Showing posts with label venture capital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label venture capital. Show all posts

Saturday, May 19, 2018

EP 043 Vinay Gupta on Survival and Enlightenment

Vinay Gupta spends a lot of time thinking about disasters, which in my experience means that he's a very happy man. There's nothing better than finding solutions to really horrible predicaments for improving your outlook on life. He's the designer of the hexayurt, a shelter that can be rapidly and efficiently created from readily available materials, and has built blockchain applications as part of the leadership team at Ethereum and Mattereum.

The hidden word behind our discussion today is scaling. The scaling problem underlies both his entrepreneurial efforts and his understanding of the enlightenment process. We discuss the reasons why you may not want to be around enlightened people, whether mass enlightenment is a desirable or feasible goal, and the problems of taking initiatory experiences and spiritual technologies (tantra, ayahuasca) out of their traditional containers.

I am, by temperament and experience, more sanguine about all of this than he is. I tend to think things will eventually work themselves out over time. My enlightenment experiences have been mild and pleasant; if mine had been as harrowing as his, I would probably feel as he does.

As a technical note, there were some sound issues on our Transatlantic Skype call, which occasionally made it sound as though one of us was conducting the call while having a bath or as if we had ghost hunter-style EVPs from beyond the grave on the line. I apologize for these and hope they do not interfere with your listening enjoyment.


Photo: Robin Hood Co-op


Photo: Robin Grane-McCalla


Show Notes and Links

Vinay Gupta
@leashless on twitter

Paul Wilson, The Calm Technique
Scott Nelson, Sweetbridge
BKS Iyengar, Light on Yoga

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Links for Later 12-31-15

  1. A book cave of about 5000 books, made by a student at Yunnan Normal University (via Marginal Revolution).
  2. Venture capital disrupts itself.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Links for Later 3-10-14

  1. William Ackman shorts Herbalife, then tries to make the short pay off by whatever means are at his disposal.
  2. Is there a tradeoff among equity, efficiency and freedom in economic systems? Paul Krugman says, not so much.
  3. Bill Janeway on the present and future of venture capital (via Brad DeLong)
  4. The US military looks a lot like Sweden. (via Helen DeWitt)

Monday, July 09, 2012

Links for Later 7-9-12

  1. Not enough scientists, and not enough science jobs
  2. How the failure of ACTA is impacting the copyfight
  3. Almost 10% of Pennsylvania voters disenfranchised by new law
  4. How to teach entrepreneurship
  5. Dave McClure, late bloomer or loser?
  6. Noahpinion thinks Zero Hedge is a behavioral finance sockpuppet
  7. Doctor gets leukemia, sequences own genome with help from a few friends, finds effective treatment.
  8. How to scale a wall

Monday, May 07, 2012

Peter Thiel's Class on Tech Investing

Blake Masters is taking notes on Peter Thiel's Stanford course, which includes a wealth of good information on how to approach and deal with VCs.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Is Venture Capital Broken?

Returns fell after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, and now the industry average tracks the broader equity markets.  Here, Noah Smith discusses some of U Chicago Professor Steven Kaplan's research on the matter. The upshot: there's alpha to be found among the VC's, but it's really hard to be one of those positive alpha fund managers. The addition of more funds just results in lots of really bad funds with negative alpha. There's another possible reason, having to do with the rationalization and increased liquidity of the early stage tech market, but that wouldn't account for the persistently good returns of the top funds, so the alpha theory seems to have it.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Links for Later

1. Patrick Bateman's New York
2. NPR is looking for the 100 best SF/fantasy novels/series of all time. The long list is a pretty good starting place
3. Best practices in VC deal sourcing
4. Elvis' fried chicken recipe

Monday, May 02, 2011

Links for Later

1. Tim Heatherington and Chris Hondros memorial at the Photography Post
2. The scene in the situation room. Closeup of Obama's face.
3. The liberals' stealth budget looks better than anything else out there.
4. Silly Bin Laden & Obama photoshoppery.
5. 100 rules for being an entrepreneur
6. The press conference from last night
7. How to get a job in VC
8. Tech company infographic
9. Cool house
10. What's Obama thinking about the economic recovery?
11. Zombie Boy before the tattoos
12. NYT on the day's events
13. Another cool house

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Links for Later

1. 100 verses of A Bang on the Ear

2. Mixergy interview with AngelList's Nivi

3. So long, PayGo

4. Bon Iver plays Peter Gabriel's Come Talk to Me. Kelly Deal sez: "YOU PEOPLE AND YOUR GODDAMN BON IVER, I SWEAR TO GOD."

5. A Guide to the Market Oligopoly System (Economic art)

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Links for Later

1. PZ Meyers comments on the Spiegel interview with Craig Venter, and ends with a snap.

2. High Frequency Trading ordering patterns.

3. Setting the price for a seed round.

4. Inception soundtrack based on time distorted Edith Piaf.

5. Glen O'Brien & Family at the Selby.

6. Medical crew chief on a very bad medivac flight.

7. Tour of the Webb Gallery in Texas. Outsider art, Masonic paraphenalia and curios. (via boingb oing.

8. Audwin P McGee, American Badass. More interesting than that Dos Equis guy.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Links for Later

Interview with Founders Capital team on SpaceX, Tesla, photographic DNA sequencing, and others.

Staff Sgt. George Zubaty's personal narrative.

Tashi Mannox's Tibetan calligraphy.

Green Lantern posters at ComicCon.

Signal transduction through the PPAR pathway.

Rehab for sex addiction may involve someone telling you you're brain damaged and forcing you to break up with your girlfriend via speakerphone.

Seven people hold keys to restart the Internet.

Tom Hardy sorta-kinda comes out sorta-kinda bi.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Restructuring Prep for Your Capital Raise

Mark Suster, entrepreneur and VC, calls this process by its true and better name: "cleaning up your own shite". It's amazing how many prohibitive terms and conditions find their way into early rounds. A lot of otherwise solid companies find themselves unexpectedly up against the wall because of this problem, and the more experience (read: more rounds) the company has under its belt, the worse this gets. If this is you, go check out his article.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

What's it like being a VC?

Mark Suster has found a great job, and describes its pleasures well.

I'm envious. As he says, "you have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC."

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

New Model VC

Jason Mendelson on why VC isn't broken, contrary to the beliefs of 59.2% of VCs who participated in a recent survey: It's cheap to build a tech company these days, there are lots of entrepreneurs, many of whom are experienced, and a couple of reasons to be optimistic about exits in the future.

I think this is right on. When you've got nothing but talent and time, great things result.

Here's an NVCA presentation on restoring liquidity (particularly IPOs) to the VC industry, referenced in Mendelson's article.