00:57:19 · Micky Malka, David Senra
[00:57:19] S1: The annual meeting. It was there that deposition... That was... That he said that line on a deposition at congress for something that Salomon Brothers was doing with the treasuries, arbitraging the... Or taking advantage of the treasury issuing market. Yeah. They played it every single year. And I remember it every single year. And part of the reasons why I wanted to live that life is because it was natural to me. It was the way you wanted to live life. So yes, reputation matters more than anything. [00:57:54] S0: There's a handful of people that I really trust and admire. And then the people I trust and admire, I wanna know who they trust and admire. And I had a decision I had to make, and I wasn't sure how to make it. It was... There was a lot of uncertainty. I didn't have the information I needed. And realized that you were actually in possession of this information. We won't talk about, like, the details of this. And I actually never, almost ever, asked to meet people. And I asked two separate people. I was like, do you mind making this, like, introduction for me? And then the first time we met, we actually wind up talking for, like, several hours, and then we, like, became, like, fast friends. [00:58:27] S1: Yep.
00:58:27 · Micky Malka, David Senra
[00:58:27] S1: Yep. [00:58:27] S0: But I made a big decision in my career based on how fantastic your reputation was. And so therefore, almost like... Charlie Munger has a great line where, like, trust is one of the greatest economic forces in the world. And it's like the level of trust that you have built up over excessive long time with people I trust made me be able to build a relationship and trust your judgment really fast that I can make a decision based on your reputation. And I think this is super important. It's also something that comes up over and over again. Like, I I did this episode on Jensen. There's this book called The NVIDIA Way, which is kinda like half biography of Jensen, half company history. And it talks about he pitched Don Valentine. Don Valentine's still alive, still making the investment decision at Sequoia. And Don's like, that was the shittiest pitch I've ever heard. I'm still gonna give you money because your reputation precedes you and it's so excellent. It's so valuable. [00:59:19] S1: It is the most valuable asset. It's the only asset we have. It's a reputation. Everything else can come and go, but that's the one thing that we have that it will always stick to us, even when we're dead. [00:59:29] S0: You know who also shaped my thinking on this? It's like, have you ever heard Palmer Luckey talk about reputation? Have you? [00:59:34] S1: No. I haven't heard him talk
00:59:34 · Micky Malka, David Senra
[00:59:34] S1: No. I haven't heard him talk [00:59:35] S0: about So he says the exact same thing. He's like, anytime... He he thinks this idea where, like, if people try to destroy reputation, like, you should just, you know, rise above the phrase. Like, no. This is bullshit. He's just a fight back because the problem is it forecloses opportunities. If this person's damaging your reputation and it's not true, it's gonna foreclose future opportunities. And it's not like if somebody... And he... His whole point is like, this is invisible. And I thought it was really interesting insight. He's like, if so... If somebody... I let somebody destroy my reputation and and unfairly, and two years later, I asked for a meeting with a guy who took that story and believes it, he's not gonna tell me I'm not taking the meeting because your reputation sucks. Yep. He's gonna make up some other story. So he's like, you have to protect it and then fight against it. I thought it was interesting. It's very like a Ben Franklin kind of idea. Yep. Because Franklin would nurture and then also protect and fight back against his reputation two hundred and fifty years ago. It's very fascinating. [01:00:27] S1: I love it. I didn't know that about Ben Franklin. I'm gonna read more about that. [01:00:30] S0: So I told you right before we started recording that I got the art piece that I ordered at Node. I was... I don't even know how to describe the fact, like, I could spend about an hour there with you. Can you just describe what the hell Node is and why you're doing it?
01:00:44 · Micky Malka
[01:00:44] S1: Yes. So I think it's in the spirit of being a rebel. So my wife and I, we love art. We find that art is beautiful. And when you find stuff that speaks to you, it has an immense value. It's been around all of us since the caves. Right? It's it's always been there. And five years ago, we stumbled upon digital art for the first time. I was on Twitter, scrolling, and I saw an art piece that looked something very similar to a physical art piece we had from the seventies. And then we got into it and started to find other artists in digital art that were doing beautiful stuff that matched something beautiful in history. So we started to pair them together. And that journey took us, like any journey, to get to know the artists. Because what's the difference of these artists? They're alive. And and they're all here, and they're all using... They all study computer science one way or the other, and they just decided to be artists and tell a story in a different way. Once you start to meet them, they were rebels in the complete expression of of the word, the same way we were describing some of the rebels in in companies. Like, think about... Right now, we're running a show on people. Think about That's one I saw. That's the one you show. So think about people. Think about an entrepreneur who decided for 5,000 to do an art piece every single day, posted online so he can only get better. His goal was, he read a book that said, if you do something every day, you will only get better at it. And he started in 2007, sketching. 2011, started to use Photoshop. 2014, cinema four d, and so the software evolves. And every single day, posted an image online that no one bought. People paid attention and just made fun of it or congratulate them or or jump against it until in '21, he sells the first five thousand days, what is it, fourteen years, for $69,000,000. And suddenly, it's like an IPO moment. No one pays attention for a long time, you sell it. What does a real Revolut do? He said, fuck it, we're gonna double down. I'm gonna build a studio, I'm gonna start building a lot more stuff that I couldn't do before. And now he's one of the most prolific artists alive. All he does, his work is digital. And he's not the only one. People see Cryptopunks and they see a JPEG. Actually, I see a movement. I see a cultural artifact.
01:03:17 · Micky Malka, David Senra
The first art on chain ever created, and it happens to be portraits. Guess what? Every single art movement in history starts with portraits. They always involve the portrait. So the story is we went to the museums and we said, this art should be seen. Because at home, we post... We get... We put it around our house, and all my kids when they were teenagers and brought their friends, guess where their their attention went? [01:03:45] S0: Now I thought you have
01:03:46 · Micky Malka
[01:03:46] S1: it hanging on the walls. It went to this. Yeah. Fifteen, twenty minutes in front of it, talking to it, interacting, asking questions. No one didn't understand. We go to museums and they said, yes, we can do this 2028, five years from now, four years from now, and we'll have to find a curator who's gonna curate what the artist wants to do. And my wife and I look at each other and say, no fucking way. This needs to happen today. So Node, it's the first digital art studio designed for digital artists. It is a space where the artist is his own curator, because that's what Rebels do. You design how you wanna show your art. You don't let somebody else tell you how you're gonna put your art. And it's a place where you come and you get your hands on with the art that speaks to the future. And we put this place in Downtown Palo Alto for a particular reason. Because Silicon Valley needs creativity. We need to bring it back. So our contribution to society is put it in a place where people can actually walk in and see it. And we've opened it five months ago. We had close to 60,000 people show up already. Every weekend we're breaking records. It's free. It's open. And people are interacting. And the most beautiful things, kids are bringing their parents. So you told me that last time you went to a museum where the kids are telling dad, let's go in. Yeah. Exactly. So that is the difference. So I think we need it, going back to beauty, to taste, to creating authentic stuff. And these artists are the most authentic people right now using digital tools. So let's show them, let people interact with them, and let that be the driver for entrepreneurs to use it in their own practices.