Relentless
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?
01:16:06 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[01:16:06] S0: Yeah. Well, this is one of those things about, like, making it sustainable, right, for... To be able to do this for the long term. So I actually... I schedule four weeks a year in advance. They're scheduled. Because if you if you just kinda wait, oh, I'll go when there's time. There's never, like, a good time. So you kinda have to schedule in advance. And some of those weeks, it's just like it's the Christmas holiday or something. Other weeks, it's... I'm going to some conference something that's, like, kinda work but kinda not. Other ones, I'm, like, truly... The other two, I'm usually taking, a real vacation, like family and stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's true that my psychology is, like, really messy on some of those trips, actually, because sometimes at the beginning, I'm like, I'm exhausted. Like, this would be a good moment to, like, take a break. But usually within, like, two to three days, I start to get anxious that I'm, like, not... I actually kind of want to start thinking about work and doing different things again. And I will often end up reading a bunch of interesting stuff, calling random people about ideas and starting to think about the future and come back with better ideas. Right? So that's kind of the purpose of vacation. But honestly, like, sometimes half to vacate... I don't know. The way the way that some people do vacation is you wake up early and you go on this... To this museum and this touristy thing. I actually really don't like doing... I don't like doing touristy stuff. [01:17:30] S1: I hate
01:17:30 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:17:30] S1: I hate [01:17:31] S0: tours. Yeah. So what I usually do is I like sleep in, go to the gym, have an amazing brunch, maybe do, like, one hike or thing like that for the day. But the rest of the day, I'm just... I have, like, quiet, unscheduled time where I'm just, like, reading interesting things, calling people, thinking about the future, writing writing ideas down. So I I use it as a moment to, yeah, like, I guess, yeah, think about what to do next. [01:18:00] S1: What's been the best thing that's come out of one of those vacations? [01:18:03] S0: Well, I mean, what... Again, an example is what we just talked about actually, like, the embryo editing dinner kinda came out of that. It was just like, I was just reading a ton of stuff about this, and is it ready? And I was calling random people. And like, why has nobody tried this? Have they tried this? Did it work? Did it not work? Like, really? Why is... You know, these are the kind of conversations I was having. I was like, alright. I gotta I gotta just gotta do do a do a dinner So kick that off, kick that expost off, like... And that... That's an example. But it's really just kind of following your nose. Like, whatever you get excited about, go read about and then see if you wanna [01:18:34] S1: take some action. You've mentioned multiple times in this conversation this idea of finding people like, surrounding yourself with people that give you energy, just kinda, like, light your fire. What's been the best way that you have found