Welcome back to twenty VC with me Harry stabbings, and I'm so excited for the show State. I mean the impact this guest has had on the she everyone is just huge. I mean, you're likely listening on one of the devices he co-invented. He's touched billions of people with his work and it's just an incredible individual. So with that I'm very very excited to introduce Tony fadell often referred to as the father of the iPod. Tony is currently principal at Future shape a global investment and advisory firm coaching engineers and scientists working on foundational deep technology prior to Future shape. Tony was the founder and
CEO Nest Labs. The company was ultimately acquired by Google for a reported 3.2 billion dollars before Nest Tony spent an incredible nine years at Apple whereas SVP of Apple's iPod division. He led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. I mean, what an incredible experience and fun fact on Tony Tony has filed more than 300 patents for his work, and I do also want to say a huge. Thank you to Brad Horace and Bill Moyers for some amazing questions suggestions today. I really do so appreciate.
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It over to Tony fadell principal at Future shape you have now arrived at your destination. Tony is such a joy to have you on the show today. I've heard so many good things from Mickey Mouse her to Bill my ice. And then also ran Horace. You said many many great things. So thank you so much for joining me. Stay
Thank You Harry, you know, I been watching and listening to all your various podcast with my friends and I'm like, wait a second what's going on here?
Hairy guy he's really got it going on.
Well, that is very kind of you. I think the term is I just get around that she told me because when we tried it before, you know, I promised that we would be forward-looking in this episode. And so I do just want to ask two quick questions on the past. And the first is when was the moment that you realize you were born to be an entrepreneur and can you take me to that realization
moment. Well, I don't know if I knew what an entrepreneur was at the time, but it was literally the first time I started making my own money and had it in my pocket and my parents couldn't tell.
Tell me what to do with that money, right? Typically you get an allowance or whatever and then they're like well don't do this. Don't do that. I got my first money when I was in third grade because I had an egg route. So I had an egg right where we go. We get eggs from the farmer he would deliver them to our house and I would load him in my wagon my blue wagon of my brother. I would go from my younger brother would go door-to-door around the neighborhood and we'd sell eggs and that was kind of every week or every other week kind of situation and I got money in my hands and I was like, oh my God, I could do whatever I wanted.
There's like this is kind of cool. I don't have to ask anybody for it. I can just do it. And so that was the level of Freedom that you know, especially when you're young. That's really like wow. This is cool and then a little later I got older and I was starting to buy my Atari video game cartridges for my 2600. Yes. I'm that old and that was really really fun to I
love that as a starting point in terms of like selling the egg stir in the childhood moment that I loved one story in particular about your father and a lesson that he taught you when it came to sales and Trust building. Can you just tell me that?
The story before we dive into the
future. Oh sure. Sure. No problem. Well my dad he worked for Levi Strauss and that Levi's were a big big deal back in the 70s. In fact, they were traded as Black Market currency in Russia. So you could trade us Levi jeans to get I don't know caviar, who knows what it was in Russia, but it was literally Black Market currency. And so we would move all around with his job for Levi's because he was head of sales over there and one time he took me to a meeting a sales meeting and I was probably
Least seven or eight at the time and I just sat there at the desk while he was talking to these people and selling them and one of the buyers would say I want to buy this shirt or this gene or something and he turned to him and said no, I don't think you should buy that and I was like hmm. What somebody who wants to buy something you're selling something. You should sell it to him and he's like no no. No, you should buy this. This is what I think is going to be the most popular styles for the season these things if you're going to do it and you want to just buy a couple that's fine. But go by this this is what's going to
really make your business successful. And so I'd listen and watch and I was like, wow this guy wanted to buy something. He didn't want to sell it to him. I like why was this so after the meeting? I talked to my dad I said, why did you do that? And he said very clearly is like look, this is a relationship if I make this person successful if I tell them this not that he's going to want to come back to me over and over and over if I sell him something. Yes, I'll sell them, you know for this quarter this garment or whatever. It was this rag because it's called the rag business and he sold it.
It doesn't sell any as the discount and he loses money. He's going to look to me like what did I do? So he said even if I don't have the right product, I'll tell him where to go to get the right product. They're looking for or if they're picking the wrong one. I'll tell them here's the right one. You should pick because my job is to make them successful because if they're successful, they'll come back to me year after year after year, even when we have a down here, they're going to trust me and they're going to come back even after a down year or down court or whatever it is. And that stuck with me so deep that everything's about
Relationships not about today not about the transaction, but about what could happen in a year five years or even 10 years down the line and that is so important.
So I'm totally with you in terms of that long-standing nature of kind of the importance of relationships. And you said you didn't mind kind of offbeat question. So I have to ask this one, but it's like one I struggle with is that as the show's grown and has funds of grown I've had this trouble of like not knowing why someone wants to be my friend and just understanding motivation is behind it. Can you help
Mirai how do you think about knowing someone's true motivation like what that she just like Tony and want to hang out or whether its iOS Tony from you know nest and you know, the iPhone the iPad and the iPod and how do you determine between genuine and
not that is difficult? You're in a difficult spot if it's not a reference if it's not coming from somebody like okay. Hey, you really need to meet this person? I take everything with a grain of salt anybody who comes to me cold because I'm like, they probably want something and so through that I try to make sure.
