We The Builders

Special Episode of We The Builders from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: Conversation with David Friedberg on rise and fall of empires, the state of US economy, robots as an economic platform, what has changed since the Winning AI Race Summit featuring President Trump, reindustrialization, the end of institutional education and of course the California bankruptcy. Watch on Youtube:Timestamps:01:21 - Shifting landscape between Silicon Valley and DC02:51 - AI has become a political attack vector 04:46 - Late-stage empires and the impact of national debt07:03 - Potential for AI to rewrite the story of US economy08:26 - AI’s recent performance and productivity gains10:03 - Bullish outlook on humanoid robots11:16 - Robots as a platform for economic mobility13:41 - Reindustrialization and energy production challenges15:15 - The “functionally bankrupt” status of California16:50 - The declining value of institutional education18:46 - Personalized AI-driven tutoring as the future20:01 - Emerging private sector models for education This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

IntroNew SciFi writing and film started declining at the end of the 20th century and we have seen a continued decline in the first quarter of the 21st century. Sci-fi is and always has been the source of inspiration for a better future. It is where the greatest builders of our time got inspired to work on the hardest problems of their era. Whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars or the Foundation Series, if you talk to entrepreneurs building frontier technologies or products; people like Elon Musk, Brett Adcock, Peter Beck, Blake Scholl, Sam Altman, you will likely hear about one of these series as a childhood inspiration. Friend of the show, Packy McCormick (Episode 14) did a post called the SciFi Idea Bank which lists about 3,000 ideas that haven’t been brought to life. I think one of the biggest reasons nobody is talking about those ideas or listing them as inspiration is because they haven’t become part of the culture. Series like Harry Potter or Star Wars became cultural movements for generations, something people from different age groups could connect on. It has been 49 years since the first Star Wars movie came out. Half a century later, over Christmas break or summer holidays, I know of families who still binge watch the entire series together as an activity. It has been 25 years since the first Harry Potter movie came out, it has had a similar impact on culture. We are living in the age of shorts and reels. Majority of the new creators have flocked to engagement baiting reels that are usually under five minutes. The purpose is getting eyeballs for advertisers. I am probably guilty of this, that is one of the ways we promote our podcast. Taking out the time to write the script for a film, recruiting a cast, iterating through the creative process, discarding hundreds of ideas, finding a way to finance it with your own money or from your profits would be kind of the antithesis of what you would do as a revenue strategy. Well, not if you have the right masterplan. Jason has been doing film and media for 15 years. This is his life’s work. He is one of the most long-term oriented, focused and mission driven entrepreneurs I have met. Before this he was Head of Content Strategy at Astranis where he got to see the science make story real. He has a deep understanding and realization of the depth of the crisis we are in when it comes to SciFi film and television and the role it plays in inspiring the future generation. You can see the decline of new SciFi ideas in the chart below:Someone had to raise their hand and say I am going to change this. That is how we got every great invention in the history of science, tech and culture. Jason is leading the SciFi renaissance and is on a mission to make SciFi great again. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did recording it. Their 2nd SciFi film, The Greatest Lie is going to be in theatre April 2nd. You can get your tickets here. Watch on YouTube:Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction02:15 - The making of "Planet" and relearning fiction 06:53 - Why good stories start with novel prose 11:31 - How Astranis gave Jason permission to build a sci-fi studio 15:18 - Why sci-fi writing dropped in the 1970s and why we need it back 21:15 - Sci-fi as the 21st century's latest addition to human philosophy 25:19 - Creation of safeguards for a spacefaring civilization 29:58 - Space Warfare and realistic combat rabbit hole 34:04 - Why bureaucracies fail and the magic of Bell Labs 41:05 - Lessons in leadership46:58 - The biggest risk of hiring all your friends 52:02 - Bootstrapping the company and using the profits to fund movies59:39 - Inspiring the next generation through sci-fi books 1:05:11 - YouTube Strategy1:11:36 - Lessons on marketing1:15:34 - The launch video bubble1:22:15 - Closing thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Seth Berman, cofounder of Susa and Kivu Ventures and early seed investor behind Robinhood and Flexport. He recounts the early days of angel investing and the explosion of seed funds. He explains why he shifted to Series A/B, explores vertical AI and physical intelligence, and discusses where talent and opportunities in robotics, agriculture, and niche AI will come from.

