's, you know, certainly not a competitor yet, but tough to make bets on that. But when you're investing in somebody who's building something that has never been built before and they're the only person who can sell it, like, those become really, really incredible businesses almost no matter how much capital it takes to get it, as long as it's a valuable problem in a big market and, and like, money and returns aside, like, it's just awesome. It's just satisfying to resource those people tackling those problems. Like, I just don't care about, I don't care how much money you can make investing in like HR software. I'm just not going to do it. Like, it's just boring and I don't care. When I get to meet somebody who's like sending the first commercial deep space craft to bring back like platinum from an asteroid.
- [73:58]
Scott Clary
That is super cool.
- [73:59]
Eric Jorgensen
That's rad. That is just awesome. I want to meet that guy. I want to talk to that guy. I want to watch the progress. I want to help however I can. I want to spread the good word. I want to like be on that team. And that's just a really, really fun thing to do.
- [74:16]
Scott Clary
Like, what's the coolest shit that people are building right now that you've invested in?
- [74:19]
Eric Jorgensen
That's a literal example.
- [74:20]
Scott Clary
Oh, shit. Like actually he's building a spaceship.
- [74:23]
Eric Jorgensen
He's asteroid mining.
- [74:24]
Scott Clary
Asteroid mining? Spaceship, yeah.
- [74:26]
Eric Jorgensen
Like it is now. Like, it may be cheaper given our current space technology to bring back like some raw materials from near Earth asteroids than it is to mine them from the earth and definitely like safer. So that's a really good one. There's somebody building. I've done podcasts with a lot of these founders on, on my podcast, but there's somebody who's building this new type of battery that is like 10 times the energy density of existing batteries. So Teslas don't have a 300 mile range, they have a 3,000 mile range. And planes can become electric because the power to weight ratio like now supports planes. Drones, the use cases for a whole bunch of different drones and robots expand massively. You know, your laptop or your phone could last for a week. The world changes. The electrification accelerates dramatically when we have Battery technology that breaks through sort of another layer like that there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of work to do on energy in general.
- [75:26]
Scott Clary
So like that level of energy is like, like akin to some sort of radical human transformation that quantum computing would bring similar kind of breakthroughs that you'd get.
- [75:35]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, quantum is like particularly mind bending to me. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in quantum computing.
- [75:39]
Scott Clary
No, I don't, I don't. Listen, dude, I don't understand quantum computing either. Like, I'm just saying like in terms of technology that would take humanity to another level, this kind of energy unlocking energy that would, you know, power a spaceship or that. So it's not like a combustion or whatever it is, I don't know, power spaceships now. But it's not some super fancy battery. Right. It's, it's like, it's, it seems like it's just like really the kind of old technology that's being recycled again and again and again. We're not using really updated energy methods like the ones that you're talking about.
- [76:12]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I mean, I think with a combination of like building a lot of solar panels, building a lot of nuclear and building a lot of batteries, like we're going to have a really different looking sort of power landscape, which it may not look tremendously different on a daily basis. You'll just be, you'll never even probably learn the name of this company. You'll just be like, wow, all my stuff just lasts forever now.
- [76:33]
Scott Clary
Yeah. IPhone? Yeah. Yeah.
- [76:36]
Eric Jorgensen
Gas stations. That was crazy, right? Yeah. In the same way that now we're kind of like. Remember when you had to go to one room of your house to use a computer?
- [76:44]
Scott Clary
Yeah. Like, same idea.
- [76:45]
Eric Jorgensen
Weird.
- [76:46]
Scott Clary
That's very, very cool.
- [76:48]
Eric Jorgensen
Remember home phones?
- [76:50]
Scott Clary
Yeah. Remember dial up.
- [76:52]
Eric Jorgensen
Dude, we forget how fast we have such amnesia about how much progress we've made and how weird things used to be. But we forget when we project that forward how different the world's going to be in five or 10 years. I just think we have such an obligation to the future to keep making things better and resourcing these pioneers working on important innovations at the frontier. I just get such satisfaction from that.
- [77:17]
Scott Clary
How did you get into this shit? Because I like. Listen dude, I like to invest, but I don't invest in this. Like I invest in like SaaS, startups and like people trying to build like digital products and like creator economy. This is now. I feel boring. I feel very boring.
- [77:34]
Eric Jorgensen
I'm sorry, I did not mean to neg you. I didn't, I didn't know that was your, your thesis.
- [77:41]
Scott Clary
Well, no, my thesis was not. My thesis was not coming up with a new energy source that's going to power humanity into the fourth industrial fifth industrial revolution, whatever. That wasn't, that isn't my investment thesis. But maybe I should, maybe that's why I should go into your fund.
- [77:54]
Eric Jorgensen
That's what, that's what we do. It's funny you say that actually. That was exactly. So I started, I started angel investing just in like my friends because I was like, that person's really smart. I think they're going to build a great company. You know, I wish I could clone myself and go work for you. I, I can't. So here's, you know, a few thousand.
