Pioneer

My guests today are Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross. Tyler is an economics professor and creator of one of the most popular economics blogs on the internet. Daniel is the founder of start-up accelerator Pioneer, having previously been a director at Apple and a partner at Y Combinator. Both Daniel and Tyler are prolific talent spotters and that is the focus of our discussion and their new book, which is called Talent. Please enjoy this conversation with Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is brought to you by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis. If you're a professional equity investor and haven't talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/Patrick.    -----   This episode is brought to you by Brex. Brex is the integrated financial platform trusted by the world's most innovative entrepreneurs and fastest-growing companies. With Brex, you can move money fast for instant impact with high-limit corporate cards, payments, venture debt, and spend management software all in one place. Ready to accelerate your business? Learn more at brex.com/best.   -----   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.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:02:38] - [First question] - Defining what talent is to them writ large [00:03:34] - The differences between means and ends in regards to talent [00:04:14] - What the Diet Coke idea is and why it’s relevant [00:06:32] - Types of energy that are valuable and the subtle differences between them  [00:07:40] - Thoughts on using a moneyball-like approach to acquiring and evaluating talent  [00:11:49] - The talent market and thinking about pricing talent specifically [00:13:14] - What is seemingly overpriced in today’s talent landscape [00:15:50] - Relationship between experience and/or age when it comes to talent [00:20:34] - Lessons about the utility of intelligence and where they’ve lead them wrong [00:23:35] - What’s beneath being an outsider and why it’s important [00:24:46] - Why what people do in their downtime is worth considering   [00:31:41] - Things to try and get out of a reference call as an objective [00:32:40] - Disabilities and what lead them write that chapter specifically [00:35:01] - Whether or not talented people are happier   [00:38:40] - Lack of contentment and it’s dynamic influence over individuals [00:41:01] - Where they think the other is most talented [00:43:33] - Thinking about the physical side of mental performance [00:45:49] - What was frustrating about writing the book [00:48:25] - How they evaluate talent most differently now after having finished the book [00:50:41] - What makes for a good bat signal and how to cast one well  [00:53:27] - Personality inventories and what they would and wouldn’t recommend   [00:54:15] - Geographical frictions and their role in high success rates [00:56:08] - Antonio Gracias; Existing supply constraints on talent development [01:00:01] - How they would redesign the current attractors of talent that we rely on today [01:01:18] - Assembly line development and how we can improve and scale talent filters [01:02:29] - The biggest open questions for talent today writ large [01:05:16] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for Tyler

Tyler Cowen

Professor of Economics

George Mason UniversityMercatus Center

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

Angel investor Jason Calacanis (Uber, Calm, Robinhood) interviews the world’s greatest founders, operators, investors and innovators. Get an insider’s look into venture capital, learn how to start and scale your own startup, and ride the cutting edge of technology in today's headlines and beyond.

Courtland Allen

Founder

Indie Hackers

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

My guest today is Daniel Gross. Daniel is the founder of Pioneer, an extremely unique company which he describes as a “fully remote startup generator” that helps talented people around the world figure out if their idea has legs. You can learn more about it at pioneer.app. Our wide-ranging conversation covers the art of asking great questions, the use of predictive modeling and psychometrics to identify talent, and why psychometrics are probably overrated and not that scientific. We then dive into exciting new frontiers for tech investing ranging from GPT-3 to satellites. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you will too.   This episode of Invest like the Best is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus has built the most extensive primary information platform available for investors. With Tegus, you can learn everything you'd want to know about a company in an on-demand digital platform. Investors share their expert calls, allowing others to instantly access more than 10,000 calls on Square, Snowflake, or almost any company of interest. All you have to do is log in. Visit https://www.tegus.co/patrick to learn more.   This episode of Invest Like The Best is also sponsored by Assure. Assure is changing the way investors manage private transactions. With Assure, investors can eliminate nearly all the admin cost of private investment. On top of that, they handle all the backend, legal, taxes, accounting, and compliance. All of it, with a straightforward one-time fee. Learn more and try Assure for yourself at https://www.assure.co/patrick.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (3:15) – (First question) – His passion for Crank and Whiplash and why movies are great screeners for interviews (6:15) – Overview of Pioneer (7:56) – Defining talent (10:02) – The equivalent page rank when it comes to people (14:10) – Psychometrics and matter to him (18:13) – The importance of persistence (20:23) – The concept of insecure overachievers (22:48) – Fast twitch vs slow twitch capitalism (24:31) – Importance of memes as it relates to human behavior today (26:14) – The landscape of the type of businesses being formed (29:25) – Overview of GPT3 (33:33) - The Power of Ten Playbook (38:08) – Technologies going from a frontier to a utility (42:45) – Why something like a Starlink can’t be regulated (44:58) – Seed vs leech ratio in capital funding             (49:10) – Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (49:15) – Dissecting Patrick’s usual closing question and good questions for screening people (52:56) – What questions help him get to the bottom of (55:58) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

