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The AI Billionaire: Now Is Your Last Chance To Build GENERATIONAL Wealth | Paul Allen
01:23:01
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- [00:01]
Graham
You're about to make a trade which you do, you listen to. Is it get optioning those options or let's do a little research. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart what was it like watching your company go public?
- [00:18]
Paul Allen
My lifelong childhood friend, he said to me, what's it like to be worth $100 million? We launched Ancestry and got multiple millions of users a month. Before LinkedIn, Facebook or Google even existed, we had to get really creative with marketing.
- [00:33]
Jack
Why is it important to understand your family history and genealogy?
- [00:36]
Paul Allen
Two things that all human beings need to know is one, your family stories because that's part of your identity. But then individually you have God given talents that are unique to you.
- [00:49]
Graham
So do you think it's easier today to start a business than it was back in 2000?
- [00:53]
Paul Allen
Way easier. 10 times, 100 times easier. Especially with the rise of architecture. What took us months and months to accomplish when we launched Ancestry.com could now be achieved by someone sitting in their bedroom in less than an hour.
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Graham
What do you think is the biggest risk to AI?
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Paul Allen
The biggest risk.
- [01:16]
Graham
So Paul Allen, co founder of Microsoft, net worth of $20 billion.
- [01:22]
Paul Allen
Yeah. Your most famous guest so far.
- [01:24]
Graham
How often do you get confused with that other Paul Allen?
- [01:28]
Paul Allen
When he was alive, it was a fantastic cheat code for me. When I lived in Silicon Valley, everybody returned my calls, everyone returned my emails. It was awesome. When he passed away then, that doesn't lend to that confusion anymore. But for about 10 years I was nicknamed in the venture capital community Paul Allen the Lesser, because people would talk about me. I mean, I'd started Ancestry with my best friend and so I was something a little bit in the entrepreneurial world, but I wasn't the Paul Allen. So I actually blogged under the name Paul Allen the lesser for about 15 years.
- [01:59]
Graham
Did you ever meet Paul Allen?
- [02:01]
Paul Allen
I did not. I wanted to so badly. I read his autobiography, Paul Allen, Idea Man. I think his sister is named Jody or Judy and I hope to meet her someday. But he's one of my heroes. He's an idea generator and his whole life mission was to ask the question what should exist and then make it happen. Either build it or fund it. So I love his life story, I love what he created. So many cool things and I regret that I never met him.
- [02:27]
Jack
So you Paul Allen founded Ancestry.com back in the 90s. It then went public in 2009 at a valuation of $700 million. It then went private again back in 2012 and was bought by a private equity company for 1.6 billion. And then once again it was bought by another private equity company back in 2020 for $4.7 billion. Do you wish you held onto the company for longer?
- [02:55]
Paul Allen
When the company was acquired in 2006 pre IPO by a private equity fund, I heard about it from Dave Moon, the chairman. My first thing was to call him and say, I want to hold on to my shares till the ipo. But the answer was you can't. The private equity fund is buying 100% of the shares. So I regret having raised venture capital on terms that I didn't understand that gave other people board control. Within the first few years of ancestry.com I was a first time entrepreneur, well, raising venture capital for the first time. And I didn't know the fault, the small print at all.
- [03:30]
Graham
So what was the mistake that you made?
- [03:32]
Paul Allen
Well, I made many, many mistakes along the way. But the biggest one was this. Ancestry.com was cash flow positive with me and my co founder owning 97% of it in 1998. July of 98, cash flow positive, multimillion dollar MRR ARR. Yeah, we owned 97%. We didn't have to raise venture capital because you're cash flow positive and you're growing like crazy. But we knew that we needed to raise tons of money to digitize all the world's genealogy records because it was kind of a race. There were other companies in the space, but I think the biggest mistake was this. When we couldn't raise venture capital for Ancestry.com, we went to Sandhill Road. Nobody was interested. It was a topic, a hobby that no young VC money would be interested in. It's really an older person's hobby. The average genealogist was 52, 60% women. So the young 20 and 30 year old VCs in Silicon Valley just did not get it at all. But when we were struggling to raise capital, I had a dream one night that we built an intranet for every family in the world to connect people to their living relatives. And what was born out of that dream was MyFamily.com, so in December of 98 we launched MyFamily.com, we raised $13 million because of MyFamily.com and then 33 million the next year and 30 million the next year. So we raised 75 million on the MyFamily.com idea. But what those investors got was Ancestry and my family. We changed the name of AncestryToMyFamily.com in early 2000 we were gonna go public and we had our Merrill lynch, we had our S1. It was gonna be a billion dollar valuation with a 50% IPO pop to 1.5 billion. We didn't know that the bubble would burst in the time that it did. When it did, it was disastrous for almost everybody. We survived it, but it was really hard. But the biggest mistake I made, I think with my co founder was why did we raise venture capital for Ancestry.com? why didn't we just raise venture capital for MyFamily.com and keep a 97% ownership in a dot com that was scaling? We didn't have to put them into one company. So I think that was the biggest mistake.
- [05:46]
Graham
How much did you walk away with by doing those rounds of funding?
- [05:52]
Paul Allen
Well, I'm not going to disclose the final amount that I ended up with, but it was a lot lower than what we started out with. My lifelong childhood friend Darren Thain was the CTO of Ancestry. We went to elementary school together. And I remember sitting in a company meeting in 2000 and he said to me, what's it like to be worth a hundred million dollars? Because my equity was worth a hundred million dollars. And I said, I don't know, it hasn't sunk in. So we ended up with a lot less than that. After the bubble burst, after the preferred were converted to common, our series E came in. Our series E funding round was at a 20 million valuation. The Series C funding round was at a $300 million valuation. So the dot com bubble bursting, a lot of companies went out of business. I'm grateful that we didn't go out of business. We survived. We shut down our San Francisco headquarters, we moved back to Utah. We got cash flow positive with me as chief marketing officer before I left the company. So I feel very good about founding it, almost losing it, getting it into a great financial spot before leaving the company. And then sadly, I had to sell my shares in 2006.
- [07:01]
Graham
What gave you faith that people would want to track their genealogy? Because back then that was a pretty novel concept, right?
- [07:07]
Paul Allen
Well, if you'd been alive in the night, you guys are so young, you.
- [07:09]
Graham
Guys, I would have been like 8 years old.
- [07:12]
Paul Allen
I admire both of you. You guys are doing incredible things. You're having a huge impact. And, and. But I just turned 60 the other day. But I grew up in the 70s. There was a television show for several nights in a row called Roots. And it was the most popular watched television show in the in US history. Alex Haley had written a book called Roots. And then this turned Into a, a, a series of episodes, I don't know, five, six, seven episodes. But it was a epic show about a family from Africa, multi generational history. Kunta Kinte was this heroic figure in this story. But Alex Haley had a hundred million people learning about the importance of family history, the importance of genealogy in the 70s, and there were already thousands of genealogy societies all around the world. So it wasn't something we stumbled into. It was an established thing that older people are driven. Alex Haley said that there's a deep hunger in each of us, marrow deep to know our heritage and to find our family stories. So we just tapped into that. And as a religious person growing up in Utah, my genealogy had been tracked hundreds of years back by my pioneer ancestors. And so I inherited thousands of family names. It's a pretty big deal in Judaism and in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that tracking genealogy is almost a theological necessity. So I kind of grew up in that, but I was never interested in it per se. When we built ancestry, it was so cool to watch millions of people flock to the site. It was so early in the Internet's history. I tell entrepreneurs all the time we launched ancestry and got multiple millions of users a month before LinkedIn, Facebook or Google even existed. We had to get really creative and do guerrilla marketing tactics of all kinds. I remember hearing a few years ago that 41% of vent venture capital raised today goes to pay for Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Facebook ads. Because you can buy audience. Well, what do you do in the mid to or to late 90s, before Google, before LinkedIn, before Facebook, we had to get really creative with marketing.
- [09:24]
Jack
So in the simplest way possible, why is it important to understand your family history and genealogy?
- [09:30]
Paul Allen
So there's an Emory psychology study from 2001 that proved that the number one predictor of resilience in children is how much they know about their family's stories. Because. Because you're not a human being isolated or detached from other human beings. You have parents, you have grandparents, you have aunts and uncles and cousins, and you are part of that family. And so the stories of up and down, high and low, the stories of overcoming depression, losing your farm in the depression and rebuilding, that becomes part of your personal identity. Families can say we can get through hard things, we always have. So there's something powerful about stories that you internalize, and it builds resilience in children and gives them strength they wouldn't have otherwise.
- [10:18]
Jack
So you're saying that there's a sense of pride in knowing what your family has gone through that you can only get from understanding your family history and not get this sense of pride from other areas of their life.
