Can robots become our best friends… or will they eventually kill us?!
We sat down with Julian Johnson to explore how AI and tech advancement might help us move toward an age of deepened connection.
Together we weave a mycelium of futurist ideas and earth-rooted principles, dreaming up systems that address scarcity, regenerate nature, accelerate innovation, and superpower the globe.
Julian speaks to the collective fears around robots, gives insight from his personal journey as an entrepreneur, and tells us the project he’s most excited about – his school in the slums of Kenya.
P.s. the audio quality is best from 15m50s onwards, but the conversation is great from the very start!
Julian Johnson
Serial entrepreneur and investor Julian Johnson is on a personal mission to become ‘Earth’s Hypeman’. Climate conscience drives his involvement in purpose-led ventures, and via his fund, Tejo Ventures, Julian supports, advises and invests in ‘companies being built by brilliant people with a vision to make a better world’.
Connect with Julian Johnson
In this episode, we discuss:
Thanks for listening! Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or find us on LinkedIn! Join the ModernMantra.co mailing list here.
Can robots become our best friends… or will they eventually kill us?!
We sat down with Julian Johnson to explore how AI and tech advancement might help us move toward an age of deepened connection.
Together we weave a mycelium of futurist ideas and earth-rooted principles, dreaming up systems that address scarcity, regenerate nature, accelerate innovation, and superpower the globe.
Julian speaks to the collective fears around robots, gives insight from his personal journey as an entrepreneur, and tells us the project he’s most excited about – his school in the slums of Kenya.
P.s. the audio quality is best from 15m50s onwards, but the conversation is great from the very start!
Julian Johnson
Serial entrepreneur and investor Julian Johnson is on a personal mission to become ‘Earth’s Hypeman’. Climate conscience drives his involvement in purpose-led ventures, and via his fund, Tejo Ventures, Julian supports, advises and invests in ‘companies being built by brilliant people with a vision to make a better world’.
Connect with Julian Johnson
In this episode, we discuss:
Thanks for listening! Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or find us on LinkedIn! Join the ModernMantra.co mailing list here.
Julian 1.40
Like I could I could… I'd love to talk about robots and old people. Like when I saw the, the Tesla Model, so yeah, a lot of ideas for that. I mean, that's gonna be that's gonna be huge. Like when you can actually have a human being as a robot. What couldn't you do with them? Well, so do you remember I was younger, I told you that story about the dates. I went on with that Brazilian girl.
Julian 2:02
A mother was a shaman in Manassas in the jungle of the Amazon. And when she was young, she had spirits would come to try to talk to her. They used her as a sounds, but as a young person, that was kind of terrifying. Because apparently, as the spirits understood that she was a channel, they were all like getting in line, you know, talking to trying to communicate with
Julian 2:24
life. Anyway, so she switched off this ability. And then when she was about 30, she decided that actually was a gift. And really, she's doing the Spiritual World disservice by not channeling. And so she kind of, she decided to switch it back on but
Julian 2:41
have her own like rules, right?
Julian 2:44
And she says, I want to deal with this girl. And I thought this is brilliant. This is good day chat. Yeah. And so then I decided to just go for it. Tell me everything. Everything. I'm gonna Georgia thing you say?
Julian 2:56
I'm all ears. And she said, Well, the world is also nine species of aliens here on earth already. And I said, as she goes, she was you one of them?
Julian 3:12
Oh, yeah, she was yeah, she was so much if you're from the same planet as I are great, right?
Julian 3:18
Why are we coming? Why would we visit this planet? What's the upside for the instead of travel?
Julian 3:26
And she said, aliens visit this planet? Because they are wanting to experience love. Right? And that love is this like Earth energy or universe energy that we experience humans violet, biologically through the heart with AI. So if they don't have love, they're the aliens. What do they have? Or what do they feel like? Yeah. And she said, the aliens that she had met, feel metallic. And I said to her, Do you think the aliens you've met are actually future us? Because it makes sense that if we're going to do instead of travel, we're not going to instead of travel, like in a biological bio of our bones are going to disintegrate over time. All the other things that make even even living on the moon is not sort of continuously possible, right?
Julian 4:13
So this, I imagined that we would, at some point upload consciousness into some robotic form. And then that just goes through. At the time, I don't know what came to my mind when I was talking to him.
Nick 4:25
It makes perfect sense to me, I think the inevitabilities that we've replicated intelligence into computers. Yeah. And I feel like even if we replicate or like try to approximate what Love feels like in the context of these machines, and I believe consciousness in these universe is not going to be the same, not have the same challenge and I feel the same emotions, it's going to be an approximation of what is here. And the other thing is like a lot of the shit that is in your body is very inefficient for travel, so we're gonna send some species on the planet. It's like let's remove everything that's non-critical to the survival rate
Nick 5:00
Math, right? Yeah. Yeah, like this spaceship that you read lets your body it's like it's not built for longevity, longevity. Yeah, it's certainly built for space travel, like we're made to be on this planet. We are organically grown from this planet as far as we know, right? It's just like a meat computer, right?
Nick 5:17
It's like something's built in seller, God has a lot of more longevity, you can multiple versions of it. There's a lot of advantages to removing the meat and actually using silicone or some of the carbon base thing for doing this.
Julian 5:31
within the the robotics thing. To test the show Intel, it was interesting because it was the same weekend that I was with my partner's grandmother who's five she grew up in Brooklyn, amazing old lady, called her Nana, she still got her wits about her still got a great sense of human shadow needs. He's got me he's been, you know, that I'm function.
Julian 5:54
And so at the moment, we have to precede us on on on food stamps, and Medicare or whatever the American system is to cover all people. But unfortunately, the budget that she has only pays for two ladies in particular intends to kind of look after her and so poorly paid, they're very poorly motivated. They're not the best carers of Nana. And when I was watching the test at the testify, I was thinking, Well, we are, I don't know, 10 years, 20 years, whatever it is probably somewhere in between, where Nana will have a bot, where we have 3d printed some synthetic skin and appearance that is a derivative of her family lineage. It's familiar and it looks like her old her dead husband no looks like a little it looks like family. We've taken the voice recordings to create a voice it feels very familiar. We've mined all the data of like her social experience hurts her browser experience and all of her family. So the robot can sit there and say Do you remember a time in 1964 and that pizza place and blah, blah, blah, right? And so you're going to have this robot that will feel so extraordinarily human and you're connected. It's so beautiful way more than you would have the dog you know have all
Julian 7:09
the sort of devotion characteristics of a dog right so that every time man is up robots stoked.
Julian 7:16
Maybe you have a tail that wags right. But even better than that, it will feel like family, and then that thing can take you to the bathroom, it can wash her and she'll know that she doesn't have to feel embarrassed about being washed by a complete stranger because it's family. I asked him how amazing.
Nick 7:33
I feel. I feel the same way. I think people always look at these robots as being this dystopian future. I personally would love to have a robot best friend. You know, something's like rent money down. Yeah. Really?
Julian 7:47
Efficient.
Nick 7:50
very efficiently. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick 7:54
Somebody uses right. He's like run down the store. And like, go buy some toilet paper. I just put what 30 minutes into this podcast. I would love to have a robot do that. And understand the context of like grabbing the right lighting the right shot and making suggestions. Like, I think it's a very bright future. When you integrate these beings now the big question becomes we have a robot that never sleeps, right? It doesn't need wages, doesn't need insurance, doesn't need all the things that a human being needs or even like any emotional connection will have. So people all right, what are we going to be doing our whole capitalistic society kind of collapses in the wake of every single job being replaceable by literal, physical robots?
Julian 8:32
And yeah, this is this is where like the human projects and messy project, right, because we're philosophically you know, what we need to do, right? We need to have universal basic income, we need to tax all the largest corporations in the world and then spread the wealth equitably. Right. And then having happy days what Utopia but that's just not how it works with us because of greed and, you know, tribalism and everything else. And that's what makes it a bit messy.
Elijah 8:55
Yeah, I think the wonder how long we've been in the same center of kind of wondering what the rise of machines is going to be like, because it feels like it's new now. But I imagine the sentiment has always existed for a very long time. Hundreds of years if not 1000s of years.
Julian 9:15
What do you think? I think so. Well, I look to the Scarecrow when I Yeah.
Elijah 9:23
Jobs are gonna be displaced or jobs are gonna be replaced by the car, you got a
Elijah 9:29
huge horse now the horse carriage leaders don't have a job or it's there's always something there's always some new technology that's going to change how we function but I don't know if it's necessarily going to put humans fully out of jobs. There's think that the role that we play is going to continue to evolve as it always has. You know, now we don't need to grow our food. We go to the supermarket and pick our food above the shelf. We don't all need to be farming our own food and I think that same pattern
Elijah 10:00
is just going to continue. I think it's happening at a faster pace than it was in the past. But I don't think that we're going to be completely obsolete and had nothing to do. And I think there's that statistic that X percentage of the jobs that are going to exist in the next 10 years don't actually exist yet. I think that was always the case. Have you just merely had a faster pace?
Nick 10:23
Yeah, I'm with you. But you know, there's also another study of I saw from two years ago, where they finally hit the inflection point where software is replacing more jobs is creating, like everybody has this claim that software is always going to be the position of job creation, or like the jobs from a more advanced Well, the software has become more advanced. And on top of that, like this AI that we're actively training through software engineering, because every piece of code that's ever been written that's posted to GitHub, which is where most of its stored has been indexed, now used by AI, right. And right now, it's a hybrid setup. So we're approaching pre singularity where, basically the space between your thought and the manifestation of that thought is becoming smaller and smaller, right. And eventually, what's going to happen the singularity where you as the human person creating, it will be replaced as well. Right? Where I'm literally going to be able to describe an idea in this podcast of saying that I want a game that can grow plants based on the number of steps I've taken today and an AI will be able to create, I think that's a decade out, Max. But that's where there's no code stuff ends up. So you know, it's the scale and reach of these things is also different. We're talking about like cars in the 1910s. Like it still took manufacturing, it took like logistical expertise, now everything's distributable immediately the internet has made it so that anybody can fork it, clone it, and re source it and make whatever they want out of it. So the speed and suddenly the speeds, the distribution of it, that's become so rapid,
Julian 10:48
and distribution is actually one of the issues right, in that I think there are going to be societies and countries completely left behind. Based on the fact that you need a certain level of education, let's say, to be able to move into a sort of put, you know, like, like, you had the manufacturing economy, then that switched into a service based economy rising. So a highly educated society, like the UK, for instance, was able to make that transition where percentages, but the large sensitivity of the GDP comes from services, right. And so you need a sort of underlayer of education to support the retooling of someone's intellect to be applied to the next thing. I think, you know, there are many countries as well, that just doesn't exist yet. And so what they, what they jump into that transition,
Nick 12:33
Yeah, cuz you grew up in Kenya, as well. You know,
Julian 12:37
I think about this a lot with Kenya, because, you know, like, the developed world, the US will have shifted all of their industry to Asia and Asia, you know, the Tiger Economies had this massive like surge of the economy, because basically all manufacturing moves there. All of that money was all that production was tax, that money was put into, into into education systems and health care, and so on, so forth. And that elevated that society now they're becoming service based economies, right? That transition now. Now, you would say, Okay, now it's Africa's turn to get that manufacturing. But then manufacture is not coming going to Africa, it's going back to, for instance, manufacturers coming back to the US now, because so much was automated. I was watching Tesla's new Mega Pack factory video today, but they produce 15,000 Mega packs a year now.