Follow Daniel: https://twitter.com/danielgross Check out Pioneer: https://pioneer.app/ Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason https://linktr.ee/calacanis

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. Long episode today! First half is with 8-figure ad agency founder Brendan Gahan to talk biz models, overhead and profitability. Then the second half is with Daniel Gross who sold his startup to Apple in his twenties and rolled that win into multiple unicorn investments. Enjoy!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Brendan Gahan

Founder & CEO

Epic Signal

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

Daniel Gross (@danielgross) has a tendency to view pretty much everything in life as a game. So when it came time to start a new business after selling his first startup to Apple, he decided to make it into a game that could change the world. In this episode, Daniel talks about what it takes to build a massively impactful project, how to minimize the effects of luck, and the habits you should develop to become a more successful founder. Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/080-daniel-gross-of-pioneer

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio I'm joined by two incredible people, Laura Deming and Daniel Gross, who have accomplished more before the age of 30 than most people have realized in a lifetime. Laura grew up in New Zealand and came to San Francisco when she was only 12 years old to join a lab studying aging. She was accepted to MIT at 14 before leaving to form Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm investing in companies aimed to help us all live longer and healthier lives. Daniel came to the Bay Area from Israel, accepted into Y Combinator in 2010, the youngest founder to go through the program at that time. His startup, Cue, was later acquired by Apple which led him to a leadership position across a number of AI and machine learning teams at the company. He left Apple to work at Y Combinator and recently launched Pioneer, a program to identify and support brilliant people in the world. In this episode we talk about: What it was like for Laura and Daniel to move to the Bay Area from overseas. How Pioneer is aimed to find the “world's lost Einsteins, Marie Curies and Elon Musks”. Why some animals don't age and how humans might be able to learn from creatures such as the tortoise or the naked mole rat. The challenges posed by living much longer than humans do now and how society might change as a result. Why you should sometimes call what you're creating on a project or experiment, rather than a startup. How to find your passion through experimentation. Advice Daniel and Laura have for founders and young people looking to start something big. Of course, we’ll also cover some of our favorite products that you might not know about. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “The benefit of the Ivy League is not the curriculum, I think Google's an awesome curriculum. The benefit of the Ivy League is the network and the branding.” — Daniel “There are a hundred versions of me that sent that same email and never got a response — and how many girls are out there who just never got the chance to explore science and grow in that way?” — Laura “The question is, 'can we build a digital Ivy League campus' — that's truly what we're going at here [at Pioneer].” — Daniel “Young people can do great work but I think it's really under-appreciated the extent to which that's a real phenomenon.” — Laura “I think the biggest thing we're fighting with Pioneer is this subtle enemy of self-editing.” — Daniel “We assume that the number of years we live today is the correct amount, but really it’s optimized for the savannah and different mortality conditions.” — Laura “All you have to do, if you want to become a Laura Deming or a Ryan Hoover, is you just have to take your passion seriously — no one needs to give you permission.” — Daniel “We should be able to choose when we die, and that could be later or earlier than it currently is... Everyone in the world should be able to choose how long they want to live, based on their particular circumstances.” — Laura “We want to bring the power of software to the problem of finding the lost Einsteins.” — Daniel Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Anki— Learn more faster with better flashcards. Longevity Fund — Investing in companies that will allow us to live longer, healthier, lives. Nanopore Sequencing — DNA sequencing on a portable device for under $1,000. Pioneer — An online tournament for productivity.