Sure that through the network like do you know this person? What are they about? Luckily? We have LinkedIn now, we didn't have a LinkedIn, you know 20 years ago, but now we do and so we can go in and very quickly find out who they're connected to and go. Oh this person makes sense or whatever and I could ask a quick question. So for me, I got to do a little bit of diligence because you know your time my time it's so valuable and to waste it on three or four meetings. And then finally the oh, hey, I got this pitch for you. It's like dude, really you're going to do that to me after I invested this much and
To build a relationship. You're like now you've really spoiled it. Right like because you're really about a transaction and not trying to build a relationship. And so that's the other thing which is instead of relationships as fake relationships to get to the transaction. It's kind of like a ulterior sales motive and that is not cool either. So if you are selling someone you got to be up front and say look I'm talking to you about this. This is why I want your time. I think you could be helpful with this but be up front on what the game is about and what you're trying to discuss with people don't waste my time because that's even worse.
Worse now. I tell you I think that's to us when you think it's authentic and then there's the transition to not everybody's kind of relationship building as we spoke about that. Yeah. I spoke to Brad Horace before the show and he talked about the importance of mentors and he asked asked Tony how he thinks about mantels and specifically kind of who he learns from them what he's
learned her mentors. Well, it's a big topic. You know, I'm now at the stage of the career where I'm a mental right or at least I hope I am and I'm helping people right and that's why I'm actually doing this show. I'm not doing the show because I'm pitching something.
I'm doing the show to Mentor people hopefully through your megaphone and so on the mentor side it takes someone who's going to tell you stuff. You don't like to hear you need to get someone who's going to be really truthful and this is not life coach. It's not that bullshit life coach. Hey, okay, you know if anyone has a life coach title Jesus Christ, that's like walk on down the street just forgive him because typically if you see a life coach, they didn't have enough experience. Right? Usually a really great mentor is going to be highly selective. They're going
I be like nah, I don't want to work with you. They're going to be like I only have so much time for people who are actually coachable. And so Bill Campbell taught me, you know, the first thing first meeting we ever had when I first met him this was back in early 2000s when he was you know on Apple board was he's like, are you coachable? You just stare you right in the eye and he teaches make sure he could trust you and know that you're like you're going to listen and you're not just again having a relationship with Bill because you just want to say, you know Bill bills there for a reason and he wasn't there.
Money was like I like this kid. He was also my wife's Mentor as well. I like this kid and I want to help him in some way. Right and so now they're only reason why I am here today is because of people like Bill and other mentors that I've had it's now time to give back and you get to that stage where like there's no way I would have been here without them. And now I have to do the same thing for the next set of people whether they're you know teenagers are in their 20s or in their 30s and yet maybe they'll fail along the way but you got to be a mentor you're going to have
Tough love with them you're going to say things that they don't want to hear. You're not going to be liked all the time. Hopefully one day you'll be respected if not liked and that's what it means to be a mentor and I find it incredibly rewarding to watch these individuals and the teams and the businesses. They grow it's really fun to do and I learned a lot I learned a lot and sometimes they're more my mentors that I am to them. I mean, I
love it in terms of that kind of love and passion for it. And I totally agree. I've benefited from some amazing mentors final thing for we talk to them future.
Open kind of exciting projects that you're working on is you mentioned about being coachable there to your loaf Aladdin Founders because I look back historically at some of the most successful Founders I go. I don't think they were very coachable and I look at Founders fund who say oh we don't want to battle Founders who need us. That's the wrong type of found. It should Founders be coachable or should they be hell-bent on their mission and vision? I think anybody who's trying to do
something that the world has never seen before or trying to work with people who've never they better be coachable because you're going to be so narrowly focused you're going to
Be so heads down. You're going to be on a mission that sometimes you're blinded and you need somebody to come from Left Field to go. Wait a second. Dude. You're not thinking about this, right? You're so in the weeds. We got to pull you out. Let me give you some perspective lets you know, they're not going to give you an answer but they're going to give you some kind of guide rails and some perspective to help you make better decisions and pull you out of the weeds that you're in because sometimes the problems you have are going to be about you. Sometimes it's going to be about the company. Sometimes it's a macro environment.
A problem and you need that to pull back and if you can't work with a CEO who is coachable. Oh my God, I have done that. Right and it's like they said they're coachable. It's kind of like the relationship we talked about earlier. They say they're coachable, but they really aren't they just said they were so they could get a relationship right? I'll get the money or whatever it is. And then when push came to shove it was like, oh no, these people are definitely not coachable. We need to move them aside and get it fixed. They have to be coachable.
