LaBossiere Podcast

Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano is an entrepreneur and technology investor. He runs his family office which makes private investments, along with owning majority stakes in a number of operating businesses. Additionally, Pomp hosts popular conversations on “The Pomp Podcast,” which has been downloaded more than 50 million times. Pomp also writes a letter that is read by more than 250,000 investors each morning. Pomp’s interests lie at the intersection of finance, technology, entrepreneurship, and economics, which he tweets about extensively to his more than 1.6 million followers. 0:00 - Intro 3:11 - Incumbents and Competition in the Age of AI 5:12 - Media’s Relationship with Technology 9:48 - Individuals vs Institutions and the Future of Content 11:46 - Consensus, Truth, and Misinformation 15:47 - How to Cut Through the Noise 18:47 - The Decline of Trust in Institutions 24:10 - Balancing Optimism and Cynicism 26:46 - National Debt 33:22 - Bad Legislation, Bad Politicians, and Bad Incentives 37:54 - Growing Our Way Out of the Problem 42:19 - Autonomous Cars, Pig Heart Transplants, and How Innovation Propagates Itself 49:22 - Legislating Technology 55:04 - Increasing the Number of Entrepreneurs in Society 1:03:08 - When Better Technology Doesn’t Mean Better Outcomes 1:05:24 - Talent Allocation 1:10:56 - What Does Pomp Do Every Day? 1:19:52 - Lessons From 1300 Interviews 1:21:56 - On Fame, Audience, and Parasocial Relationships 1:29:23 - The State of Crypto 1:34:14 - Institutional Adoption of Crypto 1:37:20 - Is Slow-Moving Bureaucracy a Bug or a Feature? 1:42:02 - Remote Work and Regulatory Arbitrage 1:46:22 - Promising Cities and the Internet as an Equalizer 1:50:03 - Lessons From War 1:58:07 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. He’s the author of 8 books, including The Myth of the Rational Voter, The Case Against Education, and Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. His next book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing, will be published by the Cato Institute in 2024. He’s the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. He’s published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. 0:00 - Intro 2:23 - The Most Irrational Beliefs in Society 3:43 - Why Do People Vote? 5:57 - The Most Net Positive Delusions in Society 7:30 - Bottlenecks in Democracy 9:13 - Idea Traps 13:13 - The Ideological Turing Test 15:16 - Caricatures of Political Parties 17:49 - The Case for Open Borders 21:48 - Tribalism and Social Cohesion 25:33 - Privatization and The Confluence of Cultures 26:56 - What’s the Point of Countries? 28:26 - What Values Are (Mostly) Non-negotiable? 30:27 - The Net Present Value of Immigration 33:43 - The Competition of Cultures 38:15 - Is Globalism Inevitable? 39:30 - Resources and Culture 42:49 - How to Fix Immigration 45:07 - The Case Against Education 48:48 - What is a Degree Actually Worth? 52:05 - Why is Bryan a Professor? 53:13 - The Value of Conformity in Society 55:25 - Is Learning How to Learn Real? 57:51 - Is There Value in the Liberal Arts? 29:27 - Bryan’s Approach to Learning 1:01:49 - Who Does Education Well? 1:02:49 - The Biggest Problems in Academia 1:05:47 - Should we Abolish Tenure? 1:09:32 - Why Parenting is Overrated 1:11:51 - What Kind of Parenting Has an Effect? 1:14:23 - Positive Effects of Having Kids 1:16:03 - The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation 1:18:50 - Intangible Costs of Deregulation 1:21:39 - How does Ideology Propagate Itself? 1:24:09 - If Everything’s Mimetic are Free Markets Overrated? 1:25:54 - How to Get Ideas Into the Mainstream 1:28:19 - Are Politicians Evil? 1:31:35 - The Future of Labor Markets Under Remote Work 1:34:21 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

