Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign things I've learned over the years that I sort of alluded to in the video. Recapping the last nine years is about high time preference versus low time preference.
[00:00:19] So I'm sure you're probably familiar with this. This is something that really hit the lexicon over the last few years thanks to the bitcoin standard and safe's books about fiat money and fiat food, etc.
[00:00:36] But essentially a high time preference means that you put more value and more importance on today, on the present moment, than you do on the future.
[00:00:51] Another way to say it is being short sighted, living in the moment.
[00:00:57] And a low time preference means that you put more value on the potential of something such as an investment like Bitcoin in the long term than you do on temporal or material pleasures in the now, today.
[00:01:17] So a low time preference then means you're thinking long term.
[00:01:23] That's basically the gist of it.
[00:01:25] And it's.
[00:01:27] For as easy as it is to explain and for as much as we like to think that we're being long term, I'll just speak for myself.
[00:01:37] Often there's this duality, there's this wrestling between the Buddhist idea of simply being present in the now versus the more pragmatic capitalist sort of way of looking at the world, which is more long term, preparing for the future.
[00:02:01] And it's constant challenge, a constant struggle, especially when in our society today, especially in my lifetime, there's the idea that, well, if I invest in this today, this can then be used for leveling up.
[00:02:28] So you see it a lot in social media where influencers will rent a Lamborghini and act as though it's theirs and go to a really nice Airbnb and act as though it's theirs in order to make a bunch of content that then they can use for the next few months, giving the perception that they've truly made it and they are worth listening to.
[00:02:58] So buy their course on how to make money, right? And the only money that they're actually making is selling suckers their course.
[00:03:08] But that's really a, you know, sort of a shallow way to look at time preference and, and culture and society. Because obviously people are building things of value.
[00:03:22] And the reason why this is interesting at the moment is I'm coming back to what can we build with Venturopoly is because you look at someone like Elon Musk.
[00:03:35] Does the guy even have a car? Does he even have, I mean, other than a Tesla, probably, but he doesn't post anything about lifestyle.
[00:03:44] Everything is about working and not in the hashtag hustle working. It's just, he just builds.
[00:03:54] Now there's a lot of people that don't like him for various reasons. Not going to get into that. My goal with Metropolis is never to be political or polarizing or anything, any of that because we just want to point positive and look at what the world could be and how we can build. And so I use that as an example. Him especially because the reputation that he has and like it or not, perception is reality for really the, the way that we live our lives in this world.
[00:04:28] The perception is that the guy just works. He doesn't even have time to go to fancy dinners or anything because they just bring the food to his meetings. Because he's working, he's running a handful of multi billion dollar companies and that's what he likes to do. So he has found his. His be, his do comes from his be. That's just who he is. He's a builder, he's an innovator, he's a creative guy that wants to make the world a better place on our own level.
[00:04:57] That's what we want to do as well. Now it's always been at the heart of ventropoly is uncovering opportunities in the frontier, in emerging markets.
[00:05:10] And there are still so many things out there that could be built and could bring value to the world. And that's really what it all comes down to.
[00:05:24] So to be succinct, I want to find other people who want to participate in building that world for a balanced, nuanced motivation.
[00:05:42] Because if you, if you make a spectrum from super spiritual to the super materialistic, where it's get rich so you can have more stuff or it's eschewing totally all things fiat and money because well, that's not spiritual.
[00:06:04] And I'm very much an all or nothing kind of guy. I live on the extremes. I'm not really one for seeking any type of balance, especially not work life balance. I think that that should come from your ikigai. It should come from you know who you are, it ends up being what you do. And, and if you have found your ikigai, the thing that you're good at, the thing that you love, the thing that the world needs and the thing you can get paid for, then you never work a day in your life, right? That's the, that's the goal.
[00:06:35] But there is a balance between doing things from the motive of more material gain or doing things to virtue signal that you're such a good person and so you're just going to volunteer and you're not going to take any money for it.
[00:06:53] Obviously we live in a material world and so there are material things that we need. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? We need food, shelter, clothing, etc. Transportation.
[00:07:04] We need to take care of our families, we have to pay our bills, we have to live in this modern world.
[00:07:09] And that's just fact of life.
[00:07:15] But the thing I've always noticed and the struggles that I've always seen with teams of people who come together with a great idea, they have great energy, great momentum, there's synergy there between the different team players.
