Village Global Podcast

Jim Rutt (@jim_rutt) joins Erik on this episode. He is an entrepreneur, technologist, research fellow, and host of The Jim Rutt Show.Note that this episode contains adult language and may not be suitable for listening in all situations.They discuss:- The change in the ethos of business over the last several decades, and why it’s now the case in Jim’s opinion that “honesty and good faith is a sucker strategy.”- Why Jim is no longer an Ayn Randian.- How to change politics and society via the Game B movement.- How to design better political systems.- What liquid democracy entails and how it might be able to solve some of the problems of the current system.- His argument against the idea of having less voice but more opportunity to exit in political systems.- The problems he sees with Bitcoin.- His learnings from his study of cognitive psychology.- What a “gigantism tax” on huge corporations would look like.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.

Erik is joined on this episode by JD Ross (@justindross) and Sean Linehan (@seanlinehan). JD is co-founder of Opendoor and Sean is co-founder of Placement and former VP of Product at Flexport.They discuss:- What Sean is doing with Placement and his personal story for where the idea came from.- How they “navigated the idea maze” and what they learned from the ideating they did.- What has led to the rise of the ISA and their thoughts on the space.- How they think about working in spaces that are highly regulated.- The future of San Francisco as a tech hub.- Why the next evolution in the US economy will be a shift to an “experience economy.”- Their thoughts on charter cities, and why JD says there could be a new city built from scratch in the US today.- The idea of “skills debt” as analogous to technical debt.- Some of their ideas around new forms of private equity.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Andrew Kortina (@kortina) joins Erik on this episode. He is the co-founder of Venmo and Fin.They talk about:- How he became interested in the US tax code and what changes he might like to see made to it.- The insights from his examination of how the US government spends its money.- Capitalism, inequality, and how to ensure everyone can live a life with dignity.- Status signalling through consumption and how to fix the inefficiency of conveying information through goods.- Tribalism as a predictive model.- What David Foster Wallace predicted about the internet and culture today, and what he might be writing about if he was still alive.- Capitalism as an artificial intelligence.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Zachary Stein (zakstein.org) joins Erik on this episode. He is a writer, educator, and futurist. They discuss:- Why he says that all institutions are fundamentally educational institutions.- The crises that humankind is facing and how to make our way through them.- The new educational paradigms he foresees.- What it means to be psychologically sovereign.- The history of measurement and the fact that prior to a few hundred years ago, no one knew how old they actually were.- How to resolve the paradox that what matters cannot be measured and yet it is difficult to improve or make progress without measuring. - Why he says that throughout capitalism there have rarely been true markets.- His thoughts on globalization and interconnectedness.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan), economist and author. They have a wide-ranging discussion on a number of different topics.They discuss:- The case for open borders and the underappreciated benefits of immigration.- His responses to some of the common arguments against increased immigration.- Why he thinks that universal basic income is a “terrible idea.”- His thoughts on the charter cities movement.- His most impactful (and controversial) policy recommendations.- Why he says that all politicians have been populists, but without the rough edges that Trump has.- His opinion on the Hobbes vs. Rousseau debate.- Gene editing, population growth, Austrian economics, education, and much more.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe), joins Erik on this episode. He is an author, entrepreneur, and investor.On this episode they talk about:- The basics of the thesis that markets are eating the world and how Taylor became interested in the idea.- The implications of markets becoming more prevalent in every aspect of life.- How smart contracts and the blockchain enable markets to eat the world.- How closely related the idea that software is eating the world is to the idea that markets are.- Some of the arguments against the idea and Taylor’s responses to them.- The key questions for the future.- What an investment firm with this thesis would invest in or what their requests for startups would be.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Samo Burja (@SamoBurja), founder of Bismarck Analysis, joins Erik for this episode. You can find him on Medium at medium.com/@samo.burja. They talk about:- Whether capitalism and democracy are incompatible and what the future holds for democracy.- Why economists need to look inside companies to learn from their cultures, not just at the relations between companies.- Why the grey hoody is as much a worker’s uniform as the suit of the 1950s was.- The coming merger of east and west coast media companies.- China, the trade war, and the effects of the country expanding its influence in Europe and the Middle East.- Why the big story of the 21st century that everyone is missing is that the Indian Ocean will become the hub of the world economy.- Why he’s skeptical about the extent to which crypto will decentralize society.- What people misunderstand about Henry Kissinger’s approach to geopolitics.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Tiago Forte (@fortelabs), creator of Building a Second Brain, founder of Forte Labs, and writer at Praxis.They talk about:- Why productivity is not an end in and of itself.- Why content creation (not just consumption) is integral to your career.- How to better deal with the 11 hours of media a day that the average person consumes.- Why the “average human life is now too complex to be managed by the average human brain.”- Why hyperfocus and intense productivity are symptoms of trauma, and how to deal with that trauma.- The theory of constraints and why it’s so powerful.- Religion and meaning-making for the secular world.- The future of libraries and why Tiago calls them “digital nomad embassies.”Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

This is a special live episode that was recorded at Village HQ in San Francisco on June 14 2018. It originally aired on July 4 2018. The event was put on in partnership with Xoogler, a network of former Googlers who have come together to help each other with their startup ambitions.Village Global co-founder Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) chatted with Jo Varshney (@jo_getter), founder and CEO of VeriSIM Life and Kiran Bellubbi (@smalldozes), founder of Keyo, about their experience with the Village Network Catalyst program.Jo and Kiran explain what it was like to be a founder in Network Catalyst, including how the team at Village helped them with their business model, leveraged Village's unique structure as a network to their advantage, and guided them through the fundraising process.Remember: applications for the winter 2019 vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator are due September 20 2019 — make sure to apply before then. Check out more info below.Village Global’s Network Catalyst accelerator is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply before September 20 at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.

Erik interviews Elliot Olds (@elliot_olds) on this episode. He is a thinker on AI, crypto, economics and prediction markets.(Remember — applications for the winter vintage of our network catalyst accelerator are due September 20 — make sure to apply before then. Check out more info below.)They talk about:- The merits of prediction markets, and why they can be thought of as a “meta solution” akin to a generalized AI- The technical and political hurdles that prediction markets face- The most prominent arguments against prediction markets and the responses to them - The idea that markets are eating the world and its implications- Whether it would be wise to outsource your personal decisions to the crowd- Governance in crypto- What it would take to make prediction markets mainstream Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.________Village Global’s Network Catalyst accelerator is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply before September 20 at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.