- [10:29]
Paul Allen
Well, I think pride is one way to characterize it, but I think resilience is probably what the psychology study said. My five years at Gallup in Washington, D.C. where I evangelized the Clifton strengthsfinder talent assessment led me to believe that two things that all human beings need to know is one, your family stories. Because that's part of your identity and that'll help you get through hard times. And you can draw from stories and lessons learned from your parents and your. It's just really part of your identity. But then individually, you have God given talents that are unique to you, that weren't necessarily inherited. You were born with talents. And Don Clifton studied talent more than any other psychologist in history. He came up with a taxonomy of 400 talents. And his little assessment will help you find your top five greatest individual strengths. Strengths. So I used to give keynotes all around about your family stories bring you strength, and your personal talents are a road map to success in your own life.
- [11:28]
Jack
So what's the best way to be able to identify your personal strengths?
- [11:31]
Paul Allen
So Don Clifton's assessment is like 20, $25 and it takes about a half an hour to answer 177 questions. These were not lightly chosen. Don Clifton, for over 50 years, studied top performers in hundreds of occupations. And he would interview them for 90 minutes to find out what made them tick. That's how he built the taxonomy. And then when he came up with these questions, they're kind of counterintuitive questions. And you only have 20 seconds to answer each question. And what it does is it reveals to you your naturally recurring patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. So you answer those 177 questions off the top of your head. And now he'll repeat back to you in language of strengths what your top patterns, recurring patterns that you could utilize to be successful. Here's your top five. So I think the best way is to take that assessment for 25 bucks and then talk to a strengths coach to help you unpack. Well, what does that mean? How do I use that? What does that mean for my job? What does that mean for my relationships? So I'm a huge believer that everyone needs to take the assessment and then go through coaching conversations so that you really deeply understand how you're wired and what your best path is to personal success.
- [12:46]
Graham
After seeing all this, what do you believe now between nature and nurture?
- [12:49]
Paul Allen
I actually don't know if I believe anything about nature and nurture. I think it's part nature, part nurture. I think it's part individual choice that kind of comes after the nature and nurture. Like you can't personally rewire your brain, but your decisions stack up over time. And the scientists at Gallup might have a better answer than that. But they also say that if you have a traumatic life changing experience, you should take the assessment again. Because sometimes your patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, might change as a result of some major experience. A death, a trauma, or maybe a great success, or maybe a new relationship. So I've only taken it once and I never want to take it again because I love my top five strengths that Don Clifton told me that I have.
- [13:35]
Jack
What did it say?
- [13:36]
Paul Allen
Your number one strength learner.
- [13:38]
Jack
So what does that mean?
- [13:38]
Paul Allen
I just have to order books on Amazon every single day? Like I have to learn something new or lots of things. Every college class I took, I wanted to major in that subject. So I'm a learning machine. All humans are learning machines, but some people love it enough to do it all the time. My second strength is called input. And it's kind of funny to think about a word input, as being a strength or a talent. No one ever told me in high school or college, paul, you've got great input. You should build a company to gather all the world's genealogy records and make them available to people. So input people gather and dispense. And every input person, everyone who has input, is gathering something. It could be recipes, it could be collecting cars, it could be data or information or books. But the thing is, Don identified these incredible patterns and talents that most people don't even know are a talent. And most people go through life probably thinking they have almost no talent.
- [14:36]
Graham
Are there any toxic traits that this is able to reveal?
- [14:40]
Paul Allen
This is a positive psychology assessment. It only highlights the 34 most positive traits that you have that can be productively applied. There are many other assessments that reveal the dark side of human nature. There is a character assessment called via the Values Inventory Assessment, and it has cataloged 24 virtues that are identified in world religions and in world literature. And it reveals what percentile you are on each of those 24 virtues. And I got really high scores on certain things and then I got 3% on one trait and it really pissed me off.
- [15:17]
Graham
What was that trait?
- [15:18]
Paul Allen
Team teamwork.
- [15:21]
Jack
So you're not going to teamwork?
- [15:22]
Paul Allen
Apparently I'm a 3 percentile for teamwork and it made me mad because I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do with that? Don Clifton's assessment tells me five good.
- [15:31]
Graham
Well, yes, as a leader, you should be leading the way, not necessarily collaborating.
- [15:36]
Jack
Okay, you're saying disagree with that? Yes, I feel like you have a good vision. I feel like the essence of a good entrepreneur is someone who can build teams. Like you need to be able to outsource. That's just the way that you grow is you can't be doing everything and you need to find the right person for the right job and make sure there's a good culture and make sure your teams are being productive.
- [15:54]
Paul Allen
Oh, I think it's being 3 percentile in being a team player. Or is. I think it was team player. Might have been. Teamwork is not a good thing. But the assessment from VIA was created by Marty Seligman. He used to be the president of the American Psychological Association. Don Clifton started working with him on building the VIA character assessment. Then they parted ways and Marty ended up building that. Don's assessment is kind of tracing your immutable traits that you have and they're not something you learned. According to the VIA character assessment, I shouldn't react negatively If I got 3% out because I can choose to become a better team player. That's The VIA character assessment invites you to get 100 percentile in all 24 virtues. I just haven't started down that path yet. I'm not a big user of that assessment. I'm such a big believer in strengthsfinder.
- [16:45]
Graham
Now, really quick, I just wanna say that we've been traveling a lot to bring you these guests here on the iced coffee hour. And if you've traveled recently, you know what happens when you start packing your bags. Clothes get way bulkier than they should be and it's a lot more stressful than it needs to. That's why our sponsor, Ekster really surprised me with their travel pack vacuum kit. It's designed to help you pack smarter, save space and stay organized without overthinking it.
- [17:09]
Jack
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- [17:32]
Graham
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- [17:41]
Jack
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- [17:50]
Graham
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- [17:59]
Jack
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- [18:06]
Graham
Just go to partner.extra.com iced or click the link down below. Or to make it easier, we have the QR code on the screen as well. Again, that is partner.extra.comiced with the link down below or the QR code on the screen. Thank you so much and enjoy.
- [18:22]
Jack
Okay, so all of these assessments are going over my head. I need to know the top three things the average person should be doing if they want to understand either their family history or they want to be going online taking assessments that are backed by tons of science, tons of data. What would the top three things be if someone wants to try to learn about themselves, learn about their family, and improve as a person?
- [18:41]
Paul Allen
Well, Ancestry.com is not that expensive. And it's a thousand times easier to get hundreds of names in your family tree today than it was 30 years ago.
- [18:49]
Jack
Are you still affiliated with Ancestry?
- [18:51]
Paul Allen
I'm not affiliated with.
- [18:52]
Jack
So you're. So this is a true organic.
- [18:54]
Paul Allen
It's like, okay, oh yeah. But there's even a better free version that will never cost you any money. It's subsidized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's called FamilySearch.org they have about 20 billion records. It's free. It'll always be free. They have a very good mobile app. Go to familysearch.org, type in the parents names, the grandparents name, it'll start suggesting hints, and within a few hours you've got hundreds of names in your family tree with stories and photos submitted by your distant cousins that you didn't even know you had.
- [19:22]
Jack
But how can you be so sure that it's accurate information?
- [19:25]
Paul Allen
You can't 100% know. But if you learn some genealogy skills, like checking sources, there are people that in the 50s everyone wanted to be famous, related to royalty in England. So professional genealogists in the United states in the 50s would kind of fudge things and do research and say you're related to this Windsor family. And everyone would pay them money because they were excited. So there is bogus genealogy out there. But most of the genealogy software platforms, including Ancestry and familysearch.org have, have citations and sources that you can look up, like census records, birth, marriage, death records, and so you can validate it. It's unlikely that the first 100 or 200 years of your ancestors will be bogus because legitimate people are doing research all the time and connecting those puzzle pieces on the personal talents and strengths. My father taught at university for like 45 years, and he started before I discovered Don Clifton's work. He started telling his students, ask your family members, your boyfriend or your girlfriend, what your talents are and your strengths are. Just have people tell you what they think you're good at. Because most of us, when you're born with a talent, you've always had it. You think nothing of it, and you think everybody has it. That's just a common reaction. But if you have input or if you're really good at organizing or delegating or something, people have to tell you that a few times before you start to believe it. I still think the strengthsfinder assessment is worth it, but. But you can also ask everyone you admire or knows you well, what do you think I'm really good at? And how can you. What evidence do you have that I'm good at that? So you can learn from other people what your talents are.
- [21:06]
Jack
So, Graham, what do you think I'm really good at?
- [21:08]
Graham
Delegating.
- [21:09]
Jack
Delegating?
- [21:10]
Graham
Yeah.
- [21:11]
Jack
Okay. And let me see. What do I think you're really good at? Oh, man.
- [21:15]
Graham
So much.