Delian Asparouhov is the co-founder, President and Chairman of Varda Space Industries, a company building spacecraft to manufacture materials in microgravity that are difficult or impossible to produce on Earth— starting with pharmaceuticals. He’s also a Partner at Founders Fund. Previously, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT, and likes to ski and play soccer. 0:00 - Intro 3:14 - How Does Innovation Happen? 6:23 - Varda and the No Science Allowed Rule 7:52 - A Primer on Solid State Microgravity Manufacturing 18:25 - Space Industrialization, Trading Posts, and the Chinese and Portuguese Navies 21:13 - Economic Incentives and Future Business Models in Space 24:24 - SpaceX and The Costs of Mass to Orbit 27:45 - Demand for Space Manufacturing and Varda at Scale 33:44 - Manufacturing, Servicing, Machining, and Future Markets for Space 36:42 - Incubating Companies 40:33 - When Would Varda Have Been Started Otherwise? 42:19 - The Hollywood Model of Startups 45:20 - Future of Incubations 47:47 - Media’s Role in Technology 50:39 - What Media Inspired Varda’s Founding? 52:38 - Talent, Culture, and Cementing Company Trajectory 53:57 - Narratives and Talent Recruitment 55:28 - Traits Delian Looks for in Founders 57:38 - The ‘Why Now’ When Investing 1:00:08 - Bring Non-Consensus and Right 1:02:53 - Is Varda Consensus Yet? 1:03:24 - Identifying Non-Consensus Opportunities 1:05:12 - Lessons from Founding and Investing 1:07:40 - What Skill Do You Wish You’d Developed Earlier? 1:10:11 - Immigrant Mentality 1:11:24 - Less Obvious Reasons for Success 1:12:55 - On Speed 1:14:23 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

Robin Hanson is a professor at George Mason University and researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. 0:00 - Intro 2:42 - Intelligent Life in the Universe 7:30 - Grabby Aliens: A Primer 15:29 - Elites and the End of Global Coordination 18:59 - 6 Hard Steps for the Emergence of Life 22:11 - The Probability of Aliens 33:05 - Domesticating Humans 38:08 - Signaling and the Elephant in the Brain 42:31 - Conscious and Subconscious Behavior 46:53 - Collective Signaling 49:54 - The Contrarian Economics of Medicine and Lifespan 57:00 - Taste 1:01:18 - Hyper-Rationality and Social Cohesion 1:07:03 - How to Predict the Future 1:12:11 - Brain Emulations 1:21:15 - Artificial General Intelligence 1:27:52 - The Descendants of Humans 1:32:49 - Changing Attitudes Toward Life and Death 1:37:33 - The Future of Inequality 1:42:10 - God and The Sacred 1:57:42 - The Most Surprising Thing Robin’s Learned Recently 1:59:57 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

Chris Mason is a professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also one of the founding Directors of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. He is the author of The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, and the co-author of The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk. 0:00 - Intro 2:29 - How Long Will Humanity Last? 9:01 - On Societal Pessimism and Long-Term Thinking 13:02 - Aliens! 17:36 - The NASA Twins Study 23:17 - Nature vs Nurture 25:56 - Chris’ Dream Experiments 27:45 - Genomics: Ethics, Opportunities, and the Future 37:38 - Space Race 2.0: Colonization, Regulation and Planetary Liberty 40:36 - Colonizing Mars and Achieving Planetary Liberty 45:46 - The Extreme Microbiome Project 47:14 - The Earth Similarity Index, Generation Ships and Leaving the Solar System 53:10 - Why Do Any of This in The First Place? 56:19 - The Age of Prediction 1:01:19 - On Chris, Science, Academia, and Big Questions 1:08:47 - Synthetic Biology, Cyborgs and the Future of Human Life 1:10:10 - Chris’ Biggest Goal 1:11:06 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

