Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

• “Fundamentally, being a component in someone else’s stack, doesn’t usually end well”
  • You want to be able to control each component (of the stack) so you create the ideal user experience
  • As an example, if you have a differentiated advantaged (say in chip design or battery life) you want to ship the end product to the customer yourself (and not sell your batteries to someone like Apple) – this way you get more credit for what you’re asymmetrically good at
• Keith lists his investment criteria in this tweet
  • But the most important one – Can the founder recruit the requisite talent?
• Keith says if you have any shot at all at “making it” as a company, there has to be something anomalous, either about your technology, or the team itself
  • “Unless you can see something that’s special, and VERY unusual, there’s no chance that this is one of the top 100 companies of all time”
• “If you’re going to take two kids in a garage again, and take over the world of X, 10% here and there ain’t gonna cut it. You need 0s. You need to be orders of magnitude better.”
• “People sometimes forget that I don’t think you can easily get to success by just avoiding bad ideas. You kind of have to do the positive stuff too, and that requires emulating people, companies, and ideas that have been successful.”
  • “I think more people should copy/replicate, and aim to reproduce what the successful companies do. But because we’re surrounded by a world that has more failure than success, it’s easy top get caught up in the ‘avoid the failure’ mentality.”
• “Every business, when it works, is like an equation – X times Y times Z with some weighting. Understanding that equation in your brain, and being able to manipulate the variables, is the key to being strategic.”
• Great career advice – “Find somebody that you can just attach yourself to, that’s incredibly impressive, and just learn through osmosis”

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

My guest this week is Keith Rabois. Keith is currently an investment partner at Khosla Ventures, but has a storied and diverse background as an investor, entrepreneur, and executive. He has worked in senior positions at Paypal, LinkedIn, and Square; has led investments in companies like Stripe, YouTube, Palantir, and AirBnB; and started the company OpenDoor, which aims to transform the process of selling a home through technology.

One fun fact about Keith is that he may have the most impressive list of bosses I’ve ever seen, which we discuss during the episode.

We cover a lot, but one thing we kept returning to was business strategy. Keith’s frameworks for gaining and building strategic power helped me clarify my thinking on the topic, and his examples of contrarian thinking will hopefully make you question some commonly held beliefs.

Please enjoy our conversation.

 

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.

Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

 

Show Notes

1:35  (First Question) – A look at his investing philosophy

3:16  – Favorite examples of his own investment history

            4:40 – 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy

5:07 – Understanding what is anomalous in a given investment

7:07 – How much a secret needs to be protected within a business

11:51 – Why accumulating advantage with data is of interest to Keith

15:12 – Digital health companies and ideas that he finds compelling

16:17 – Nuance around financial services that investors should be mindful of

17:56 – How do they evaluate managers ability to recruit talent

19:36 – How similar are the roles of entrepreneur, board member, investor, etc that Keith has had in his career

24:02 – Ways that Keith is a contrarian, including his feelings on “lean startup.”

27:04 – Is problem identification a specific skill set

28:29 – Objection with experimentation/iteration

30:02 – Bad ideas in venture

31:36 – What he likes about Apple

            31:51 – Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

32:26 - Interview questions for identifying great talent

35:41 – Elements of good design

37:14 – Impact of platforms on opening new opportunities

38:42 – His take on valuation in the early stage environment

40:33 – Advice he would give people early in their careers

43:58 – Do high growth companies get beat by established larger businesses

45:25 – Popular narratives that he thinks are just wrong

48:22 – His thoughts on how people should learn, balancing experience vs information gathering

50:00 – Other investors that are taking a unique approach to investing

51:57 – Reflecting on the entrepreneur as a client model of private equity

55:04 – Books that he recommends that is least known

            55:18 – The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It

56:30 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Keith

 

Learn More

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. 

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub

Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

• Josh takes an ice bath every morning in a large chest freezer while doing the following breathing exercise:
  • 10 second breaths (4 seconds in, 1-2 second hold, and then 4-5 seconds out – for 20 cycles)
  • The water temperature is ~35 °F
• Josh makes his bed immediately after waking up
  • “It’s not about making your bed, it’s about starting your day off right”
  • What’s the logic to this? – Right off the bat, you accomplish your first task of the day
• Here’s what one of Josh’s mentors in the Navy SEALS told him, which stuck with him to this day:
  • “No matter what it is that you’re doing, the one thing these instructors can’t do is stop time. Whatever it is that you’re doing, no matter how bad it hurts, no matter how bad it sucks, it’s going to come to an end. You can either push through it, and realize that it’s going to come to an end, and still be here at the back end of it, or you can quit mid way, and then you have to live with that for the rest of your life.”
• “I think I just love what I do. I love going out and testing myself every day, whether it be in the gym, on a run, anything in life really, even being a dad. I love it. Once you find something you love, and really enjoy doing, it’s easy to continue to do it forever.“

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

Josh Bridges is a six-time CrossFit Games veteran and  former Navy SEAL. In 2011 he finished second overall at the CrossFit games while at the same time being a Navy SEAL. Josh is one of the hardest working, mentally tough individuals you will come across. On this episode Josh discusses his mindset, training and recovery techniques and some of the most physically challenging things he’s doing. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!

*Questions for the solo podcast email [email protected]*

 

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Intro/Outro music by Justin Great- http://justingreat.com/

Audio Engineer- Brian Lapres 

"So often, when you see someone who's really good at almost anything, it's because they actually started out exactly the opposite — and then they cared so much about fixing that problem." — Susan Cain

Susan Cain (@susancain) is the author of the bestsellers Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can't Stop Talking, the latter of which has been translated into more than 40 languages. Quiet is in its seventh year on The New York Times Best Sellers list, and it was named the number one best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Susan one of its Most Creative People in Business.

