Raoul Pal: The Journey Man
00:41:48 · Raoul Pal, Micky Malka
[00:41:48] S0: Yeah. You said this to me the other day when we were together. You said I'm spending all of my time with 21, 22, 23 year olds because they're native to this, and they're the only people who are gonna get it. [00:42:01] S1: Yes. It is like going back to 1996, '95, 9798, and trying to talk to somebody about the Internet that is not actually playing with it twenty four seven. What could they tell you? How would they describe a page view or a HTML website or a browser or a SMTP? Like, they they they had no con... It's... We could try it, but it was not the same as the guys that were building We were lucky as a generation that we grew up with the infrastructure of the Internet showing, beginning built. So we understood what was possible. We understood that, hey. The packets on TCP IP can actually be compressed more and you can send video. And you will understand, yeah, I can see that happening. I can see how packet because I understand how TCP IP works. So you can understand, yeah, voice, video, yes, it's cool, but it's it's possible and and better and better. These kids are the same for AI. They understand foundational models. They understand the application layer. They are they are they are... They don't take notes on anything but on an AI agent. They do the homework there. They're just different. It's the same way as the kids of the nineties were.
00:42:01 · Micky Malka, Raoul Pal
[00:42:01] S1: Yes. It is like going back to 1996, '95, 9798, and trying to talk to somebody about the Internet that is not actually playing with it twenty four seven. What could they tell you? How would they describe a page view or a HTML website or a browser or a SMTP? Like, they they they had no con... It's... We could try it, but it was not the same as the guys that were building We were lucky as a generation that we grew up with the infrastructure of the Internet showing, beginning built. So we understood what was possible. We understood that, hey. The packets on TCP IP can actually be compressed more and you can send video. And you will understand, yeah, I can see that happening. I can see how packet because I understand how TCP IP works. So you can understand, yeah, voice, video, yes, it's cool, but it's it's possible and and better and better. These kids are the same for AI. They understand foundational models. They understand the application layer. They are they are they are... They don't take notes on anything but on an AI agent. They do the homework there. They're just different. It's the same way as the kids of the nineties were. [00:43:12] S0: It's fascinating. And do you think the businesses they build will start falling in the category of one employee style... You know, you can build a billion dollar business with one employee idea. Are we getting there yet?
00:43:12 · Raoul Pal, Micky Malka
[00:43:12] S0: It's fascinating. And do you think the businesses they build will start falling in the category of one employee style... You know, you can build a billion dollar business with one employee idea. Are we getting there yet? [00:43:24] S1: I think we're on our way faster than we think. I think, using just in historic context, you know, when, a hundred years ago, a hundred and ten years ago, the the vanguard of entrepreneurship in America, the barons, when they... When their companies went public or when they got really, really big, they still own 70, 80% of their companies. And their friends own 10%, and their merchant banks own 10%. And capitalism and society moved that equation from a founder owning 80 to the founder owning 20 and the financial investors owning 80. I think we're gonna start to see the move back where companies have less employees, hence, less dilution. They're more capital efficient because of all these agentic experiences, and the founders will probably own more of their companies. So we'll see a proliferation of new companies. [00:44:17] S0: That's fascinating. We've seen crypto go the other way that they tried to force as much out of the hands of of the original founders, and it loses alignment of interest.
00:44:17 · Raoul Pal, Micky Malka
[00:44:17] S0: That's fascinating. We've seen crypto go the other way that they tried to force as much out of the hands of of the original founders, and it loses alignment of interest. [00:44:30] S1: It does. And and then he was doing it because he was trying to use money as a battle for attention. Yeah. Because you were trying to solve a problem. But here, I think this combination of token factories actually solve attention. And if they solve the attention, the the money is not needed. You got the attention. Now it's... What do you do with it? [00:44:49] S0: Yeah. And, also, because of the old system of the rigidity of having to go through a seed raise and a friends of family, and then you need to go through a VC and all of this, you are naturally just losing equity of the firm. But if we take forward the conversation we're having before about instant capital formation, you actually don't need to to go through that process in the same way. [00:45:11] S1: That's exactly right. [00:45:12] S0: Fascinating. So more importantly, digital art. What... How... Where did this journey start with you? And I wanna talk about this journey because this is another amazing thing. We've been both been going through this whole journey at the same time as well and thoroughly loving it. So give me that whole story. Where where did it start for you?
00:45:31 · Micky Malka
[00:45:31] S1: So I missed the whole free to claim CryptoPunks 2017. I never bought CryptoKitty when Ethereum showed up. I saw them. I saw how it collapsed the network. I I saw the punks, but I was too busy doing my stuff and missed the whole thing and missed the NFT craziness of '21 or twenty twenty one, twenty two. I stumbled into digital art in 2022, just three years ago. And, it was in the bear market, and I was, the the markets had calmed down. World was a little bit slower. We were reshaping our thesis and our thinking. And on Twitter, was scrolling, and I saw an art piece posted that looked very similar to an art piece that Becky and I have from a Brazilian artist that was painted in the eighties. And it was very similar, and we were like, woah. This is beautiful. So ended up going online, buying it. It was from a Mexican artist one called Juan Carlos Garcia, and he had done it on a bright moments Mexico exhibition. And and so we bought our first NFT. And then our journey was more like, let's pair... Because we have an art... We've been collecting physical art for a while. Let's pair some of our physical art with our digital art. And we we went and saw the Autoglyphs, and they matched with something we had from an artist from the fifties. And and so our journey was not a crypto first journey. Our journey was not a trading journey or a looking for the hard, to find stuff. It was very artistic by nature, just trying to pair. And then... And along that journey, when we bought The Autoglyphs, we got a chance to meet John and Matt, the Larva founders. And then we talked about the Cryptopunks and about the pixels in the Cryptopunks and where it comes from and we're the same age and how it was the same games we were playing when we were kids and the psychic and the whole story about and how it was free to claim. And that was the day that we just... The moment came. And trying to convince Becky to shift from physical art to digital was a journey of itself, and now we're fully, as as as you can imagine Well, because you... I mean, I
00:47:53 · Raoul Pal
[00:47:53] S0: remember following you earlier in the journey, and you were comparing Latin American and South American arts that you'd had physically and that art history of that region and then showing the art history of that region continuing into digital art and how they were referencing each other. So you really came from art itself.