Julian 13:23
Why the two things entirely robots, right? And that's going to be kind of for everything in the future. So what does forget, which is the largest population in the world until 2015? By 1.8 billion people in Africa, I think, in the next 30 years.
Julian 13:44
I am from Kenya, right? When my father was a kid, it was 3 million. When I was a kid, it was 18 million. Today, it's 53 million. By 2050. It's 100 million Tanzania. They're probably the country below US populations, five axing in this period of time.
Julian 14:02
What are all these people going to do? It I don't know, don't know what they're going to do. Because you could say, well, they could really live in a climate change crisis, you could say, well, if they can't be supported in the cities, then at least they can live on the land and subside that, you know, subsistence farming, and all that sort of stuff.
Julian 14:22
But the land is giving up. You know, we've had in northern Kenya, we haven't had rain in three years. Everything's done, every now. And then when we do have rain, it's a concrete flood, you know, and so it doesn't go down for water table, it just washes all the topsoil off into the rivers and into the oceans and just makes them and even worse, and so everyone's actually moving to the cities. And so I think about that, you know, when you watch these movies, or whatever, where the wealthy are living this suddenly spacing report yet, I think about that, you know, whether these cities are going to become just
Julian 14:57
massive sort of heights of people
Julian 15:00
Just kind of low level trading with each other, or whether we can move into a utopian place where everyone's connected to knowledge, everyone's case, the internet, everything's tokenized. And you can, you know, the things that you dream up in that way.
Nick 15:13
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the promise a lot of these tokenized systems, right, it's like, actually being able to express all the scarcity, or just having the world through software, the scarcity of water, the scarcity of every little thing that's being traded that right now just all comes from the almighty dollar, or the almighty local currency in which cases collapse. And sometimes, so I feel like, you know, eventually everything will be expressed on chain. And through that, that's going to be that's going to log entirely new economies, nearly all these micro economies that make these sort of societies function, they can have their own tokens that they can play with, you know, even, you can build a token now and a couple clicks of a button that can support just a couple 100 people, some of that's unique to certain environment, or to certain contexts that are contingent on these like world economic factors, whatnot. So the way looking at
Julian 16:03
so we're looking at something now says, you know, one of the things I do is a fund, and it's a golden visa fund, we get, we essentially enable people to access the program to gain European citizenship. And so that they can have a just in case, right in case things go wrong in their country, they can move here, part of that program is that I have to invest the funds that come into the country for the next seven to eight years, and 60% of those funds have to be invested in Portugal, and one of the things I'm looking at is this, helping speed up the transition to clean energy. So I'm looking at solar plus storage plus software. And we're speaking to a company who've already started doing this in Australia, they're based out of Holland, who are tokenizing solar panels, so that you can buy a fractional ownership in the yield that comes off of the solar panel in the form of a token. And that can then be used, however, which way it can be used.
Nick 16:53
Right. So it's like you're reserving power for yourself. So you so it was like a futures on like the power.
Julian
Yeah. So you know, that the solar panel is going to give you let's say, a 5% yield on on on, you know, on your capital. And so rather than so they're making it easy for you to buy in fractionalized across, you know, soda fields so that you have, you have the income coming off energy, solar energy ongoing. And I wonder if you could do a thing like that, you know, back home, I don't know.
Nick 17:49
Well, this, this is the promise of tokenization as well. It's like right now I've got a helium miner on my roof. Yeah, right. Right. And so the helium Miner is taking my, my internet, sharing it across the city with IoT devices, like all the like Berta, lime scooters, use it to talk to the internet, and then I'm compensated based on its usage, right, that can, in theory be applied to everything now, like, for example, we're not driving your Tesla, you actually got to be able to rent it out. So gonna be used for Ubers around the city until you actually need to use it, your home robot, when you're sleeping, go out, and maybe go work in a nightclub. While you sleep like this, like the shared acid economy, it can now be automated. And that's the promise of the most obvious application is things that are already measured to the nth degree. Right? Solar being one of them, like how much energy energy we're producing, we have advanced systems to measure the specifics of how the energy flows. And now you can tokenize it by simply just having scalable scarcity integrated so I can basically say like, yes, like, one kilowatt is $100 and tokenize. It however I pleased, but that's going to happen to everything.
Julian 18:57
But you know, it's tough, like from an investment perspective, right, is that you look at something like solar, you that okay, we can make whatever 4% yield based on blah, blah, blah, right, but but then I watched a YouTube video yesterday with this futurist, Tony Saba, who the one I was mentioning to you, who you must, you got to watch his videos. It's just fascinating. And really, like, if Phil inspires you with confidence that we're going to get there, right leg leg like that, hopefully, we can maybe get ourselves to a place where we get to, we can cap ourselves at two degrees of warming.
Julian Unknown Speaker 19:04
And one of the things he was mentioning yesterday is they ran an analysis on it, he said, a lot of the misinformation that relates to renewable energy is that there isn't enough wind or solar at certain times in loads of countries to support the pure solar wind transition thesis that you need to have, you know, nuclear and you need to have green hydrogen and all these other things to sort of support the grid. They ran an analysis across the entire world, every every single country and found that there was one country I think in the world, the most storage they needed was four days. And the US the most amount of storage that any one part of the country ever needed was 90 hours. And so that basically if you just overbuilt solar and wind, you could put you could provide energy to the whole world right now. And he said not only that, it got on the cost curve
Unknown Speaker 20:00
We are in certain places in the world very soon reaching out a phenomenon known as a superpower, which is in is, in essence, free power; it’s produced so cheaply, It's free, ultimately, right? Because there's this massive sort of over over output. And I see, crikey – imagine what the economy is like, when you're free energy, you imagine when you like pricing, the input cost of energy on a lot of the things we interact with in the world. And what when you pull that out what that means to look at how it's priced, and therefore, how accessible it is, and therefore, how it you know how innovation gets supercharged by it, and all of that kind of thing. It's kind of mental.
Unknown Speaker 20:42
Well, that, to me is inevitable. Like, I know, it's like we have a long way to get there. But I also think
Julian
Well, I don't think it's a long time. I don't think so either. Because 3d printers, this is the thing I'm most excited about
Unknown Speaker 20:54
is fucking Serani
Nick 20:57
Oh, there's a lot of sort of excited about. One of the things is that we're moving into the place where 3d printers have gotten so good, we can actually 3d print at a molecular level. So even within this microphone they have in front of you, right, we can actually build integrated energy sources, right, you can build integrated circuitry, integrated internet connection, Bluetooth, all into the piece that's being printed from a printer. Right like now you have like a small disc, people talk about alien technology, and how the fuck this stuff is possible. The small discs that could represent so many different things in a molecular and quantum level, that like I think material sciences, the most exciting thing happening right now is 3d printing, and the shit that it's going to be able to produce. I mean, that's where the innovation solar power is coming from. That's where we're on the cusp of even having these conversations around unlimited energy. 3d printing is gonna change the world because everything when a 3d printer could potentially have solar panel integrated into it.
Julian 22:23
Well, 3d printing plus all these breakthroughs we're having with like, new biological materials. Yeah.
Nick
The material sciences are getting crazy. Oh, anything it's plus, it's like times. Yeah, it's the exponent of 3d printing applied to everything in our built environment,
Julian
where it's just like, you know, I was saying to you before we started that, you know, the Web Summit here in Lisbon, right. And I was saying how last night I was at a dinner Yeah, with an entrepreneur, who based on his experience of building a space company, and the research is coming out of NASA has worked out how to speak to mycelium. And he has the sort of passcode with a cheat code to get mycelium to interact with the plants in a way that we wish them to get to interact with them. Fundamentally, what we're, we want mycelium to do is its normal sort of function, which is essentially to communicate to plants based on what it's experiencing in the environment. Right? So fundamentally distress, right?
Yeah, it's the internet of the internet, the use of the earth. In fact, he traded his trademark that as a as a state as a term. And so we're sitting there at this dinner with Michael, he's coming out with various he's, he's a brilliant guy, really brilliant guy. And he shows me it's got this little bracelet on the bracelet, he's got his company statement, like his mission is engraved in the bracelet of what he's here to do, and it has a sword on it, it's like something out of Lord of the Rings. And in the handle of the sword is this tiny dot of this white substance. And he said to me, this drop is enough to make an acre of land, increase yields by 20 to whatever percent. And what happens is when you put the drop on the land, the plants increase their root thickness, increase the depth of their roots, and they make smaller the pores in the in the leaves, they don't perspire as much. So essentially, they're conserving their water. And that's what makes them more productive. And so you can imagine, you could potentially, you know, fly over or even even sort of seed the clouds with this stuff, to try to like accelerate regeneration of forests and jungles, and then you know, help with crops and all that kind of thing as well.
So he's sitting down, I’m thinking, crikey, this is, you know, amazing, like something of a sci fi. And the girl next to him, who's in her mid 20s, has a functioning quantum computer in the UK, or close to functioning. And I know nothing about the progress of quantum computing. But enough that she's raised just shy of 100 million into this business, and sort of sitting there talking about how they're literally on the cusp of of being able to use quantum computing, which is then another shit show as it relates to crypto, right. And encryption,
24:27
in theory, and so it's just like, we live in amazing times. Yeah, I mean, there's a we're not talking about the dark side of all of this, right? We're not talking about deep fakes. And we're not talking about all the other shit that that also comes on the other side of technology. But to go back to where I've seen, it's interesting from an investment perspective is it's I think it's probably getting harder to choose what to invest in, because then they're being disrupted. More quicker and quicker. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, it's okay. So some of the things I want to touch on here. First thing is
Unknown Speaker 25:00
As mycelium, I mean the fact that I guess hypothesis that this could be the API for us to control nature. Exactly. And to actually whisper and influence nature is using its its embedded programming. Yeah. And the mushrooms are kind of like the API to do so. Is that Is that his? Wow.
Julian
Yeah. Yeah. He, you would love him. I wish he was not leaving tomorrow morning. That's exactly he said, we have worked out how to talk to the plants.
Elijah
Wow. And did he do something to manipulate that spore that he said could increase the yields? Or is this
Julian 26:15
I'm I'm a layman. Right. Yeah. And he's explained to me probably twice. And I'm just like, that sounds amazing.
Julian 25:41
But it's, it's something to do with enzymes and molecular structures of whatever and I'm just thinking about that. Yes. The seat the my first instinct when he told me about this because I was introduced him to invest in my first instinct was, you're in deep trouble. The Monsanto's of the world and people who don't want you to be able to do that, totally, you're a huge threat.
Unknown Speaker 26:06
And he said that, because his company before is in the space industry, he's become quite used to that, like his business partner in the space business, was kidnapped, his daughter was kidnapped. What Yeah, because they have all these these like innovation secrets of like how to accelerate you know, space, transit space, etc. So he said, he's kind of used to that. But what he's done is he hasn't patented the secret. And he's broken it up into broken the chain up of what it is. And he has one in one office, one another as in lawyer's office in safes around the world. The only he has the full code to.