- [21:15]
Jack
That's actually a start. Oh, man. Yeah. Let's see here. What do I think you're really good at? I think you have really, really, really good sustained, deep focus. Great. And I'm focused. I'm envious of that. He's able to sit down and you know how, like, certain activities either energize someone or drain someone, for example. For me, I am more of an extrovert. So I'm generally energized by being around people. Like, it actually increases my battery. Whereas Graham just immediately depletes as soon as he's around more than like two other people. When he's working, it, like, fully gives him energy. Like we will be after a 12 hour day, two back to back podcasts in Florida. I'm exhausted off a horrible night of sleep. We'll be flying all the way back to Vegas, six hour flight, and Graham is like super tired. Then he gets into the plane and locks in and works because it gives him energy. I. I don't get it. I don't.
- [22:06]
Paul Allen
Do you like Cal Newport's Deep Work book? Have you heard that?
- [22:09]
Graham
I've never heard of that.
- [22:10]
Paul Allen
Okay, so, yeah, he's famous for his book, Deep Work. But focus is one of the 34 strengths that Don Clifton has identified. And it's my 14th. So I've got 10 strengths that are always on. And then I've got 11, 12, 13, 14 that I think I can intentionally dial up. Like I can occasionally focus, but I have ideation number three, and that's kind of the opposite of focus. That's like every new idea gets my attention and it gives me energy. So this is a really good conversation. And if I'm low at being a team player, maybe the best solution for me, and I'm doing this with all my 50 employees, is deeply understand their strengths and try to make sure the tasks they're given and the projects they're assigned and play to their strengths. Because imagine if you give someone a task that's going to drain them for the next week or month. And it's natural that you don't always know what people love and what they don't love. But if you could delegate the right tasks to the right people and energize everybody, everybody wins.
- [23:03]
Jack
It's really interesting because I feel like Graham and I are exactly the opposite. I think I'm much more of a team worker. I love building teams. I love being around people, doing things with people. And I'm much more of like a ideator. I love coming up with new ideas. Oh, let's do this shiny object syndrome. And Graham is like, work alone.
- [23:20]
Graham
Work intensely well.
- [23:22]
Paul Allen
That's why you make great partners. It's seriously complimentary. Strengths are so helpful when everyone's the same. Like, that's not going to be very, very good. Or you've got to have some balanced strengths on the team. So if you're opposite, that's a really good thing.
- [23:36]
Jack
So what do you think about other popular tests like Myers Briggs test or Jordan Peterson's Understand Myself.com test? Have you ever taken any of these?
- [23:45]
Paul Allen
I love Jordan Peterson. I've listened to hundreds of hours of and his all of his books. I haven't taken his assess, but I would trust it because I think that guy is a genius. Myers Briggs, not so much. I had one. My son's friend had a great experience with Myers Briggs. So I don't want to fully discount Myers Briggs. He was struggling with his self confidence and trying to figure out what to do in life. He took Myers Briggs and it breaks down the 16 types and he found out he had the same personality type as Elon and Steve Jobs. That fact alone decided gave him courage to go into tech and to say I could be really good at tech. He's now a coder for Microsoft. He has had a great tech career so far. But if a assessment can give you a boost of confidence that you can be something, that's a good thing. It's not as rigorous and it's not as scientifically validated. The test retest reliability is a lot lower. I like strengthsfinder because I've seen it used by thousands of people with huge positive outcomes. But there are thousands of psychological tests and I'm sure there's many good ones.
- [24:46]
Graham
Yeah. Now, after looking at lineage for decades, what's the biggest lie people tell themselves about identity?
- [24:53]
Paul Allen
Wow, that is a huge question. Okay, well, so I would say in answer to that question, less from studying heritage and lineage and more about being immersed in the world of strength psychology, positive psychology, coaching, leadership, all the things that I've Learned the last 20 years. I think the biggest lie people tell themselves is that they don't have talent, that they're not a talented person. And that lie starts when you're very young, when you've got athletic talent in high school, musical talent, you've got performance talent. And most people don't think of themselves as having that level of talent. If you're not a quarterback, if you're not a dancer or a singer, you don't think you have talent. Don Clifton's vocabulary of 34 talents, with 400 total in his taxonomy, expands the view so that nobody has to tell a lie to themselves that you don't have talent. You might have a talent called empathy or developer. And those are extremely powerful human building, connecting and growing other people talents. And most people just never know they have talent. So I think that's the biggest lie that people tell themselves is they're not talented.
- [26:01]
Graham
How much of that talent is genetic? Like, let's just say your parents are great singers. It seems like they have children who are great singers or artists or athletes or they're. They're these specific traits that their kids overwhelmingly seem to inherit.
- [26:17]
Paul Allen
I think the musical and the athletic talent probably is largely heritable. I do think you see that in lots of families, that it passes down over time. And those are not the talents that Don Clifton was identifying. His were patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving I would say a percentage of your natural strengths are inherited, and then some percentage is nurtured, and then some percentage is developed through choice of how you spend your time. I would say the majority is nurture.
- [26:47]
Graham
And what's the most shocking thing that you've discovered from looking at so much DNA and lineage?
- [26:52]
Paul Allen
I haven't seen very many crazy stories. When I've traveled the world and given a lot of keynotes over the past 10 years, inevitably, I'll be talking about entrepreneurship or strength finder, and the audience members come up. Lots of them line up to meet me, and many of them have tears in their eyes because they want to tell me their story, their family story about meeting a sister they didn't know they had.
- [27:12]
Graham
I got a story that I'll tell you speaking of exactly that. I found out. Well, I guess my mom found out, and then she told me she had a half brother she had no idea about her entire life. And she found out in her late 60s. And apparently my grandpa went off to war in the. I think it was late 1930s, early 1940s. He was stationed somewhere in England at the time, had a relationship, and then went back or something happened. He was pulled immediately and had to go back to the United States. Something happened. Turned out he had a child with the person that he was in a relationship with in England. He had no idea that she had a child. She thought that he had died in the war. And my mom did one of those tests, found that she was related to this person. And she showed me a picture of him. He looked exactly like my grandpa. Like, exactly like a spitting image. Like, holy shit, this is the same guy.
- [28:10]
Paul Allen
Did she ever meet him?
- [28:11]
Graham
Yes. Oh, she had a meeting. Great guy. Great guy.
- [28:15]
Paul Allen
Incredible.
- [28:15]
Graham
And they're close and they. And they email and call all the time, but, like, this never would have happened if not for that.
- [28:22]
Paul Allen
One of my very best friends has a brother who's never married. And as he got past 60, he kind of started feeling like life was meaningless. And. And he got an email from someone, and someone had done a DNA test and said, I think we might be related. Turns out he had had a relationship in college 40 years earlier, didn't know that she got pregnant, had a child, and now he's really close with his biological son. It gave him a new lease on life. Like, I have a son that I've never been married. I didn't know I had a son. But they have so many things in common and they're very close, and it just brought new meaning to his life. I just thought that was an incredible story.
- [29:02]
Graham
That's so cool.
- [29:03]
Paul Allen
Now I have now just rethought your question about weird things. And so As I left Ancestry.com I started an Internet marketing agency called 10X Marketing. I wanted to help people 10X their revenue. If you double your traffic, double your sales conversion rate and double your average price per sale, that's eight times. And so I thought we could 10x almost anybody's revenue. So one of my clients was a paternity DNA testing company in San Jose. And they were not insurance paid paternity DNA tests, but there are millions of people in inner cities around the United States that don't know who their father is. And so this was a first Internet order the DNA test, take it, send it in and find out who your father is. And I started doing marketing and assistance for them and then analyzing all their emails, the support emails and the reactions. And there was a lot of tragedy in that, a lot of like people being shocked that they weren't the father of somebody, that they thought they were the father of someone shocked that the person they thought was their father was not their father. And so a lot of family issues came to a head and it wasn't a good thing.
- [30:18]
Graham
How common was that that you do a paternity test and the kid's not yours? Very common, very common.
- [30:23]
Paul Allen
Well, not necessarily with married families, but if you think about, you know, people hooking up in cities all the time and, and just like a kind of a unrestrained, you know, whatever, how many, however many sexual partners you have, then if someone gets pregnant and has a child and, and, and keeps the child, there's a lot of people that could be the father. So I, I just think in, in a lot of cities or a lot of locations, there's a majority of people who, who don't live with their father. And so knowing who your father is, you know, can be a really powerful good thing or can be a shocking thing that you didn't know.
- [30:58]
Graham
I was always curious why they don't mandate genetic testing at birth at the hospital.
- [31:03]
Jack
Right.
- [31:04]
Paul Allen
Who the government mandate that? For what purpose? So that you would know who the parents were.
- [31:09]
Graham
Right.