She is the Chief Revolutionary of Quiet Revolution, and her writing has appeared in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her record-smashing TED talk has been viewed more than 20 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks.

Please enjoy! 

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn and its job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you’ve ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know finding the right people can be difficult. If you don’t have a direct referral from someone you trust, you’re left to use job boards that don’t offer any real-world networking approach.

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This podcast is also brought to you by Peloton, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I’ve been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute.

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Peloton is offering listeners to this show a special offer. Visit onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. Again, that’s onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM.

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

• “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”
• There are so many variables governing the outcome of every human interaction
• Fitzgerald, Twain, and Schopenhauer – Josh’s Framework on Information Processing
  • Each of the above, was a famous literary giant, who had a quote, which Josh says defines where we should direct our attention:
    • Fitzgerald – “The test of of a first rate intellect is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”
    • Twain – “It ain’t what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”
    • Schopenhauer- “Talent can hit a target that nobody else can hit, and genius can hit a target that nobody else can see”
• Ask yourself – “What sucks?”
  • “Almost everything that we use, almost everything that was ever invented, started with somebody saying, ‘Huh, that sucks. I’ve got a better idea.'”
• One directional arrow of progress that Josh doesn’t think a lot of people are paying attention to – “The half life of technology intimacy”
  • This is a trend about how we interact with our computers
  • “The undeniable arrow of progress, that directional trend, is more and more intimacy”
  • Tech is slowly starting to become more natural/intimate with the human body
• “Failure comes from a failure to imagine failure”
• “The first thing I tell people when I make an investment, or I join the board, is, ‘I want the bad news.’ Good news – you’re going to get applause from me…but I am your partner, I am invested in you, I want the bad news. I want to know what happened, what’s going wrong, because that’s where I can actually help.”

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org



Subscribe to the Knowledge Project Podcast

Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital discusses how to unearth the unexplored ideas that will reshape our future. We also talk parenting, decision making, and which generation has the best rap.

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For comprehensive show notes on this episode, including a full edited transcript, go to https://fs.blog/podcast/

Is your brain hungry for more? Don't miss out! Sign up for our weekly "Brain Food" at https://fs.blog/newsletter/

Follow @farnamstreet on Twitter for mind-expanding content. 

My guest today is Keith Rabois, the Managing Director at Khosla Ventures. At Khosla, Keith focuses on the consumer internet, education, enterprise, financial services, and digital health. 

 

Keith has had a front-seat to Silicon Valley history. He’s had five bosses in his career: Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, Jack Dorsey, and Vinod Khosla.

"You spend the first 20 years of being rich accumulating all of this stuff. And then you'll spend the next 20 years trying to get out of one thing after another to simplify your life." — Peter Mallouk

Peter Mallouk (@PeterMallouk) is the President of Creative Planning, one of the largest independent wealth management firms in America.

Creative Planning provides wealth management services to clients, manages over $36 billion for clients in all 50 states and abroad, and has been featured as the number one independent wealth management firm in America by Barron's (2017).

Peter is featured in Worth magazine's Power 100, featuring the most powerful men and women in global finance, the only financial planner on the list (2017 and 2018). Creative Planning was featured in Forbes in 2016 as the number one RIA for growth over the last 10 years.

Peter is the co-author (with Tony Robbins) of Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook.

Please enjoy!

This podcast is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together create designs they love. Its creative process has become the go-to solution for businesses, agencies, and individuals, and I have used it for years to help with display advertising and illustrations and to rapid prototype the cover for The Tao of Seneca. Whether your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs.

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Peter and I explore the fascinating applications of Rapamycin for longevity. We also discuss fasting, inflammation, aging, mindfulness, and supplements.

Peter and I explore the fascinating applications of Rapamycin for longevity. We also discuss fasting, inflammation, aging, mindfulness, and supplements.

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

• It’s more about what you eat, as opposed to how much you eat
• Losing weight is NOT about will power – it’s much more complicated, and more so related to hormones
• All calories are not equal – they have different hormonal effects on our body
• Many people think exercise plays the biggest role in the number of calories you burn, but…”Exercise is almost an irrelevant part of the number of calories you expend every day”
  • The most important factor – basal metabolic rate (BMR – aka how many calories your liver uses, your brain uses, and how much body heat you generate)

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

Jason Fung, MD is a Toronto-based nephrologist, obesity expert, and author of "The Obesity Code," "The Diabetes Code," and "The Complete Guide to Fasting." Learn how fasting can actually boost your metabolism, preserve muscle, fix obesity, and prevent disease.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a scientist who has done extensive research on aging, cancer and nutrition. She has a Ph.D. in biomedical science from the University of Tennessee Health Science center and St. Jude’s children’s research hospital in Memphis Tennessee, a bachelor's of science degree in biochemistry/chemistry from the University of California San Diego and has trained as a Postdoc at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute with Dr. Bruce Ames. Her research on the role of insulin signaling in protein misfolding commonly found in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, was conducted at the prestigious Salk Institute for biological Sciences.

Rhonda's podcast and website, both called Found My Fitness, discuss topics such as the role of micronutrient deficiencies in diseases of aging, the benefits of exposing the body to hormetic stressors such as exercise, fasting, sauna use or various forms of cold exposure, and the importance of mindfulness, stress reduction and sleep on health.

In this episode we discuss Rhonda's new publication on the role of the APOE4 gene in Alzheimer's Disease, and why eating fish but not taking fish oil DHA supplements help slow the progression of the disease for carriers. We also touch on how we both approach healthy pregnancies and Rhonda's personal nutrition strategies.

For complete show notes visit: http://summertomato.com/category/podcast