I totally agree with you but then inside
how do you give effective feedback because I'm a brick Tony I suck. I'm too late. I dance around topics and I don't like it straight the hard not honestly, I'm terrible at if you fed me like crap in a restaurant. I'm going it's fantastic. Thank you so much. Sure. How do you give effective feedback without crushing
them? Well first it's about trust you have to be able to have a trusted relationship with somebody there are different ways of delivering a message. Now, you can deliver a message the first time in a iron fist in a velvet glove kind of thing.
But sometimes the velvet glove is going to come off. So it depends on the level of are you listening? Are you hearing you know, I remember Bill Campbell telling me he would do his thing and he would just tell me pull your fucking head out of your ass. Like if you're not listening and you're not learning then he's going to be like beat you upside the head and you kind of have these modulations between Iron Fist in a velvet glove and then just like whacking people upside the head and unfortunately, that's again, you're not always like you're respected and I'm in too many board meeting we have over.
200 Investments, I've seen all kinds of different CEOs and different boards where the investors don't want to feel like they're going to get a bad rep because the CEO is going to say something if they say something negative and it's all this pussyfooting around dude. We got a mission. We have money that's being put to work. We have a team that's trying to build this thing and you're going to worry about how your relationship is like come on get in there and get something done right so that we're not all frustrated and just
Trying to be nice and play footsies. You gotta get stuff done. That's why we're here. This isn't a country club. This is about getting something done. Now. It can't be about you. It can't be about the money. It can't be about ego. You got to be about the mission the team what we're trying to do here and give bold examples of how this is done and how you're there and seeing it done right and other companies, but you know at the end of the day you're going to have to tell the truth that can come in all different forms, but the truth is important and you need to say it and
Maybe one day it's like, you know, Bill Campbell said pull your head out of your
ass. Sometimes you have to say that do you think that willingness to be bold bluntly comes from the success that you've had like, well, I look at myself. Sometimes it's like I'm very vulnerable and open now about some of the challenges I've had in the past, you know, I was bulimic before and had troubles with eating disorders for years. I would never have admitted that when I was Bunny not with a big podcast and they didn't have very much like do you think boldness and willingness to be open like that comes with success?
I think you become more bold with success, but you're not going to get success unless you start making the success happen for yourself. So you have to already project a level of confidence that is backed up by real intelligence and real facts and real hard work and ethic and stuff like that. You're not going to just get along and then it's all going to be nice and then it appears and then you become bold. No, you got to be bold from the day one. That's what it means to be a change maker. You have to be bold. Now, you got to be within limits and sometimes when I
Younger and be even today you didn't you make the slip up where it's a little bit too ego-driven or whatever else but you got to pull back and you got to modulate but you need to be bold and that doesn't just mean bold with words, but bold with actions and how you treat people, you know, you got to be listening. You got to be kind you have to be empathetic. But you also got to be pushy. You got to get people out of their comfort zones. You got to have this full picture. It's not always full on being absolutely emphatic about everything people say I'm
Too loud a bit, but it's because I'm passionate and so you need that kind of style to get things done in this world. The quiet person in the corner doesn't typically succeed because they're not getting other people excited and interesting what they're saying or what they're thinking even if they're the smartest people in the
world is and I totally agree with you and yeah, I think it's in a way sad, but I also think that is in a way atoms like Clubhouse and all the mediums which are allowing them to express themselves may be more free than they could have done before in terms of getting on stages and speaking.
Oh, yeah absolutely look,
Let me be clear when I was in college. I had a fear of speaking. I almost pissed my pants when I was just speaking to an audience of five people. It was that bad. So look, this is a learned thing. This is a learn scale with the way I got more bold is because like my ideas and the things that I'm learning and the people I'm talking to they like what I'm saying, and I'm like I building up confidence around that and that includes that at some point speaking ability right a speaking to a larger crowd, but you're not necessarily born like that.
Don't have the Bold Gene you grow into it over time and you challenge yourself, right? Like if I would have just turned back after that four or five person pissing my pants episode. It was all over know. You're like, oh that's a challenge. I'm going to have to get better at it just practice practice practice practice practice and hopefully you have a enough natural talent that you can take it further.
I'm sorry Tammy. I'm going to have to invoice me for this episode with the amount of advice who giving me the Imagine like the self-confidence are and I I'm honestly doing a ton of things now, and I have no fucking
Idea what I'm doing because I'm doing them for the first time legal strategies for you, but I'm scared shitless and my self-confidence is like down here. How do you deal with lack of self-confidence lack of kind of self-worth in what you're doing when you don't know what you're doing.
Actually, you know what everyone goes through imposter some girl. Everyone does we all have gone through it I go through it because you know what when you're doing stuff you've never done before and you're changing the world. No one else has done it either. No one.