- [31:10]
Paul Allen
I mean, I guess that could be legislated somewhere, but I don't know. I think the large percentage of people probably know who the father is. And so that might be just a, an, I guess an expense burden on, on most people.
- [31:23]
Graham
I'm also thinking how many kids get switched at birth and you just have no idea?
- [31:27]
Paul Allen
Well, they do have these tagging systems. Now, when my wife and I had started having kids in 88 and the hospital situation was a lot less locked down today. Oh, my gosh. They have.
- [31:40]
Graham
How do they prevent that?
- [31:41]
Paul Allen
Oh, they have all kinds of preventions. They have doors that lock and passwords to go in and see the child. And they. I. I don't know. They have a lot more cameras and a lot more security, but it think they have, you know, Code Red or something. If. But I'm sure it's happened occasionally in history, but I don't think it's very common.
- [32:00]
Graham
That would be a crazy story.
- [32:01]
Paul Allen
Switched.
- [32:02]
Jack
It's possible.
- [32:02]
Graham
Technically, it's probably happened. When you look at the odds.
- [32:05]
Jack
I. I am willing to bet that it's happened many times, actually.
- [32:08]
Graham
Yeah.
- [32:09]
Paul Allen
Yeah.
- [32:10]
Graham
It's just. Truly just a random situation.
- [32:12]
Paul Allen
And then there's the other thing. So adoptive parents or, you know, step parents or whatever. I believe that their ability to love a child, even if it's not their biological child, is extraordinary. So I think the family ties that we develop, someone that's our mom or our dad by birth or by nurture, I think those are profoundly powerful. So even if there is switching or even if the paternity isn't clear, love inside of families is real. And parents will do anything for their children's happiness and welfare. And so I think I've known people who were adopted, and I think they're. Your loving ties are just as strong as natural.
- [32:54]
Graham
Now, going back for a moment, I'm curious. What was it like watching your company go public?
- [32:58]
Paul Allen
Well, it was 2009. I had been bought out in 2006, and the 20 people on the stand ringing the bell, only one of them was familiar to me. So it wasn't a pleasant experience. It was like, that should have happened with all of us early folks ringing the bell. I have friends who run angel studios who just. This went public, I think, a month or two ago. And it was just all the top employees there, key investors and spouses of the founders, and they were all there ringing the bell. And I'm like, that's the proper celebration of an ipo. It's the people who built the company, not the late investors who bought the company and then took it public. So I was dissatisfied with that experience.
- [33:40]
Jack
So explain this. You were forced to sell because you raised capital to other people and your shares got diluted to the point where they wanted to then sell the company. And you were just like, well, well, I don't really have a choice here.
- [33:50]
Paul Allen
Correct. It happens a lot so, but how.
- [33:52]
Jack
Did you not see that giving up that much equity to other people that you may not be super familiar with would want to take the company in a different direction?
- [34:01]
Paul Allen
I didn't understand preferred shares versus common shares. I'd never studied business before, I'd never taken a technology class. I was a Russian major in college, I was a humanities major and I started a master's degree in library science. So I was all into academia and books and learning.
- [34:20]
Jack
Explain preferred shares and common shares.
- [34:22]
Paul Allen
So when a venture capitalist writes a check for your company, they want preferred shares and the founders usually get common shares. And so preferred shares have rights and privileges that common shares don't have, such as if there's a liquidation and the company sells for $10 million, the venture capitalists, the preferred shareholders, get paid back first. And if there's any leftover, it gets split among the common shareholders. So it's like a tranching, it's like the waterfall effect. If there's any leftover, the common shareholders get what's left. Now if there's a big IPO and it's all successful, then the preferred convert to common and everybody's treated alike. So there are some scenarios where the upside is unfairly weighted towards the preferred, but many times they end up being the same class of stock at the end of the day.
- [35:14]
Jack
So successfully scaling a company before the dot com bubble, during the dot com bubble and then after the dot com bubble, do you see any similarities between that and right now with AI? Because a lot of people are speculating we could be in an AI bubble. It's easy to raise a lot of capital when you just have AI somewhere in the name of your company. Do you see any similarities there?
- [35:33]
Paul Allen
So I see possibly a huge bubble in terms of valuations, but in the long run, I think the value created by AI will be will dwarf anything that the Internet ever did in terms of value creation. Now, Elon and others are taking the view that the few foundational model companies will end up creating all the value, that it's going to be concentrated in the hands of Grok and OpenAI and, you know, Meta's Llama and Google's Gemini. And there's one argument that says these huge LLMs that spend billions of dollars to, you know, train on every single word ever written or spoken. They're going to start building applications to fill all the needs and that the app application companies will all be put out of business. Then there's the opposite point of view, that there's going to be so many niches and so many application companies that millions of AI companies will prosper. And I don't know what the answer is. I'm just betting that this wave is so much bigger than any previous technology wave that I want to play in it and be a partner and have as many AI horses in the race as possible.
- [36:39]
Jack
So as someone that was really in the weeds during the dot com bubble, what do you see are the primary similarities then to that now?
- [36:46]
Paul Allen
Well, venture capital is still concentrated in San Francisco and maybe Boston and a few other places. But the Cool thing about 2016 is that the US crowdfunding, the JOBS act in 2012 led to crowdfunding in 2015. 2016. $5 billion has been raised by startup companies from non accredited investors who are buying equity or options or whatever. And so there's a way to raise capital today that didn't exist 25 years ago. You had venture capitalists, angel investors. You didn't have crowdfunding until 2016. So that's one of the things that's different about today versus decades ago is that anybody can start a company, get an audience, sell shares to that audience, and get funding and keep control of their company without necessarily giving up control to the the investor class.
- [37:43]
Graham
So do you think it's easier today to start a business than it Was back in 2000? There's a reason why the Iced Coffee Hour is one of the top ranked podcasts on YouTube, just like there's a reason Morgan and Morgan is America's largest.
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Jack
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Graham
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- [38:13]
Jack
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- [38:21]
Graham
So even if you're not sure your claim is worth it, it costs nothing to check our sponsor, Morgan. And Morgan makes it simple to see if you have a claim. And they only get paid if you win.
- [38:29]
Jack
So if you're ever injured, you can start a claim at for the people.comiced you could click the link down below or you could just scan the QR code on the screen right here. Once again, it is for the people.comiced thank you so much to Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring this episode.
- [38:43]
Graham
Episode. As you might be aware, December always gets chaotic fast. Things like travel schedules, last minute deadlines, filming. The last thing I want is to overdo caffeine and feel jittery or experience a crash midway through the day.
- [38:59]
Jack
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- [39:15]
Graham
It really tastes just like coffee, but with all the good stuff built in. No crash, no jitters, just consistent energy. Plus, it only takes about 30 seconds to make, so it works perfectly when we're on the go or about to film.
- [39:26]
Jack
And honestly, I absolutely love the flavor. It's smooth, not bitter at all. It mixes in super easily, so you get that coffee taste that you want just instantly. And on top of that, it's upgraded.
- [39:37]
Graham
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- [40:04]
Jack
Again, that is everydaydose.comich or just use code ICH at checkout. There's also a link down below in the description. You can just click it right there. Thank you so much to Everyday Dose for sponsoring this episode.
- [40:14]
Graham
So do you think it's easier today to start a business than it was back in 2000?
- [40:18]
Paul Allen
I do. Way easier. 10 times, 100 times easier. You can vibe code an incredible application in 24 hours.
- [40:25]
Jack
Now explain Vibe coding.
- [40:27]
Paul Allen
So Vibe coding is, if you don't know how to program, but you know what you want your application to do, you speak to the AI or write the instructions in plain English. And then it writes the software code and compiles it and and builds the app and ships the app, and you've actually built a finished product without even knowing how to write a line of code. If you can speak English, you can Vibe code. And there are dozens of tools now that are super popular with Vibe coders, Lovable and many others. And they have, you know, tens of millions of ARR or hundreds of millions of ARR. So it's cool that we live in A day where computers now understand language, and anyone who can speak or write can command a computer, an AI, to go do stuff for them. And so vibe coding is just speaking things into existence or typing some instructions and having an application built for you.
- [41:18]
Jack
So do you then think that anybody can be successful and build a big business in 2025, 2026, or also, as someone who studied genealogy or is familiar with genealogy and big genealogy data, are there certain genes that will prevent people, regardless of the environment, from becoming successful?
- [41:39]
Paul Allen
Like actually, yeah. Like genetic predisposition to failure, sure.
- [41:44]
Jack
Yeah.
- [41:45]
Paul Allen
I don't believe that. I believe.
- [41:47]
Jack
So you think that anybody now.