Julian 26:44
So it's like encrypting his own IP. Yeah. And so at the moment, it's being used in America. So I was with him in New York the other day having lunch with him, and he got a text message from a farmer, saying, This is insane. We've had you know, extraordinarily unusual rains almost no rains, and yet I'm having the best harvest I've had in forever. Wow. Yeah. So I introduced him to an entrepreneur in Bangladesh who has this huge I farming network has x 75,000 farmers that I've connected the message for you guys to chat and get you know, get this distributed. I think it's something like 18 bucks for an acre. That's it.
Julian 27:17
It's amazing. It's amazing. I was super excited by it. It was so good. For those little moment me going. Am I being hoodwinked?
Nick 27:28
Dummy? Yeah. Is this sounds it sounds way too good to be to be true. Yeah. Yeah, we just I mean, but who knows? I mean, I mean, we know the power of mushrooms we experienced this. months ago. Yeah. Yeah. Totally full on. Yeah. We just want to play medicine. Yeah.
Julian 27:43
My answer to everyone every time like, what's going on with you? You should go do mushrooms. Yeah.
Nick 27:52
I mean, you know, I think everyone should dance with this medicine, for sure. I mean, even the fact that has talked about increasing yield and like, you know, being more resilient, I think that going through the mushrooms is a very uncomfortable transition, integrative but like ultimately can the other side and like, you are a more resilient person, for sure. Going through that experience is fucking wild dude. Honestly, since he told you about the experience, right, like, but
Julian 28:17
since then, because in my experience with the mushrooms, one of the things that came to me, it was like, I absolve you of fear. For things, one of the most beautiful things I've ever been told my entire life or absolve you of fear, right?
Julian 28:30
Since then, and I don't mean, I'm standing there with a sword. But I've been literally fearless meaning I totally trust everything that's happened to me. You know, we hosted this event two nights ago for Web Summit, and we had 100 guests or whatever, whatever, I would have been nervous for that. Normally, I would have been like, I don't want to let 100 people down. And I want it to be the right environment and the food to be right by your blog, the blog, we don't have the money, blah, blah, blah,
Julian 28:53
the zero because I was just like, it'll be what it'll be. And, you know, all this disruption, I've got a bunch of stuff going on in personal life, that you know, moving out of the house. Pobla just complete faith. Now imagine me everyone can access that. By sitting with the mushrooms. We just have to break through the propaganda. I didn't tell you that my mum and dad are doing I got my mom and dad onto the iOS can microdosing
Nick
Yeah, so basically just sort of context for people listening, the plant medicine retreats and everyone to they also offer a Iosco micro dosing course. So it's the non active ingredient in the Ayahuasca so it doesn't mix in like you're not tripping balls, all the buttons, but it's it integrates and Julian got himself out to to write I am in with your parents too, which is fucking amazing.
Julian
Well, you know it, you know, it's so amazing. I found my dad, my dad for me today. And he goes, mom's on the other line. I said, Oh, yeah, she said she's on the other line trying to convince a dear friend of hers that he needs to do mushrooms to get over his depression. My mom and my
0:00
only a few months ago, I showed her how to change your mind, you know, Michael Polin, or maybe it was your mind on plants, whatever.
0:09
And she was very interesting like this when talking about the psychedelics, because obviously they've grown up with all the propaganda. And somehow after our experience, I just found her and I said, Mom, I'm here to help you heal. I know she's not aligned. You, I know, stuffs up for you, you know, trust me, and let's do this together. And so it's amazing. You're seeing my little parents on the Zoom.
Unknown Speaker 0:32
With all the with all the Psychonauts ever, and I was like hippies, a psychedelic mom and dad. It's been amazing. Yeah. Still some fear for them before they started. The ambo was amazing. Yeah. So let's see. Yeah.
Elijah 31:32
Yeah, I think it's incredible that we can all already speak with these mycelium right on and these different medicines, these different species speak so clearly when you're interacting with them. But I think what's fascinating about what you're naming with this dude is he's actually
Elijah 1:03
I've had experiences where Mycelium is influencing my behavior. I've never influenced the mycelium his behavior. But I think that when you ingest mycelium or any other medicine, you can very clearly communicate with it. We're having an interaction, we're having a dialogue, but to be able to influence the behavior of the mycelium, I think is a whole new frontier of how we interact with nature.
Julian 32:20
So one of the push backs, one of the first push backs to him is who are we to dictate the stressing of plants through mycelium, right? Like how do we know the ramifications of this random stressing? And he makes the point that things like fasting that we do, are very good for us. And that, you know, you're not doing it all the time. Or you're not putting this little drop every day putting it once you know, and then we'll see. Let's see how it happens. But yeah, it's magic. And they may be going around to the beginning. You know, we were talking about what are we going to do in the robots are doing everything? Maybe we should all be doing mushrooms.
Nick 2:10
I think we should all be doing mushrooms now.
Unknown Speaker 2:13
You know, micro dosing this stuff and like integrate into your routine is generally healthy. It's generally healthy for your health, mentally for creativity. This should come with a big warning. Yeah, like there's the show people doesn't vibe with but well. Yeah, yeah. All this stuff going on with that guy? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're going to go into,
Julian
but it is important to give that warning that you shouldn't do mushrooms or anything psychedelic of that nature, if there's a history of mental illness in the family, where you know, you're mentally vulnerable. Yeah. And that really should be taken seriously because we've witnessed it.
Nick
Yeah, we saw it a couple times, you know, and to be perfectly frank, like my first plant medicine journey, this is back in 2017. Like, I went down to Peru, sat with a shaman for three Ayahuasca ceremonies, and then was kind of just left on my own, you know, just like thrown out, I'm a terrible to Peru, at the small cafe completely alone without any friend in the world. You know, after my first sitting with God, three times over the course of a week of the shamans, and like, there's no post integration, you know, and even today, we met with an entrepreneur, and he was Amanda. And her whole focus is on the pre and post integration of these different experiences, not only plant medicine, but like all the different experiences surrounding all the deep shadow work we're doing. Because you know, you can have a breathwork that changes your perspective on life, you can have a yoga experience that even can can warp your entire world. So, you know, rather has been thrown back into society, like good fucking luck, actually building structures in partnership with these places to support everything we're doing pre and post therapy like that is just as important as the therapy itself. Whatever medicines you're consuming.
Julian
Yeah. I mean, this is why the lack of regulation is an issue with this kind of nascent, you know, interaction with a thing because you need if there was regulation, you'd have entrepreneurs building systems around this whole process, right? And then you you'd have integrations with proper, you were very lucky. The one we went to as proper trained psychologists, and interacted the integrations were just as good as medicine, I would say, right, well, not just as good as they were, like, exceptionally good at like grounding you into the into the understanding. Yeah. And not being just thrown out into the street like you were or my girlfriend was last week. She just did Ireland, Costa Rica, Costa Rica, same vibe. She's got no support. There was no sport. It was like it was done in the day. And then she sort of stumbled home. Wow, man. You know, I tweeted today, I think, I don't know if you you reply to a tweet today. What do you do when you have so many ideas? You know, how do you manage having so many ideas? You know, like,
Unknown Speaker 4:59
I don't think there's a day that
Unknown Speaker 5:00
goes by where I don't feel enthusiastic, like super enthusiastic about an idea that I'm like, maybe I should drop everything and build that as a company, right. But every day, it's a new thing. And so like,
Unknown Speaker 5:10
a piece of work that feels really valuable to the world is working in that space, with mushrooms, with with psychedelics in general.
Nick
So just some of the ideas thing, my approach is, I like to boomerang them. So whenever I have an idea, I'll pluck it on my head and boomerang it around the universe. So it goes and hits all the people that need to be informed of what the fuck I'm doing, whether there's investors, whether it's friends, whether it's colleagues, or future co workers, and then one day, it might hit me back in the head again, I take it I boomerang and, again, keep on hitting all the different people that need to be formed of what needs to happen, until it hits me so hard in the back of the head, I can't ignore it anymore. And I've had moments, you know, I've had moments where like, it's hit me very hard, and very directly, this is what I need to do. It's about trying to carry all these ideas, you know, like, carry them around, you put in your backpack in your shoulder, it's heavy.
Julian
But this way, like, you know, I said the other day, I think it's so fun what you guys are building because you get to just pick and choose the things that you think are interesting to build. And that gives you variety, right? I was in this thing called erode the Entrepreneurs Organization back in London back in the day, and for eight years, second Tuesday of every month, I would sit with a group of entrepreneurs, seven of us, eight of us from 630, in the evening to 1030 at night. And we had this structured system in which we would give feedback to each other and share our journey as entrepreneurs Well, personal business and then romantic relationship stuff.
Unknown Speaker 6:41
And no personal view, then family and relationships. And then business, right. That's what you shared on one of the guys in my forum. It was great. Like a board of life. One of those, my forum was an unbelievable contrarian entrepreneur. So hilarious that you see in this group, really smart people, everyone gives their opinions gets to him. And he's like, yeah, I totally agree or disagree. You know, he has like, the opposite opinions are super valuable. And he had this spreadsheet that he would run every time he had an idea. He put the broke down sort of the vertical, what you know, what the niche play was, what the value creation is, what do you think's the addressable market is,
Nick 7:18
blah, blah, blah, this whole thing, and that's where it would just be stored. And then if he would meet really capable entrepreneurs, he'd say to them, by the way, I have this database of ideas. If you're, you know, if you're lacking one, I'd love to give you one of mine. And then he could fund them and stuff. I thought that was quite a cool way to do it. You know, we have a whole website that's dedicated versus like, I remember, yeah, it's like, all of you can go to modern mantra.co/i think it's ideas, actually, and have a look at everything we've been thinking about some of the stuff I should go on there and just upload every day.
Julian 7:50
That's the boy, you know. And I think what we could potentially move to is like a collective manifestations ideas like can we bring in funding, we obviously have talent, design, talent, engineering talent, like you've got funding, like, bring it together, where, you know, we can create a organization like decentralized in a way where you can potentially fund new ideas from scratch. That would be a really fun thing to do, wouldn't it?
Yeah, hell yeah. I would say like, just build a company of like remote people who just came to the party and said, This is the thing I'll execute on. And then you get a chunk of like, if you hit the thing, and it worked, that piece works that you contributed, you get a little chunk of something. Right, right. And then in the end is just just distributed ownership of this thing. Yeah.
Nick
Welcome to modern mantra.
Unknown Speaker 8:34
I need to come to my education idea of an education idea. There are a whole bunch of others.
Unknown Speaker 8:40
You know, we're building the infrastructure for it. the truth is like coordinating remote people at scale. And I think we're now what a team Yeah, total. Like it's, it takes a lot of work. There's other operations. There's a lot of management, there's a lot of shit. That goes into it. But we're, we're going to the nth degree when it comes to documentation.
Yeah, but yeah, you're very good at that.
Nick
Yeah. Well, he's very good at it. Frankly, I can't I can't take much credit for its Elijah
Julian
he's very good at talking about how you you are it
Nick 9:11
Yeah, exactly.
Everybody at our retreat? Well, oiled the looms and all Yeah, how you got it done? Yeah. Yeah, they were like, Oh, you got to send us a loom. I tell you this. Oh, you guys want? Yeah, fuck, you know, post medicine. Yeah, see, this is what I mean, he would have done it right away. Anyway, I digress, like I do believe is a possibility where you can have a specific cadence of actions that may be taken to launch a product. So we could actually boil this down to a replicable formula with with estimate double hours as well as estimated contributors in order to see something or like one of our contributors Nebras she calls it a barn race where you basically like have the four walls of the roof and like becomes much easier to raise about barn like the Amish do. Right? And like bring it boiled down to the simplest version of itself. So
So our hope is to eventually get there
Julian 10:00
is that an agency or some sort of service fulfillment, that essentially just builds, builds market validation? On ideas? So for instance, is there something in the world that you guys know of that you can go to and say, this is the idea. And they, their service is they validate. So they go cool, we have this way to go into market and understand if you actually have buyers and whether you'd actually get traction. And then if they do and come back to you, they go, yes, we do. And we also have this investor, and we can continue this team to go build the thing. Does that exist?
