Podcast Notes Playlist: Latest Episodes

• Check out The Knowledge Project Episode Page & Show Notes

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Brian Roemmele is in contention for the most interesting man on the internet.  

That's why I invited him on the podcast. I wanted to discuss his work, his thoughts and philosophy and his propensity for finding fascinating content not found anywhere else.  

What I got was three hours of unmitigated fascination.  

Brian was ready to rock-n-roll. His heart and mind opened up and delivered such a lucid and thought-provoking monologue that I was little inclined to say anything.  

So, I didn't, really. 

I just let him say what he needed to say. 

The result was one of the most interesting, coherent and salient testimonies I've ever had the good fortune to witness.  

Grab a notebook, clear your mind and buckle up. This is a wild ride.  

I'll bring Brian back on sometime relatively soon, but in the mean time, find him here:  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele 

Website: http://voicefirst.expert/ 

Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Brian-Roemmele

Gurwinder Bhogal is a programmer and a writer.

Gurwinder is one of my favourite Twitter follows. He’s written yet another megathread exploring human nature, cognitive biases, mental models, status games, crowd behaviour and social media. It's fantastic, and today we go through some of my favourites.

Expect to learn why asking questions is the most selfish thing you can do, why people create hatred in an attempt to feel love, the real danger of censorship, why it's more important to avoid being wrong than try to be right, what postjournalism is and why you need to understand it, how to win every debate even if you lose, why you should never take an internet insult personally and much more...

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• Understand the difference between work and play: work is anything that is energy-depleting, while play is energy-regenerating
• In life, there is a big difference between what you are good at and how you are wired
• If you do not love what you do, you will probably not stick with it even if you excel at it
• No amount of pleasure from lifestyle inflation can offset a lack of purpose
• What minimalism is to your things, slow living is to your time
• Concepts of intentional living include voluntary simplicity, downshifting, minimalism, digital minimalism, decluttering, financial independence, and lifestyle design   
• Epiphanies happen when you read something that you intuitively knew, but aren’t unable to put into words until then 
• Always consider the second and third-order effects of an action, and try to make that action positively reinforce other goals that you have
• As you psychologically develop, how you relate to what you know changes
• Quality is a byproduct of quantity; you will get better at something the more that you do it 
• A synthesizing mind is a mind with the capacity to take in a lot of information, reflect on it, and then organize it in a way that is useful to you that also proves useful to others
• When you reflect on a situation or period of time, oftentimes you realize things that you did not realize when you were in the midst of it
• Having awareness of your thoughts and understanding that you are not your thoughts changes your relationship with them

Kyle Kowalski is the Funder of Sloww.co (one of my favorite websites for synthesized knowledge + wisdom!) 

He has been an advisor to INC. fastest growing companies, has interviewed billionaire business titans and personally coached CEO’s and executives. Interested in having Sean coach you? CLICK HERE

I’ve studied hundreds of the world’s must successful people and compiled:13 Insights from the World’s Most Successful People – Click Here to get access 

https://youunleashedcourse.com/

You Unleashed is an online personal development course created by Sean DeLaney after spending years working with and interviewing high achievers.The online course that helps you ‘Unleash your potential’!

You Unleashed teaches you the MINDSETS, ROUTINES and BEHAVIORS you need to unleash your potential and discover what you’re capable of.

You know you’re capable of more and want to bring out that untapped potential inside of you.

We teach you how.

Enroll Today!- Click Here

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• Many of the high-margin software businesses have no impact on society, and sometimes can even have a negative impact on society 
• Founders in the dynamism category are creating teams that are mission-oriented and interested in more than just making money; they want to build techno-optimist solutions for strategically important problems 
• It is important for society’s best players to choose good quests
• It is best to lean into your passions and overinvest in them 
• We must encourage people to be “spikey” instead of only encouraging them to be “well-rounded”  
• In his early days at Founder Fund, Trae was looking to invest in a 21st-century reboot of Lockheed Martin; it did not exist, so he started it 
• If a company is going to work, each team member must leverage their own superpower to achieve the company’s audacious goal 
• The adversary must know that Anduril’s product will prevent their offensive from happening and that the defensive cost to prevent it is far lower than the offensive cost to launch it  
• “The DoD has done a really good job at creating theater around their innovation efforts.” – Trae Stephens 
• The big defense primes are effectively government agencies that respond to the incentives presented to them 
• Mimetic desire is the primary motivation for conflict in society because we are all going after the scarce resources that other people want  
• Working and learning about an industry in a supporting role is 100x better than graduate school
• The first question that Trae Stephens asks in every pitch meeting is: “What is the origin story of this business?”
• Ask yourself what you are uniquely suited to do to contribute to a greater good
• We lose the wonders of virtue when we rely on ourselves as the source of all truth 

My guest this week is Trae Stephens. Trae is a partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril. Trae’s philosophy can be boiled down to finding good quests, which has led him to investing in businesses that work closely with the government on societally important issues. Clearly, that extends to co-founding Anduril and I would highly recommend listening to my Business Breakdowns episode on Anduril if you haven’t already. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of lobbyists, why the high-tech defense firms of the past became stale, and how he hunts for disagreeableness in founders. Please enjoy my conversation with Trae Stephens.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

Listen to Founders Podcast

Founders Episode 136 - Estee Lauder

Founders Episode 288 - Ralph Lauren

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

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Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

Show Notes

[00:03:17] - [First question] - Why Trae thinks most high-margin businesses are bad for society

[00:04:28] - What would he change to impact energy technology most if he were in charge

[00:06:18] - His investing focus on dynamism and mission-driven tech companies

[00:09:42] - Analyzing why relatively few people strive to make society-level advancements

[00:11:35] - What he’s done as a parent to enable his kids to develop passions

[00:12:41] - The most noteworthy adventures in his career

[00:14:41] - Founding Anduril and what it taught him about the tech industry

[00:18:40] - The cutting-edge of defense technologies today

[00:21:29] - What Shyam Sankar of Palantir taught him about defense tech

[00:23:34] - Why some of the biggest defense tech companies have stopped innovating

[00:28:29] - What he and Anduril have learned about sales and scaling in the public sector

[00:32:12] - Where lobbyists and decision makers play in to defense tech business models

[00:35:22] - His take on Peter Thiel’s notion that competition should be avoided

[00:38:24] - The importance of being psychologically disagreeable when building a start-up

[00:39:54] - The origin story that stands out the most from companies he has interviewed

[00:41:12] - How he developed an investor mindset on his unorthodox path to the venture world

[00:43:57] - What he has learned from playing supporting roles and aligning with great leaders

[00:46:11] - Important but uncommon lessons about entrepreneurship

[00:48:21] - Venture investing lessons he’s learned from Lauren Gross

[00:50:00] - His first VR project and aspirations for the future of VR

[00:54:50] - The role of religion and spirituality in his business philosophies

[00:59:13] - Why he tries to capitalize on morality as opposed to sin

[01:03:57] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him