Else has done it either. That means it's okay and I always say if you don't have butterflies in your stomach each day, you're either not paying attention or you're not pushing hard enough and taking enough risk. Now. There's taking stupid risks versus risk mitigation and taking calculated risks, but you should always be living on the edge of pushing yourself because that's where the growth is. That's where the change is happening. That's where you know, you're on the Leading Edge when you're sitting back and being complacent and just you know, whatever. There's going to be somebody.
was behind you running up past you who's doing that who's taking the challenges? So if you're feeling that it's okay to feel it just when you do make a mistake because you will God knows I made so many goddamn mistakes in my career. Same things going to happen. It's okay get past it learn from it. Hopefully you have mentors to help you to understand what's going on and what happened so that you can learn from it and move on and guess what? It didn't kill you that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger and you move on it's all good. That's how our brains and our
finalities
work. I was with a mental this morning walking through the park and he was that Harry this I did you learn more from fading in the new success. It's bullshit. You learn more From Success than you do from fading. Would you would you agree with that or do you learn more from failing
First Look? It's do fail. Learn do fail learn. There's no such thing as learn and then you're going to do no no, no, no, no you when you really learn in life is after you've tried to do it. I think college in our education system is entirely back.
Words you sit here and you go you go learn something and you learn for years and years and years and then you're told to go do and it's like no no. No the way that I learned who is from my grandfather everything it was we go do some stuff and then we'll figure it out as we go along, you know, we didn't learn to go build a bridge and then Build a Bridge the first bridges in the world were built without any books right the first boats, when were they built somebody built it and tried it and then it failed in sunken people drown or whatever it was and they built a better boat there was
No books. There's no one to teach you that stuff. This is how we do and change the world is through the same method is that we go do and then we fail and then we learn from that and then we do again. I do want to
move to Future shape. They wishes. I love it. It's all first question, which only took us a while together. So I'm glad we had that discussion in terms of I post everything you've done you could have done anything you chose feature Shapers the vehicle to kind of pursue your passions. First of like, what's the structure of future shape Tony? Is it another fund?
How are you thinking about
that? Well future shape is really a way for me to not drive my wife and kids crazy being retired and drive myself crazy being retired. I tried retirement. It
sucks, but it's not it's boring
because if you have a curious mind and I'm sure your listeners all have curious minds. That's why they're tuning in is because to me new things new ideas new people new technology their oxygen for your brain. And as soon as you starve it of that oxygen you start going I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm dying, right
And so I need and I think a most curious minds need oxygen and that means interactions and learning and learning and devouring new information and trying to make sense of where things are headed. That's what I think. So that's first so future shape was all about taking the experiences that I had the finances that we have our family has and combining them to help other entrepreneurs. We're not a VC. We're not an angel we call ourselves mentors with money. And the reason why we're mentors with money is because we
Right hundred thousand dollar checks or whatever it is, but we can also write tens of millions of dollars of checks and everything in between and we have done that and so what we want to do is find the entrepreneurs doing the hardest things that are going to help the environment help Society help our health and help them to succeed with their mission. So we want to go and Mentor them make sure their coach Mo work on Technologies and things that are interesting to us, but we think are incredibly important for the world and we want to just help out and be part of
Of the team, we rarely take board seats rarely. We don't lead rounds. We're just there to be on the side of the entrepreneur on the side of the team to help them. Now, of course when things are going awry or whatever. We'll have to step in and take more of a engagement. But at the end of the day, we're there to help the entrepreneurs succeed with their mission that we think is very very valuable just like other people helped me when I was younger. Same thing goes there luckily now, we just have the financial resources to put our money where our mouth is instead of just going on will advise.
You advice when they're not like putting money behind it and like truly working. That's usually just somebody's trying to make some Consulting dollars. I totally
agree with you that in terms of the allocation of dullness. I spoke to Mickey it Ribbit before the show, but he's question to you was if you only have 1 million to invest in you had to choose between cannabis e-bikes or Plastics. Which one would you do
easy cannabis? Why cannabis is actually medicinal and it's a vice it's both.
And so when you can have those two Dynamics together when you can actually help people whether that's recreationally or medically and you can have all of the uplift of the recreational side for the medical side. You're going to see that and the other thing is there's so many hypocritical investors or LPS out there who are like, I can't go invest in cannabis. So it's actually better because most people aren't investing in it so you can get in there and you can make the money so that I can then invest that money. That was the gains into things like e-bikes.
Plastics and all the other things we do. So to me, it's a great thing to get into that game and to help because we can help so many other things through that both people with the with the actual product whether that's medicinally or recreationally and then also take that money and put it into other places because it is really truly growing like crazy and it's going to grow even more
so totally with you. My mom is actually a mouthful cirrhosis and the doctor recommended sheets have cannabis. So she thinks she's the coolest mom in London right now, but I do want to watch
you mention Plastics as one of the options. It's an interesting topic to be so intrigued by and I've actually never had it on the show before. So where did the entry come from around Plastics? And I guess one of the biggest problems that you're so concerned
by well Plastics, you know, when you live in the US or the UK Plastics are all around you and you have a recycle bin and you're like, oh, yeah, it's all taken care of. So it just looks great. But if you look closer and my eyes have totally changed now because after living
In Indonesia for almost two years and seeing what Plastics are like there and what happens in Southeast Asian the rest of the world where there's not recycling recycling will get into that in a second you start to learn about how Plastics are so prevalent. They're so cheap and they're so pushed on us by the fossil fuel companies and I was on beaches beautiful beaches all around southeast Asia and they were littered with plastics from everywhere in the world and some of the text on the page.