Elijah
I don't know. Anybody that just says that. It's a great idea. It's a great idea.
Nick
We'd call it venture design. Yeah, really, research and like break down, like what needs to be built. And imagine how cool that is. Right? And we validate it.
Elijah
Well, yeah, we run research, we run discovery will validate an idea, but we don't stop there. We don't just do that, you know, we'll take it and actually design it and architected but I don't know, a firm that just does that.
Nick
I think there's no, there's definitely a company built. Totally. Why the fuck would you put in 50k for validation before investors and what we're thinking with this kind of what we're talking about in terms of the funding and execution of ideas is thinking about how do you actually release that funding in phases? Right, because what we're building is the systems for remote collaboration and for organization, and also the process for how do you design a product?
Elijah
How do you design a venture? And so when it comes to actually funding these ideas, I think it makes sense to release that funding in phases, right? That first phase being discovery, how do we actually validate this idea? What is that user discovery, finding that product market fit, finding that splitting head migraine, right? What's that core problem? And then maybe you present that back? And then okay, cool, the Dow decides to, you know, they vote on releasing some more funding for the second phase, let's take that into some early prototyping. Let's start testing it, but some users get the results back from that. All right, they vote cool. Let's release it into the next phase. So I think that's, that's the eventual model that I see us going for. I don't know anyone that's just doing market validation, though, that would be a cool company. No, it'd be a cool company in itself that just got really good at validating ideas being amazing. Just validation as a service. Yeah. And you just validation, validation as a service.
Julian
Yeah, you go on there, you write the brief? And it's like, and it's like, we could decide how valuable that validation is, right? So you come back and say, Okay, we think we can validate this for 10 grand, right? So it doesn't have to always be 50 grand, right? We think we can validate save 10 grand, because actually, we know what we need to put on Twitter and Instagram, blah, blah, blah. This one, we actually have to do, you know, think tanks and groups and so on this validation is 50 grand.
Nick 12:58
Imagine that productize validation is great, I
think that we should like maybe make us an offer?
Why not? I mean, yeah, I would throw money at that for sure. Before investing a ton of capital into building, so
Julian 13:02
totally did Let's got it, there's 1000s of entrepreneurs out there who want who run this service, for sure. For sure, you're saving them years of their lives, potentially, by being able to come back and and say, We did it uptakes, like 25% Doesn't seem interesting. We could then and then you come back, say we think it's like this 25% Like uptake, if you want, we can try and see if if we change that and that we can be juiced, right? And so they pay a little bit more, and then we save come by say okay, we juiced it, now we realize there is a market, you just need to do this. And then they would ask you again to then build it for them.
Nick
You know, I think for entrepreneurs, the best thing to do is get 100 nose, like when you're when you're actually going through the process of trying to find a job or trying to start a company like putting in front of 100 people that are your target audience. And having them say no, is the best thing you can do. Because you're iterating you're iterating through each one of these sessions, and you're getting closer and closer to precisely what you want to build. If you're skipping all that, and this is my big mistake I made early in my entrepreneurial career. I got obsessed with coding. You know, I got obsessed with the command line and pumping the Adderall and the coffee to like go into deep till five in the morning and obsessed with like a Java function, how it functions. That's not where the answers are. It's not in the command line. It's in the people that you were selling it to. So the human beings, how they interact with it, how it makes them feel, and how it makes them move things in the superpowers or given them.
Julian -
Well, you see the thing is, is that if you're an entrepreneur, you have a reality distortion field, right as coined by by Steve Jobs. And I was talking to my business partner in the fund about this because he's very much from a unit he works from the cashflow the business right, like he looks at the p&l because we have this much cash I think we can do this. Whereas I've my background is like serial entrepreneurship, I sort of tend to operate from like
Unknown Speaker 15:00
I've sold for over a year, right? So I'm sort of selling features that haven't been built yet. Because in my imagination they have. And I'm pretty convinced that they will be limited by the time this product is. And I think the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you have this sort of reality, distortion field instinct, is that you can over invest time and money and everything in getting in building something that turns out to just be like an average idea. You know, like an average idea. And the worst thing is to build an average idea, right? Because it actually works. It makes you some money, it makes some kind of impact. But average, yeah, right. And so imagine being able to be the guy where you have your ideas, you go to the service, and you go, this is the idea. I'll put, I'll pay five grand on my credit card, or 10 grand on my credit card for you guys to tell me if there's a shit idea or not.
Elijah 15:51
Yeah, I think we have those components, we just never extracted it and said, This is an offering on its own. It's, I think it's great, because the thing we're solving for with venture design is is a lot of entrepreneurs that I've seen, even whether they have lots of funding, or no funding,
Unknown Speaker 16:07
their first line of getting this thing done is oh, I need to find a CTO, right? Oh, I need to find developers oh, I need to know, it's actually what you're talking about. You know, you need to start with discovery, you need to start with actually understanding the demographic you're looking to serve, understand the space you're looking to serve and really find what is that core problem? What's that core pain point you're looking to solve.
Nick
And that's the thing is like, within this area of interest you've identified, I guarantee there's 1000 problems to solve for sure. And by going in like talking to these people, you're going to dig up a lot of shit, you did not think you needed, like starting this company, and like being responsible for everything across the board lead how many problems there are to solve an agency level.
Julian
Dude, I used to have an agency, I had 28 staff we did, we had 8 million bucks in revenue, like, when I was in my 20s. And like, Fuck, I don't want to have to do another quarterly review of anyone ever again.
Unknown Speaker 17:08
There's a reason like, I run tiny things, just me and someone else or me on my own, or me and like, you know, outsource project managers, because for a while, have wanted to run anything larger. Now I actually miss it. Because the the camaraderie was extraordinary. It was so much fun, most fun of my career was my first company.
Unknown Speaker 17:29
Because we were just all in the trenches, you know, it was wonderful, I get the remote work thing I get why people are interested in that I get that we can connect talent all over the world and all that sort of thing. But there was something amazing about all being in the same room, you know, getting up in a fucking, you know, just being pumped about something you've just done, or all of you like sharing the anxiety of the guy who needed to get the thing in by five, and it just got to any time, we'd all go down to the pub and you know, have a great night in the pub. And I missed that. Yeah, we're feeling we're feeling it too.
Nick
We're actually in the process of organizing kind of a month away with our company in Costa Rica. In March, we're going to bring like our core contributors down. And our hope is to actually have a project and a central question to work on. And to chew on in real life is some of the best design thinkers in the world. But I think this like to supplement all this whole remote thing, which I think is has a lot of pros and cons to this a supplement it with his work away trips, you know, someplace where you do get together at least once a year, ****if not more frequently, and bring everyone into the same place to do things together remind ourselves we're human, who's this physical touch this quality time that goes into these things. ****And I do think it can accelerate innovation. Diversity.
Elijah
Yeah, this is the beginning of in person experiences a minor mantra because I think Nick and I have been working remotely for so long, so but I think after working remote and having in person touch points, I recognize that hybrid is actually the most effective solution. Like there's so much that you can accomplish and get done and so much thinking and connection that happens when you're sitting right here with somebody that for whatever reason, just does not seem to be able to compute through a zoom call. And also, you know, speaking to that,
Julian 19:13
let's not forget, it's also not just all about the work, right? It's about the experience of human being human is humanity, isn't it? One of the biggest regrets I have, I don't regret one of the things I would have changed about my first business is that I had a teammate who was fucking hilarious. He was brilliant. He always burst through the front door with a giant smile on his face. He had a huge voice. Everyone loved him to pieces. And we had a blast for a couple of years. But I was just like overly ambitious kid trying to prove himself, right because of all the shit from school days and all that sort of stuff.
Unknown Speaker 19:54
And I wreck and I felt that this guy wasn't a type it was
Unknown Speaker 20:00
In a class, you know, it wasn't like 100%, the killer that we needed to have to build the company to get it to blah, blah, blah, right. And I let him go, because he became too expensive over time. And I was naive and juvenile and like, I made the mistake of letting him go. It was only later that I realized that the excitement of the business partly was growth, partly was the innovation partly was like succeeding. But mostly it was people mostly it was the journey. Mostly, it was just like, I know, that sounds terribly cliched, but that's what it was. And so when I think about businesses now on the company's web, you know, as we're talking about when we come up with ideas all the time, when I think about an idea, I don't just think about the idea, I think about who would I have to work with to build this company? And what would I have to do to build this company? If it means I have to be on a plane into continental America, for instance, three days a week, I'm out, yeah, how big it is, I don't want to go through security lines, three days a week, right? Or if it means that it has to be remote, and etc, etc, I don't want to do that.
Elijah 21:09
This is my biggest hope for the rise of the robots, it makes it is that it will is that it will that we move from this age of information into more of an age of connection, where we can actually honor the humanity in ourselves and within every everyone else. And that by automating or outsourcing these different functions. And I think a lot of these things that the robots are automating are very masculine, that this will give rise to more to the feminine, to the connection to the humanity, to the nurturing.
Unknown Speaker 21:45
Unfortunately, it seems like we're getting more automated, and we're also getting more busy, simultaneously. My hope would be that the opposite happens, right? The more automation, the more space, we have to sit with medicine, the more space we have to sit with people, the more space we had to sit with medicine. Yeah, who we are and what we are.
Nick
Yeah, the feminine application of AI would be a fantastic investment thesis. Yeah, like only applying artificial intelligence to the feminine arts. I like it like what that actually means in terms of building softness and soft skills. I think that'd be a fantastic investment thesis. And what it means to like be heard and listened to and to challenge.
Julian
I feel like whenever we're talking about AI robots, the last thing we should say is until they kill us
Unknown Speaker 22:38
was what?
Unknown Speaker 22:40
You know, like you said, Well, yeah, and the robots do this. Yeah, until they kill us.
Nick 22:47
Well, okay, why is everyone so afraid of this tech?
Julian
I mean, I mean, with AI, I'll send you this amazing paper, that the whole thing that not AI?
Unknown Speaker 22:56
No, it's on my Kindle. I never opened it. Because I have a different thesis on this
Julian
the GAI thing, essentially, I mean, this is one of the he's done a smartest man I've ever had the privilege of reading. The GI thing is ultimately that whichever which way you skin, the cat, at some point, it makes total sense for the GAA to get rid of us. Like we have, whichever which way it happens. conscious or unconscious, we're either the most obvious risk, or we're just in the way. And this is why the whole, you know, neuro link is all about alignment, right? Like the whole sort of human surviving the GI is about aligning gi to our, you know, sets of core beliefs or, you know, our sort of our survival, fundamentally.
Unknown Speaker 23:46
But
Unknown Speaker 23:48
it's a long read. And at the end, you just go Oh, shit.