- [41:49]
Paul Allen
No, I'm not saying just because of now, and I'm not saying everyone will, but Don Clifton felt that anybody could be better than 10,000 other people at something, okay? So he studied human potential and human talent, and he knew that if people would identify their talents and develop them, they could be the best public school teacher in a city of 10,000 people. And so everyone could be better than others at something. Now, in the world of AI, you've got great coders, great marketers, you've got great podcast interviewers, you've got people that can build product, build audience. I'm not saying everybody can do that, but I do think that AI will enable anyone who takes a little bit of time, time to learn how to vibe code or vibe market or learn how to use AI to create agents to do things for you when you're sleeping, that in the coming years, when people learn those skills, they'll have an extraordinary life. You could have 10 AI agents that are helping you with your financial planning and to save money. And every time you spend money and it's reported to the AI, they could say, you could have saved 80% on that coffee. You could have done this. Instead of that, you could have a bunch of AI aimed at helping you live healthy, helping you be financially well off, helping you have better relationships with family and friends, helping you learn skills that are aligned with your natural talents. I just think AI opens up a whole new universe of opportunity for humans to develop. And I don't think anyone is genetically predisposed to failure.
- [43:21]
Graham
Do you think with everything that you just said that we're becoming too reliant on AI and that we lose our critical thinking skills by having this just kind of tell us what to do?
- [43:33]
Paul Allen
100%. 100%. The studies that are coming out on brain function and the cognitive demise of people who outsource essay writing to ChatGPT, we completely could dumb down ourselves by letting AI do the things for us, like do our homework or write our essays or do our blog posts. So I'm not a fan of outsourcing your cognitive thinking to use it as a research tool. And it's indexed billions of pages and you can ask it any question. I think we can use it in a very powerful way that keeps us in the driver's seat, or we can just offload the things we don't want to do and we will get dumber and dumber. So I think there's definitely a dark side to AI if we over rely on it, or if the companies that got us hooked on dopamine with social media, with shares and likes and followers and all those counts that are artificial, that give us all this addiction to social media. If the same companies build AI tools and companions that are designed to get us using them 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours a day instead of living real life, then those are dangerous slopes.
- [44:45]
Graham
Why wouldn't they do that?
- [44:46]
Paul Allen
It just seems, yeah, they will do that, but there will be alternatives that are aiming to uplift humanity by giving you a limited amount of of intelligence during the day so that you can live your best life.
- [44:57]
Graham
Yeah, but that doesn't make money though. Oh, sure it can, but not as much money as keeping you glued to it.
- [45:02]
Paul Allen
That's true. Well, the hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising revenue versus the subscription revenue that a good company would take to build a system that's designed to help you live your best life. That's what we're hoping to be one of the participants in is uplifting humanity, helping every individual reach their full potential with a limited amount of use of AI. Now Google, when it started, Larry and Sergey were geniuses and they built this incredible search engine built on hypertext links. And I wrote their paper called Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertext Search Engine. It was a brilliant thing. And their key metric for success early on was how little time you spent on their site. If you came to the early Google and did a search and five seconds later you left and didn't come back, they knew they had the right answer for you.
- [45:50]
Jack
You.
- [45:51]
Paul Allen
That was the early days of Google, when they were don't be evil. And now, like most corporations, they're kind of monopolistic and they use their force in the marketplace to, you know, to get fined by the eu. All the time they've been in antitrust investigations in the United States. So big companies that are worth trillions of dollars are going to hire the smartest, most ambitious people they can and they might not. Don't be evil for very long. So I'm putting my faith in young startups or emerging companies that really do care about humanity. They care about individuals, they care about building a better world. And they'll design tools and systems that are healthy in small doses and brilliantly allow you to navigate life like a GPS for your life. You're not looking at your GPS all the time you're driving. You might check in at it every five minutes to make sure you're on track. But, but there could be a light touch AI that helps you use super intelligence to make really good choices and to have all kinds of thriving and prosperity without being dependent on it, without, without using it all the time as a crutch or as a companion or as a friend, because you don't have any real friends.
- [47:02]
Graham
What do you think the government's role should be in AI? Because it seems like they are really supporting AI at the moment. And we're in been from what I've been told, somewhat in a race with other countries to get super intelligence first and that you don't want to lose this race.
- [47:21]
Paul Allen
That's always an argument that people use. I actually really like David Sachs. He's the aizar. I've met him in person, we've had several good conversations. He launched a genealogy company before he launched Yammer. It was called Genie. And he once told me that I was a fantastic entrepreneur because my family link app on Facebook got way more users than Jeannie did and we were kind of going head to head. He was not on Facebook, I was on Facebook. And so he kind of admitted that you crushed us, like you're a really good entrepreneur. Well, a year later he sells Yammer for a billion dollars. So he, he like leapfrogged me by like a thousandfold. But I really like David Sachs and his all in podcast is very good. So us has to be very friendly towards AI development and competition. My biggest thing is that government should encourage open source AI as much as possible and that individuals should have access to open source software and open source AI so that we're not locked into these closed systems. The government will award huge contracts to the OpenAI's and the Googles of the world and the Microsofts and that's fine. But I think the government should take a really hard look at open source like Linux and Apache and the world, the web, WordPress, the world's Internet started out being very open and not being very locked down commercial. And these trillion dollar companies just can't help but try to be monopolies and can't help but try to rig the system and get regulations in their favor that hurt all the non incumbents, the new companies. So I think we the people should elect representatives who know something about technology. We don't tend to do that very often. Most of our representatives in the United States are attorneys and they know very little about how the financial system works, how healthcare works, or how technology runs the world. So I think we voted for lots of persuasive people that are lawmakers and policymakers. But they don't know that the Internet is not a series of tubes. They don't know that that Facebook's business model is selling advertising. And that was like 10 or 20 years ago. But my point is we the people need to elect better tech savvy representatives who have our long term well being in mind. Yeah.
- [49:40]
Graham
What do you think is the biggest risk to AI?
- [49:42]
Paul Allen
The biggest risk? Well, it's been hallucination where you don't know that it's hallucinating. Like people putting too much trust in it is a really big risk. Think about medical doctors who start relying on AI to diagnose or to treat and if it hallucinates, they lose a patient. Now doesn't mean that doctors without AI won't lose patients. But I think hallucination has been kind of the Achilles heel of the ChatGpts and the LLMs of the world. I don't think it'll remain the biggest issue. My own company has a portfolio of companies and we like to build AI that is more like a perfectly knowledgeable librarian that can quote people and cite the sources rather than a creative writer that can go off the rails and hallucinate. So we view our search engine background, which I worked in search engines for decades. Search engines retrieve exact quotes from people and exact clips and present them to you. AI, the way the LLMs currently work is the generative AI is a probability engine. It doesn't even know what it's going to tell you when it starts talking and it predicts calculated what word can follow this word. And so it's all statistics and probability. It's all stochastic and so it often hallucinates. Now retrieval, augmented generation is a technical term that a lot of computer scientists are using now. And OpenAI bought a rag company and lots of people are doing rag. Rag is more like retrieve an exact quote, cite the source, and then give a little bit of background to it instead of just making up the answer out of whole cloth. So I think many of the problems with AI are being tackled by the smartest people. And I actually think there's a very, very bright future for AI that can assist us.
- [51:24]
Jack
Us.
- [51:24]
Paul Allen
My biggest fear is that humans become super dependent on it and let it make choices for them and they kind of give up their own personal freedom to choose and they become dependent on the algorithm or the recommendation engine. Even more than social media, I've.
- [51:41]
Graham
I've had so many mistakes with ChatGPT when it came to helping me organize my financial statements and uploading documents. My gosh, the amount of time it just, it doesn't calculate the numbers properly or there's something that's obviously inexpensive events and it counts it in. And then I only realized that when someone else puts that through Excel and says, no, this doesn't add up. Yeah, even last night I was pissed. I had a GFCI breaker that went out in the house and I. I spent hours trying to track this thing down because I thought it was like an upstream GFCI that tripped and it tripped another one. And I'm chatgpting this and I'm like, here's the breaker box. And it would walk me through, like, what to look for. And then I couldn't find where this breaker tripped. And so I says, I have this box on the side of the house. Could it be in here? This is the outside electrical box to the house, is it? No, that's going to be where your electric panels are wired. And, you know, looking in, that won't be able to tell you unless you're an electrician. So I. I never look in there. Turns out it was that. Had I just opened that damn box and flipped that breaker on the outside to that panel of the house, I would have fixed it. It sent me on a runner.