Plastics came from Europe. Some of them came from the US so literally it was The Dumping Ground for all of this plastic and I'm like what's going on? Okay, we just have to get Recycling and that'll be better. So then I dig into recycling. I find out. Oh my God, we either bury or burn almost all of it. Nothing is really recycled. Why because plastic is so cheap and the petroleum companies just want to sell you more and more virgin plastic. Nobody wants to recycle it because it's not worth anything to them. So we go and burn it and there's all these toxic fumes that come off or we bury it and it sits there for
Five to seven hundred years and these micro Plastics are getting into our bloodstreams. They're literally been found in the placental walls of humans and mammals and we see all the stories about whales or dolphins and all these things choking on and everything else. We are literally going to drown in Plastics if we keep this up and I was doing that in Indonesia. You don't see it in the US the UK or whatever, but if you actually walk into something like a Sainsbury's are Marks & Spencer or if you walk into
a Walmart or something. If you go in there, it looks like a sci-fi movie from 2001 everything's in plastic. It's wrapped in plastic and we are buying so much stuff in plastic. Now, if you go into a farmer's market in UK or the us or you go into just general shops in Southeast Asia, you see? Oh my God, this is how food is normally prepared. This is how it's normally bought and sold its that in all these hermetically sealed packages that are going to be around for 500 to 700 years and only degrade into
I think that's going to actually poison us and poison the biology around us. So you start going there's something really wrong here and we have to rethink our relationships with plastics because it's not about recycling because recycling is basically a bunch of bullshit, especially when it comes to single use or low use Plastics versus durable use
plastic help me out. Why is recycling bullshit?
Well, because for the fact that most recycling either ends up burned or buried for one and then the recycling giddy only about five to seven.
Percent of only certain types of plastics are actually recycled and when they're recycled, they're almost always down cycled to something like an ugly chair or Road material or something like that. You know, we're now just starting to see if we can make more bottles with it, but they still mix in a ton of Virgin plastic into it. So there's never been a real economy around Recycling and when I grew up in Detroit in the 70s, they put a 10 cent fee on every bottle and can that was sold with you know, you know
Soda, or you know various other drinks in it. It was ten cents in the 70s when I was like running down the street. We would pick up that tencent can wherever we were and we would take it in we could make 5 10 bucks really fast. The streets were clean and Detroit for all of these cans and bottles we need to do the same thing for plastics. It's amazing to me that we were so far looking in the 70s back then with 10 cents. Just think about it. The 10-cent recycle fee was probably worth way more than that.
Crap that was inside of it, you know sugary water or whatever it was. And so you're just like why can't we do that again? And until we come up with an economy like that around Plastics and we hold people to it, you know, the petroleum industry just tries to Lobby that stuff away right now. We're seeing it with single-use plastic bands and stuff like that. But we need an economy around it. Once we get an economy around it. We're going to see more technology and we're going to see much more upcycling of plastics into things that's said recycling should be only for one kind of use of plastics, which is durable plastic.
Think of car bumpers think about the Plastics like, you know, real
dishware and things like that that we have those are durable applications, but we should not be using single use
non home compostable plastics for forks and you know,
all this stuff at Starbucks and all these other things that we know are
going to just end up being burned or buried
or just littered and go into the environment. We need to think of new Plastics and
new ways of either
reducing stop using entirely or changing out the materials for all these see
Single use kind of areas. Can I ask what you mean by an economy one? And then two I guess I totally stand can us as individuals even individuals with money admittedly use little bit more living impact how we think about Plastics versus actually just government and supranational regulation around it. I
want to say that this is a for a waste in general. This is not just Plastics. We need to transform our economies into circular economies. Not this extract use
Then trash we need to make it fully holistic and there's so many businesses about closing that Loop or changing the loop that are going to be created and are being created now and so an economy is not just one of the materials usage but it's also about the money that flows for both at the time. I don't know about the UK, but in the u.s. Most places have tire recycling fees so car tires, you pay 225 dollars per tire so that when the time you buy something new that debit is put into
To a bank somewhere so that when the tire gets out, there's money there to recycle that Tower and find new uses for the materials inside of that tire. That is an economy. Right so that the trash can turn into treasure again for someone else and so we need more of that to happen around the world. That's the same thing with the carbon economy. Right? We're trying to do cap and trade and carbon pricing so that if people are emitting something that we don't want other people are incentivized to get rid of it or to recycle it or do something with that. So we need a circular economy.
