Relentless
01:40:21 · Brian Armstrong
[01:40:21] S0: Yeah. Actually, the game civilization, highly addictive to my brain where it was like... That was one of the only times in my life where I was like, the sun would be coming up, and I'd still be playing. And I'd be like, oh, shoot. Like, I have to go to class in a few hours or whatever. So what I realized is, like, okay. If my brain is just hyper drawn to certain things before I can become fixated on it, how do I channel that into something positive in the world? Because I didn't necessarily wanna become like a pro Starcraft player or something like that, although that's fine if people wanna do that. But I wanted to, like, try to say, okay. What could I... How could I do this to try to build something cool in the world? And so actually business does a lot of that same thing in my brain that the game civilization or Starcraft does where you literally are, like, you're harvesting resources, investing it in a new thing. There's some competitive aspect of it, but you can actually... You can win. Anyway, the timelines are longer in business. Like, might invest in things which take years to pay off, decades even, whereas the game can give you, like, a quick hit. But I've noticed, like, I just feel a little guilty or lazy. Like, if I'm if I'm just playing games too much, then I'm like, why don't I actually try doing this in the real world, which is, like, the ultimate game? You know? And so I think that's been a healthy reframe. But I I... You know, just the final thought I had in this is, I actually think a lot of people are born with predispositions to different addictions. And unfortunately, a lot of them are like the unhealthy ones that we think of, right, and like drugs and alcohol and like whatever social media and all these things. So I think some people are lucky enough to be born with an addiction that outputs some kind of value in society, and part of that is luck. But it's also you can try to take the things which are vices and turn them into strengths in some cases. I don't wanna say everybody can do that. That sounds like it kinda trivial... Trivializes it, but I think in some cases, can take something that your brain is unhealthily drawn to and try to channel it into a positive thing. Like, there's a doctor I was talking to recently. He's like, I have OCD, and it's, like, really detrimental in my personal life.
01:42:14 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
But, you know, he's a dermatologist, so, like, in his professional life, it's, a huge asset. Like, his patients love it. He has so much attention to detail. Like, he'll make sure everything little thing is perfect or whatever. So you can try to channel these weaknesses into strengths. [01:42:28] S1: I I find that so funny to say that because, like, for a vice, that might be you're consuming a bunch of content. You're watching a bunch of movies, a bunch of shows. And I was thinking to myself as we were building this probably a week ago, we were just setting everything up. I was like, I have got to be the only person that's ever prepared for an interview by watching Game of Thrones. Watched the first three seasons of prep. Yeah. Yeah. And then [01:42:51] S0: we did a bunch of it. You know, what? Listened to a bunch of your interviews. Yeah. [01:42:54] S1: And then you don't you don't have to know that much. It's interesting to see how people spend their time because normally, I would think it's absolutely nuts to build this this sort of set for something like this. But then you just look at how people spend their time, and it's like, they clearly love stories. They love to see real things. You
01:43:12 · Brian Armstrong
[01:43:12] S0: know? Have you ever watched Band of Brothers? No. Okay. Great TV show, HBO. Anyway, I I feel like I've learned a bit about business from watching that show strangely enough because there's certain moments where you have to, like, go deliver hard news to this person that, like, they're not gonna be the one leading it... Leading this invasion, and their their their skills are needed elsewhere. Right? Which is kind of a polite way to say them, like, you're not up to the job. Or going and telling, like, this group of people, you know, I'm about to ask you to do something which is terrible and unthinkable, but you need to get it done. Like... And then, like... So as a younger person kinda watching this show, I remember think... Watching it and thinking, wow. Okay. That's a... That's how you have that conversation. That's a moment of leadership. How would you say it? And, like, you don't wanna be, like... You know, you're not in a movie in real life, so you can go too far with these things. But there are certain scenes of, like, negotiation in films where I'm... Like, I remember watching that. And Game of Thrones has lots of stuff. I don't know if there's a specific one I took took inspiration from. Probably not. But, yeah, Band of Brothers is great. You should watch that.
01:44:12 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:44:12] S1: This was... My initial idea was copying, like, what I'd imagined the seventeenth century Rothschilds bank might look like. Yeah. But then I was like, this is a very clear example that... Like, I searched up the Rothschilds, I was like, there's no obvious... Like, this is the set for it. And it's just such an obvious set in in in Game of Thrones. [01:44:29] S0: Yeah. [01:44:29] S1: But we're not gonna go so far as, like, me offering you a bank loan on camera. There's... There is too far. Yeah. [01:44:35] S0: By the way, the the modern day banks in a digital economy with crypto, they actually look like distributed sets of data centers. Uh-huh. And the data centers have, like, biometrics and people with guns guarding them and, like, cool things like that too. So this is That's pretty badass. Yeah. Like, the old school physical vault is kinda fun, but in a digital world, it's, yeah, it's data centers and armed guards and biometrics. [01:45:00] S1: In the Coinbase doc as well, Fred's parents were talking about him just playing video games for hours and just not being able to pull him away from video games. Did you guys bond over video games? Somewhat. Yeah. [01:45:09] S0: I mean, would play, like, Halo sometimes, like, late in the evenings and stuff. But, honestly, Fred is, like, too good at most video games where it's just... It's like It's not fun. Yeah. He's [01:45:18] S1: There's, like, always winning, and then there's, like, you never win.
01:45:18 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:45:18] S1: There's, like, always winning, and then there's, like, you never win. [01:45:21] S0: We would play, like, three on one with him versus... In Halo, and he'd still crush us instead of certain... And he's, like, so competitive that he's, like, he wins, and then he's not... He just rubs in your face and stuff. So, like, I realized at certain point, we had to... I I actually told him at one point, I was like, for the relationship, we're only gonna do co op games, going forward. So... [01:45:40] S1: Yeah. We need to win together. [01:45:41] S0: Yeah. He he hated that. He's like, what's the point if you're not competing and, like, you know, taking people's souls or whatever? [01:45:46] S1: Fred also had another thing when I was talking with him. He said, you are the king of never leaving a meeting without next steps. Yeah. How how... Why do you do that?
01:45:58 · Brian Armstrong
[01:45:58] S0: Yeah. Well, I mean, a meetings can be, like, really inefficient and ineffective if just a bunch of people come in without a clear objective, and you talk about a bunch of stuff, and no clear decision is made, and so you just all leave, and then you go... Nobody follows up and does anything. Right? So oftentimes we'll be sitting there in a meeting and there's like a hard call and everyone's... You know, and try to just prompt the room with that. Right? What are the next steps? What are the action items? It's one of my favorite things to say. He's he's right. And we actually try to write them down and look at them in the meeting. Oftentimes people are like, oh, cool. Like, think we got it, and we'll we'll follow-up. I'm like, do you got it? Like, let's look at it on the screen right now or in person. Who is going to do what by when? Right? And it's like sometimes people write these things that are a little bit too wishy washy for my taste, where they're like, Follow-up on this press release or something. And I'm like, What does follow-up mean? It's a very weak word, right? Do you want to publish it by this date? Do you want to... Review it? Yeah. Let's make something more concrete. And so... And then it it has... You have to identify who as well. Who's the DRI for this? Other times, people are like, I don't know. We're all gonna kinda work together on it. I'm like, no. You can all give input, but there's gotta be one person who owns this. So we we literally sit there and what is the person's name? What do we wanna get them to get done? And what's the target date? And then if we don't leave the meeting with that, it wasn't a useful meeting.