- [78:10]
Scott Clary
Dollars one of your startups will be able to. Don't worry.
- [78:12]
Eric Jorgensen
But yeah, I hope that'd be, that'd be a fun one. If you're working on a cloning startup, holler at me. I want to, I want to fund a cloning startup. It just started with friends investments and then we scaled that up to raise the fund and then we're just kind of started as a normal, like a little bit more like you're describing of just like things that we think are good venture investments. And it wasn't too long into that that I read a book called where's my Flying Car? That it really makes the case. It's a little bit historical looking as saying like why, why don't we have flying cars? But it also makes a case for the next industrial revolution and what it would look like and what technologies could come together and what the life could be like on the other side of it. And it just lit a fire under me to be like, this is the real shit. Like this is what venture was originally started to do. This is what turns me on. This is what I'm excited to think about and work on and, and the paradox is I think it's actually going to have significantly better returns than investing in things that are a little closer to home that a thousand other people feel comfortable and confident investing in because they're just all going to try to eat each other's lunch. The returns are going to get competed away and there's going to be one dude way over there like bringing back platinum asteroids who started a trillion dollar company that we invested in 20 years ago. And I'll be like very old and gray and be like, that was a good idea. Thank God we did that. I think it is really all in service. This is really the underpinning philosophy of all the work that I do, all the books that I write, all the investments that I make. Like we owe it to the future to pay it forward. Like we owe the future our best effort to create, to create greatness. Like we live in an insane mind blowing abundance because of the generations of work and sacrifice and knowledge and effort and engineering and building that went into creating farms, tractors like air conditioning, light bulbs, cars. Can you. We are just so, so lucky to be alive right now. And there's nothing, there's nothing stopping us from having other orders of magnitude of just mind blowing technological progress. But we don't think about it day to day, we don't feel obligated to continue it. We just kind of like putz around with the work that's in front of us. And I just get such like spiritual satisfaction out of working towards a long term vision of a better future. And I find that so energizing and so exciting. And it's just a thrill to meet people that also see or that have a very specific piece of that that they are uniquely working on that I get to then participate in, support, evangelize, cheer them on, resource them. Like whatever we can do to help those pioneers keep moving forward. I love it. We all, we all ride on, on their hard work.
- [81:18]
Scott Clary
Last, last thought because I'm super curious just on this topic. When you look at like the traditional VC firms or, or like financial institutions like you know, Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, any pick, any pick, any of them, do you see them putting money into these kinds of spaces as well? Like you must get other people that go in on these rounds.
- [81:38]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, oh yeah, some of them. I, I think Andreessen Horowitz is pretty good. I think the people that are really consistently at the frontier are lesser known firms like Future Ventures. Steve Jurvetson is one of the OGs of this. He used to be a Draper, Fisher Jurvetson, but started his own fund a few years ago. 50 years led by Seth Bannon is a newer but really strong up and coming one. There's a whole sort of coalition of deep tech futuristic investors that are doing really, really cool stuff. Founders Fund is like one of the bigger ones that invests in these like highly more speculative but like. And then there are a ton of angels, right? I mean the Collison brothers are really great about this, Naval is great about this, Biology is great about this. Is part of what sort of drew me to them in the first place is just Feeling this philosophical kinship with them.
- [82:34]
Scott Clary
So where do people connect with you? I mean you have your own podcast, obviously socials, website, drop it all.
- [82:39]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, ejorgensen.com is kind of my personal. That has links to absolutely everything on it. Scribe Media, if you are. You think you have a book idea? You think you have a book in you? You think a book would help you build your business? Like come talk to us, we would love to help you brainstorm. And that whole crew just does exceptional, exceptional work. If you want to meet some of the founders that I talked about, like my podcast is Smart Friends and it's, it's just like, it's a good name. Shooting the shit. Thank you. I think it's like the use case of all, all podcasting. You know, it's like on demand. Smart Friends. You just want people to hang out with that. He's going to make your life better. But yeah, there's some, there's some interesting stories to tell on that. But I appreciate you, you know, having me on and sharing stories.
- [83:24]
Scott Clary
This is awesome.
- [83:25]
Eric Jorgensen
Talking through some of this. This has been fun.
- [83:27]
Scott Clary
Good, good. No, I appreciate you. It has been fun. Last words of wisdom that you want to leave the audience. Usually I'll say like, hey, you know what would be a lesson you tell your 20 year old self? I think you already dropped one earlier. But any, any sort of like last words of wisdom based on your life, seasons of your life, what you've learned as an author, entrepreneur, investor, just to, to close it out.
- [83:47]
Eric Jorgensen
Don't be afraid to chase a meaningful purpose. I think I, David Senra has a great line about this is the best. Financial decisions are not financial decisions. So like you get to decide the meaning of your life. Just choose a meaning that you think might be the answer and throw yourself at it. Even if you don't know how it's going to work out or why it's going to work out. And the world has a way of rearranging itself around willful people. So choose something meaningful, work on it with intensity and you will wake up one day and find an army of supporters behind you like helping you achieve that vision.