[00:07:30] It's very hard to continue and to keep that momentum going forward with everybody because there's always, always going to be one or two people out of a handful of group that lose interest or they have something else that takes away their responsibility, you know, so their focus is elsewhere, et cetera. So it's hard to keep a whole group motivated.
[00:07:54] But the, the other big challenge that I have seen is being too much on one extreme or the other.
[00:08:03] So you have these communities that are, you know, expat communities that want to get outside the system. And so they're going to go live off grid or whatever and everyone's going to volunteer, everyone's going to chip in and it becomes like a communist sort of thing. Even though it starts out with very capitalist intentions, supposedly they even sometimes name it after G Gulch in, in Atlas Shrug.
[00:08:25] It never works, never works. And I'm not going to get into criticisms of why in at this point, but it just never works.
[00:08:34] And on the other side, you can often have people who come together to do something, to build something. They see potential, they have an idea, everyone's going to contribute. We're going to build this company, this business.
[00:08:51] We're gonna take advantage of this opportunity that we see in front of us, but it's completely driven by how can we get super rich.
[00:09:00] And when the motivation is completely materialistic and it's get rich or die trying, it's let's build a unicorn.
[00:09:12] When that is the motivation for building a startup or any kind of business, it's very easy to get derailed if that doesn't happen fast enough.
[00:09:25] And the more that someone is in it to get rich quick, the less motivated they're going to be to just do the hard work, to keep going, to keep slogging, because they're not doing it for the passion of the project to build whatever it is, they're doing it to get rich quick.
[00:09:45] So they can have more materialism or so they can have more status or power, whatever it is today. I guess it would be so they can have more influence. Because everybody wants to be an influencer, a YouTuber, which is silly when people have zero life experience and suddenly they're influencers. But I digress.
[00:10:05] So what I want to find, what the. The real goal is here is to find people who want to build for the sake of building and within different categories. This is the other thing that usually tends to happen.
[00:10:21] And this is something that I have learned very, very well from sports. And it's why I am staunch believer that all kids should play organized sports for as long as they can.
[00:10:36] Because you learn so much about life and clearly the education system doesn't teach you jack about life.
[00:10:44] Hopefully you homeschool your kids, but they should also play organized sports because it's the absolute best way to learn so many life principles.
[00:10:52] And one of those life principles is that there are star players and there are role players and there are coaches and there are bench warmers who need to be ready to come in and really, really perform at a high level when their number is called.
[00:11:11] But particularly, it's important to understand that there are star players and there are role players and that there are different roles on a team.
[00:11:21] So for me, I like to use basketball.
[00:11:25] One of the clearest examples from growing up in the 90s would be the Chicago Bulls. You had Michael Jordan, and everyone knows Michael Jordan, obviously the star, the goat.
[00:11:36] But then you had people who you probably don't even know their names, and they sort of played their role.
[00:11:46] BG Armstrong, this little point guard guy, obviously, you know, Scotty Pippen, he was sort of the second fiddle. He was the Robin to Michael Jordan, Batman.
[00:11:54] But then there were other guys, like my favorite Dennis Rodman.
[00:12:00] That guy had a role.
[00:12:04] He would play defense against players who were way bigger than him.
[00:12:10] And he just. His role was to hustle, to get rebounds, to die for loose balls, to foul if he had to. The guy could score like me. He, he clearly everyone in the NBA can score compared to any of us off the street. Like, they would beat us 11 to 0 and one on one.
[00:12:30] But he didn't have to score. Like he could go the entire game and never shoot the ball because his, his thing, his rule was to hustle and die for loose balls. And that was how he helped the team.
[00:12:45] So when it comes to business projects, when it comes to startups, when it comes to how can we bring this idea, this concept of something that we see potential value in wherever it is some frontier country.
[00:13:06] The thing that I see that usually gets overlooked, especially with people who have been successful either in, in business or in investing and they're looking to diversify or looking to get involved in a certain country or a certain industry, is that that often gets overlooked the importance of those types of role players. Because many people think that you can just hire them off the street, you can just get anybody to fill a role. And that is not true.
[00:13:42] It's really not. There was only one Dennis Rodman there to have the right fit.
[00:13:54] It's really, really important to understand the psychology, the motivation of the players and also their strengths and weaknesses and how bringing certain personality types together is going to impact the other people.
