Smart Friends - podcast cover

Smart Friends

Eric Jorgensonwww.ejorgenson.com
Casual conversations with founders, technologists, investors, and artists about building a brighter future, together. Welcome to our digital living room.  With science, technology and entrepreneurship we can *continue* to create unfathomable leaps in quality of life. We show you how to find, apply, build, and invest in technologies to change your life and the world.  When we have smart friends, we do smart things. When we do smart things, we save the world.  No matter who, where, or when you are – now you have smart friends, too.  Outside this podcast, I’m the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and The Anthology of Balaji. Connect at ejorgenson.com  Laugh and learn with people like Balaji Srinivasan, Naval Ravikant, Andrew Wilkinson, Austen Allred, David Senra, Josh Storrs Hall, Ashley Rindsberg, Zach Pettet, Bret Kugelmass, Omar ElNaggar, Grace Guo, Brett Kopf, Max Olson, Chris Williamson, Shane Mac, Tim Hwang, David Perell, Jason Hitchcock, Natalia Karayaneva, Sebastian Marshall, Taylor Pearson, Mitchell Baldridge and more. Join conversations with my partners in early-stage tech investing, Bo Fishback and Al Doan. Our Rolling Fun Episodes cover our investments and escapades as angel investors and startup helpers. We invest in startups creating the *next* industrial revolution. Learn more at rolling.fun “Surround yourself with people who remind you more of your future than of your past.”

Episodes

#026 Jason Hitchcock #2 w/ Four Moons: structuring a DeFi Fund, Liquid Staking & How to get involved in Web3

This episode is a conversation about investing in the DeFi space with my previous podcast guest Jason Hitchcock and his partners of Four Moons Capital, Adam and Boz. They talk about how they all got together to form Four Moons and came to partner with Kingsley Capital to create a 100-million-dollar fund to be invested in DeFi. Throughout the conversation, we chat about some of their favorite tokens, projects, and ecosystems and how early it is in the space. We talk about how they all keep up in ...

Feb 01, 20222 hr 50 minEp. 35

#025 Shane Mac: Building Messaging Protocol for Web3 (XMTP), Company Culture, and Scaling Trust

In this episode of Jorgenson’s Soundbox, I continue exploring the world of web3 with my friend and former coworker Shane Mac. Shane is now the cofounder of XMTP, a decentralized and economic messaging protocol being built for web3. During our conversation, we talk about XMTP as a new protocol for building communication tools. We can spam-proof the next generation of the web! How Shane builds company culture to help him compete with world renowned companies and his personal and professional inves...

Jan 25, 20222 hr 10 minEp. 34

#024 SquidDAO: Web3 Project Deep-Dive: Part Crypto Hedge Fund, Part NFT DAO. An Anonymous Conspiracy for Mutual Enrichment

SquidDAO is an “Economic Flywheel denominated in Ethereum.” What does that mean? Good question, I wondered too. It’s basically a conspiracy amongst anonymous people on the internet to make money together. And anyone can join! I dug in with a few members to see what it’s all about. They sell NFTs, they issue tokens, they invest a treasury… they earn money! And they share it with token and NFT holders. This is my first pseudonymous podcast as well as the longest one I’ve ever done. In this episode...

Jan 18, 20222 hr 51 minEp. 33

#023 Tim Hwang: Trade Journal Cooperative, Robot Lawyers, Bubble in Digital Ads, Zuck Being Quantitatively Weird, and Misinformation as Warfare

Tim Hwang is the most interesting man on the internet. He runs a project called the Trade Journal Cooperative, which I've subscribed to for years. We talk about how the Trade Journal Cooperative got started it, how Tim *secretly* went to law school, and several other projects Tim is working on including an academic journal dedicated to bizarre images of Mark Zuckerberg. Thought that was all? That’s not all. Also using bots to wage information wars on social media, and Tim’s book which predicts a...

Jan 11, 20221 hr 1 minEp. 32

#022 Solocast #2 - Web3 by a Winter Fire

This week’s podcast is my second SoloCast, and during the episode, I share my thoughts and some predictions on the potential impacts and implementations of web3. The blockchain can be basically defined as a cryptographic breakthrough that allows for openness but with very careful editing permissions. While web1 resulted in costless publication and web2 in costless communication, web3 allows for costless transactions. This will likely increase the number of transactions we make. Web3 can also cre...

Jan 04, 202244 minEp. 31

#021 Track Zach Marshall #2: Focusing on customers, building MVPs, and creating trust as a new startup.