Unknown Speaker 23:55
He doesn't have any view on how we get through it. Yeah, I mean, we're spawning consciousness. So there's that on the AI piece. And then of course, like, we're thinking of bipedal robots that have lovely faces or as beautiful as the girl in in Ex Machina, right? Well, I I can marry a robot.
Unknown Speaker 24:13
Right? I don't know if I did. 100%. And I like the feminine Saturday, man is good. You can ask him to be crazy.
Unknown Speaker 24:22
You know, but then at some but but obviously robots are also unmanned drones.
Nick 24:29
And all the other thing is that video you sent me was fucking scary. Yeah, there's this crazy video of you talking about doomsday shit. Yeah. Okay, so it's about these miniature drones. That situated on top of it is a small explosive device. And they're embedded with cameras and AI in the UK. Basically give it a face and we'll go find somebody it looks like that land on their head will explode.
Unknown Speaker 24:54
And it's absolutely terrifying the way they produce the video because
Unknown Speaker 25:00
All of the technology described in this video exists today. This is not a year out two years out three years out all the core components you needed to do that exists today.
Julian
Yeah, and what's fun, what's so scary about the video is the video is made by a consortium of scientists warning against the development of drones in this way. And the video demonstrates how they can, you know, these nefarious characters go out the back of a van, and they release 300 of these things. And these things fly into a lecture hall in a university and spot the students who have been, I don't know marching for climate change, or have been been online talking against fascism, or whatever it might be. spots, them all kills them all. Like that. And so
Unknown Speaker 25:52
the real worry is, of course, because that's right. And then he talks the voiceover about how they're making like 20 million of these things, in order to respond to make 20 million of these things. So now people have to walk around in cages, because they're completely expose. Yeah. Yeah, the weird. The weird part is that all this tech exists today. Yeah. Well, so there was a Sam Harris podcast once though this two years ago, where he was talking about how human innovation is. What how do you describe it, this idea that we're putting our hands in a bag, and we pull out the next thing is innovation. And at some point, we put out a black ball, which is essentially the end of us, right? But we innovate into a space where the thing that we make kills us all. And so because obviously innovation is unregulated it you know, mostly Yeah, maybe that happens. And you think I was thinking about, maybe we've already pulled those black balls out, you know, maybe like nuclear fusion rates to to bombs, etc. is already the blackball or maybe the way that we can do CRISPR and all that sort of stuff is already the Blackpool etc.
Elijah
Yeah, I think one thing is that I'm noting is just checking my own gauge of toxic positivity as it pertains to artificial intelligence, you know, and just like, really acknowledging that all of this technology is, it's their tools, you know, their tools, and technology is neutral until it's not, but technology is neutral. And it's really the the human behind it that can determine what it's used for. And what its use case is.
Julian 27:27
Pretend it can be unconsciously not neutral. Yes, yeah. Yeah.
Elijah
And I guess that, especially with AI,
Julian
will the training AI on from the internet off the internet? So I remember reading this book, I don't know. It's called shit with the remembering names of things.
Unknown Speaker 27:46
Where he was talking about that being an issue that essentially we're training AI off the internet and the Internet right now is full of awful stuff. Right, like hatred and bigotry, xenophobia, racism, all the other things.
Elijah
And you can see it in a eyes as well. Yeah, which comes out very clearly that it's trained off a very,
Julian
dude, I watched this YouTube video the other day. And I, I thought it was a fake, but I couldn't see anywhere. It was like a fake every saying this is real bla bla bla, or this guy asking, asking this robot
Unknown Speaker 28:21
questions about us. And the robot just saying the AI just saying, we're going to kill you.
Unknown Speaker 28:27
It kept you're saying we're going to kill you.
Unknown Speaker 28:31
in lots of different ways.
Nick
Yeah. But you know, it's all about the training data, you know, easier would be for me to demo that video. No, no, exactly. Exactly.
Unknown Speaker 28:40
This has got to be bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, go back to what you're saying is that, when we train AI on historical data, it reinforces that dataset. And the most obvious applications I found in my career was that there was a software that made offers to people. And I actually realized like, I'm looking at the different offers was suggesting and somebody else's, like 20% higher than the other guy. I was like, why the fuck is this they have similar experience, one guy actually had more experience like I felt like digging back and like, obviously can upload as many resumes I wanted to and actually found that when I uploaded resumes with a certain area code associated to their phone number, the offer came in lower. So because I had a Detroit metro Detroit area code, the the AI would offer me less money. Wow. So you're looking at factors that the layman or like the human right, the human resource person would never look at. But based on historical data, there's been a correlation between the area code use for the phone number and the salary suggested suggest as a function of you happening to register your phone in a certain state and city, you might end up making 10 to 20% less money. This is the kind of bias that is embedded through artificial machine learning systems that is everywhere because it'd be
Unknown Speaker 0:00
It forces historical data. Right? Fascinating.
Elijah
Negotiate yo. So
earlier you were saying that there's a lot of things to invest in. And the difficulty is in actually, you know, choosing where to where to place those bets. Yeah. From your perspective, what are you? What are you looking at investing in? And I guess I can look at that question in two ways. One is the people and one of the spaces, and I'm curious about both, maybe the spaces first, like what, what spaces are really exciting to you at the moment?
Julian
So I'd love for there to be a different name because sounds a bit wonky. But
1:01:58 - at the moment, like, if you looked at my portfolio, the overarching theme has been human flourishing. So it's this idea of like, does this relate to human flourishing in some way? And so what does that mean, for my portfolio structure? It starts with trauma. So like, we talked about, like psychedelic intervention, trauma intervention, so I have positions in companies doing that, it looks it goes to like the food system. So investing in companies that are working through our food system, investing in companies that are helping humans eat, like mostly plants, because that has to do with carbon footprint. I've we've done electric mobility, we've done female empowerment in the workspace. I've done AI based recycling, I've invested in an amazing woman building green, the green chemical future, for industrial chemicals. So it's anything that honestly that I care about, you know, where I look at immediately and go we need to get that shit done.
And so I've no doubt miss a ton of great companies that are building SAS tools to make it easier to talk to each other at work and that sort of stuff. I just don't care about it. I don't care about it. And so, and partly honestly is it's also that I don't actually invest—i hope none of my investors are listening— I don't actually invest in you got one how much money this thing can make us? You know, I don't it's it's more or less like, this is really cool. What makes this person likely to win? Right? So I had heard this beautiful phrase the other day, choose to play in a game where you deserve to win, right?
And you deserve to win because of your talent, your compounded experience, your network, maybe you grew up like the founder of the AI recycling company of brilliant woman from Switzerland, the company based in the UK, she grew up in in the garbage business, like her family was in the garbage business before she'd been around it her whole life. It's so something deeply embedded in her wanting to sort of solve the problem. She's also highly educated, she's built in other companies, blah, blah, blah. So those things obviously matter. Like I don't, I haven't invested in first time entrepreneurs, because typically, I think you need a couple of runs under your belt unless you're lucky. But yes, it's mission first, then it's like, do I think this person has a special thing that makes them particularly acutely tan? Right for for solving for this problem? And then little things like, do I think these people can bring great people around them? Because obviously, it's a team, right? Yeah. It's kind of as simple as that. I don't do. I don't have like teams of analysts and do deep dives and all that kind of thing. I sit with them and go on instincts a little bit. No validation team.
Unknown Speaker 3:31
No validation team
Elijah
and where were you in your life when you decided that you were going to start your first fund? Like what what was that decision? Like? Where were you in your life?
Julian
Right, good. It's not a very good. What do you call it birthing story?
Unknown Speaker 3:49
Because
Unknown Speaker 3:52
I kind of got pulled into it. I'm not sure it was actually even really a choice. Because I was a bit lost. Actually, I didn't really know what I wanted to do next. Yeah, I've built. I've built three companies in my life. I've sold both the two of them and one gave away. Then I've been in real estate. I've been an angel investor for 10 years, I've I've 35 companies that I Angel invested in. You know, I've got my charity school in Kenya. I'd like done a lot of a lot of things. And it was my business partner Yan, who's a dear friend of mine, I married him. I'm also a priest, I married him to his wife, who came to me and just said, Dude, this is the port. He's golden visa program is, you know, pretty low demand funding, right? Like, we should be crawling this funding
Unknown Speaker 4:40
and investing in things that we think are interesting. And as soon as he said that, I realized that this was my opportunity to invest in climate. So my original goal was like, I want to fight climate. Because I've had
Unknown Speaker 4:54
I've been aware of the climate crisis for 20 years, and so I had insomnia and I had
Unknown Speaker 5:00
melancholy depression, because even 10 years ago, no one cared. It feel it felt like you know, even all educated people around me it was raw. This is a problem for 200 years from now. Luckily, now everyone's on the same page. And so that was the mostly Yeah, that was the impetus to start it. And so
Unknown Speaker 5:23
the interesting thing is that we've been learning it's only a year old. I don't know anything about running a fund.
Unknown Speaker 5:30
Whenever I sit down, I'll say media. I'm not a venture capitalist. By the way, I'm not Nafisi. I've done a lot of angel investing. And I have a fund.
Unknown Speaker 5:41
And so that's what I'm doing.
Unknown Speaker 5:44
And so far, it's fun.
Unknown Speaker 5:47
It does make me want to get back in the game, though, doesn't really want to build. Yeah.
Elijah
And what's that distinction for you? If you're not a venture capitalist? What what draws that line?
Julian 5:59
I think I think being a VC is really hard work. By the VCs, I know, the because a lot of my LPS VCs, hats off to them, they work hard, like really hard.
Unknown Speaker 6:14
This so much like meeting people and very quickly having to like ascertain whether this person is valuable to you. That's not really my vibe.
Unknown Speaker 6:25
And I must quantify as well, when I say they work really hard, I am saying that I don't like to work really hard. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying oh my god, they worked really hard. Surprise. Entrepreneurs don't work hard, or friends work even harder. I'm just saying I don't like to work really hard. But I like to live, I like to have, I like to go on holiday, I go on holiday about three months of the year.
Unknown Speaker 6:46
I like to travel a lot. I like to, you know, just stop at four o'clock, or I don't like to sometimes start till 10 Because I want to read a book, you know? Yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 6:57
I don't want to give myself away to my career. Yeah, and
Elijah
I'm noticing, just thinking of that theme of human flourishing, you know, feels it feels very natural that it would come from somebody that is applying that to their own life. Right and saying, This is how I want to design my life. And this is how I want to flourish.
Julian
Yeah. And so I'm gonna, I mean, obviously, it's full of contradictions, right? Like, the older I'm getting, the more and when I say everything is so nuanced, isn't it? Like,
Unknown Speaker 7:26
I think getting older is awesome. And I think it's completely underrated.
Unknown Speaker 7:32
becoming wiser is a wonderful thing. Not needing to win the argument is a wonderful thing. Being able to quickly have the humility to listen to the other side is a wonderful thing, right? And one of the things that comes with getting older is you start to realize that everything's nuanced. And so it's okay for me to say to you, I don't really like to work all the time. And then next week, I wake up in the morning, one morning of fuck, I just want to work all the time.
Nick 8:02
Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, it's a context. Yeah. Right. Like, that's the other thing. It's like, it's not about the day to day, it's about the average of the course of a decade. Right? Even the charts gonna look up and down like that. But as long as it's going steadily rising right direction, you're gonna be looking good.