- [52:53]
Paul Allen
I. I live in Missouri, in rural Missouri, in farming country, and I don't. I don't get into guns much, but I bought a BB gun and I didn't know how to load the BBs into the cartridge. I was like, there's two places that I thought I took photos of it. I sent it to Chat gbt. It kept telling me, oh, you did it right. You did it right. The thing wouldn't fire. About an hour later, after trying several queries on different AIs, I finally realized I need a CO2 cartridge to fire this thing. And I put the BBS where the CO2 cartridge was supposed to be. And I felt like total idiot. But AI doesn't know everything yet. But just think how miraculous it is that AI understands language and can index all the photos and all the videos. And so I'm pretty bullish about the future of AI. If humans can start being a little bit wise about which platforms we choose to use, what are the ultimate designs of the companies building these things? I actually think there's some things I can't announce right now that some of our strategic partners are going to announce soon that will allow any individual human to install your own LLM on your own device and have your own context for finances, for health, for education, for career, for friends, for family on your own device. And you won't even need to use these cloud based behemoth monopoly AI systems. You'll have an open source remote on your device that knows the context that you give it to help you live your best life without selling your soul.
- [54:23]
Graham
To the Then I feel like Apple would just do that directly within the iPhone and then they could sell their iPhone for $3,000 because now you don't have to do a, you know, $50 membership or whatever.
- [54:33]
Paul Allen
Well, month. Well, I think Apple and I think smartphone manufacturers are positioned best to take advantage of this. But there could easily be other hardware platforms that emerge that allow an alternative that might be more. Now Apple seems to be a pretty good player in terms of privacy and caring about you. They're less ad driven than most other companies. But yeah, I think we haven't even started to see in five or 10 years we'll be shocked at how many options there are for AI that we don't even imagine today.
- [55:09]
Graham
What is your most dramatic prediction prediction for AI in the next five years?
- [55:13]
Paul Allen
I would predict that in the next five to 10 years one of the most important decisions each individual human makes is which AI platforms to believe in and plug into. Because I think the difference between AI that runs your life and monetizes your time and attention and sells your time and attention to the highest bidder. There will be very powerful systems that are used by billions of people that don't have your personal well being in mind. They're going to monetize you, they're going to know everything about you. And I'm worried about people that go down that path. But I think there will be many, many options that wise people will choose. Sometimes you might vibe code something yourself instead of outsource your application needs to a known player. But I think think humans are so ingenious and so creative and young people that are learning how to vibe code entire suites of applications in a day or two. I just think the proliferation of unique applications will Shock all of us in the next five to 10 years. Now the wisdom that we're going to need to know which ones to trust. You know, do you remember there used to be in the 90s, late 90s, there were ratings sites like Epinions and then there was Yelp and now there's, you know, know all these ratings things.
- [56:39]
Graham
I remember Hot or Not.
- [56:40]
Paul Allen
Hot or Not. Okay, yes, I remember that too.
- [56:42]
Graham
You don't remember Hot or Not. Jack was too young.
- [56:45]
Jack
When was that?
- [56:45]
Graham
It was a website that you would go to hotornot.com and you would see a picture come up and you would rate is this person hot or not? And you click like yes or no.
- [56:56]
Jack
And was it of like models or was it just some models?
- [56:59]
Paul Allen
Everyone could upload pictures and then if they wanted to be rated, they could do it.
- [57:03]
Jack
Or someone you have like a percentage then that you're assigned.
- [57:05]
Paul Allen
Yep, that's a lot less useful than ratemyprofessor.com I actually met the US professor who was the highest rated professor in the country on ratemyprofessor.com he was actually my neighbor. And I found out that the first day of class he had already memorized 400 people's names. He was funny, but he memorized the names of every one of his students. Blew my mind.
- [57:27]
Jack
Seems like he's just farming his Rate My Professor.
- [57:29]
Paul Allen
Well, I don't know. He did that before Rate My professor even came out. But by the time it came out, I'm sure he was pretty proud of that.
- [57:36]
Graham
What's the benefit of being top rated on?
- [57:39]
Jack
Well, because people select your class and also it's. You just have more authority, more clout.
- [57:44]
Paul Allen
More clout?
- [57:44]
Jack
Yeah. Around other teachers with like the, the higher ups and this.
- [57:48]
Graham
Do they discuss scores with each other?
- [57:50]
Jack
Probably. I also I've seen videos online of people saying like, this is why you're a 2:1 rate my professor. Like screaming at them.
- [57:57]
Paul Allen
Use it as a weapon.
- [57:58]
Jack
Yeah, you just like don't. I don't respect the teachers that are lower on rate my professor. You just like you walk in already having a preconceived notion of what they're going to be like.
- [58:07]
Paul Allen
So have you ever been to G2.com or Capterra.com have you heard of those two sites? Okay.
- [58:13]
Graham
G2.
- [58:13]
Paul Allen
Yeah. So never buy a software application or subscribe to any SaaS without first going to G2.com and Capterra. They have thousands of ratings. Very well submitted ratings by actual customers of all the pros and cons. Of every application, how easy it is to use, how expensive it is. G2.com has helped me make hundreds of really good decisions on software. To buy or not to buy. I think that the world of AI is going to need trustworthy rating systems more than any previous technology that we've ever had. Because if you start using a system and you don't get the results or the outcome you want, it could be very damaging if that scales up to millions or billions of users. So my hope is that collectively humans can evaluate the good and the bad that's out there, and we can migrate ourselves and our loved ones to the good. And then human thriving and prosperity could be unprecedented in world history. We've already seen the elimination of mass poverty in most of the world over the past 100 or 200 years. The agricultural revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Green revolution in India. There's a lot less, less sickness and early death in the world than there was. We obviously have some chaos and geopolitical issues and stuff like that. So the world's not in a great place yet. But AI and robotics offer unprecedented productivity gains that hopefully we can harness and have widespread benefits for billions of people.
- [59:46]
Graham
That's why I am so optimistic for emerging markets around the world and up and coming countries that are developing. Yes. But I just think it, it creates so much opportunity. And part of me feels like them going from like 1 to 5 is much more dramatic than us going from like an 8 to a 9, for example.
- [60:09]
Paul Allen
Can you imagine? So when ChatGPT came out and I started buying all these URLs because I was going to be building things on top of large language models, so like citizenportal. AI. AI has now transcribed almost 2 million videos from government meetings and we've published 4 million articles. This year. We have millions of people learning about local, state and federal government through Citizen Portal. So that's, that's, that's out there and I think next year you'll have tens of millions of users. Family Portal, Faith Portal, Founder Portal. We have all these portals, but I actually, I don't know if I bought Gardening Portal, but I went to Chat GPT and I said, I live in this part of Missouri. This is my zip code. Tell me about my soil, tell me about the vegetable gardens that I could grow the best things I should plant, and what about trees and fruit trees? And within about a minute it had told me based on the weather, the soil, the lat long, and it could totally tell me what to grow in that area. Now, if you think about the developing world. Think about how little knowledge they have about agriculture, irrigation, mechanical things, machines, energy, and imagine leapfrogging. Imagine billions of people being able to talk to a device in their language and have it teach them or coach them.
- [61:28]
Graham
What do you say to the people who believe that AI is not going to create jobs, it's just going to redistribute them to fewer people?
- [61:35]
Paul Allen
I believe that humans have always been very creative and very adaptable. If you think about all the historical waves of change that we've seen in the past few hundreds or thousands of years. So my belief is that humans will figure out how to create billions of new jobs. If AI and robots become super productive and they do a lot of the manual labor and they provide us with subsistence living, maybe we'll find a lot more time for personal connection, for creative work in the arts or in the, in other fields that we personally love. So I do think there will be disruption and displacement and it will be a painful phase to go through. And I do think there's a role for individuals and nonprofits and charities and faith groups and possibly even the government to provide some transition to people that are affected by that. But I'm not a big fan of government handouts and central planning and socialism. I'm a big fan of, of unleash human creativity, help people find their talents and find ways to develop those into value, creating skills that people will pay for.
- [62:47]
Graham
I'm. My thought is that it's, it's. We're going to become so reliant on AI though, that if someone loses their job, the first thing they're going to do is go to AI and say, what job should I do? And the AI is going to pick something.
- [62:59]
Jack
But is that a bad thing?
- [63:00]
Paul Allen
It might not be a bad thing.
- [63:01]
Jack
Yeah, but something.
- [63:02]
Graham
You're relying on the AI to tell you what you should be.
- [63:05]
Jack
I think all day, realistically. Tell me if I'm wrong. I feel like 95 of people would be better off if they let AI make most of their decisions. I'm probably one of those people genuinely like, if you're like, okay, well what should I do today? Like, go to the gym, go do this, go study something, read a book. It's like, otherwise, what are these people gonna. Okay, but that.
- [63:25]
Graham
But then you're trusting it to have your best interest. But imagine that's right if a company is out there who's like, hey, listen, we make more money if you're on for an extra. An extra.
- [63:32]
Jack
Yeah, but that's not. That's not the reality of what's happening at least, right?
- [63:35]
Graham
Oh, but why wouldn't it?