Welcome to the second episode of Track Zach, a series of quarterly podcast episodes in which we will be following Zach’s journey as he starts and scales his private security marketplace, Conterra. We will check in on how the previous goals Zach set are going, hear about what he’s learned and how he’s pivoted, and see what he is looking to accomplish in the next quarter in the huge, fragmented, and heavily middle-manned $50 billion industry of private security. This quarter, Zach’s target was at ...

Dec 28, 20211 hr 26 minEp. 30

#020 Chris Powers: Starting A Real Estate Empire at 17, Focus, Podcast Flywheels

In the last episode, we discussed alternative assets, and in this episode, we take a deep dive into the career of Chris Powers, the master of one specific alternative asset: real estate. Chris began his real estate career when he was just 17 years old and has spent the last 17 years building Fort Capital, a real estate firm in Fort Worth, Texas. Chris was a hungry 17-year-old, just showed up at college, bought his first house with no money down in 2004. By the time he left college, he had 12 hou...

Dec 21, 20212 hr 49 minEp. 29

#019 Phil Huber: Crazy Alternative Assets, Crypto for Financial Advisors & the Book Writing

In this week’s episode, I talk with Phil Huber, the Chief Investment Officer at Savant Wealth Management and author of the new book The Allocator’s Edge. This episode does not include financial advice.* Rather, we talk about the advice Phil gives other people about their finances and the book he wrote about financial advice. We begin the episode with a discussion about financial advising and what goes into becoming a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and a CFP (Certified Financial Planner). We a...

Dec 14, 20211 hr 24 minEp. 28

#018 Bram Kanstein: Effing around on the internet - MicroStartups, Crypto/NFT’s & Course Building.

Bram Kanstein has become a professional at fucking around on the internet. He has built dozens of products, three of which he successfully sold, and he previously spent time working for a VC and Product Hunt. We dive right into talking about Startup Stash, which is listed as the number one product on Product Hunt. Startup Stash is described as a curated directory of resources and tools for startups. Two years after launching and going viral, he sold the micro product for Ethereum. He also discus...

Dec 07, 20211 hr 8 minEp. 27

#017 Chris Sparks: High-stakes Poker, the training regimen of a world-class mental athlete, and coaching the top 0.01%

Chris says he isn’t the best poker player in the world, but he may be the most profitable. Pro poker player Chris Sparks is training for the highest-stakes tournament he has ever played in after a long sabbatical. He says he has already decided he is going to win, and now he is doing the necessary things to create that outcome. What is the dynamic amongst poker friends? Chris says “frenemies” – all bets are off when the cards are on the table. Chris only plays when he expects to make money, and ...

Nov 30, 20212 hr 55 minEp. 26

#016 Kevin Espiritu: Bootstrapping Epic Gardening to 8 figures by mixing Media + D2C Biz models. Oh and Poker, Pink Pineapples, and Male Models

This week’s guest is my friend, Kevin Espiritu. Kevin is the founder of Epic Gardening, the world’s biggest gardening education platform. We became good friends over the internet--Kevin and I talked about the trend of parasocial relationships and how you can get to know someone despite having little to no in-person interaction. We talked about how Kevin transitioned from making a living out of playing poker, to building websites, to marketing and blogging, and finally, working full-time on Epic ...

Nov 23, 20211 hr 29 minEp. 25

#015 David Perell: Intellectual Openness, Mental Models for Success, and Peculiar Ways of Looking at The World

This week’s guest is David Perell. David is a creator, a writer, and a teacher at his massively successful online writing course, called Write of Passage. The success of his course gave me inspiration for my own course, and gives me fundamental optimism about the future of education. David and I have been friends for years, so this is less of an interview and more of a one-sided hang-session, where I get the pleasure of drawing out new ideas and experiences from David that I haven’t heard before...

Nov 16, 20212 hr 45 minEp. 24

#014 Dan Reecer: What Is Polkadot And Why It’s The Future of Web3

Today, my guest is Dan Reecer. Dan joined the crypto world 3 years ago instead of going to get his MBA, and is now VP of Growth for Acala, the Defi Network launching soon on the Polkadot Blockchain Platform. Don’t worry, all of those words get explained in the podcast. In this conversation, I try to bring us all (myself included) from basics to applications of blockchain, and help us all see around the next few corners we’ll all go through together over the next decade. We talk about: Dan’s path...

Nov 09, 20211 hr 7 minEp. 23

#013 Cliff Kuang: Optimizing User Interface And The Massive Opportunities Within Design

Today my guest is Cliff Kuang, author of a fantastic book called User Friendly: How The Hidden Rules of Design are Reshaping The Way We Live, Work, and Play, which was called a "tour de force" by the New York Times. He was the Design editor of Fast Company, and Editor at Wired Magazine. From there he went on to work at Google as a Senior Staff Designer on an innovations team. Cliff is obsessive about the deepest challenges facing UX design today such as the metaphors that undergird what we do, t...

