Bret is an entrepreneur on a big mission as the CEO of Last Energy , a vertically integrated nuclear-powered electricity provider. Bret aims to create energy superabundance, fix climate change and elevate human potential to unimaginable heights and sees nuclear as the solution. Few if any people in the world have talked to more experts. Bret hosts the " Titans of Nuclear " Podcast, which has a whopping 380 episodes! Bret and Niklas talk about why nuclear has become such a stagnant industry. The ...
Feb 07, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Eche Emole is the co-founder of Afropolitan , a digital nation aimed at empowering Africans to lead abundant lives. With a background as a lawyer, technology executive, and community organizer, Eche has extensive experience in his field. He has successfully organized events for over 200,000 diaspora Africans, including the 2019 Year of Return in Ghana, which generated $1.9 billion in economic activity. Eche's vision for Afropolitan was further solidified after reading " The Network State " by Ba...
Jan 31, 2023•46 min
Scott A. Beyer . is a journalist and consultant, and owner of the Market Urbanism Report , a think tank that advocates for free-market city policy. Scott is currently on a 1.5-year-long trip to document how Market Urbanism can apply to developing world cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Scott has just arrived in Africa after 6 months in Latin America. Niklas and Scott talk about what's wrong with cities, how can we improve them and colorful insights from Scott's travels to existing and ne...
Jan 24, 2023•56 min
Patri Friedman is the legendary founder of The Seasteading Institute , and General Partner at Pronomos Capital , a VC fund focused on improving statecraft. Patri is the foremost thinker behind the idea of "competitive governance". Patri has been a huge inspiration for this show, and for Infinita VC . This makes this one of the most defining and important episodes in the history of the podcast. We talk about Patri's life's work and the venture funding side of funding new cities or governance expe...
Jan 17, 2023•51 min
Max Borders is an author and public intellectual. He wrote books like " The Social Singularity " and " After Collapse ". He is also Executive Director at Social Evolution , a non-profit organization dedicated to solving social problems through innovation. We start the conversation by discussing competitive governance and using "exit" to improve existing institutions. Max views existing institutions as increasingly ossifying due to their monopolistic nature coupled with high switching costs. This...
Jan 10, 2023•1 hr 10 min
Adeo Ressi is an iconic entrepreneur, investor, and teacher. He is the CEO of VC Lab , which runs the leading venture capital accelerator. He is also the Executive Chairman of the Founder Institute , the world's largest pre-seed accelerator. Adeo has launched more than 14 venture capital funds and founded 11 startups, having nearly $2 billion in exits before the age of 30. Adeo speaks about his mission with VC Lab. VC Lab has to date accelerated 236 new VC firms and reduced the time to start a f...
Jan 03, 2023•37 min
Dan Epstein is Director at Trust Ventures , a VC fund helping entrepreneurs overcome regulatory challenges. As a political economist and regulatory litigator, Dan is uniquely positioned to understand the politics, law, and economics of regulation and how it affects entrepreneurs at the forefront of technology. Studying and practicing regulatory litigation on both the government side, and the entrepreneurs' side led Dan to surprising and important insights. Insights that are essential for any ent...
Dec 27, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Niklas speaks with Thibault Serlet , the Director of Research at the Adrianopole Group , a firm providing intelligence on special economic zones (SEZs) Thibault is one of the world's leading thinkers on the past, present and future of governance innovation through SEZs. SEZs are business parks that are geographically walled off from the countries that they're in, and they have their own laws. The most famous examples are Shenzhen, China and Dubai, UAE, which both were growing into modern megacit...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Niklas speaks with Eli Dourado , a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University. Eli is also a blogger, investor, and self-described "regulatory hacker". Eli and Niklas have a conversation about many things technology, innovation, and regulatory bottlenecks. His breadth of knowledge includes aviation, energy, housing, cryptocurrency, biotech, cybersecurity, and many more areas. Eli has a background in regulatory and technology policy. He was involved i...
Dec 13, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Niklas speaks with Mark Lutter. Mark is the Founder and Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute , a non-profit which is building the ecosystem for charter cities. Mark has a PhD in economics from George Mason University. Mark also has a podcast called the Charter Cities Podcast , a fantastic listen to learn about this fascinating movement. Mark and Niklas start by talking about how they both became more motivated to pursue experimentation to fix or build alternatives to government institutions ...