All these things because we have to reuse all of the different things. We have extracted over the years. We have gold mines sitting in landfills all around the world. We just need to extract it. And so we're finding at Future shape all kinds of businesses that literally go in mind Urban mines instead of mine the Earth. Let's go mind the stuff. We've already extracted and get it out of those things. It's a valuable mineral streams again, so we can reuse them and literally just sitting there. Nobody wants to stuff. It's great. So there's lots of innovation to
He had
their can. I just one thing that I think about when I think about kind of funding these Innovations is bluntly we both night. If you've got a data storage solution or an Enterprise SAS products, you'll get 50 other guys willing to fund it guys or girls willing to fund it and series B will see when you go something like this. I mean, it's like Urban mining. I'm kind of I know a lot of VCS after two thousand five hundred shows. I'm scratching my head going, huh? This would be a tough five person this to put together. Do you worry about the lack of life cycle funding given the
Entrance nature of the
projects. I've always thought like we are two myopic in the investment community of like, oh, I just don't need to see the next return like we forget that the computer industry took decades to take off since the 70s and Venture Capital was about long-term 10 15 year kind of returns. We've gotten so hooked on the drug of Social Mobile from 2008 2010. Oh my God, 18 months 36 months then the rise of China and all this stuff and now we're doing it again with specs everybody wants fast.
Money, but we're going to find out the only way we are going to fix this planet and the problems we've created because of fast money over the years is to take these long-term long-term being seven to twelve year kind of initiatives and investing in them because those are the ones that are going to actually make sure we have a healthy Planet. So we have healthy customers to keep a healthy economy going to make sure that investors and businesses can stay operating and continue to bring in returns over time. We can't just keep trashing the place so
People are going to learn investors are going to learn and we're seeing that now with the big banks with ESG goals. We're seeing that with governments now incentivizing we're going to go back to a real Adam space economy because the infrastructure around us is going to entirely change we're seeing Mobility change right in front of our eyes. It's all turning electric or hydrogen powered or what have you across the board all those gas stations. You see everywhere. Those are going to be gone. That's new infrastructure. We're seeing all kinds of robots or manufacturing equipment or blast furnaces.
For making steel cement all of these different things almost every piece of infrastructure around us is going to change in a dramatic way with Adams over the next 10 to 20 years. All these people have been talking software software software. Guess what it's not going to be about electrons that fix this planet. It's going to be about atoms plus electrons and great financing and great economies that are going to make this thing happen. We are going to need tons and tons of atoms to fix the problems we've created and you know, what everything old is new again and yeah,
The industrial era of a hundred hundred fifty years ago. We're going to go back through that same arrow. And we're in at the beginning of it right now and it's amazing to be with these companies that we've been supporting for 5-7 years now and all of a sudden people are waking up to all these ESG goals and investors are in there like calling us get I can't tell you how many calls I've got. I got a speck. What do you have with ESG goals in your portfolio every day because nobody cared about it and all of a sudden everyone cares about it my whole
He has been always zigging while other people are zagging and they always end up coming this way because you know everything works in a way. So I just stay on the track and sooner or later. It's berated. It's like Fidel you're crazy. You're doing the wrong thing. You're on the wrong track. This is not where everyone's going. Go against the herd go with what you think is right go with what you believe in and that's what's always led me down the path even though it's taken 10 or 15 years fast money means you're chasing it as opposed to building something new.
And something important
as everyone says to me like, you know the oversupply of capital the low interest rates going to increase capitals flavor more intervention into startups. And this is the worst time to be anywhere all super- and measurable. I share your perspective a lot more in terms of like the foundational changes to the structure and the fabric of society that we're going to see do you share my optimism overall actually, like we're at the dawn of what will be an even more amazing age in terms of innovation and bluntly being a position to fund
it. Absolutely I
of the fact that we're in the teenager era there is no alternative. We're in Tina right now, like literally everybody's rushing to go find companies that have great technology great things that they can bring to Market and a lot of its around covid or health and stuff like that. We're finally understanding that software doesn't eat the world unless you got Hardware that's attached to it and changing it. Okay, so we're all about systems thinking system system systems and if we always have a negative View and we always take a negative view about this. We're never going to get
And fix the systems that we have with new system. And so you heard jamaat's a Hamas very clear. He's like the first trillionaire in the world is someone who's going to fix climate change. It's true because it's going to be all about atoms and it's going to be about changing the infrastructure around us. So you have to be hopeful if you're not hopeful don't have kids don't be on this planet because the only way we're going to stay and be here and be healthy is if we're cautiously optimistic and we invest in the right things and understand that this is a 20 to 30 year game and there's
Going to be a ton of opportunity, but just do the right thing. And yeah, the money will come. I've always found it the money will come. Can I ask a
question? You said that about systems thinking how do you determine systems think is that that very coordinate that very kind of being when you're speaking to a Founder innovating in urban mining or in your name, whatever field were in and there's signs someone's a systems thinker.