[00:14:11] And so especially in the early days of a project, you want everyone to buy in. You don't want to have to depend on external labor, even if it's like contract labor or whatever. You don't want to have to be dealing with payroll and employee management because then you need a manager and then you need a jar and you have, it's just a whole headache for as long as possible with any business. You want to, as Jim Gray said in Good, great, get the right people on the bus and then figure out where that bus is going.
[00:14:46] But it's much easier said than done. It's a, a big challenge to find people, especially when it comes to expats in the frontier, especially when it comes to getting people from very different socioeconomic levels together on one team to work towards a common goal.
[00:15:14] Because you might have someone who is a three time exited founder now teaming up with someone who's fresh out of school, but they're super hungry with their little green behind the ears.
[00:15:32] And so there's going to be this, this clash of communication and understanding potentially.
[00:15:39] And I've seen it many, many, many times, especially when in, when the motivations are different. And that's where I think that in these ideological times it's more important than ever to get people together who are ideologically aligned first of all and then who are aligned in their desire to build first and foremost.
[00:16:04] So if I have people who come from the extremes, I have a Teluminati person who goes to Burning man every year and they don't care at all about money except for, you know, just keeping the Tulum dream alive.
[00:16:20] And then you have someone who's completely materialistic and they run three businesses and like all they care about is like return on investment.
[00:16:31] Those people are not going to be able to work together at all. Because the Illuminati person is going to be super spiritual and they're going to think that the capitalist person is just this greedy, materialistic, hedonistic person.
[00:16:45] And they're so virtuous because they're super spiritual.
[00:16:49] But if both of them are motivated by building because they understand themsel they are self aware enough to know that I just love to build or I just love to create, I just love to see opportunities become a living entity.
[00:17:13] I just love to see ideas flourish, become something.
[00:17:18] I had a vision for something and now it is, it's existing, it's making money, it's operational, it's creating jobs, it's oh, it's cool. And for many people that love to start things, build things, create things, the goal is to do exactly that.
[00:17:43] To come up with the idea or find the idea to create the plan to build it, to see it come to life and then move on to the next thing.
[00:17:53] And then it's important to find those who love consistency and stability to operate, to bring in expertise to make sure that things are flowing efficiently, consistently growing steadily or fast, depending on what it is.
[00:18:13] But again, motivated by being and doing rather than simply by hedonism, materialism or by virtue signaling that they're just volunteering to make the world a better place like we see with so many sustainable companies and whatnot.
[00:18:35] And I've, I've been involved in enough businesses and projects over my lifetime, everything from the outdoor industry, white water to the super, super hypocritical ESG with sustainable foods and plant based foods etc as well as just like pure capitalism of, you know, growing franchise businesses and, and selling widgets or selling services in the US that are strictly about hedonism and materialism and looking good and making money, whatever.
[00:19:23] I've seen the spectrum. I've been involved in the spectrum and it's fun that I have because I can empathize genuinely with both the super, super materialistic people who just want to get rich and have a hundred million dollar exit in three years. And I can also understand the super spiritual people that don't care about if they ever see a dollar again as long as they can, you know, keep living in the commune and, and being creative and contributing what they feel is value to the world.
[00:19:59] My goal with being bringing back Ventropoly is to facilitate getting the right people together who want to build.
[00:20:10] People who can look at Elon Musk and regardless of government subsidies or regardless of political considerations, who can look at him and say if it's True that that guy just works and just builds because he just loves to build, then I respect that. And that's the kind of person that I am and want to be.
[00:20:28] Those are the kind of people that I want to find.
[00:20:32] And so it doesn't matter if someone's worth nine figures and they're an investor or if someone is worth one figure and they're someone who just loves to run things or get things started or go and scout opportunities and they have a good eye for that.
[00:20:54] Those people can work together within a framework, within a network, within a structure that says let's put the right people in the right roles and let's bring these ideas to life. And there are so many opportunities still. I see them every day. And I know that in many of the groups, the networks that I'm connected to, the biggest problem is not deal flow. The biggest problem is not sourcing opportunities.
[00:21:26] The biggest problem is just getting people coordinated to work together to build.
[00:21:31] That is the biggest challenge.
[00:21:35] And part of it is sociological because you do have these people from very disparate socioeconomic levels, academic backgrounds, education levels, etc, but within, especially the international community, the expat community, people who are, are in that small percentage who said no to scammed, who, who have as much as possible attempted to live by flag theory regardless of their motivations. And, and I'm telling you there are people on both ends of the spectrum, the super spiritual and the super material, both ends of the spectrum that play the five flags game, that are expats that, that don't trust the system, their governments, etc, and that also are motivated to build a better world, to, to create value while they are here and to, to add to a more flourishing society.