Who is Ali Jehangir Siddiqui and why I was interested in having a conversation with him?Ali is an entrepreneur, investor, diplomat and industrialist. When I first met Ali in 2017, he was the Special Assistant to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of Pakistan. For my friends in the US, that would be like the President’s Chief of Staff. He also didn’t need the job. He had built one of Pakistan’s fastest growing banks in JS Bank (now over $4B in assets), built the largest carbon-neutral private steel industries in the UAE (Arabian Gulf Steel Industries), founded the first private domestic airline with AirBlue and was central to growing the Jahangir Siddiqui Group into easily the Top 10 family business empires out of Pakistan. I recently got interested in the history of patronage which got me into the history of Medici family from Renaissance Europe, one of the wealthiest families in the 15th century. When we caught up after recording the episode, I was curious about whether Ali had studied them before starting the bank given his interest in Austrian and European history — unsurprisingly he had deeply studied both the Medici and Fugger families before starting the bank. Given the unique range and adaptability Ali has shown by reinventing himself in different industries every few years (venture capital & private equity, commercial airline, steel & glass manufacturing, foreign diplomacy, climate-tech to name a few) it would be fair to categorize him as a Renaissance Man of our era at the heart of building and growing what future historians will probably refer to as the House of Jahangir Siddiqui (JS Group). Ali and I reconnected last year after seven long years. Even though we have had limited interactions, he has had some of the most formative impact on my life trajectory and career since I have met him. I will share those exact moments in a bit but first some context is important on where I was at in life at the time. I was working on playing my part in growing a still nascent entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country by organizing business plan competitions in 20+ universities across the country. I was doing this as the head of Pakistan’s national campus program for Hult Prize Foundation which would grant $1 million to a team of student entrepreneurs working on a specific challenge every year. This took me to New York City to the annual final event where $1 million is awarded which overlapped with the UNGA week which brings together all world leaders. Ali was in town as part of the Prime Minister’s delegation and was helping coordinate high stakes meetings with other heads of states, billionaires and so forth in a very short three day trip. On that same trip, I was introduced to Ali through a mutual to discuss potential collaboration opportunities with the government. Ali was gracious enough to carve out time for me, my colleague and the Hult Prize winning team that year. At the end of the meeting, he came up to me and said that he is close with the Prime Minister and his sons and that I should become friends with them. He scheduled a 45-min meeting for all of us and the rest as they say, is history. What did that particular instance do? It showed me that if you are ambitious and you work hard, there is some sense of meritocracy in the world. That you in fact can change the trajectory of your life. It showed me that anything is possible and people are just people at the end of the day even if they have fancy titles or 20-car motorcades. I did not come from the wealthiest family or the most powerful but was able to open doors, that changed how I have looked at life ever since. After I was back in the country, I kept nagging Ali and his chief of staff at the time and would try to meet him for all sorts of stuff. My different business ideas at the time, my job and just try to learn from him by finding an excuse to spend some time together. During one of these trips to the Prime Minister’s office, he showed me this app called RelSci where you could list your most powerful/well networked connections and map out an exact path to anyone in the world. This taught me that anyone in the world is at most six degrees removed. Donald Trump was President at the time, just as an experiment I checked for a path to him and saw that Ali was four degrees removed. It would later turn out that he would get appointed as the Ambassador to the U.S and thus I would be one degree removed. I never asked for any introduction, well at 21 I wasn’t doing something that would warrant the request for such introductions but it taught me a critical lesson: relationships run the world and anyone including the President of the United States is at most six degrees removed from you. In this conversation:We talk about the pros and cons of the CEO role in companies, optimizing your career around your strengths, cold outreach, taking over a successful family business, spotting and nurturing outlier talent, consuming media and making sense of the world, the concept of rules being counterintuitive to innovation, the concept of shorting people, the art of relationships, mentorship, evaluating opportunity costs and more. Watch on YoutubeTimestamps00:00 - Introduction01:31 - On doing his first ever long form podcast06:24 - Operating philosophy and not taking CEO roles 13:28 - On optimizing his career around strengths 17:00 - Lessons from working with one of Asia’s largest VC firm21:30 - Social media presence and identity24:00 - Media diet, continuous learning, questioning institutional programming & making sense of the world 33:00 - The art of cold outreach, warm intros and 40:20 - Spotting, hiring and nurturing outlier talent54:25 - Ambition, problem-solving archetype56:00 - Taking over a successful family business1:04:25 - Talent retention 1:14:55 - Mentorship1:21:00 - The concept of rules is counterintuitive to innovation1:24:31 - Evolution of venture capital1:32:06 - The art of relationships 1:38:13 - Shorting people 1:41:16 - What is more important? The network or the product?1:51:01 - Building OnZero 02:01:25 - Evaluating opportunity cost and the 10 year plan 2:10:30 - Closing thoughts and rapid fire This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