Dec 06, 2022•48 min
Niklas synthesizes insights after thinking about regulation & innovation by talking to experts and practitioners for more than 8 months. Why are regulations important? John Maynard Keynes observed that capital accumulation and technical improvements enabled economic growth. Keynes calculated that with 2% growth per year, the economic pie increased by 7.5x in 100 years. If it would be 5%, it’s 130x our current level of wealth. That would lead to an age of superabundance. Regulations have a mu...
Nov 29, 2022•36 min
Niklas speaks with Santiago Pinzon , the founder and CEO of ORKID . ORKID aims to revolutionize healthcare in Latin America through autonomous drone delivery. In this episode, we talk about technological and regulatory challenges in the aviation industry, and how to unlock a future of rapid logistics. Aviation is a fascinating industry that has developed high safety standards and technology that leads to extremely safe passenger flights. However, we note something we call the "safety paradox". H...
Nov 22, 2022•48 min
Niklas talks with Joshua Scigala , the Co-Founder and CEO of TheStandard.io , which offers over-collateralized stablecoins backed by Gold, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Josh and Niklas talk about the recent events surrounding the collapse of FTX, the crypto trading platform. Josh has been in the industry since 2010 and has seen many collapses and creative destruction over the years. He believes the industry has a way of overcoming failed experiments and bad ideas by writing better code. Better code inst...
Nov 15, 2022•1 hr 4 min
David K. Levine is an economist at the European University Institute and at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Michele Boldrin of "Against Intellectual Monopoly", an empirical study of the economics of intellectual property ( available for free here ) that concludes that IP is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity, and liberty. IP law allegedly offers protection of innovation, most importantly in the form of patents and copy...
Nov 08, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Niklas speaks with Caroline Cochran, the COO and co-founder of Oklo , joined by special guest Mac Davis, the CEO of Minicircle . Oklo is revolutionizing nuclear energy to create a clean energy future. Nuclear energy is probably the best example of a stranded technology. It has the potential to give us a low-to-no-cost, low-to-no-carbon future economy - but it is held back by industry stagnation, political obstacles and regulatory strangulation. In this episode, we'll learn about Oklo and Carolin...
Nov 01, 2022•56 min
J. Storrs Hall or "Josh" is an independent researcher and author. He was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, which is developing a CAD system for nanomechanical engineering. His research interests include molecular nanotechnology and the design of useful macroscopic machines using the capabilities of molecular manufacturing. His background is in computer science, particularly parallel processor architectures, artificial intelligence, particularly agoric and genetic algorithms. This episode ...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 31 min
Dusan is the Founder and CEO of the AmityAge Academy , a Bitcoin Education Center based in the startup city of Prospera on the island of Roatan, Honduras. The mission of the academy is to accelerate bitcoinization. Dusan and Niklas share a special history. Dusan heard about the paradise island of Roatan, Honduras from a friend. While he was visiting in April, he heard about the "Build Prospera Summit 2022". The conference was organized as an "unconference", so it was very open for every particip...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Savva is the Founder and CEO of Crowd Funded Cures , a New Zealand-based charity and Open Source Pharma De-Sci Organisation. Savva and Niklas talk about the pharmaceutical market, and how the interplay of clinical trials and the patent system disincentivize pharma companies from producing widely available drugs that could significantly improve people's lives. This is another deep dive into one of the largest markets in the world, healthcare, and into the possible future using blockchain technolo...
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr
Niklas speaks with Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur John Chisholm. Over the last 35 years, John has founded, grown, or sold four companies in Silicon Valley, including Decisive Technology, now part of Google; and CustomerSat, now part of FocusVision. He has served as president and chair of the worldwide MIT Alumni Association, and as trustee of MIT and the Santa Fe Institute. Today, John is CEO of John Chisholm Ventures , a startup advisory, and angel investment firm. He is the author of...
Oct 04, 2022•54 min
Niklas speaks with Zina Sarif , the Founder and Managing Director of Yendou , a company on a mission to accelerate clinical research and make it universally accessible to patients, clinicians, and scientists. Zina starts by talking about her familial experiences with cancer during her upbringing in Morocco, and how it motivated her to dedicate her life to combating cancer. During her career as.a cancer scientist in Germany, Zina experienced the inefficiencies and bureaucratic obstacles to bringi...
