Relentless
01:10:49 · Brian Armstrong
[01:10:49] S0: Yeah. So I think that being able to convene some people for dinner is underrated. I mean, it it sounds simple, but a lot people don't do this. They're they're sitting around thinking like, man, I wish that I could create a company in this space or do a great podcast or make a great film or whatever they're trying to do. And you can read a bunch of stuff on the Internet. You can read books. Like, that's great as a starting point. But there's something magical about reaching out to whoever you can get to show up, even if you're early in your career or later or whatever, and just say, hey. I wanna talk about this. You... You're interested in it. Like, will you come to this dinner? Because think about that. Like, it's actually much... It's much harder to call somebody randomly and be like, do you wanna cofound this thing with me? Right? Or like, do you wanna make a film with me? And they're like, no. I'm already making films. Like, don't... I do my own... You know? But people will say yes to a dinner more easily than they will say yes to, like, I will I will leave what I'm doing in the world and come... You know? And it's also more interesting than sometimes just reading books because books are written typically about stuff that's already happened, and you might have to read, like, for eight hours, read a book to get like, oh, there's one nugget in there that's relevant to me. But in a dinner, in a captive setting, you can actually direct it to where you want to go. And so you get... It's a lower threshold for people to say, Okay. I'll come to this dinner. There's other interesting people there. And you can really just go around the room and ask everybody, you know, what do you think is the most exciting thing happening in this field right now or whatever you want to talk about. And most of stuff you hear people talk about, you'll be like, I know that one, or that's not interesting to me, or this person's bad at communicating or whatever. And you're kind of... Honestly, you're kind of evaluating each of them a little bit, like, who who raised your energy the most? You know? Who might I... Could I see myself working with? And then you'll see, like, a little piece of the puzzle here, a little piece there. And sometimes you leave the dinner, you're like, was waste of time. Nothing interesting happened.
01:12:36 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
Other times, after a week or two, you're like, somebody calls you back and, like, you know, that dinner made me think of this, and you said this, but I actually think the other piece is this. And so something starts to happen in the world when you convene a group like that. Yeah. And I I... There's... I've seen examples of that now where, you know, you can actually really make progress towards starting a company just by hosting a dinner. It's like a very lightweight step for people to start to make progress. [01:13:00] S1: I also kinda love that because it's it's a little bit... The whole action produces information. There's also this other idea of, like, action produces action. And so if you just kind of are the activation energy for some new idea to be spread and some new gathering to happen Yeah. That can just be like the first domino in a sequence of other dominoes.
01:13:00 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:13:00] S1: I also kinda love that because it's it's a little bit... The whole action produces information. There's also this other idea of, like, action produces action. And so if you just kind of are the activation energy for some new idea to be spread and some new gathering to happen Yeah. That can just be like the first domino in a sequence of other dominoes. [01:13:15] S0: Well, I did that recently. I started thinking about, you know, gene therapies are getting like more and more prevalent, and I was like, who's actually working on genetic editing of embryos? Right? Like, this is a controversial topic, but like for disease prevention, most Americans are for it. It's it's taboo, so, like, most people would be afraid to do it. But these... In my entrepreneurial brain, I'm like, okay. There's an opportunity there. It's, like, clearly something that could benefit the world, but people are afraid to do it. That's kind of my sweet spot. You know? And that was the first thing I did. I was like, all right, let's organize a dinner, you know, and reached out to a bunch of scientists, people that had interest in this. I actually put out a Google form on X, and, like, I think 120 people applied. And my chief of staff helped me screen a bunch of them, invited a bunch of them from different parts of the world. Hosted a couple of dinners like that, and actually two companies came out of it. Of them I invested in. So that was just a recent example.
01:13:15 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[01:13:15] S0: Well, I did that recently. I started thinking about, you know, gene therapies are getting like more and more prevalent, and I was like, who's actually working on genetic editing of embryos? Right? Like, this is a controversial topic, but like for disease prevention, most Americans are for it. It's it's taboo, so, like, most people would be afraid to do it. But these... In my entrepreneurial brain, I'm like, okay. There's an opportunity there. It's, like, clearly something that could benefit the world, but people are afraid to do it. That's kind of my sweet spot. You know? And that was the first thing I did. I was like, all right, let's organize a dinner, you know, and reached out to a bunch of scientists, people that had interest in this. I actually put out a Google form on X, and, like, I think 120 people applied. And my chief of staff helped me screen a bunch of them, invited a bunch of them from different parts of the world. Hosted a couple of dinners like that, and actually two companies came out of it. Of them I invested in. So that was just a recent example. [01:14:11] S1: You have this idea of basically wanting to make sure that the people that are gonna work directionally on what Coinbase could evolve into stay inside of Coinbase and do it internally at the company. For the companies that aren't going... Or completely different missions and should be started as separate entities, how do you decide who to back, why to back them, what missions to focus on?
01:14:30 · Brian Armstrong
[01:14:30] S0: Well, I mean, should mention inside Coinbase, we have the next best program I mentioned to do internal innovation, but we also do external innovation. I mean, so we have Coinbase Ventures, and if employees want to leave to start companies, we'll often put a check-in there too. So we're open to all of those. Oftentimes, makes sense to do it internally because you get the distribution of the Coinbase. But if it doesn't make sense, if you wanna leave, we're also supportive of that. I... So... And then just more broadly, your question about, like, how to decide who to work with in these other areas. Like, if it's not really into crypto or financial services at all, there might... You know, I've done some as a separate company. And how do you... Mean, how do you decide what... Who to work with? It's it's a lot like who to hire as well. It's like you're looking for people that are high agency, great communicators, high integrity. They raise your energy when you meet with them. They're bringing new ideas to the table. Part of it is, like, just going off of excitement. It's like when you when you meet with one of these people and you're like, that would be awesome for the world, and this is a fun and interesting conversation. I kinda wanna have more conversations like this. Let's put a check-in and see what happens. Like, it could... It can literally be that simple. Because if you're excited about it, other smart people are gonna be excited about it. That is, like, half the battle to just getting the right group of people in the room to sometimes go try something really ambitious and fun and crazy.
01:15:46 · Ty Morse
[01:15:46] S1: I've seen multiple interviews where you talked about going on a week long vacation. And I kind of want to know at what point does Brian Armstrong decide to go on that week long vacation? And then how does your psychology change from the first day on the beach to the seventh day where you feel the anxiety of wanting to get back to work?