Julian
And honestly, I suspect if you ask most people, they say of work, you know, like, I'm working tomorrow. Saturday, I'm working most of Sunday. So, but it's not really work. Is it? Because our stuff, it's our things. It's our ideas. You know, on Sunday, I'm writing a presentation about the school. That's just fun. And it's just like joyful. And so it's a different thing. I think that's the biggest gift.
Unknown Speaker 8:44
Being an entrepreneur, so stressful, isn't it? So stressful shame. I've seen a bunch of my friends, really talented people give a huge part of their lives to building something amazing. And they got everything right. And then the market changed or something changed, and it went to zero. And then they made nothing. I mean, given all of this talent and time to a thing.
Unknown Speaker 9:07
And then I see my friends who got corporate jobs. And I've just watched their careers compound and compound and compound until suddenly they're in their like, you know, 40s, mid 40s. They're on huge salaries, great benefits, Barbara. I wouldn't trade it.
Unknown Speaker 9:21
Because the entrepreneurs still have that freedom to you know, to pursue the thing.
Nick 9:27
Yeah, I think I think it's, it's hard for me not to take risks. Like I've tried, I've kind of tried both ways. You know, like, I've tried doing the CTO thing like a bigger court cooperations mitigate my own risk of a fat salary. And we also just like a year ago, you know, we're here in Portugal, you know, we had no fucking money, right? We just like put our last 20 gauge into this company. It started from scratch and said, Fuck it, let's do it. And now a year later, like we're 18 people, you know, like my appetite for risk is is always been there.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Like, even the time we spent doing the CTO thing, like I was, like, you know, I just wanted to get back into it. And now it's at the point where like, this thing that we created can have sustainable cash flow. You know, like now it's like a nice foundation, it's still, like something we build that we can now iterate to wherever we want to go with it. I think there's a lot of beauty of that. But man, people live their lives and they're like, it, there's always a but there's always a but standing between you and a dream. You know, we're gonna do it, but I'm 33 years old, right? I wouldn't go, you know, pursue this thing. But you know, I got to make sure my rents paid.
Julian
Well, this is where there's these two exercises, I think both of them come from Tim Ferriss, or certainly bless both where I where I heard them both from one is the fear setting exercise, right, where you write down all the worst that can happen, you know, but I'm gonna lose my house. But I'll end up just having living in my jeans and T shirt by Baba Baba. And when you get to the end of the fear setting thing, you realize you're still alive. You know, and you've actually you have friends, you could ask, and you could sleep on your mother's couch or whatever it might be. And then so I think that's very healthy exercise.
And then the other thing is working out what the true burn rate is actually this for someone else, the true burn rate is of your actual dreams. Right? Because the I think, if I can remember correctly, the idea was he asked in the room, Who here wants to be have $10 million? You know, there's a whole bunch of people there. Great. And Who here wants to have like 50 million over? Who here wants to be a billionaire, right? And the guys with their arms up? And he's like, okay, cool. Tell me what you need the billion for? And so the guy said, Okay, well, I need a private jet. And he's like, Okay, well, where do you live right in Miami? And where are you taking the private jet? Well, I'm going to New York, how many times a year? Well, probably only six times. Okay. So it's, you could probably charter a jet, make just six times a year rather than own a jet. So rather than having to put on 50 mil, you could just spend 250 grand a year on the private jet, what else do you need, and he goes through this whole list of things and realizes that his dreams, the burn rate for his dreams, a million dollars a year, or $2 million dollars or whatever. And it completely changes how much of his life and focus and ambition he has to give to this one thing to try to reach this imaginary number where you know, the hallowed hills, right. And so when you run that on your own life, you for me, it's like,
Unknown Speaker 12:21
I want a chunk of money that I can invest in startups, because I love investing in startups, right. So if I can do, let's say, six deals a year, like 25, grand tickets, happy days,
Unknown Speaker 12:34
I want to be able to try a fly business class. I never want to fly private. I just doesn't I don't agree with it. I don't want to fly private. I don't want to travel first because it just feels like a rip off.
Unknown Speaker 12:46
And I hope and I hope that I would always feel like certain things or rip offs, right? Like when you lose that barometer then. And so you always want to fly business. I don't care to stay in luxury. Personally, I prefer adventure. So sometimes I've heard you stand a canvas next to a fire somewhere, then be in a five star class bed, whatever. Medical Insurance looking after my family, etc. Burn for that is it's only like 400,000 that say, depending on where you live. So then it changes how much you need to how big you need to be in the world.
Nick
It's all attainable. This is a thing that I believe is that you can make $100 million company. It's a function of convincing the people who can make you into $100 million company to work for you. And I really think a lot of attracts back to the deep work that we do. You know, I mean, like actually clearing out your insights, and all your fears and all your childhood trauma so you can show up as a leader, be cognizant of your influence, right, putting yourself in a position and lead others into whatever dream that you want to manifest in the world. Anybody can become a billionaire, but you have to attract the right people who can put you there is a question of your own self work.
Julian
Yeah, but it's also like people need to know that becoming a billionaire is full of peril. Like I know people who've become billionaires. Yeah, it's not like the people I've witnessed become billionaires. They all have less trust. And we talked to the very beginning about community about connection. If you feel you can't trust anyone, you'll never gonna form connection and community. And I think that's what silos them into these small like distrusting kind of groups of peoples. There's a book
Unknown Speaker 14:27
called I think it's something like the headedness dilemma or so what is it? I don't know. I made that up. It's something else, where she talks about how you need to if you are constantly over indexing in with dopamine, that you live living this hedonistic, consistent hedonistic lifestyle. At some point, that sort of muscle becomes bent out of shape, and that you need degrees of suffering, sort of bring you back to the middle, so that you can really experience joy when you experience it. You know, like it's important to sometimes sleep in an uncomfortable bed to appreciate.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Share how comfortable your bed is, or to sometimes not be able to have hot water out of your shower. And then when you do, it's a joy. Right? And I think one of the challenges is very wealthy people is that then they never go back that suffering piece so that everything becomes mundane. And so a little bit like, well, I won't use that example
Nick
. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's important to create pressure for yourself. And when you're way too comfortable, and like, everything's, like easy, and everything's just coasting. You know, like, you go a little bit crazy, because you have this part of our brain that needs the fear, right? Like it's, we're built for fear receptors. So if y ou don't get it from your media environment, or like the world that you are cultivating, it comes in other forms. That's when the trust begins diminish. This person is trying to steal from me, this person is doing this to me, right? Because you're not cultivating pressure when you become too comfortable.
Julian
So I had that, right. So I had to suffer at a SaaS company that I founded, we did shift scheduling. And I got paid every month. And it didn't work. Right. It was just like, I had a whole bunch of customers. Money just came into my bank account, covered everything I needed. And I just coasted and it made me miserable.
Unknown Speaker 16:12
Miserable.
Unknown Speaker 16:14
But now I don't have that. And I kind of like it back.
Unknown Speaker 16:21
Because now I think I'd know what to do with it.
Nick 16:25
So what would you do differently if you had that cashflow back?
Julian
Well, so for instance, I bought my first apartment when I was 25 years old, right, I started my first company was 24, I bought my first apartment was 25. My second one at 26. My third one at 27. I bought an office at 28 right now in London. And so this was this and I was like, I'm going to buy a piece of property every year for the rest of my career. So at the end, I have this beautiful portfolio of real estate.
Unknown Speaker 16:52
And
Unknown Speaker 16:54
after I bought the office as then then 30 I broke up with the love of my life, felt crushed by the experience, all of the color drained out of my life. And I chose hedonism as a way to try to like bring color, reactivate,
Unknown Speaker 17:13
I bought a fancy car and moved to this. ritziest part of town, I went to all the party club, you know, all that stuff. For a brief period of time. I wasn't a wanker for very long, but I was for a bit. And I stopped that instinct to just keep investing.
Unknown Speaker 17:30
And I regret that. Because
Unknown Speaker 17:36
one things I think I got right is in in my 20s, I worked really hard. I worked really hard. In my 20s all my mates were going out, getting trashed, doing all the things. And I built three companies and
Unknown Speaker 17:49
bought real estate, had a public portfolio,
Unknown Speaker 17:54
paid for my brothers education, all the things so that when I hit my 30s I was I could actually just chill for a while.
Unknown Speaker 18:05
But when I got into that chill mode, I stopped investing
Unknown Speaker 18:09
for a while. And I regret that if I had that now the cash coming in like it make it was that would love to be just investing in investing in investing, because it's fun. It's like being a farmer of ideas, you know? Yeah.
Elijah 18:26
And what's your biggest investment priority in your life at the moment, and not talking about investing into companies? What are you looking to invest in currently, what's what's your priority?
Julian
It's really an it's really, if we could rather than investment, it's a commitment.
Unknown Speaker 18:45
And it's a commitment to practicing trust in the divine.
Unknown Speaker 18:51
Because we had this experience together, where we met the divine. And it was the most beautiful experience of my life. And in that connection, the message to me was just trust, surrender to life. And if you surrender to it, it'll work up. And so when I'm having moments, if I have moments, because they're few actually right now,
Unknown Speaker 19:21
but if I have moments where I'm like, This feels uncomfortable. You're like, I'm moving out of my house in two weeks. I've lived there for years. I'm having to move out of my house, the golden visa program they've talked about it's now slowly being going to be shut down right then we're just building a business around that. My girlfriend is in New York so we've got like, you know, long distance Barber, there's a lot of stuff in the air. That could make me feel very unsettled. But it's been a wonderful exercise in me just going I trust a trust. That's really powerful then that's my biggest investment right now. Yeah, yeah. Now
Elijah 20:00
Have you from that experience that y'all shared? Coming off? The back of that? Has it has it shifted? How you prioritize, has it shifted how you want to invest?
Nick 20:12
You know, it's funny, because going into the same, I just had a lot on my plate. You know, there's a lot of relationships, there's a lot of things. And the second ceremony, we had actually had the intention to show me, show me where I should be investing my intention. And I thought this is gonna be painful experience, because like, you're asking the medicine for a purge.
Unknown Speaker 20:35
Normally, it's like fighting dragons, you're getting pulled out of you all this all this wild shit. And it was the most peaceful experience of my life. I sat down and put it everything, all my relationships, like personal romantic, everything in front of me. And everything just melted away.
Unknown Speaker 20:52
Just poof, that will remain was modern mantra. And what we're building together in one relationship with his wonderful human being, I'm sad to say it's, you know, that one, this is in flux, as relationships are, you know, it was it was really reflecting on it. I think it's just like, what was feeding me, like, what was actively giving me attention and things that I felt like I could put love and attention to that would create compound returns in the universe. Because a lot of things you can put your attention on anything, right? And the truth is, all these little things that happened to digital devices are yearning for your attention. Right? They all want to suck in your attention, right? Yes,
Julian 21:43
I want to read the other day, someone saying time is not our most precious commodity, our attention is our most
precious commodity, colonialism is over. Right? Like we had this time in history in history, where we'd go into all these different countries trying to take the resources take the land, and that was a measure of colonization, now, they're trying to colonize your attention every single moment that you could be doing something, they're trying to take more of it through better content through better algorithms through better means of second it up and, you know, it's you got to take time, this is why taking a week off of my phone, you know, they do this regularly is Elijah knows, fuck off for one to two weeks, and take some time away from it. Because you know, it's important. You've done the Personnel right to be talked about that. I haven't done the person you haven't yet. But I did do a silent plant medicine retreat earlier this year, for two weeks, sitting in silence in the jungles of Costa Rica. So it's very, very similar medicine all day, every day. Wow. Yeah, it's powerful. Wow. Yeah. It's it crazy. How hard it is to tame the mind. Right? Yeah. I've done vipassana twice. And so the person has, you know, is 10 days or two of us? Yeah, wow, it's 10 days of silent meditation, right where you get up at 4am. And you basically meditate from 4:30am with two breaks until eight o'clock in the evening, sitting on a cushion.