[00:22:37] And so I've broken this into sort of and a handful of different roles from investors to operators to experts like scientists and, and legal, etc, topical experts, engineers, you have founders, you know, people that just love to connect, people that love to discover ideas and people that are willing to go and move somewhere and do the hard work for a couple years or for a long time just to go and experience a new place and build something, get it from zero up and running and then move on to build something else.
[00:23:20] Right? It's like if you think about builders, and I mean a home builder would be the easiest one, right? They don't just build one house and call it a day. Well that was nice than that's my life.
[00:23:30] The end.
[00:23:31] Oh, they build one and then they learn from that and they go and they build another one and another one, another One, because they're builders, they love to build and you can expand that across industries and across sectors and across positions and roles within a team as well.
[00:23:49] So something that I've been part of, I've been in many different roles. I've been in the, the role player, I've been the Robin to Batman and I've been the star player and the person that's out front that's, you know, leading the charge that the head honcho, the CEO.
[00:24:07] And it's really, really, really important to make sure that that structure is in place. So that's one of the things that we are putting together with Ventropolis to not only present ideas and deals because there are still so many things. And the more that I've reached out to people that, you know, we've had different projects or ideas in the past, in recent weeks, the more I'm reason realizing that like there's way more than there even was a few years ago and there's just so much opportunity out there.
[00:24:45] The question is what is the level that, that a person has to be comfortable with? Like how much can this make? Is it going to be enough for the different roles that are needed?
[00:25:00] And if so, how do you structure that so that everyone is okay with accepting that okay, this is my role on the team and I'm going to do this whole hog because it's worth it and it's. My motivation is to be part of building these types of things and it's my talent and I can get paid for it as well. Obviously when you're talking about any of these types of projects or business entities or startups, the opportunities in the frontier, it has to make money.
[00:25:32] I think the, the biggest deception that I've seen over the years is that the more materialistic or the higher level that someone is looking at these things from, the more that that return on investment has to be exponential. And then you're looking at like things that are unrealistic quite honestly because you can have opportunities all over the world that may turn into a very consistent cash flowing business that makes six figures or that makes a couple million dollars a year, but you're not necessarily going to make a hundred x on that. And if that is your only motivation, then you should be looking at software or AI or something like that. Not at a tangible poultry business in Malaysia or regenerative agriculture, definitely not regenerative agriculture because that's very slow.
[00:26:36] Or any type of lifestyle business, etc. Those are things that, you know, hotels or Airbnbs or tourism etcetera Those types of sectors are not going to return the same 10-100x to an investor or an operator, a founder that something like software or even a home run with a fast moving consumer good is going to bring you. The important thing is to understand that structure has to be in place. Do you understand that with most of these opportunities they're often overlooked strictly because they're not that 10 to 100x ROI.
[00:27:21] And so for both founders and investors as well as the builders who if they're going to build then that's going to be their full time gig, they have to be able to make money at that as well so that they can pay for basic needs. Again, all of those things come into play and so I have seen, and this is really why venturaboli was born initially that it's a huge overlooked opportunity all over the world at this level because most of these opportunities on the ground do require eventually that you have people on the ground running them because they are tangible businesses like we were talking about a minute ago with regenerative agriculture or just agricultural production, ecotourism or tourism in general, lifestyle businesses, tangible businesses, all of that requires on site doesn't mean that the capex has to be expensive but it, it means that you have to have people that are running it. It's not software, it's not just digital, you can't just outsource everything, right? You have to have the people who build it, the people who get it going, the people who then operate it.
[00:28:43] You have to have those types of things in place and then as long as it's managed well, it can turn back or return a very nice dividend. We can say consistently over time, especially when it comes to agricultural production or tourism in areas that are that are growing.
[00:29:06] I mean you could get a very consistent return from that for many, many years.
[00:29:13] It just might not be 10x your money in 3 years or 100x like that. That's not at all what we are looking to uncover.
[00:29:23] If that happens, cool. If you find a unicorn in the middle of the jungle, amazing.
