North Star Podcast

Albert Wenger: World After Capital

10.07.2017 - By David PerellPlay

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Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor in Etsy and Tumblr. He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Albert graduated from Harvard College, where he studied economics and computer science and holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT. 

In this episode, we talk about what it was like to grow up in Germany, where Albert received an Apple II at a young age. As a teenager, Albert visited America for the first time when he stayed with a family in Rochester, Minnesota — the most impactful travel experience of his life.  We talk about how technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digital technologies, scarcity is shifting once more. We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital — the title of Albert’s new book — where the only scarcity is our attention. 

Links: 

World After Capital

Future of the Nation State

Decentralization and the Knowledge Age

Albert Wenger Twitter

Books: 

Grit

Three Body Problem

Thinking, Fast & Slow

Antifragile

Seveneves

Beginning of Infinity

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