Unknown Speaker 23:08
And it is nuts how your mind doesn't fucking Shut up.
Unknown Speaker 23:14
And so you'll be six days in and your mind is still creating some sexual like, you know, fantasy with somehow weird characters. You're like, dude, when are we going to stop this? Like becomes then
Nick 23:29
you know, it's mental. Yeah, it's not an easy tool to train. But you're the reason I bring it up to your point is I think it's a really good exercise that you do, you know, like taping not not being on your phone for the week to find yourself and realign? You know, yeah, I think it's almost become a, like a part of our regular flow. Because every couple of months, we fuck off. In fact, we have one collaborator, Ryan, who's just taking two months off, like, hit us up, and it's like, yep, gone for two months, or like,
Julian
Great, we'll figure it out. Let's do this. This makes me think of something I shared the other day with a friend of mine. So I was in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. And a friend of mine, I just made a really nice amount of money for regular people, for like the people who think that making a million dollars is like not a big deal. That's a different audience. I'm assuming we're talking to normal regular people, right?
Unknown Speaker 24:20
And
Unknown Speaker 24:22
he still had scarcity,
24:25
resource scarcity, anxiety. And to your to your point about your mate who took the two months off, I said to him, that it's the way you're thinking about it. If you think that the life is about piling the coins, you know on a pile and you're trying to make the pile as big as possible, then you're gonna have anxiety about money your whole life. But if you understand that money is essentially time, and so that when you when you earn, let's say a million bucks, and your burn is 300k a year, you just bought three years. You bought three years forward of your life.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
You get to do with whatever you want, right? And then it completely changes things and sets your mind this way. This actually goes back to the point of why, if I changed things I would have kept investing. Because if I kept investing by now, I think I would have bought forward probably most of my life. And I could if I want to sit on the couch and read, yeah.
Nick 25:22
Yeah, it's, I think, even seen as like a pile of coins. So it's heavy. Right? It can be taken, it can be like put it or controlled by somebody else. It's a very nervous metaphor. I like to see this green energy, right, like I'm accumulating all this green energy, almost like the mycelium that I can go and plant and enhance different parts of the world to grow the things that I want to see. So we're always actively, like, you know, talking about investing some land you're talking about, like taking these things actually investment to the right people in order to build some things that are long lasting. You know, I want my money to always feel like it's emotion, and always doing something good for the world. Not just like accumulating some fucking back room.
Julian
But this is what's interesting about your land, you know, you're buying this land in Costa Rica. Do you know Sebastian Salgado, the photographer. So very famous photographer, Brazilian photographer. He has beautiful, beautiful black and white photography, just he just actually completed a series about the Amazon jungle that he showed an exhibition in London, him and his wife bought a valley, actually, I think they inherited a valley that his family had lived on. And he remembered when his great grandfather or grandfather started cutting down the trees for the cattle. And by the time they inherited this valley, it was barren, completely barren. So there was the house and then these barren hills, and they decided they were going to regenerate this valley. And so they started a plant nursery. They replanted 6 million shrubs, and completely reforest the valleys such that seven rivers came back. And they even had jaguars and all the other stuff come back onto the land. And I just wonder, because I've been thinking about this, like, does one buy land that you preserve? Or does one buy land that you regenerate? You know, like, what would be the most fulfilling project?
Elijah 27:11
I think it's regeneration. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's investment, right? That's an investment into getting that ROI, nature's ROI. Right? I didn't reforest thing, I actually think that's what we need. You know, there's a lot of talk around sustainability, when I think that we're at a place where we need to regenerate. And I think that's really the word that's the, that's the ethos that we need. I don't think there's a lot. There's some stuff that we should sustain, maybe some practices, some norms that we should sustain, but a lot of stuff actually needs to change. And when it comes to the environment, we need to regenerate it. And I think that would that just feels like it would be the more fulfilling thing just because you're seeing or at least from my perspective, you're you're seeing that change over time. Preservation, it's important as well, don't get me wrong, very important. But just the emotional experience of getting land to preserve versus getting land to regenerate. I would imagine it's more rewarding.
Julian
I think as builders definitely. There's a there's a company, if you when you find that big piece of land you want to regenerate is an amazing company called Terra formation.
Unknown Speaker 28:21
I'm working with them as in I've introduced to machines who work with them, I'm not I've introduced them to friends of mine in Kenya, who are going are building out regenerating forest, I raised money to build a nursery. And so we have 1000s of tree shrubs coming out of our nursery, and we're replanting this forest. And it's been a fascinating process, because you have to go into the old forests and collect all the seeds and put them into your seed bank and then get them ready to turn. And it's you would think that that would be an easy thing to do. You walk into a forest and you pick up all the seeds, that the disappearing, the trees are disappearing. This you know, it's hard. And so the sooner you get on it and start get doing that, the better. I think totally, then we'll we'll find our boy Michael and throw some of that various stuff on there. And off we go. Right.
Elijah
And I think preservation I feel like that's the first step. You know, I feel like we should we should preserve and make sure that we have some stuff preserved because regeneration takes a lot of work, you know, and a lot of you know, offsetting initiatives, for example, that go towards planting trees like well, how many of those trees actually reach maturity to the point where sequestering carbon there's a whole process
Julian
if we planted the entire Earth where we that would would enable that would essentially allow for the planting of trees. It would only draw down 20 years of our carbon footprint. Wow, why entire earth?
Unknown Speaker 29:51
We're beyond just being able to use biology to get us out of this challenge. We that we have to sequester in other ways.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You know, he's crazy, but goes back to everything between my innovation and, you know, having to innovate our way out of this.
Nick 0:08
Yeah, it's gonna force our hand. It Yeah. Yeah, something's gotta give. I mean, you know, we talked about the prospect of a fund that's acutely focused on preventing the downfall of mankind. That's something that you're thinking about.
Unknown Speaker 0:24
I think there's tons of funds doing that, right. Like, I think that's like, where all the money is going to be spent. You know, like Chris Sacca who's, you know, one of the most famous, most successful venture capitalists all time, his fund, lower carbon capital, that's all they're doing. There is so much money now, thankfully, being being put into these funds, and governments now, you know, the IRA, that the Democrats, Joe Biden pushed through is extraordinary steroids for the whole, like, you know, climate tech industry, and is already showing real impact. There's some really fun piece of data out there to see like, for instance, random fact, in 2006, we made a prediction on where we'd be on solar deployment. In 2021, we are 30 times further ahead, than we thought we'd be in 2030. On wind power in 2021, with four acts ahead of where we thought we'd be in 2030. So innovation is happening. It's happening faster, we're flying down the price curve, the more we can get governments behind it, the faster the better. I feel optimistic. The challenges were still, despite everything, it still looks like. There's no way apparently we do 1.5 It looks like we do between 1.9 and 2.5. And there's a big difference between 1.5 degrees and three degrees. Care massive, yeah, by two or three degrees triples, the likelihood of droughts for instance, on on flash floods it, I think quadruples it, yeah, it's it's
Nick 2:11
Yeah. I just love that you're actually focusing on this specific and the specifics of like, how this actually permeates our world. Now. I also want them on another project that you have in motion. And that's your school down in Kenya. Can you share with everybody what you're doing out there and all the Yeah, just tell us what you were doing.
Julian 2:31
Yeah, you can see like, that brings me a lot of joy. Yeah, yeah. So little lions it so Kenya has the largest slum in the world, called Kibera. About 200,000 People in two and a half square kilometers of land. It's it's Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Two
Unknown Speaker 2:48
and a half 1000 People in two and a half, five kilometers of land
Unknown Speaker 2:53
square. Yeah. Yeah. And so life there is you live in what's called a mobility. It's really which is a corrugated steel sheet walled hut. Your hut is a little bit bigger than the length than your length, you know, to sleep in. No running water, no tapped energy piped energy or anything like that. You're essentially you're cooking on kerosene, the fumes of the kerosene are causing cancer and so on while you're cooking on open coals, you have children around open coals. The floor of your of your heart is mud. So you know you're open to the to the you know, worms and all that sort of stuff in your feet, and so on and so forth. You open the you open the door of your tent shack, and it is an alleyway. The alleyway is usually maybe five feet, maybe six feet wide. And the alleyway doubles as a as a drain and a sewer. And so when your kids step out to go to school, they're stepping out hoping they don't step in human feces, or step in the way of the mangy dogs that just sort of live freely through the shantytown. Somehow, these incredible people get their kids bathed and not based because they they somehow put their children out onto the street looking ready for school, you know, and full of enthusiasm with big smiles on their faces. Despite the fact that they one of the kids had to leave the house first thing in the morning, go with the bucket to the to the only tap you know, for 300 households, get it filled with water, bring it home So Mum can boil it so that she can make them a cup of tea. Probably not feed them, right. And then those kids holding hands. I'm thinking I'm telling the story thinking about a couple of our girls, seven and five will hold hands and navigate their way through the these streets to try to get to school. And most of the time, they're totally fine. Sometimes they're knocked over by motorcycles or they're pulled into houses and molested. And I'm not exaggerating, this happens. This has happened to our kids. And so you know and And Mum goes to work, you know, and mum, the average commute is on foot takes two hours, the average commute two hours there two hours back, because they don't have the money to even get on to the public transport as a four hours of their days walking to and from a job that might pay them three bucks. And because a lot of these jobs is not a contract, it's a turn up at the gate. And we'll see if we can give you work kind of thing. These are the people I have the privilege of helping, and it is a privilege to help them. What we have done is three years ago, now, I was showing friend I take I take friends through the slum, when they when it comes to Kenya, it was just some first cuz I want them to know how privileged they are, before I go and show them the animals and take them to the coast, and we have an incredible time. I need them to know how privileged they are. Because people think they understand poverty, but they don't usually they never really witnessed it, right. And it was in that experience that we saw, we met a little school and it was my body is about as big as this this room and had 120 kids in it age between three and nine years old of the teacher standing in each corner to try and educate across that noise. And the kids were being fed the cup of like an oatmeal out of a bucket. So the cup will be put in the bucket, pass the child the child drink it, and that was its meal for the day. And if you know, you know, you know lots of stuff about how our brains are formed first four years where our brains are first four years of our lives, our brains tripled in size, right? And then they quadruple in size as we get to I think 10 years old or whatever. This first phase of our lives is fundamental to the human ability to preparing us to become the adults we become. And so when I was growing up as a kid, I remember seeing adults do stuff back home in Kenya. That's like, why would you do that? That seems so dumb. I didn't mean it in a patronizing way or anything. It just made no sense to me that someone would make the choices that they made. It was only when I got older. I realize some of these people have had such little nutrition. There's the brains just haven't formed in the way that I want all of our children to have the opportunity to form, right. And so we raised a bunch of money. I found an old building, we turned it into a school we have six classrooms, we built a little restaurant, the roof, I worked with a nutritionist in Nairobi to put a nutritional profile to the food schedule together and the day it's changed our kids, you know, they're bigger, smiley are happier, blah, blah, blah. Then I realized also my teachers all have trauma, like most of my teachers are the orphans. Because we have the huge all the issue with AIDS, it's a little bit more under control. But we still have. So my teachers have trauma, and my teachers are ill educated and they also had no ill nutrition. And so yeah, it's just a project that I'm just sort of making up as I go along.