[00:29:31] But also it's highly unrealistic. So it's better to have a, a more tethered view of reality of look, there's opportunities everywhere and if we can diversify and get into things that are going to make the world a better place that we as expats can utilize and be part of, whether it's some organic food that comes only from one region in the world and you can then have access to that consistently or whether it's some sort of tourism business that is in a place that's absolutely incredible. And it, it, you know, makes 5 million bucks a year and like, you can get a return on whatever you invested into that or whatever time that you put into that. You can go be part of that, you can go work there for experience or for the love of it or to.
[00:30:25] Because you want to build another franchise, you can say of that same concept in another part of the world and you see an opportunity of doing that and so expanding it, etc, there's a million things out there. And so in the process of starting to put some of these different ideas online behind a subscription free for now, but just to not, not put it out there publicly, we also want to put in place a structure so that people can identify, self identify sort of their role, what they're best at and what they would like to do so that we can start building a community of people who want to be involved, who are interested in going in and investing in something or building something or being part of operating something in different parts of the world and can contribute value.
[00:31:30] And where this comes back to the idea of expats wanting to get outside of the system because the system is impossibly corrupt and we can't vote our way out of this, is if it's possible to build a better world, a parallel society as detached from the system as we can, then it's going to take a huge network of people that are able to be motivated by the sheer joy of creating and building and continuing to build value with these entities that are created and an understanding that it's a lot of work and it's not going to be easy, and especially if there's ideological alignment, that there's a, a good deal of risk that's involved as well.
[00:32:40] But it only takes a small percentage of society to say enough is enough. I'm not participating in the scams anymore. I'm not participating in my own slavery.
[00:32:56] But I'm also not going to go move out to a, an Airstream trailer in the middle of the desert and completely live off grid and detach myself from all of humanity. Because that's also not my purpose. Right? Our purpose here is to learn lessons. And sometimes the only way that we can learn those lessons is to go through the fire.
[00:33:17] And by going through the fire, we may have to stand for what is right and stand against evil. And through that, that's how each of us learns the lessons that we have a purpose to be here to learn.
[00:33:35] And I think that the more that we can come into that view of being in the world but not of it. So not detaching and becoming super spiritual. Also not being so of the world that we're just consumed by hedonism and materialism, but finding a place of okay, this is who I am, this is my ikigai, this is what I see the world needs, but maybe we're not going to be able to do it under the current system, so let's build it outside of the system. This is what the world needs. It's what I'm passionate about and good at.
[00:34:10] And it's what I can also make the monetary income that I need, whether it's in fiat or whether it's in something that's more hard money like gold or Bitcoin or even trade for those organic consumer goods that we were talking about, regenerative agriculture.
[00:34:31] But to, to slot in and be realistic with who we are and how we can contribute. And then our goal with Ventropoli is to provide a better framework not only of opportunities that we have seen and so that other people can share their opportunities, but also a framework to help guide people to get on the bus in the roles that they are best suited to be in. And not merely as a projection where perception is reality, but with proof of work showing, showing up, showing that you are willing to do the work and, and be transparent in that.
[00:35:17] And that there will be value attached to your participation on the team in a quantifiable way.
[00:35:28] I think that is going to be really, really helpful in breaking down a lot of the awkward friction that happens in putting teams together and, and getting projects off the ground at all.
[00:35:41] So there's a little, little bit of a teaser of what is under development right now and what we're working on and what the, the long term goal is. Because it's not to completely detach from community.
[00:36:01] It's not to try and build something that's going to compete with the existing system. It's definitely not to be political and, and think that we can vote our way out of this.
[00:36:17] It's to be disruptive, but in a way that is sort of behind the scenes.
[00:36:25] What disrupted the typewriter wasn't a better typewriter. It was a completely new world of the computer and the Internet.
[00:36:32] What disrupted and made Kodak go bankrupt, you know, disrupted film cameras, was not a better version of that. It was digital, digital on your smartphone.
[00:36:47] And I think that when it comes to the current system and the current world, and I'll talk more about the venture capital world and how that has defined culture and society over the last several decades.
[00:37:03] But the disruption is going to be that there aren't simply gods and pawns who eventually want to become gods. I'm talking about, obviously, the venture capitalists and the founders.
[00:37:17] But there's a whole range of roles that it takes to build, truly build something successful.
[00:37:27] And with all the opportunities that are out there, and with all of the people that I know who have so much to offer the world and are ideologically aligned for life and freedom, I think there needs to be something that provides the opportunity for everybody to get involved and contribute so that we can together use our individual talents to build a better world.