Laura Deming

Co-Founder and CEO

UNUntilLongevity Fund

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

Daniel Gross is the Founder @ Pioneer and the Head of AI @ Y Combinator. Taking them in turn, Pioneer is the home for ambitious outsiders of the world where they are building a community of creative young people working on interesting projects around the globe. YC is obviously the world's most successful accelerator with alumni that includes the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Flexport and many more incredible companies. Prior to Pioneer and YC, Daniel was a Director @ Apple where he focused on machine learning, as a result of his prior company, Cue (also a YC company) being acquired by Apple in 2013. Finally, Daniel also has one of the valley's most impressive angel portfolios with investments in OpenDoor, Cruise (acquired by GM), Gusto and Github, just to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Daniel made his way from a military camp in Israel to start a company at YC to selling the company to Apple to now, creating a global community of the world's most ambitious people? 2.) What does Daniel believe is the commonality of truly great people? Why did Daniel decide to start Pioneers now? What are the terms for entering Pioneers? How is Daniel looking to create the global talent engine through gamification with Pioneers? Why is gamification such a strong tool to understand human motivation? 3.) Why did Daniel decide it was the right decision to bring the Pioneers to SF? In the world of decentralized entrepreneurship, why did Daniel feel it necessary to bring everyone to the valley? What does Daniel believe Silicon Valley needs to solve if it is to become the home for crypto and frontier tech? What role does optimism play in the success of SF? 4.) The program is funded through Stripe and Marc Andreesen, many have suggested this poses conflict with potential optionality on projects and talent, how does Daniel think about this conflict? Why is it not a concern? What other challenges does Daniel forsee as being the biggest barriers to the success of Pioneer? 5.) How does Daniel think about KPI's for the coming 12 months? What are his core KPI's? How does Daniel construct a framework that will allow him to love previously disliked tasks? How can anyone do this with success? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Daniel's Fave Book: Finite and Infinite Games, Enders Game Daniel's Most Recent Investment: Jump, Retool As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Daniel on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Joist has built the go-to platform for contractors. Joist enables contractors to professionally handle everyday tasks like estimating, invoicing, collecting payments, and manage projects, while also helping them grow their businesses as a streamlined CRM. More than 500 thousand contractors have used the Joist platform to manage more than $8.5 billion in invoiced work in North America, the UK, and Australia. Learn more at joist.com. WePay's got a great case study about how another platform, TeamSnap, is working with WePay to make payments its #1 revenue stream… more than its subscription business. Get it at wepay.com/harry. Lattice is the #1 people management solution for growing companies and helps companies like Asana, Reddit and Cruise build a strong company culture. With Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 reviews, share ongoing feedback, facilitate 1:1s, set up goal tracking, and run employee engagement surveys. Lattice is the only solution that combines performance management and employee engagement, so operators can make sure top performers are happy. Lattice is giving away three months of Lattice free to 20VC listeners. Just go to lattice.com/20vc to receive the offer. Build an award-winning culture with Lattice. The #1 people management solution.

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

Y Combinator Partner Daniel Gross talks with Recode's Kara Swisher and The Verge's Casey Newton about why he returned to the startup incubator that gave him his start in Silicon Valley. Gross co-founded the personal search engine Cue, which Apple bought in 2013 for a reported $35 million and integrated into iOS. Hailing from Jerusalem, Israel originally, he says YC is vitally important for bringing new outsider voices into the highly-networked tech industry and explains why it's important to remind those founders that success is a gradual, humbling process. Gross also talks about the promise of continued investment in artificial intelligence, why it's not a bad thing that "AI" has become a buzzword and what worries him about the algorithms on platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer

Daniel Gross is a Partner @ Y Combinator, the world's most successful accelerator with alumni that includes the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Flexport and many more incredible companies. At Y Combinator Daniel heads up all things YC AI having been a Director @ Apple where he focused on machine learning, as a result of his prior company, Cue (also a YC company) being acquired by Apple in 2013. If that was not enough, Daniel also has one of the valley's most impressive angel portfolios with investments in OpenDoor, Cruise (acquired by GM), Gusto and Github, just to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Daniel made his way from YC founder to being acquired by Apple to being YC partner? 2.) How does Daniel respond to the statement that "AI, is in part, a scam"? Why does Daniel believe that the impact of AI has not lived up to the hype? 3.) What are the 3 economies of scale that you have with machine learning when you are a large company? What can startups do to mitigate these incumbency advantages? What does Daniel mean when he says it is his job to "democratize AI"? 4.) Does Daniel believe we will see the rise of "AI companies" or machine learning as a sustaining innovation that existing incumbents use? What is Daniel fearful of with regards to this? 5.) How does Daniel view the potential for business models to be built around AI? Daniel has said "machine learning software will eat the software that has eaten the world". What does he mean by this? How does this play out? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Daniel's Fave Book: Enders Game, High Output Management, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Daniel's Fave Blog: Slate Star Codex Daniel's Most Recent Investment: Rippling As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Daniel on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Pendo delivers the only complete platform that helps companies create great products. The Pendo Product Experience Platform enables product teams to understand product usage, collect user feedback, measure NPS, assist users, and promote new features in-app – all without requiring any engineering resources. This unique combination of capabilities helps companies improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and increase revenue. Pendo is the proven choice of Salesforce, Cisco, Optimizely Citrix, BMC and many more leading companies. Start a free trial at http://go.pendo.io/harry Treehouse is an online school where you can learn how to build websites and apps. Their course library has thousands of hours of content, where you can learn all sorts of topics, including Javascript, iOS, Android and more. With high-quality video instruction from real industry experts teaching you all you need to know, and quizzes and code challenges keep you engaged and on track. Learn on your own schedule and go from beginner to pro. Go to teamtreehouse.com to start your free trial.

Daniel Gross

Partner

Y CombinatorPioneer