Nov 02, 20211 hr 19 minEp. 22

#012 Mitchell Baldridge: Defeating Taxes, Financial Planning, and Flipping A Bored Ape NFT for $250k

Mitchell Baldridge is an accountant and financial planner who also identifies as a libertarian anarchist crypto-degenerate. We talk through the creation of his firm, everything financial planning entails, and how he flipped a Bored Ape NFT for $250k. A little something for everyone today! Mitchell can’t be everyone’s personal planner and accountant, (though he is mine and I’m very grateful for that!) but he offers expertise that can help anyone. Taxes are likely your single largest expense over ...

Oct 26, 20212 hr 56 minEp. 21

#011 Eric Jorgenson: Metagames, Feedback Loops and Transcending The Muggle World

Just me and you today, dear listener -- and I’m going to talk through some ideas that have been fascinating me recently, weaving together authors like Rory Sutherland, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nassim Taleb. As I reviewed my highlights from books, blogs and articles that I’ve been collecting over the past 10 years the main ideas that jumped out at me are playing the metagame and feedback loops. Both of these are ways to transcend the muggle world and start playing a different game. I hope you enjoy...

Oct 19, 202157 minEp. 20

#010 Codie Sanchez: Learning Leverage From Drug Cartels, Vanguard, And Goldman Sachs

Codie Sanchez has been a journalist embedded with cartels, worked fancy-pants finance jobs at Goldman Sachs and Vanguard, and now -- she is an independent investor and entrepreneur. She owns a direct interest in FORTY FIVE businesses, with more than 25 cash flows. Codie’s interests include boring businesses (like laundromats and property managers), online media companies, and service businesses. You’ll hear us drop “leverage” a few times in this interview, and though it wasn’t what I’d planned o...

Oct 12, 20212 hr 31 minEp. 19

#009 Track Zach Marshall Vol 1: From Navy SEAL To Marketplace Founder -- Future of Private Security

Today, we’re kicking off a new long-term segment, called Track Zach -- my buddy Zach Marshall just founded a company called Conterra, and is about 3 months into the journey. I plan to have a conversation with him every 3 months or so to get a real-time, much more honest, interesting look at startup life. Zach, now in his second career after the Navy SEALs, is setting his considerable will against a new challenge -- starting a venture-backed company to fix today’s outdated, broken system for hiri...

Oct 05, 20212 hr 36 minEp. 18

#008 Andrew Finn of G64 Ventures & Wait But Why: How To Acquire A Free Company And Knowing When To Eat A Shitburger

Today, I’m talking with my new Capital Camp buddy Andrew Finn. He is the co-founder of the blog Wait But Why. Since age 25 he’s been patiently building, buying, and operating small businesses. Now, he and Tim Urban share a portfolio of cash-flowing small businesses. Together we discuss how to get a free company, why it is often easier to buy a company than build it, and when to eat a shitburger. Enjoy these topics and countless others on this episode of Jorgenson’s Soundbox. Additional resources...

Sep 28, 20212 hr 45 minEp. 17

#007 Into the DAO: How Index Coop is building Crypto Index products

On this episode we welcome Index Coop, a DAO focused on building and governing crypto indexes. They want to be the Vanguard of Crypto. In our discussion we explore Simon’s journey from the US Marines to the world of crypto. Simon explains what Index Co-Op is and why it’s the most intense group he’s ever been a part of. Lastly, learn why people all over the globe are quitting their jobs to become a part of DAOs and more on this episode. Additional resources to help enrich your experience below: T...

Sep 21, 20211 hr 17 minEp. 16

#006 Sean O’Connor: How Blockchains Make Transactions Costless, and How that Transforms Society

Sean O’Connor is a brilliant writer and marketer who has been working full-time in Crypto since 2016. Sean O’Connor is Head of Strategy at BlockNative, a blockchain infrastructure company. Previously, he was part of ConsenSys, an Ethereum startup studio, where he helped to launch and scale fan engagement dApps. His career has ranged from launching new digital products (big data and open source content), taking Mentored from vision to product in market, coaching for altMBA, and serving as the fir...

Sep 14, 20211 hr 22 minEp. 15

#005 Joe Hertler: Tapping Into Creative Genius & Pursuing Joy Through Creativity

On today’s episode I host Joe Hertler from the Michigan based funk/soul/pop band, Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers! Joe Hertler recorded his first album "The Hard Times LP" in 2009, in his college dorm room. He later went on to form his band The Rainbow Seekers and never looked back. Listen as we discuss: how the craft of songwriting works, how Joe got started, and why music is a universal language. Learn how a band actually works, what the path to their success looked like, and much more. Addi...