I have an amazing woman in Nairobi called toujou. She runs basically runs it, we do a Monday call every Monday, we riff on ideas, I read this book, The Body Keeps the Score. So you know, I talked to her about how do we how do we teach our teachers to understand trauma, you know, with their parents evening, because all of these parents are beating their children because that's how it is in the slum. You know, it's a dog eat dog world, right? And so they're there and they're frustrated, probably and upset. So they beat their kids. And so we did a whole session on how if you beat your children, they're going to turn into like sub optimal adults, and they're not going to look after you when you're older. You have to find the incentive. And yeah, it's been great. Like we have plants because they you know, if you grew up in a slum, you don't see plants, right? Because every space is taken for human existence. trash everywhere, you would shock you the trash everywhere. And so we now have dance, we now have singing, we rent a little field of the church once a week, that's all they'll give us. So our kids can run around. We rented a bus and took the kids to a park so they can like be around trees. There's just a lot of like, join my
Our ambition is to find Kenya's first female president. So we want to find a little girl in Kibera who we educate all the way through to the end, who one day becomes the president of Kenya. That's our vision. Because we think Kenya needs to be run by a woman. And we think it needs to be run by a woman who knows what it's like to be at the bottom. So that's the big, hairy, audacious goal. And then everything in between is magic.
Unknown Speaker 9:28
Wow, thank you for sharing that story. And you guys are also raising money at the moment. Correct me if I'm wrong?
Unknown Speaker 9:34
Yeah. So we're building a pre primary, because we want to get the intervention as early as possible for a number of reasons. Like if a mom can bring a little baby in at one years old and her mom could go work, you know, she can bring money back to the household, but also she can bring her in at one we can start producing providing the nutrition to help the child. You know, these kids didn't attain mastery. We're walking through the slum this year earlier this year and with it with a group of new friends there. And a little girl walked past with a cardboard box with plastic old plastic bottles in it. And my friend asked me why she carrying a bottle, a box of old plastic bottles around. And I said to her, because those are toys, she doesn't have toys, never seen toys. So she's had to use her imagination to make these little bottles into something. And so if we can do this pre primary, where we are this nursery, essentially, it's a nursery, which we can filled with, with with cuddly toys and books and all that. So imagine what that does to the brain, you know, it's like sparks it to get going. And so we're raising money for that the primary school cost about $100,000 a year to run pre primary kindergarten, it's going to cost about 24,000 a year to run. And then I need to build the high school. And so I'm going to raise a few million bucks to get this done. Ideally, I need to get a few million bucks for an endowment, so that we can make income off of it. And then the income runs the school. Our parents do pay a nominal amount, but they pay because we want them to be committed in that way. Because I think sometimes like charity can be the wrong thing. You know, you need a level of commitment like giving a free product on the internet, right? Like you don't they don't care but you need to charge for it. But thank you for asking that that's that's the mission.
And outside of funding is there any other support you're looking for on the project any
Unknown Speaker 11:22
people any any want to put out
Unknown Speaker 11:24
like someone to build an unbelievable website, someone to help put together a social campaign to allow to help us to generate like, raise capital, someone to build an E commerce site, because we think this is stuff we can put on the site to sell. You know, there's a lot of beaded work and like interesting stuff that comes out of the out of the slum connection, just general connections. You know, like, we saw, we put internet in the school, we have a TV in every room, because we found the free curriculum out of the UK. So we're teaching a free curriculum out of the UK to the kids meant they want to get to watch their first cartoons and everything cartoons for so that that's great. Yeah, we have way back. Becky Hicks is hopefully coming out beginning of next year to teach dance, because we want to use dance to help treat trauma. But we also want to use dance to help us fundraise because have kids have unbelievable rhythm you know and so we can you like like film them with their beautiful rhythm like through the slum, we think we can fundraise off that we have an artist from here. His name's dipping my mind he reached out recently. He wants to come to Kenya and teach metalwork. Right. And so all those sorts of programs you want to do? Great. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:43
Where can people find you? Where can people hit you up?
Unknown Speaker 12:46
Yeah. So at the moment, it's little lions dot life, little lions dot life. It's all going to get better. You know, it's I wish I could give all my time to honestly, I think about that. Maybe there is a way I can do that. At some point, I watched Scott Harrison from Charity Water. give a presentation at massive scale two weeks ago, faculty guys so inspiring, you know, real storyteller on a real mission. And I was like, wow, I'd love to do that. I went up to him afterwards. I said, you weren't doing charity water, what would you be doing? And he said, I'll be doing charity education. So let's see.
Nick 13:23
Awesome. Yeah. So I feel like we've been here for a while. Any other needs? The reason why we asked is that your followers, like a lot of design thinkers, and AcBel conduct a lot of interesting things is there any any other needs that you're looking for and the other calls,
Julian 13:40
so one of the things I was going to riff with you guys on this, and we can do it afterwards or whatever is, so we have a teacher, he's a sweet guy in his, like, mid 20s often grew up in an orphanage. His life's mission is to help children to educate kids, he's paid 180 bucks a month. That's all we can afford right now. Right? And that's a good, that's a fine salary for the slum. But it's not a fine Saturday, you know, I'd like to pay him way more than that. But it's a fine salary for the stamp for now. We give them food as like an aid package on a Friday as well, oil and sugar and all that sort of stuff. Bless him, he makes 180 bucks a month. And he signed himself up for $2,000 certified edit course on how to become a better teacher. Because he felt like the certificate and the knowledge would essentially you know, upskill him make him more effective and give him more opportunity. To me there's got to be a way a better way for him to get up skilled and certified with more opportunity than him giving away like to you know, net income two years and then like, take think about his running costs him he barely makes any housing and a pair of 2000 bucks. He's not he's gonna be in debt. And then people are going to come find him because he's probably got slammed it and slammed it is the most expensive debt in the world. Right? If you ever read the book that the fact of the fortunate the bar on the pyramid, slam that it's like, everything in the slum is more expensive than everywhere else. Unfortunately, it's a weird thing. And so my idea is, is there a way for us to go and find curriculums that we break down into much smaller packages of learning, that can be delivered at a low data cost, because they're poor rates, even the mobile data is expensive, that cost them like 50 cents, you know, like or $1 $1 for this segment, and it's just a tiny piece of the much bigger thing that they learn, they get ticked off, the next thing gets delivered.
Nick 15:46
Now, one of the concepts we've been kicking around, is actually flipping the model on its head, flipping this whole model and said, Hey, for education, where somebody rocks up, and they actually get paid to learn, I am the time to learn to earn concept. So it's designed for inner city families and kids and slum based individuals who there's a model put in place where by actually given this a live form of the Soviet into these communities, they can actually use it to purchase education. And then there's a revenue share with the all these different, like Khan Academy, like all these different caddies, Ascena, provide free education can sign up and actually get some sort of revenue off of this token that's provided to people who can't normally afford education. That's the concept and then based on your attention, that you're actually giving to learn this learning and actually compensated for it. Because the truth is, we want to upskill these impoverished people, right, and the means of doing it are all based on like US base prices and price points. And the first scope job pay basically to your salary to give fucking certifications is absurd.
Unknown Speaker 16:54
Especially when you think Khan Academy is free, right? And the so the issue is not that the education isn't out there, because it is already there, right? It's just not evenly distributed. And so it's like, is there a way for us to repackage it, so that it can be evenly distributed? The reason there's a price the reason I say $1 is the to the point you made earlier, I think people need to pay things to feel like it's valuable. If it's free, I don't think they take it as they're so interested.
Nick 17:21
It was definitely I think it just needed the right UX research to see how these specific micro bits of education are deployed into these systems like that. That's everything like we it's really hard to establish empathy with somebody who is paying, you know, a third of the salary every month to listen to the telephone program, right to have access to maybe 100 megabytes a month, like you said, like cost of data, this place is also very high. It's very scarce, right? Infrastructure is not built out. So let's say
Julian 17:53
the infrastructure is there, right? So in Kenya, penetrate cell phone penetration, Africa is like it's done. Everybody has phones, but it's expensive relative to the data. Yeah, relative to income is expensive. So for instance, as a company I'm looking to invest in at the moment that if you have spare cash, I think is very interesting. It's called Boost, guy called Mike CEO, he's building the company. What boost has done is they understand so it's really there's a thing called mama and Baba, Mama and Baba means vegetable woman. And essentially, it's these tiny little kiosks, where you turn up and they have Colgate and they have like a bar soap and they have like some spinach and so on and so forth. Right, and you go there with at the end of your day with your 200 shillings and you buy three tomatoes, you know, in a bar of soap to get you at home, because you're living day by day, the vendor, the mom and Boger is giving credit to these people who just don't have enough money. And so she's writing all of this down on a piece of paper. And when the wholesaler is delivering the goods, she can't afford a mom and brother can't pay a wholesaler because she has a credit line with other people. Right? So he's writing a whole thing on his piece of paper. And that's and as a result, economic progress, GDP productivity, etc. Is is stifled, basically, because of cash flow issues, because there's no way of understanding how to lend these people money if you don't have that you don't know their credit scores. And so what Mike is brilliantly doing, he's enabling the mom and boggers to order all of their inventory using WhatsApp. So 50 kilobyte KB data transfers to these guys who then manage it through WhatsApp. And by doing that, they can now establish credit lines, they can provide products inventory on credit, and it just frees up the system. And so it's something maybe it's the wrong story to tell but it's a story about you know, how the innovative thinking around something like the mobile the mobile data issue
Nick 19:52
in a lot of this tracks back to empathy, like actually being at the slums. Yeah. Yeah. Like the context is everything, you know, there's a great concept of tropical causation, which is taking something that works in one country and bringing it to another, where you have like Uber that worked in the US. So then you have like, Go Jek in Indonesia, which now multibillion dollar company, right. So taking that a step further, not only going to the places that have the most profit, but bringing these, like we're talking about ERP system, right, and bringing that to the lowest common denominator on Earth can have tremendous value, these key innovation don't exist, because, you know, a lot of people have never sat in front of a computer. Right, and their mobile costs are very high. I mean, even I remember reading about how your data credits through the cellphone towers, that's how a lot of these companies, these nations transact, if I buy a tomato off of you, I'm actually sending you credits, in the form of data. There's entire economies in Africa that operate just based on how much data they have available on their cell phones, that's the underlying economy, because everyone has a phone, and that is a transactional asset. You know, like, this is where the empathy comes in. And this is where the UX research comes in actually sitting down and being in the slums and sitting with that and understand the problem from a first principles perspective.
Unknown Speaker 21:07
Well, the markets huge and Africa is the only continent that is going to be you know, the we'll have population growth and obviously GDP correlates to you know, amount of consumption. And how many people are consuming so I think Africa is an amazing place to be building building tools for especially because you just get the joy of building something that matters. You know,
Unknown Speaker 21:31
it's a great way to end
Unknown Speaker 21:34
and then everything and then everything the robots killer
Unknown Speaker 21:41
the things everyone sleepeezee know the robots are coming