Sep 27, 2022•41 min
Niklas speaks with Sebastian A. Brunemeier. Sebastian is the Co-Founder and General Partner at Healthspan Capital , a venture fund focused on longevity biotech ("LongBio") & geroscience. He is also the Co-Founder and CEO at ImmuneAGE Pharma, a drug discovery platform for immune system rejuvenation. He holds an advisor and board member position at multiple companies and organizations, such as VitaDAO and Molecule AG . This episode is recorded as a primer to the " Prospera Healthtech Summit 20...
Sep 20, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Niklas speaks with Grant Taylor . Grant is the Founder & CEO of Quotanda , a company that is digitising financial aid for educational institutions and students. Over the past 40 years, college has developed from an offering for an elite of knowledge workers to a job entry requirement for a majority of the population. Grant argues that college is overutilised in developed countries such as the United States, but underutilized in less developed countries such as Mexico. The higher education sy...
Sep 17, 2022•33 min
Niklas speaks with Cameron Sorsby , the CEO of Praxis , a college alternative that builds your skills, your network, and leads to a full-time job at a growing business. Over the past 40 years, college has developed from an offering for an elite of knowledge workers to a job entry requirement for a majority of the population. However, during the past 2 years enrollment rates have been dropping rapidly. During covid-19, students and parents were comparing "Zoom University" with free, or better alt...
Sep 13, 2022•32 min
Niklas speaks with Michael Gibson , co-founder and General Partner at 1517, a VC firm that backs dropouts, renegade students & deep tech scientists at the earliest stages. Michael is the author of the book “Paper Belt on Fire - The Fight for Progress in an Age of Ashes”, coming out on November 8, 2022 ( pre-order on Amazon ). Michael dropped out of his philosophy PhD program and was then picked by Peter Thiel to run the now legendary Thiel Fellowship Program from Day 1. With no traditional V...
Sep 06, 2022•47 min
Niklas speaks with Sandra Carillo , the Professor in charge of Cannabis Research and Education, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Panama. Sandra has been advocating and promoting the use of medical cannabis as an educator, advisor to policymakers, and a medical doctor treating 1.500 patients in Colombia. Cannabis for medical use is a great example of a stranded technology. It's prohibited by many governments and faces cultural resistance, even though the benefits have been proven for a lo...
Aug 30, 2022•43 min
Niklas speaks with Joseph McKinney, the CEO of the Catawba Digital Economic Zone (CDEZ). The CDEZ is the Is the first jurisdiction within the United States created for fintech and digital asset growth. Governance is possibly the most stranded technology imaginable. The governance industry, typically run by state governments around the world, is roughly 40% of global GDP and has gotten more expensive and lower quality over time. The CDEZ is one of the most exciting and ambitious startups set to d...
Aug 23, 2022•37 min
Niklas shares some of his own thoughts and insights after 3 months of podcasting. He starts with Adam Smith's 1776 masterpiece "The Wealth of Nations". Smith believes in the best case, humanity could produce 3-4x than what he observed in the present day. What happened is that more like a 30-40x improvement. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes reasoned that response was a compounding interest of 2% annual growth, and he believed in an even greater future for his grandchildren. But who says 2% is the bes...
Aug 16, 2022•17 min
This is a special episode. Niklas has a free-flowing conversation with Trey Goff, the CMO and Chief of Staff of Prospera, the startup city in Honduras. If there is such an industry as “network states”, “network societies” or “startup cities”, Trey is one of the most influential executives in the field. Governance is possibly the most stranded technology imaginable. The governance industry, typically run by state governments around the world, is roughly 40% of global GDP and has gotten more expen...
Aug 09, 2022•1 hr 22 min
Niklas talks with Raymond J. March, the Director of fdareview.org at the Independent Institute, public policy and public choice fellow at the American Institute for Economic Institute and assistant professor for economics at North Dakota State University. Entrepreneurs are often taught the incentives of investors but rarely do they learn how the incentives of public bureaucracies work. However, in the area of medical technology and healthcare, navigating public health institutions is vital. This...
Aug 02, 2022•57 min
Niklas talks with Tom W. Bell. Tom is a professor of law at Chapman University, and the author of books such as “ Your Next Government - From Nation States to Stateless Nations ” and “ Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good ”. For anyone interested in startup cities, network states and competitive governance, Tom is someone you must know. Tom is the engineer of the legal architecture of the startup city of Prospera in Honduras and the Catawba Digital Zone . He's like ...
Jul 26, 2022•1 hr 11 min