Sep 07, 20212 hr 30 minEp. 14

#004 Jason Hitchcock: DeFi, NFTs, And The Metaverse

On this episode I welcome Jason Hitchcock, crypto sensei and Principal at To The Moon Capital. Jason (Twitter: @JasonHitchcock) was among the few to be early to Ethereum, Helium, CryptoPunks, Alchemix, and more. He has 12 years of early stage startup experience and previously held a role at Twitch and Bebo. Listen as we explore DeFi, NFTs, intermediate wealth building, the Metaverse and much more. If you are new to the space I wanted to provide a quick glossary of terms and phrases that you migh...

Aug 31, 20212 hr 44 minEp. 13

#003 Nick Huber: How to Leverage Twitter, an Abundance Mindset, and A Love of Chaos

Nick Huber owns a real estate private equity company (http://boltstorage.com) in the self storage space. He owns 24 properties and over 630,000 rentable square feet in 4 states. He employees a team of 17 individuals and has raised over $10m in outside capital. Artwork and illustrations by Jack Butcher of @VisualizeValue Huge thanks to Modern Stoa (modernstoa.co) for their help on creating and growing this very podcast you’re listening to now. If you need help with podcast growth or monetization,...

Aug 24, 20212 hr 45 minEp. 12

#002 Andrew Wilkinson: Investing vs. Operating, De-risking Leverage, and The Best Part About Business

Andrew Wilkinson is the co-founder of Tiny, a venture capital firm that has helped to build over 25 profitable internet businesses over the last 15 years. He got his start founding MetaLab, one of the world’s top design agencies. He has gone from working out of his apartment a little over a decade ago, to today overseeing a group of companies with over 300 employees and tens of millions in revenue. Artwork and illustrations by Jack Butcher of @VisualizeValue Huge thanks to Modern Stoa (modernsto...

Aug 17, 20211 hr 7 minEp. 11

#001 Sky King: The Next Level of the Internet, Decentralization, and Becoming a Player in the Game of Life

Sky King is an entrepreneur and podcaster, passionate about creating systems that incentivize authenticity in media. He founded his company Modern Stoa based in Austin, Texas where he helps podcasters like Aubrey Marcus, Paul Saladino, Luke Storey, and more create and monetize sincere media. His new podcast Sky King’s Mental Playground will be launching in late August on Supercast. If you want to be early to the party subscribe at skyking.substack.com Artwork and illustrations by Jack Butcher of...

Aug 10, 20211 hr 21 minEp. 10

Almanack of Naval bonus episode and next: Jorgenson’s Soundbox

In the very first episode of Jorgenson’s soundbox Eric Jorgenson sought to use this opportunity to answer some of your core questions around The Almanack of Naval including: What I learned creating the Almanack of Naval? What story is underrated from the Alamanack of Naval? What I have applied from The Almanack of Naval? And of course I answered questions about leverage! At the end of this episodes Erick Jorgenson We also go into what you can expect from Jorgenson's Soundbox. Topics can include ...

Aug 03, 202151 minEp. 9

The Almanack of Naval Epilogue: Recommended Reading

This final episode of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant includes Naval’s favorite books, his recommended reading, and more thoughts. This is a great resource to view Naval’s influences, and to find books to read deeper on key ideas from the book: investing, mental models, happiness, philosophy, and science. You’ll notice authors like Matt Ridley, Nassim Taleb, Richard Feynman, and more as well as some blog posts from Naval in this Epilogue. Huge thanks to Sky King for his help. If you need help wit...

Apr 01, 202129 minEp. 8

Naval on Philosophy

Naval shares the biggest, deepest, oldest thoughts in this philosophy episode. What is the meaning of life? It turns out there are 3 answers, from Naval’s perspective. Naval shares the values that he lives by, and “rational buddhism” the foundation of his worldview, which involves science, evolution, and ancient eastern wisdom. At the end of the day, as Naval reminds us… the present is all we have. This very moment of consciousness to enjoy peace and find joy and happiness. Huge thanks to Sky Ki...

Mar 25, 202115 minEp. 7

Naval on Saving Yourself

As Naval says, life is a single-player game. No one else is going to make you rich. No one else is going to make you healthy. No one else is going to make you happy. You have to learn the discipline and clarity of living your own life your own way. Naval shows you the basics he has learned of health, diet, exercise, meditation, and mental strength. This is Naval’s basic blueprint for a happy life and a wealthy life. It starts with how you build yourself -- the foundation of everything. Huge than...

Mar 18, 202155 minEp. 6