- [63:37]
Jack
Well, it could at some point in the future, but that's also speculating.
- [63:39]
Graham
I'm just saying. No, I don't think it's speculation. I, I think it's guaranteed they're going to keep you on whatever platform for as long as possible.
- [63:45]
Jack
So what do you think? It's going to give you like a run around, like, tell you one thing and then you start leaning into that. It's like, well, what about this? And tell you the other thing.
- [63:52]
Graham
It, it's going to be so beyond what I could even comprehend because it's so. Because person. I'm just saying for you, Jack, it would be different than, than me. It would know you so well that it knows how to keep you on a little longer or to click a link or like, hey, listen, before you go to the gym, you need a new tonic. And this is really going to energize you at the gym so you can have a better workout. And then the next time it's like, hey, by the way, you might need this. Easy to see though.
- [64:18]
Jack
Like, wouldn't that be so.
- [64:19]
Graham
No, it's because people are dumb and they're going to, they're going to see this creatine.
- [64:23]
Jack
So if people are dumb, then they probably need some sort of like cognitive assistance, like AI to help them make decisions and maybe the AI will lead them to buy another new tonic. But is that really such a bad thing?
- [64:33]
Graham
It's pretty good. I do.
- [64:35]
Paul Allen
You know, it is interesting that you say 95% of us could make decisions better with AI and that may be true because a lot of people make a lot of bad decisions right now for all kinds of reasons.
- [64:45]
Jack
Like there's such clear cut, objectively wrong decisions, you know, tons of. I'm gonna go out, buy a pack of Marlboro Reds. Should I do it? AI is like, probably not.
- [64:54]
Graham
Like, okay, but here's a vape that is 85 better and that's better cigarettes.
- [64:59]
Jack
There you go.
- [65:00]
Graham
I mean, and here's a link.
- [65:01]
Jack
I just, I think it could prevent disastrous decisions being made. And also if you have a freckle that's been moving on your body and you want to take a picture of it and upload it to ChatGPT, that's easier than going to the doctor and scheduling an appointment. You don't know what's going to happen.
- [65:16]
Graham
Then it'll recommend you to a doctor or chat. GPT will get a kickback for a referral fee. There's so many ways, you know how the world works.
- [65:23]
Paul Allen
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's pretty scary.
- [65:25]
Jack
Of course, I'm just talking in terms of right now. That's all speculation.
- [65:29]
Graham
See, I like to think of the future. Jack likes to think like a few steps back.
- [65:33]
Paul Allen
I mean this is a very healthy conversation. I think billions of people need to have these open conversations about what could go wrong, about what could go right. Because we're only going to get the future that we design and choose. Like the best way to predict the future is by inventing it. That's why I'm an entrepreneur. I want to build stuff that I want to use and that I want other people to be able to use. But there are also people out there that maybe are bad actors who just don't have human thriving as their primary motive. And they are going to do anything they can to get you hooked on social media addiction, gambling, marijuana, whatever, just to kind of hook you. And now they've got, you know, some of the industries that have people at an early age that might end up making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars during their lifetime. Like that's real. The tobacco industry really did lie for decades about the science. And then the tobacco companies bought the groceries, the food companies like Kraft and others, and they started putting sugar in all the foods. And so 80% of the store bought food has added sugar. That is super unhealthy, which is why we have an obesity epidemic. So there are a lot of bad people subtly doing things that harm us at scale. Big pharma, big tech, big food. Um, and so we have to be very careful. If AI just keeps us in those tracks, we'll all live unhealthy short lives. But if we can have AI systems designed by people who are truth seeking and who are looking for human thriving at the end of the day, like that's the goal of their platform. And if we choose those platforms, we can have abundance and thriving at scale.
- [67:10]
Graham
But that assumes that people have self control. And if they're making bad decisions from the get go, they don't have self control control. And so assuming they don't have self control, then the AI is just going to take them over.
- [67:22]
Paul Allen
Well, if you think about it, I think that the, the erosion of the family as the fundamental unit of society, policies that. So I think you've credited being raised by a, by parents in a stable family as part of your path to success. I was in the same boat. My mom was a stay at home mom. She had Eight kids. My dad was a professor. She was an elementary school teacher before that. But I'm sure that my life would not be where it is today. My mom and dad and a stable family. And so AI, of course, is powerful and always present. It'll never take the place of loving parents and faith leaders and friends that are good influence on young people. So we can't abandon the traditional elements and ingredients that helped people live a good life, an honest, moral, upstanding life. And that's really, really influences from people that love us. And AI will never substitute for that or take its place. And I don't know if the pendulum will swing backwards towards people marrying and having children and enjoying family life, or if it will continue to have lower marriage rates, lower fertility rates. Elon talks about civilizational decline because of population erosion. Now I live in the Midwest, so I've done the math. The Amish people have seven children per family. They've doubled their population in the last 22 years. And I will predict. This is my shocking prediction, by 2200 AD there will be 100 million Amish people in the United States.
- [68:59]
Jack
Wow.
- [68:59]
Graham
We're going to get a lot of construction done, a lot of great furniture, and we're going to have some really nice houses and very little technology. Yeah. It reminds me, though, at your point where you tend to swing a pendulum, I think when we go in the direction that AI and Focus is just kind of going out the window, I think you're going to have apps of the opposite direction or products of the opposite tend to do really well. And that reminded me of Hank Green's Focus app. Have you seen this?
- [69:26]
Paul Allen
I haven't.
- [69:27]
Graham
He made this incredible app, and it became, like, top five on the App Store recently. All it was was an app that helps you focus. You have this little character within the app that knit. And the longer you focus and don't touch your phone, the more it could knit. And it could trade those knittings for things that make this little character, like this little kitty happy. And as soon as you go and pick up your phone or open your phone, it drops what it was knitting, and it has to start over. And it's sad. That's all it is.
- [69:58]
Paul Allen
And you use it.
- [69:59]
Graham
Macy uses it okay.
- [70:00]
Paul Allen
All the time.
- [70:01]
Graham
But it was, for her, it was staying off her phone and getting, like, solid work done.
- [70:07]
Paul Allen
Yeah.
- [70:07]
Graham
But she became very, like, into these characters, like, making sure I can't touch my phone because it's got a knit, and if I. If I disturb it, it's going to Drop the knitting and.
- [70:16]
Jack
But what if you're just like chilling on the couch, watching television and your phone does it. Like, how does it monitor that you're actually working?
- [70:22]
Graham
It doesn't, but you set a timer. You could set like an hour. I'm going to an hour without using my phone, so.
- [70:28]
Paul Allen
But gamification is a technique that could help us, if we don't have self discipline, to get more like, I think there's all kinds of things we could try. Duolingo has this streaks thing that's just got billions, millions of people using it, but they don't really help you learn to speak a language. Like, there's AI tools that are 10 times better at helping you learn to speak Spanish because it can listen to you, it can correct you. It's actually conversational AI. And they'll probably get there, too. But sometimes the streaks start having a life of their own and they end up backfiring. Like, I know people that are so stressed out by their duolingo streak that it's actually not a net good for them. It's actually stressful. They can't lose their streak. And so they're kind of now.
- [71:07]
Graham
But again, it keeps you on the app.
- [71:10]
Paul Allen
Yeah, it does, it does.
- [71:11]
Graham
Taken over.
- [71:11]
Paul Allen
Yeah. Now with screens versus ambient versus augmented reality versus rings versus whatever, we're going to have a variety of technologies that are not as intrusive as a screen. And it'll be really interesting to see how humans adopt those and use them for good. To navigate the world, to make better choices, but not to be beholden to them and subject to all their whims.
- [71:34]
Graham
Speaking of things. Things. When you said that there's so much opportunity going forward and that more things will be invented in the future than in the past, I've actually been working with someone from the Index about a. We actually have it. It's operational, mostly point pal AI. And what that does is you're able to search for flights based off credit card points, and you're able to put in what points you have, and it'll tell you faster than any other site how much each flight is with points and how to redeem those points. And so I just booked a trip to New York recently using that, and I got round trip. I think it was like 18,000 points with Amex.
- [72:19]
Paul Allen
Wow.
- [72:20]
Graham
Round trip to New York.
- [72:22]
Jack
18,000.
- [72:23]
Graham
Yeah.
- [72:24]
Jack
That's really good. 18,000Amex points for round trip.
- [72:27]
Graham
Round trip.
- [72:29]
Jack
$90 there and back. Yeah.
- [72:30]
Graham
And it was, I believe, through $90 there. Yeah, it was. It was through Air Canada. And so I made an Air Canada account, transferred my Amex points to that and booked a specific day.