Absolutely. You see people going well, they talk about end-of-life what's going to happen with the product and end-of-life they talk about the
Journey they talked about how they're going to build a platform over time. Now what happens typically is that they first because most investors get scared off because if somebody has a really big Vision investors like no just do this one little thing that's going to be successful and then these entrepreneurs they pitched their much Bolder vision of where they really want to take things, you know, like look at Elon now, but if he was pitching that what he's doing now, 15 years ago people would go no way a few people like Jeff.
Hudson and others were like yeah sure. Okay great. But very few people would get behind that huge boldness. So what they do is and this is what I've had to do is, you know, we had bold Visions for startups we've done and we start and we just pitch just the simple. What's the next three to four years look like and never tell anybody about the big picture because you scare most people off but what I have is I'm like I say to them I'm like, yeah, that's really interesting. But you think about years 5 7 and 10, here's what I think this is going to be and then all of a sudden
See their eyes light up and they go. Yes go. We don't normally talk about it because it scares people in like scare me come on, and they tell me the stuff and I'm like, yes. Now you're thinking big now, you're thinking bold you're thinking much broader about the holistic circular Vision or systems thinking Vision that it's going to take to build something great that's going to be Legacy and it's not just a flash in the
pan. Another thing that you said was kind of the combination of acids and bases and kind of the requirement of both to really succeed moving forwards. Does that change like funding?
Requirements because funding enterprise software or being three devs building a bottoms-up SAS product is fundamentally different to real-world structural changes like we discussed but the funding markets need to change to fit atoms and bits as an innovation
absolutely. So what we're seeing we've done a bunch of Agriculture technology Investments AG Tech Investments and WeatherTech and climate Tech and amazing technology. But at the end of the day when you went to that customer, they were worried about just making ends meet like think
Farmers today most of them unless they're the real big egg guys. They're incredibly suffering and there's suffering around the world almost no Farmer they do it because they love to do it, but they don't really make a lot of money. And so when you bring technology to him, like I see all these farming robot companies, I'm like guys. Yes, it's cool. And we think it's cool. But these people can't afford it and until you figure out how to get it financed. They want the technology. Don't get me wrong. There's lots of early adopter farmers out there that want the technology. They just can't afford it if you can make it affordable. So
Most of our act tech companies are fintech companies first. So we take the technology and this is a perfect example of a company called expert see expert see has figured out how to turn Fish Farms with real hard data with their technology. They created over the last five seven years to help get better financing rates for Farmers to grow their shrimp or their other aquaculture crops so that these people can make cleaner more environmentally friendly crops make more money at it using
Technology, but it's all Finance properly so that they don't have to worry about whether you're going to go bankrupt because they overextended themselves buying new technology. We are going to have to finance so many things and this is where the finance industry can make a ton of money if they start looking at the small medium-sized businesses and start looking at the technology that they could adopt if they were financed properly and there's a lot of money to be made there a ton of money to be made and all of these early
Adopters in many many fields will take to
it very very quickly. If they know they're not going to use their last dollar to buy Tech that may or may not work. Well totally with you that I do have to ask one final thing for the quick fine. It's you know, you mentioned the elements of money there and it's something that I actually think about a lot personally which is like my own relationship to money and how that's maybe changed. I always thought money would make me happy when I had a certain amount and then I realized that I was sitting on my balcony still drinking too much. I'm right at the end of the day as unhappy as ever. How do you think about your
It to money and has it changed
Tony. Yeah, you know it totally changed, you know, to be honest. I always knew that you know, when I was younger when I was in my teens and my 20s, I always said I would never get married until I was financially stable enough so that I could have a family because I knew that money problems were the number one cause of most marital issues and most family issues. So I said I was not going to get married till after I did that so I was focused on that in a positive way, right because I was like, okay great and then ultimately being in
Silicon Valley and all this stuff you start seeing all these other people running around with money and all this stuff, you know, you want more of that you want more of that. I've been lucky enough to go through many many different stages of finances, right? I haven't gone all the way not you know Bezos SRI Lan or whatever else but I can see it and I bet hanging out around with people who have it at that level whatever level you're at. There's always a level above you. I've always seen a level above you and you know, like when is enough is enough and I have like little
Over the last four or five years gotten rid of stuff. Like I haven't driven a car in over a year. Like I sold a bunch of cars. I've sold house. I'm like, you don't need all this stuff like you think you get there and then you're like, oh I'm here but that's not fun. This isn't great. I got all this stuff. I thought I wanted and then, you know, we even bought a house because we could and then it's like we don't need that house get rid of it. Right like some things are just because you think you want it and then when you get here like oh, that's just
A bunch of headaches and you get rid of it. So my relationship to money now is like that's just a means to make change happen. And so literally for me I can just have a backpack my computer my phone my you know, what have you a couple of roller bags with my clothes and that's enough to live life with my family. I don't need all this other stuff and covid even taught me that right like even further. So for me money is just a means to get things done. If it's trying to Define you if you're trying to make a lifestyle out of it if you're always like I got to have champagne in.