Keith Rabois is a General Partner at Founders Fund and the CEO of OpenStore, which acquires small direct-to-consumer businesses. Keith co-founded Opendoor and led the first institutional investments in DoorDash and Affirm. He has early stakes in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, and Wish, and also led investments in Faire, Ramp, Trade Republic, and Stripe. He’s regarded as one of the greatest early stage investors. Keith began his career in the industry as a senior executive at PayPal and subsequently served in influential roles at LinkedIn and as chief operating officer of Square. As a board member, Keith guided Yelp and Xoom from inception to IPO, and served on the board of Reddit from 2012-2018. 0:00 - Intro 2:35 - Bomb-Building and the PayPal Mafia 5:10 - Spotting Talent 11:32 - Where Keith is 1000:1 16:14 - PayPal, Regulation, and Law 22:00 - Regulatory Arbitrage 25:03 - AI 27:46 - Keith’s 5 Bosses 31:04 - How to Operate 34:16 - OpenStore 39:33 - Founding vs Investing 42:48 - Requests for Startups 47:39 - Early-Stage Investing 53:46 - Companies as Cults 56:42 - The Future of Venture 1:00:56 - Not Stretching, Engineering Serendipity, and How to Ask Better Questions 1:06:40 - On Keith 1:08:45 - Time Allocation, Self-Grading, Values, Reading and Legacy 1:16:11 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE

Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist and writer. He is the CEO and co-founder of Tusk Ventures, the world’s first venture capital fund that invests solely in early stage startups in highly regulated industries, and the founder of political consulting firm Tusk Strategies. Bradley’s family foundation is funding and leading the national campaign to bring mobile voting to all U.S. elections. Tusk Philanthropies also runs and funds anti-hunger campaigns that have led to the creation of anti-hunger policies and programs (including universal school breakfast programs) in 22 different states, helping to feed over 12.5 million people. Bradley is the author of The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death by Politics and Obvious in Hindsight (coming out this November), writes a column for Fast Company, hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics, and is the co-founder of the Gotham Book Prize. He recently opened a bookstore, podcast studio, event space and cafe called P&T Knitwear on Manhattan's lower east side. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. 0:00 - Intro 2:03 - The Incentives of Politics 10:57 - Bradley’s Philosophy 18:33 - More Political Parties and Fixing Political Polarization 25:13 - Big Tech Antitrust 29:09 - What Bradley Would Change 32:23 - The Decline of Trust in Institutions  36:12 - Tusk Ventures 37:53 - Requests for Startups 39:50 - Debt, Inflation, and COVID 46:31 - The Story of Uber  49:29 - How Uber Beats Lyft 52:59 - Weaponizing a Constituency  54:53 - Regulated Industries Bradley’s Excited About  57:54 - Crypto 1:01:40 - Psychedelics and Doing Ketamine  1:07:21 - What Keeps Bradley Up at Night? 1:10:48 - Mobile Voting  1:15:41 - Doing Lots of Things at Once 1:18:25 - Why Credentials Are Overrated 1:23:42 - On Happiness 1:28:31 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt⁠⁠ Apple: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/478Be6M⁠⁠ Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE

Jeff Morris Jr is the Managing Partner at Chapter One, an early stage venture capital fund. He’s formerly the VP of Product and Revenue at Tinder, which he helped scale to become the #1 grossing app in the world. 0:00 - Intro 1:57 - Growing up in Silicon Valley 5:01 - Writing, Hollywood, and Tech 13:15 - AI and the Future of Content 21:20 - Dating Apps Today and Time at Tinder 29:26 - Future of Product and Strategy 36:30 - Crypto 40:38 - On Venture Capital 53:19 - Building Chapter One 59:36 - Goals, Mentors, and Personal Philosophy 1:07:56 - $10,000 for Michael Jordan’s Cigar and Other Fun Stories 1:16:52 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE

On founding versus Investing, parenting, indexing knowledge, collective intelligence, and good questions.

On optimism, progress in technology, drivers of stagnation, and how to think about innovation.