I had a conversation with Jonathan about choosing what to work on, getting the government as a customer, fundraising and how too much money can hurt the culture, favorite interview questions and more. Check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts or right here on Substack. Sharing some of my highlights below. How do you know you are working on a problem worth solving? - You can feel if you’re solving a big enough problem for someone through their like reactions to things, such as people falling off chairs in conference rooms as we showed them what we could do.What does product market fit feel like?- Early government customers literally bought Chainalysis on expense credit cards and used emails that didn’t have real government affiliation.How do you sell to the government? - The core strategy in selling to the government is: how do you make people’s careers?How much of growth fundraising is about financial vs. the story? People get behind the story and even very very smart people look at numbers differently depending on how emotionally bought in to the story they are.Watch on YouTube:Timestamps00:00 - Introduction04:11 - Growing up as an immigrant in London and the “chip on my shoulder”09:18 - Why market sequencing is critical16:23 - Choosing to take up the CEO role and the domain of sales23:20 - Early transformational experiences and the entrepreneurial bug26:13 - How to penetrate the government30:57 - Importance of storytelling, emotional and intellectual storytelling38:26 - Raising funds and why too much money can hurt a culture42:23 - Lessons in creating a culture48:50 - How to hire executives55:44 - Jonathan’s favorite interview questions and hiring philosophy1:02:09 - Exciting things in the next 20 years1:06:44 - The “two-stage rocket” of fundraising1:11:45 - Loneliness of being a CEO1:12:55 - Rapid fire and closing questions This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Bharat Vasan, serial entrepreneur and leader of Intangible building 3D communication tools with generative AI. He reflects on how a military upbringing shaped adaptability. They explore founder identity, culture as a tiny cult, co-founder dynamics, followership, resource allocation, and how to balance mission, people and storytelling in building companies.

Mike Solana, media entrepreneur and founder of Pirate Wires who built new-media brands and ran marketing at Founders Fund. He talks about building a memorable editorial voice and small, high-leverage teams. He explains why email is the last free distribution channel and why creators should own audiences. He also discusses cultural projects, advertising wins, and the tradeoffs of platform choice.

Mike Maples Jr., early-stage investor and Floodgate co-founder who seeded Twitter, Lyft and Twitch, joins to discuss founders who break patterns. He explores startups as movements, storytelling tailored to customers/investors/employees, and how insight, refusal and heresy create breakthroughs. He also explains Floodgate’s seed-only approach and how they find and support founders long before pitches.

Packy McCormick, founder of Not Boring and Not Boring Capital, is a writer-investor known for deep, long-form tech essays. He recounts starting on Substack, building a personal monopoly, and how writing became deal flow. He breaks down strategy, vertical integrators, Ramp vs Brex, creator-to-venture models, and how research, formats, and slow craft shape his work.

New Year’s Eve special: I recorded this one at the Founders Fund office on Nov 6, 2024, right after election day. It was originally scheduled to be over zoom but I read Delian’s blog post called “Thirty Observations at Thirty” where one of the things he talked about was prioritizing in-person whenever possible so I decided to make the trip to Miami. Delian dropped out of MIT, became a Thiel Fellow, a program with ~300 fellows who have started companies valued at over $750B. I saw a chart according to which Thiel Fellowship has a 5.9% unicorn hit rate, which probably makes it the best program for entrepreneurs ever. We will cover this story with friend of the pod Danielle Strachman who built the program in Q1 2026 but for now, sharing a tweet below to sum it up:He interned at Square $XYZ when it was around ~100 employees, got to see Jack Dorsey at work and got to meet operators like Kieth Rabois who he would go on to work with at Khosla Ventures. This would turn out to be an apprenticeship that put him on the path to be one of the best seed investors in the industry. His record as a seed investor:Ramp is now valued at $32B, Hadrian and Sword are also unicorns and Varda is going to be probably be the biggest among them. (Disclaimer: I am a proud tiny shareholder in the company) The narrative around why college doesn’t work at least in my echo chamber is well understood but I wanted to ask Delian what college was actually useful for so we had a conversation around that. We also talk about that, the experience at Square, what led to the apprenticeship with Kieth Rabois, learning cult building and the very Silicon Valley like pay-it-forward culture of mentoring from the college fraternity and up-skilling for Varda Space among other things. Delian on the incredible access and opportunity of working with Kieth as his chief of staff of sorts:“Maybe you have to get a diet coke or coffee but you get to be in an Affirm board meeting with Max Levchin” Happy New Year and hope you enjoy!Timestamps00:00 - Intro00:30 - Writing and Flow State05:12 - Dropping Out 12:13 - What MIT was good for20:16 - Early days at Square25:16 - Parents reaction to joining Thiel Fellowship29:44 - Transferrable skills from frat days34:02 - Lessons from Keith Rabois45:15 - Building Varda52:58 - How Mafias are built57:53 - Culture at VardaWatch on YouTube This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us