Happy hour every day. It's like yeah, that's kind of not the person I want to hang around with
I was with a mental this morning. He was very very wealthy. And he said the hardest thing is not making money. It's giving it away effectively actually.
Yeah, and people don't understand the responsibilities. Once you have it. You don't know how much time and energy you spend like figuring out what to do with it both philanthropic lie it also just managing and make sure you do the right things with it. It's not like freedom and then what else will comes with that and we talked about this at the beginning of the conversation all these people wanting to be your friend.
When that's not what they want to be so yeah. Okay great. But yeah focus on something else. You know, I'm just in a t-shirt now, I'm not like sitting here wearing diamonds and all these other.
No I'm with you. I actually wore brings you the most happiness in the most energy and it's like Blondie is doing conversations like this where I have like completely neglected the schedule. I
do want to move into a
quick-fire an attorney. So I say shortly. Yeah
ready? Yeah ready? Okay.
What's the favorite book? And why Tony what must I read
I've said this many times but thinking fast and slow by
No common is one of the best and I just got the galleys for his new book noise that he did was a couple collaborators. I just got it. So I'm going to read it. But I'm assuming noise is going to be even better than that but thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman is incredibly important because it teaches you so much about how people think and why we're in the political situation. We're in how social networks work how you make decisions why the crazy stock market is the way it is now thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. What do you
believe that most?
Do you
disbelieve I think we discussed it. You got to be nice. You got to be liked. It's like no no, no, you got to be respected and you got to speak your mind and be damned if people don't like you for a little while. Typically they'll come around and respect you so it's like say the tough things because we're only on this planet for so long and stop all the niceties and let's get to business because that's what we do. So stop everyone's like I got to be like because if I'm not like my business dies like no be respected and then you're going to have more business lined up than you could think and
People who you want to like you probably the wrong people important one for me. And I love this
one what three trains would you like your children to have
hard work for the right reasons work hard for doing something that's meaningful for the world. Beyond yourself. Don't focus on the money be kind but be direct be fair be ethical be moral in all the things that you do and then the third one is take risks and understand with risks. You're going to have a roller coaster ride. Sometimes it's fun sometimes not but take risks have those butterflies.
Flies in your
stomach penultimate one and this is a tough one, but it's just me. And you said it's totally fine. But here's the best board member that you've worked with and why
official board member I would say would be Randy komisar Randy komisar. He's straight. He and I both had Bill Campbell is a mentor. He saw things that other people didn't see he backed you up. He stood behind you. He told you when you were screwing up and he let you make mistakes too. He let you make mistakes, but he was always there and he still is there so yeah, Randy.
Of that one. So final one one that is five years old for you. And I guess like what's Tony's plan?
I follow my gut. I follow my nose. So that's how it's been for all my life is just I would have never believed I would have been living in Indonesia. I don't try to predict where things are going. I just follow my nose and what I'm curious about and so I can't wait to see the dramatic things that are going to happen on this planet in a good way with amazing entrepreneurs and the teams.
Around them both inside the company as well as the investors and financiers and everyone. We're going to see a tremendous set of companies that are going to actually do really great things for the planet and I am so ready to see that, you know, their self driving cars and self flying planes and all that stuff. Yeah, whatever I care about the stuff that my kids and my grandkids and my great-grandkids are going to need and that is going to be really really
Awarding
tiny we said about kind of money and you know what drives one. They honestly it is conversations like this, which just make me happy as a person and so grateful student ID. So thank you so much for doing this, and I'm sorry for going so way would on the schedule.
No worries hurry, and you know, hopefully we'll talk in five years or maybe sooner about the future and maybe we'll even have even better things to say, but let's be hopeful, let's be cautiously optimistic and let's make the future happen. So thanks Harry and thanks for having me on I really appreciate it.
I didn't know about you, but I think
That was one of the best shows we've done. I think Tony is just one of the most inspiring incredible individuals that I've been fortunate enough to have on the show. I want to say a huge. Thank you to Tony, you know, as I said that we did not stick to the schedule at all. And he was so accommodating. So a huge thank you for that. If you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, of course, you can on Instagram @ H demings 1996 with two bees. However, before we leave you today, I have to say I just love using AngelList fund admin platform to manage my investments the team platform on AngelList takes care of all my back office.
So that I can focus on working with great Founders leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into six thousand startups via AngelList all online and all in one place and with recently announced rolling funds. You can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on AngelList.com forward slash rolling and speaking of amazing products there with AngelList last month. I had Jeff cyber and Wayne Chang on the show from digits simply put they're two of the best Founders. I've met and they're creating the most intuitive Financial software. You've ever used automatically analyzing your
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If I'm in the world with 50 plus years working with VCS. They help VC's Foreman managed funds make investments and handle the Myriad of issues that arise throughout a funds lifetime to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing vc-backed companies going public had over to KU d.com. Check out Cooley go.com. Also as always I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you off first founder from Latin America C mon borrero found and CEO rappy on the show on Thursday.