- [72:41]
Paul Allen
Wow. When it comes to thinking about is everything been built that should be built. So do you remember Robert Allen who wrote Nothing Down Real estate? He was the most famous author in real estate in the 90s, I think he sold two and a half million copies. I ended up doing some Internet marketing for him. And he had a book that came out called One Minute Millionaire. And it was like 24 chapters that had the mindset, like one minute a day to adopt the mindset of a millionaire. It was really good book. And one of the things in one of those chapters was look at every physical object around you. Every single physical object that you see started out as an idea in the mind of somebody. They had to think of it, they had to design it, they had to build, build it, they had to sell it and someone has to support it. So literally every physical thing in the world is the result of somebody's creativity. Now if you think about in the future, what I love about Paul Allen, Idea man, the real Paul Allen was that he asked that question, what should exist? And then he set about to fund it or build it and he did dozens or hundreds of amazing projects. So I would take that 22 year old you're talking about, who doesn't really know what to do and say what should exist? What talents do you have? What do you wish was different about the world? Go make it happen and see if other people need that same solution that you've envisioned. Because the whole world is filled with the creations of humans who saw a problem and solved it. And there's a lot more problems in the future to solve than there are right now.
- [74:07]
Graham
I agree.
- [74:09]
Jack
Cool.
- [74:09]
Paul Allen
And AI can help you.
- [74:10]
Graham
Yeah. So what would be your advice to someone who's young today, who wants to start a business, but they feel like everything's already been done.
- [74:21]
Paul Allen
Wow, that's interesting. Almost nothing has been done. Like there will be way more done in the future than has ever been done in the past. So it's just what we've done in the past is the tip of the iceberg and what AI enables you to do. If you go follow my friend John Chaney on LinkedIn. John Chaney teaches courses of 20 or 30 people every week to launch a business using AI vibe coding in 24 hours hours. He's had hundreds and hundreds of people launch full blown companies this year. He's actually Tony Robbins, chief AI officer now. And so John Chaney and lots of people like him are out there teaching you how to learn the tools that will help you be 10 times more productive than you are today. So I would start there.
- [75:03]
Graham
And if you were 22 years old today, starting over with no connections, how would you use AI to get ahead and build wealth?
- [75:10]
Paul Allen
Well, John teaches that too.
- [75:12]
Graham
Okay.
- [75:12]
Paul Allen
So not only does he teach you how to vibe code, he teaches you dozens of tools that are already built that you can start using and deploying. I would say that, As I mentioned, G2.com that don't make an enterprise sales software purchase without checking the reviews and reading and extensively to make sure your decision's good. All of us are going to have to find a way to evaluate more tools, more apps, more AI systems, because there will probably be a Dave Ramsey AI that could help 100 million people avoid debt, lives smartly with cash. And, you know, not everybody loves what he teaches, but he's helped a lot of people rip up their credit cards and get out of debt and then start purchasing things with cash. So I think we just have to be super careful to find the tools and apps and AI systems that will help us get where we want to go faster than any other other way.
- [76:08]
Graham
Well, it seems like you're very optimistic about turning people into AI and basically uploading their information so that people could talk to it.
- [76:15]
Paul Allen
Yeah.
- [76:15]
Graham
Who's liable if that AI gives bad advice? Like, let's just say Dave Ramsey's AI says, hey, I'm pretty bullish on bonds these next 10 years, and they just underperform or something like that. Can you go and like, sue Dave Ramsey for what the AI said?
- [76:30]
Paul Allen
I. That's a. The whole area of legislation and litigation is so brand new. I actually don't know how we, the people and our government will navigate that. There will be lots of case law, there will be lots of lawmakers that have opinions. I think humans should be treated as like adult decision makers. If you choose to use a Dave Ramsey AI system or if you choose to listen to him in person, what are you going to do if. If he gives you bad advice and you follow it and it doesn't, you know, you don't sue him because you lost 10% of your portfolio last year. Like, we're all adults. We all can assume that there's no perfect, perfect crystal ball. And, and so, but again, being careful with who are the experts, what tools will you adopt, and how much confidence do you have that they're going to give you good advice? I mean, that's a personal decision for all of us to make. So when you talk about the Focus app from Hank Green, like, it's really cool how we spread good things through word of mouth. And if there could be spread good AI programs through word of mouth, but also online with directories and with rating systems, there's a good chance that most people will adopt tools that are positive, not negative. Yeah.
- [77:39]
Jack
So being someone that studied genealogy and traits, what would you say are the top three traits or mindsets that someone should have if they want to be successful in business or entrepreneurship? What are the three things that they should refine?
- [77:52]
Paul Allen
I. I've come to believe in the last few years that the one of the greatest human traits for every part of life, especially entrepreneurs. But. But at any age and in any part of life is gratitude. Gratitude. If you don't wake up with an overwhelming sense that you should be grateful for your parents, for the world, for the talents you have, for the physical body you have, for the health you have, for the financial well being that you have, gratitude is to me the best virtue to nurture so that you can be happy and content. When you're feeling awe and wonder about the fact that you are a human being out of 8 billion humans, you actually are unique and you live and you have a chance to do amazing things every day and learn and grow and form relationships and have friendships and enjoy music and poetry and athletics. Like what an incredible thing to be alive. And so I think gratitude and kind of awe and wonder is like a really important one. But then I would say being hungry and being humble, like just realize you don't know very much, there's a lot more to learn and be very eager to learn as much as you can and do as much as you can. So being hungry, hungry and being humble is the BYU football team's mantra this year with coach Kalani Sataki. And I really like that, it resonates. But I also think the primary virtue that I wish all humans could encourage or inculcate in themselves is deep gratitude for their creator, for their parents, for their friends, for their family, for their co workers, for life itself. Just be in awe that you are alive and you get to be you.
- [79:34]
Graham
It's funny you say that because that is on my phone. I had to check that it's there, but it's one of these little notes on my phone is focus on gratitude. Just every time I check my phone, I see it.
- [79:46]
Paul Allen
That's cool. I like that.
- [79:48]
Graham
It's funny you see it.
- [79:48]
Jack
Gratitude is amazing. Like I remember I used to journal every day and now still to this day, I, I practice gratitude in a different way. But back when I was journaling, I would daily log and then at the very end, I would write three things down that I'm very grateful for. And those three things that I tried to write down down, I, I would, I would try to make sure that they were things that would not change. Like, I'm grateful that I have, you know, like ten fingers, or I'm grateful that, you know, and it's not like I'm grateful that we had a really good month on the podcast, we made a lot of money or whatever it was. Things that like, would not change and I could practice for an extended period of time. So I think gratitude's very important. But also one thing I always love mentioning to my friends is their relationship with failure, because I think a lot of people, whenever they fail, they get really down on themselves and it's ends up hindering them for the next, you know, long period of time. They, they're kind of bogged down by their failures. But I think if they could then learn from a failure, it ends up becoming a success. So then you have your actual successes that remain to be successes, and you also have your failures that you then transform into successes because you learned and adapted from that. So it's like, how can you ever fail if you are successful from your failures and you're also successful from your success?
- [80:59]
Paul Allen
I love that. That's a fantastic mindset. I, I remember teaching entrepreneurship about 20 years ago at Utah Valley University and my co teacher was a guy named Rick Farr. He was about 20 years older than me and he had been very successful, had huge exits, but he also had had some failures. And he taught all of us. Failure is overrated. It doesn't last very long. Success is also overrated. It doesn't last very long. There's no reason to think there is a thing where you're successful and then it never changes. That's not reality. So he just tried to say, don't worry about the deep successes or the deep failures because just live life like, live it within a narrower band. But I, but I think the way you framed successes are successes and failures framed properly are lessons learned that lead to success. That's fantastic. That's very wise.
- [81:47]
Jack
Paul Allen, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour. We really appreciate it and thank you guys.
- [81:53]
Graham
We'll link to all your info down below in the description for anyone who wants to follow all of your upcoming plans. Businesses.
- [81:59]
Paul Allen
Awesome.
- [81:59]
Graham
Thanks for coming.
- [82:00]
Paul Allen
Thank you, Graham. My very first investor in Sora was Graham Weston.
- [82:03]
Graham
No way.
- [82:03]
Paul Allen
And my youngest daughter just told me she's going to name her son Jack. So I like both of your names and I'm really grateful that you guys had me on the podcast.
- [82:10]
Graham
Why Jack?
- [82:11]
Paul Allen
I don't know. It's a phenomenal name. It's a great.
- [82:14]
Graham
Why not Graham?
- [82:14]
Jack
Because that's a cracker, okay? And no one wants to name their child a cracker. Thank you guys so much for watching.
- [82:20]
Graham
Till next time.
- [82:21]
Jack
Thank you, Graham. Till next time.
- [82:34]
Paul Allen
And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [82:49]
Graham
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [82:52]
Paul Allen
Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts.