Welcome to the Free Cities podcast.
My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this episode number 139 of the Free Cities podcast.
Well, today's show is sponsored, as always, by our most fantastic supporters
and the purveyors of the best luxury freedom-oriented communities in Latin America.
That's right, Veritas Village Coronado in Panama, to be more specific.
and yes i'm being specific because they have just announced a new community in panama that's the
chirokee veritas village only a few minutes drive from the costa rica border same setup as coronado
solar powered homes close to nature but also amenities a community of freedom lovers health
and convenience on your doorstep there's a new hospital seven minutes away and an international
airport 30 minutes away anyway www.ecovillages.life forward slash free cities for more info on their
Coronado development if you're interested in the new one you'll have to send them a direct message
through that page there's not a lot of info out there yet they are marketing it to their loyal
customers first and it's hot off the presses anyway mention us if you have dealings with them
many thanks okay announcement over today's show is a very unique one it is in fact the first show
i have ever recorded that was not done in person now you know me i'm an in-person podcast nazi
is one way you could put it i suppose always have been and i know i've broken my own rule here but
There is a reason. Let me digress.
Nicholas Anzinger is a Prospera resident and the co-founder of Infinita City,
which is a science and biotech network city also based in Prospera.
What's interesting for us, though, and the reason for this conversation in the first place,
is that Nicholas has been at the heart of community building in Prospera for longer than anyone else I can think of.
The story is that a few weeks ago I spoke to a gentleman by the name of Gonzalo Hall on this podcast.
He's a digital nomad influencer who's been involved in setting up very popular nomad villages
and who recently became aware of the Free Cities ecosystem.
That's episode 130, by the way, titled Why Most Digital Nomads Have Never Heard of Prospera.
yes excuse the incendiary title but it helps with clicks anyway um obviously as a new person
in the space there is a little bit of i've just discovered free cities and i'm here to fix them
but truthfully as a fresh face in the ecosystem with a history of community building gonzalo
is also the perfect person to hear their opinion on what's going on and i got that in our previous
interview when he was quite vocal about what he thought Prospera was doing wrong on the PR and
community building side. Anyway, Nicholas got in touch after that episode and said, hey, let me tell
you what's actually going on here. So this episode is a bit of a kind of reply to the Gonzalo Hall
episode, but also an update on what's happening on the ground in Prospera. Obviously, with Nicholas
residing on a tropical island in Honduras and myself in the hills of the Welsh borders. My
Free Cities podcast budget didn't quite stretch to a Prospera trip in order to record in person.
Yes, even with all the new paying subscribers on Fountain. I know, hard to believe, isn't it? Anyway,
we hooked up online a few days ago and here's the lowdown and latest from Prospera from someone
who's living there and running a successful business in what we all know as the most well-known
free city in the world quick summary from fountain about the episode this conversation centers on
prospera and how its community navigates public relations and skepticism particularly in response
to criticisms by influencer consalo hall nicholas shares his journey to prospera through his ventures
infinita vc and infinita city the discussion addresses misconceptions about prospera
concerns about its effect on the nearby crawfish rock community and the political challenges
related to honduras's reputation nicholas highlights efforts to build trust through
community engagement correcting misinformation and attracting investment while positioning
infinita as a layer two business helping prospera scale despite new backing from figures like brian
armstrong and balaji nicholas emphasizes the long-term effort needed to build a sustainable
and appealing community pretty much does what it says on the tin there this will be the most
up-to-date information on prospera you'll probably get today hot off the presses or the view from the
trenches as i like to say anyway thanks again nicholas and to my fountain subscribers helping
to keep this content flowing you'll always be the ogs the first ones to support us regularly cb
bullish mike matthias cousin vinnie dovidas christopher albanese many thanks for your
support and don't forget as a subscriber which you can do via the fountain app you get early access
to some shows like the three and a half hour epic with the extremely popular ben gunn which ran a
couple of weeks ago and bonus episodes on the following weeks after those two part episodes
the latest bonus episode is with gg if you know who gg is you'll know how interesting that episode
is right time to dream about leaving your god forsaken overtaxed and overregulated life
and move to a tropical island in Central America as you sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Nicholas Anziger.
Yes, as I was saying, that's part of the reason why I don't like doing online interviews.
um yeah the other reason i'm much preferring person but it's just like difficult with all
the other stuff well yeah exactly but you see here's my theory like i say as a filmmaker is
that um if you if you really can be bothered it does make a difference it certainly makes a
difference to me for example if i sit down if i put some earphones in and i listen to a podcast
that was recorded in person my experience is a thousand times better it's worth it even though
it's an absolute ball like traveling around and doing all the lugging all your gear and stuff
and yeah sure i could put out two episodes a week probably as well if i was doing it online but um
i find the conversation very difficult when the person's not there i don't know how you you do all
yours online right yeah um i i mean i wouldn't say the difference is a thousand times right i enjoy
in person much better personally as an interviewer but the listening experience i don't know it's hard
to say for me i listen to lots of other podcasts and i'm not sure i can tell the difference
but it's definitely easier to organize for me to get all these interviews especially with like
running a whole company as well yeah oh no i can definitely tell i think i don't know it's just
even the background noise you know uh things like that matter to me and also i just find the general
um i don't know maybe i'm probably from a different generation to you as well i think
you're very much more of a kind of pro at that so i but you're also pro at that so i think you
have much more of an you you look at or listen to details that i don't correct yeah anyway well
it's good to see you anyway and i should probably give a little bit of background
behind this um i think we did actually meet once quite a long time ago in prad adopting bitcoin
in el salvador that's right we did we did you were just getting started with the podcast so
really impressive how how big it's become now yeah we did funnily enough we started the we
started in prosper that was we started with that we we sort of launched in prosper which was great really when you probably when i look back in if i still alive in another 30 years as well
it will seem quite a monumental thing how long have you been how long have you been in prosper
yourself in australia since 2022 right and i came there for the first time late march and i've
basically been there since. What brought you there in 2022? I read Scott Alexander's blog post,
right? Which was April, 2021, right? So it's the famous Bay Area blogger. He wrote an article
called Prospectus on Prospera, which was very thorough and very interesting and stimulating.
He highlighted everything that was interesting about Prospera and that got Prospera actually
quite a lot of interest from investors and like myself right so that article was very important
i think in their history and um you were you what were you doing at the time like what was it that
you were looking for that that meant that that kind of like grabbed your attention so i was a
nomad right so i listened to your podcast recently with gongelo right so i think there's something
to exploring that thesis which is which i should say as well that is the whole point of this
conversation and the reason we're actually recording it yeah like over the internet because
we both live in very different countries and i just can't get out to see you just for one interview
but i think it's an important conversation to have because like i was about to say earlier you're
you're kind of responding in a way to what gonzalo was talking about which was
so if you look back at um episode 130 if you're listening to this um gonzalo hall who's a sort of
like a digital nomad influencer type guy had just kind of heard about prospera um and the whole free
cities movement in general i mean he's gone he's dived feet first in now but when i had a conversation
with him he he was he was baffled at the way that prospera was dealing with its kind of community
and public relations and all this kind of stuff,
which is kind of like his expertise.
He started the first co-working space in Madeira
and turned it into a huge project and things like that.
And Nicholas, who's been basically living on Prospera since 2022
and who's probably at the heart of the community on Prospera,
I would say, sent me a message and said,
hey, look, you know, like, let me tell you what's going on at Prospera then.
And so this is why this conversation's happened.
And sure, I'd love to do it in person,
but flying out to Prospera for one interview is a little bit too above my budget.
But anyway, so carry on. Sorry to butt in.
Yeah, we were digital nomads at the time, and that was because of COVID.
I met my now wife just then, basically in the first week before the lockdowns and the travel restrictions started.
So I was on a business trip in New York in March 2020,
and we had this like legendary 24 hour before sunrise date, very romantic. And then we went
our separate ways. I went back to Berlin at the time when I was living and she stayed in New York
and we planned to reunite after and book flights to London. But then all flights were canceled
because of COVID. And we select, no, now we just met someone so special. So we said, all right,
we're going to go to the first country to let both of us in. Right. And so we held out for like
four and a half months, kept talking every day. And kind of one of our premises was that we wanted
to A, see the world and B, go after our wildest and most ambitious dreams and kind of start our
own businesses. Right. So four and a half months later, we reunited in Croatia and basically from
then on put our lives in backpacks and were mobile. And for those two years, until we came
to Prosper, we were kind of exploring different businesses, started different projects. And we
were also discovering that Mexico was the ultimate travel hack because Mexico was easy to get in and
out of. From Mexico, you can go to the United States and Europe and it was easy to get in.
So for an American or the European, that was the ideal place. And that's where we got into
Latin American culture. That's where we discovered just how much arbitrage there is when you earn
sort of a Western salary in dollars and then live in a place like Mexico, especially Mexico City,
how much of a great life you can have there. And then I read the article on Prospera,
And it wasn't that far.
So we were quite flexible.
So we were like, let's check this out.
And then I felt, both of us felt from that trip that there was something very special
going on here that we want to be a part of.
Did you already have a business idea before that you were thinking of implementing in
Prospera?
Because obviously that's one of the biggest attractions to Prospera for most people, because
there's plenty of beautiful places you can live around the world.
Prospera is one of those places.
it's on the beach it's a little tropical island it's lovely but really what probably attracts most
people is the opportunity regulatory or or you know tax or whatever you know yeah i think uh yes
and no in a way or or in a i think the story is quite good right so i was actually thinking about
the kind of things that i would need prosper for before i knew it existed right so i was a founder
mostly in like big data and analytics. So I knew how to well handle large data sets and things like
that. And I wanted to go into one of the biggest industries with and solve some of the biggest
problems in the world. And healthcare seemed kind of obvious to me because of COVID. And I learned
that we have all this amazing science and technology available. But at the same time, the path for new
inventions, new drugs, new therapies to get to market, it's like super long, right? During the
pandemic, we had all these crazy restrictions. We had all these like blockages of like testing by
the CDC. And also like operation warp speed was better than usual. But then afterwards, we weren't
like iterating and sort of inserting the vaccines within your genome sequencing. So it would be more
effective for subsequent variants. So all that struck me as tremendously irrational. And sort of
doing a business in this super regulated space just doesn't make sense. You can add small band-aids
in some parts of the system, potentially make a lot of money with it, but you can't really
fundamentally change or fix it. We have a sick care system and that's very much hard-coded into
the regulations. And then I kind of went down the whole rabbit hole of Milton Friedman, David
Friedman, Tom Sowell, and also the whole public choice theory thing. And it was kind of understanding
that's systematic. It's due to the way we do regulations. But it was kind of just an
intellectual curiosity. And I was always like, hey, you should do a real business. Eventually,
you need to make an income. And you should stick to what you know. And that was kind of,
hey, build something with software and build analytics. So I was actually working on a
different software that was unrelated to that, nothing regulatory. But I had these two things
in my mind. On the one hand, my mind was gravitating towards that, but I just didn't know
how to. And I was listening or reading about sea setting at the time, but it just seemed utopian
to me. And I was like, hey, I'm an entrepreneur. I want to build something that can actually make
a difference. And then I came to Prosper and there was just an unlock. There was just like,
all of a sudden, how I was thinking about the world and what seemed now practically possible
were coming together, right? Hey, some of the stuff like the faster path to market, the regulatory,
the problems with housing regulations, the problems with education, all of that,
we can do different here. Like here's this flexible system where you can design sort of
new or different regulations. And that's then led me down to basically start with Infinita VC,
the VC fund, because I could share all these ideas or connect with all these startups that
were at the forefront and directly facing these regulatory barriers. And I'm also doing a podcast
about that called Stranded Technologies. And then sort of halfway in, after one and a half years,
I kind of realized, you know, Prosper really needs a growth industry. It really needs to prove
that this governance innovation can solve some of the biggest problem in the world.
And to me, just the most scalable and highest upside area just seemed to me biotech and
healthcare.
Sort of back into what I was starting to originally think about.
And basically, if we're able to solve the problem for one biotech company to go to market
and eventually go to a big market like the United States, then we could do it for hundreds
of companies versus in some other areas like crypto.
I think you can use the regulatory advantages for very interesting crypto companies or insurance
companies or like, you know, the drone companies or robotics, but every time would be kind of very
custom to you. And it would not scale so much to other companies versus in biotech and healthcare.
Here we design a playbook and then hundreds of companies can do the same thing.
This then led me to start Infinita City, which started sort of as the Vitalia Pub-Up City that
you might have heard of And now we basically bringing people in biotech and then crypto to Prospera We do demo days with them We do startup mentorship and advisory We also exploring to build new labs and clinics
We're also looking for these companies to help them expand. So we recently passed the enabling
legislation in Montana. So we have access to the largest market in the world and sort of aim to be
this you know decentralized longevity city with the first hub in prospera second in montana and
then several hubs around the world wow that's eliciting so many questions in me before we before
we talk anything about what you're doing in prospera i want to i want to start with um the the
sort of community question which is what kind of like brought us back together originally and what
gonzalo mentioned um so and it's good that you were a former nomad as well because what gonzalo
was talking about was that he was surprised how prosper didn't appear to be sort of trying to
attract um digital nomads now i personally don't have a problem with that because i you know i
speak to a lot of people in this movement and really digital nomads aren't necessarily considered
a large block of people that really need attracting it's more especially in free city type projects
it's more about local people you want to get you want to get real people from the real country
coming because nomads tend to be unreliable but what gonzalo is saying and he i think he really
he kind of did convince me back the other way to say look that there may be a small block of people
but what they do is create a buzz around a place and and that definitely does elicit more interest
in a place and sure maybe only 20 of them stay 10 of them stay long term or whatever but that
doesn't matter they're the kind of first movers they're the canary in the coal mine kind of thing
if they if if a place gets the the okay from nomads often it goes on to great things but then
also on the other side of that is and i think i saw on the news a couple of days ago in mexico
same thing's happening again protests in a mexico from locals saying stop gentrifying our places
because we can't afford them and stuff so i don't know what's what's your what's your take on that
whole digital nomad thing yeah um i also listened to the interview and i was initially a bit skeptical
um probably a bit less than you were but then afterwards leaving very inspired from the interview
when back three years ago, I basically started testing what could be the sort of target audience
for Prosper, right? So we know we had to create local jobs, right? So we knew we had to work with
people on the island and had to attract mainland Hondurans. And we did that. And it was especially
speaking to the startup community, right? And then I was kind of looking at different verticals,
like all of them, or generally I was looking for entrepreneurs, right? Because the biggest factor
that makes people stay here is that they have jobs, that they have something to do, right?
So you need the entrepreneurs to create these jobs. And I was basically looking by different
industries, right? So now my hypothesis was kind of like, let's find the kind of industries where
there's the highest upside or the highest value. And I was kind of adjacently thinking a bit about
digital nomads, but kind of also discarding the thesis a bit because my idea was like,
hey, I'm not finding the right entrepreneurs there.
The kind of entrepreneurs I'm looking for
are in this very specialized biotech or crypto area.
But among nomads, that's just probably one in a hundred
or one in a thousand is doing that.
And sort of the honeypots to find these kinds of people
are kind of elsewhere.
But I think what I really underestimated
is the switching costs.
right so for people to move to a different place um just like the switching costs are so high
right so you know the more you're into your career or into like a family life the higher
switching costs are right so it's harder for you to emotionally say goodbye to like friends or
family to convince your wife or your children especially women in school and also when you're
kind of more established then you have like status attached to you and your environments right so you
have to give data and start a new, right? So you're basically speaking then to younger people,
that's established people that don't have as high switching costs, but they often don't have a lot
of income, right? So it's very hard for you as an organization to sustain yourself on that.
And then I think what I underestimated, that's what I underestimated. And then sort of the
argument with digital nomads is the switching costs are low, right? Because these people are
kind of already flexible and are already looking. And that's probably, as Gonzalo said,
like, you know, in my case, I was looking kind of for the cannery and the coal mine
entrepreneurs in their fields. But you also need a lot of entrepreneurs who do content, who do,
you know, who do restaurants here, who, you know, do traditional businesses,
not necessarily some VC funded startups. But I think with that interview and Gonzalo also being
here in Prosper, I think we really have a good chance to double down on that thesis. Because
as I tell you, from doing this for three years, it's been really hard to bring people and build
community and prosper. Yeah, it's funny. By the end of speaking with him, I realized you just want
to get everyone to come. That was the kind of thing I was thinking to myself, yeah, why sort of
like blacklist a group of people because of xyz why not just be get everyone i mean i know that
obviously you have to allocate money to places and build certain types of accommodation you know
obviously digital nomads don't want lovely luxury villas they probably want co-working spaces and
small cheaper places maybe i don't know but but still it's like of course you know everyone should
come and i i do probably now believe in the kind of thesis that there are first movers who tend to
be nomads you get you get pre-nomads who are just like people like yourself you're just like weird
something weird's happening i gotta go and have a look this sounds great you know then you get
that first mover and they tend to be digital nomads and i do think they're part of the process
I think you often find that in cities when areas become cool.
You know, there's a group of people that move in first when it's cheap and they make it cool.
And then they get priced out later by someone else, etc, etc, etc.
However, with Prosper, I think you can hopefully you can keep everyone good because you've got this option to build everything if you want.
This is the beauty of it.
And this is the other thing that I kind of drew from Gonzalo's speaking to him was there is the potential to do anything there.
You really don't have to not do certain things because it's all ready to be done.
It's all available to be built, literally, physically, but also digitally, you know, everything.
And really, that's, you know, quite astonishing when you think about it.
I'm not sure there are many other places in the world where you can actually do that.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, what I might say is where I think he might be a bit too over-optimistic is,
now, one big barrier is simply the brand of Honduras here, right?
So people hear Honduras and they don't hear Roatan, right?
So you know that Roatan is a tropical paradise.
If it was a US state, it would be the fourth safest US state, right?
It's very easy to get here, flights or whatever, and sort of a bit higher level of amenities.
But we hear Honduras and they're kind of eerie about it.
And I understand that.
It was the same for me when I came there for the first time.
So even coming to Mexico for the first time, even though I had a lot of travel experience,
and then Honduras as well, you kind of postpone it.
And then especially if you hear about the political trouble, you're like, eh.
So in that sense, that makes it a bit harder than when you're Portugal or I think Medellin
Colombia is also now more established as a nomad hub or like Chiang Mai, Thailand. I mean,
yeah, come on, easy. So nomad paradise. But I think that is one thing that is just making it
difficult to establish that. And the other thing is, I do also think he underestimates a bit that
much of the nomad community is a bit more left-wing than he thinks. So I actually had some
people exploring that thesis or introducing Prosper in their communities. And some of the
people that actually Gonzalo himself mentioned, and they said that he's getting very strong feedback.
It's not necessarily that these people are super left-wing relative to the general population
elsewhere, but it's just like if you have these Guardian articles, it just makes people like,
okay, it's not something that the consensus right now is accepting. It's still something like,
You know, what do other people think?
It might be this bad thing or whatever, you know, so you need to give it a chance and
to like really sort of become a very strong advocate or like have very strong reasons that have to do with like supporting the idea the ideas behind that sort of realizing that sort of what the world thinks about it right now
the mainstream media that we're not consuming, right? I mean, you know, in the free city space,
prosper is like great and whatever. But now in the normal world, you people read the Guardian
or the New York Times, right? So I think he might underestimate that a bit. But still,
I think the potential is much higher than what I initially thought from digital nomads.
So I think we have a really good chance now to explore that thesis.
I think you're absolutely right about the political leanings of people.
Because I met Gonzalo at a sort of invite-only nomad summit in Morocco.
And yeah, there was probably two or three free market guys there drifting around, being quite quiet.
and not that that was a problem or anything because I don't have any problem with what I
believe and I've tested the thesis over and over again and I would say also the me of 15 years ago
would would be would have been that guy as well I worked in the media for years and without really
knowing who I was I there were certain things I just took for granted and the narrative around
to prosper is super strong in that sense the kind of colonialism aspect to it which which you know
it's very hard to combat because it it makes a lot of sense as well if you're if you if you read an
article that says oh look people are building this place um um you know that that basically
it's going to cause this disparity in income between you know this place and this place uh
that's not fair and it's it's easy to to believe that that's true and in one sense it kind of is
but in another sense it's like well what are you going to do nothing like what what are you going
to do you either make a place better according to what you think or you don't it's it's it's like
there's no such thing as everyone being happy with your decision but i have to say that i know a
number of people friends of mine one in particular who was very left-wing who went to prosper and
completely changed his opinion on it and on everything actually he came away politically
different and i think that's the truth i i don't see many people go there uh and and come back um
with the same opinion um and and and so i you know i mean what is your experience i mean in
In Prospera's case, the very compelling narrative that you often hear is that the local community Crawfish Rock, which is next door, which is a very simple community of people fishing, a few people doing simple jobs, but nothing, you know, a very sleepy little village on the beach, is somehow going to be negatively impacted by this.
um so what's someone who lives there and you who knows people there and goes there and what's the
what's your opinion on it yeah i mean i've brought about 1,500 people right the last like two years
right so and i can confirm what you're saying right so um people are liking it far more than
they initially thought right so even when you're already positively inclined to these ideas
you're even more excited afterwards, right? Because it's like very impressive when you see
Christine Bay, when you see the Do Not Tower now, the Circular Factory, when you hear about the gene
therapies. So just like alone, the visuals are like very exciting for people and like, whoa.
And then if you're into the ideas and hear like about the regulatory system and like the legal
ideas, you're like, wow, this can really change the world in so many important ways.
So almost everyone, like 90, 95% of people have this far exceeding their expectations.
And we regularly have people here like journalists with different political opinions that are not inclined to like it. And there's a very small number that kind of does the whole thing, talks to us and still writes something kind of disingenuous about it. It's a very small number.
And we had a much larger number of more left-wing journalists that wrote about it and put in some negative, tendentious kind of things to please their audience.
But the same kind also were very honest and giving our arguments.
So there was this piece in this left-wing Honduran magazine called Contra Corriente, which said some things to the extent it's like these tech bros or whatever.
but it was like some of the most empathetic and true content about us in terms of who we actually
are and what we want to do and what we're actually saying right so i think it really does have that
effect on people right so i think we have some practice now um sort of addressing arguments or
concerns i think prosper did very good work instead of hey you know the the coral reef is protected by
environmental statute like we have labor rights that in a way exceed what's currently available
and you thought it through. It's not no regulation. Everyone learns, okay, this is not
no regulation. Why has everyone taught me before that this is no regulation? The first thing that
I hear about it as I see is these very long regulations or you do things. So there must be
something false about what these other people told me. And I think that makes you a bit more
open-minded. I liken a bit to, you know, back in the days, you know, a lot of people were like
skeptical, sort of everyone said Jordan Peterson, that's like this right-wing guy or whatever,
don't listen to him. And then you listen to him as like this very reasonable guy. So that kind of
makes you question, what else are they kind of trying to steer me away from and sort of makes
you more open-minded and listening. And I think there is this, there's definitely this effect.
And when it comes to the community relations here in Prospera with like Crawfish Rock and like the surrounding business community, I can't really compare it with anything.
But my feeling is that it's far better than people think from the outside.
And that's to like 20, 30 people, a percent of people in Crawfish Rock are employed, right?
They tend to have, you know, to think very good about the jobs that they're getting or the opportunity.
I think paradoxically, many of them don't even understand what this is all about, right?
and some might even sort of hold a negative opinion.
I think we're generally,
but I think it's generally much less common
and still people appreciate
that it's bringing something good, right?
And it's better jobs than elsewhere.
So they might have sort of helped
these two opinions at the same time.
And then I think also what Gonjalo says,
really critical to develop good relations
with the business community.
My impression is that we're doing pretty good there, right?
So I'm not aware really of any business
that's not doing business of us
because we're us. I very regularly interact with other business people from the island.
Among almost every business person that I've talked to on the island, the sentiment towards
prospects is very positive. And as a final indicator, maybe cab drivers or taxi drivers.
So people constantly come here and use taxi drivers as a barometer. And my impression or
rough data collection was that four in five taxi drivers are positive towards us. And that is
pretty good right because there's more of a people um element to what taxi drivers might be thinking
about this what about um going back to crawfish um bay um what i tried to find out what the
worries were you know and because i i can understand that there are real worries there and
one worry which is irrefutable is that oh my god they're building a big city near us
and i can't refute that that's absolutely true but when i i didn't see anyone who seemed to be
complaining about that i saw land grabs things like that which as far as i know that can't happen
isn't that isn't that true yeah like what so so what what are the main worries from people who
live in the little community next door yeah i mean it's a bit hard to distinguish between like
genuine worries and what is kind of you know what people told them to worry about and therefore
they're influenced by it right so um i'm not sure i can recall sort of the whole dispute but you know
the main kind of loud mouths against us who like speak about all the line grabbing they have their
own political or local interests right so the story was something like you know prosper was
providing water for a more reasonable price and they were before kind of the water monopoly
and a lot of people depended on them and they're themselves in a position of power in that community
and kind of see their local power in a way.
It's a bit like regulatory capture and special interests there, right?
Which, again, as you say, is almost impossible to avoid.
So, the concerns about land grabs or something like that
don't seem real for that reason, right?
So, it kind of goes back to this visit that Eric had
and he was trying to explain,
explain like, no, we can't appropriate land. And it was trying to explain. So Eric is a very
rational guy, right? And he's just like explaining it to people. Currently, the Honduran government
has a right to expropriate you, right? They do so left and right, right? And they had to kind of,
and the ZAs do too, right? So in a kind of weird way, I'm not sure I know the entire legal
technicalities but they deliberately designed a way so they could not do that right so and it was
just like explaining that and then like someone recorded that and put it like entirely out of
context sort of making it seem like that he was talking that he would expropriate where he was
saying or explaining the entire opposite hey we set ourselves up so we can't do that right
you mean that was just politically they cut the section out where he said both the condurin
government and prospera could appropriate and then cut there before he said but we've actually
designed our constitution or whatever to say we can't do that on purpose you know they can
yeah exactly so does it always seem probably politically motivated right and i think
um you know of course in my position i'm not working for prosper so i can criticize them but
i also understand how hard it is for them i think they um were not sort of setting the story straight
back then. So in some of these PR moments, I think it's very important to very quickly set the story
straight. And back then, they just weren't because I think it was also very new territory for them.
And that, I think, then made the round. And that was sort of then material for other people just
to repeat the claim and for the then opposition, who later became the Honduran government, to double
down on expropriation. It's like this scare image that you can implant on people. So even if they're
not there it just seems something that's plausible to them and just like a fear you can instrumentalize
you're absolutely right though that the the the creation the sort of prosperer uh billionaire
tax avoiding uh frankenstein medicine sort of image that's created is super compelling
except when you go there like that's the the pure nature of it in its entirety is the moment you go
there you realize in the first instance quite a lot that actually that's not true but then slowly
but surely if you dig a little bit deeper um you you you realize that what's going on there is
as good as could be done in that situation you want to make a place better you want to start
from scratch uh you want to give everyone the opportunity to do whatever they want and try and
make it better this is probably the best model that we've ever come up with so so if you're not
happy with this model then please tell us how to do it not you can't do it you know but how how do
we make it better you know and as someone that's been speaking about these things for now over two
years, I can't. I find it compelling. I find it the correct way to do it. I find it the fair way
to do it as much as possible. And also, what's interesting about Prospera and the ZAs in general
is, and this is one of my bugbears about journalists who come to Prospera, is they never
go to Ciudad Morazan, because that does not fit that narrative in the slightest, right?
and for those listening who don't know what ciudad morizan is the other well-known um zed a which has
been sort of like dubbed the blue collar zed a because it's pretty much apart from two foreigners
it's uh an almost 100 local hondurans living a better life inside the free city than their
neighbors which is one of the most dangerous parts of honduras and um you can't go there and spin the
same kind of narrative it has no billionaires other than the guy that built it the one guy
who built it is a sort of like his passion project to help hondurans and um and you know this is the
beauty of this system it's like cool you know you can do you can do it you can create a competing
one well currently obviously we're in that's slightly different because of what's happening
with the government but in its original state the whole point is you can do these things and you can
experiment and you can try and create something better than than what's already there you know
yeah and i think that's also ultimately the argument that works with people right from
wherever on the political spectrum they are right so you know we're trying something here we're going
about it in a very responsible way right sort of and according to the ideas that we think work
and if they don't work, then we'll learn about that.
And you can try your version of this,
sort of a bit more of like a socialized healthcare system
or whatever, right?
Are you happy with the current political system?
You're criticizing that all the time, right?
So you get the half of the time,
you get what you want or what you think you want,
but you're also often disappointed by that.
Then the other half of the time,
you have like a government or an administration
that you think is pure evil, right?
So is that, why can't you let you build your place with the kind of people that you think best represent your values and what you think is a better way of doing it?
I think that ultimately works on people.
They kind of see, yeah, that kind of makes sense.
Yeah, true.
But unfortunately, in reality, that means many places don't get built.
And it's a hard truth to face, especially if you've believed in a certain system your whole life.
but the truth is and i hope to see the day when these kind of theories work work in real life if
we have hundreds of thousands of competing places i'm not sure it will happen in my life but it'd be
lovely but you will notice very quickly which systems have people moving to them and which don't
and unfortunately for non sort of free market aligned people i i have a sneaky suspicion that
those free marketplaces will be the ones that thrive because we're seeing it happen in real
life now and uh you know like i say it's a it's probably a hard pill to swallow for certain people
it forces you to be proactive productive you you have to you really have to do something you have
to add value you really do and i'm i i i don't think everyone aligns with those principles
because and you know i don't know yeah but at the same time you know some of the places
You see that often in places that seem like more socialist or to the left that actually
are capitalist, right?
Like Sweden, right?
Or you're like your whatever consciousness, longevity camp or whatever in Bali or something
like that.
Like these things have some elements of like a left-wing ideology that they cater to or
like impulses or wishes or desires in us that have to do with like care, right?
As opposed to we're like commercializing everything or whatever, right?
So some people and, you know, I myself sometimes don't want, you know, my relationships to be
entirely driven by that or whatever, but the underlying mechanism is capitalist, right?
So I still think there is place for, you know, free cities that are sort of less explicitly
branded as like libertarian projects, but still sort of have a working business model
and capitalist mechanisms but sort of deliver sort of a product to people that isn't necessarily
that explicitly brandless that well i think the main problem with those kind of places
which it would be great to see how it plays how it would play out but really in systems with
like large social care systems or social socialized systems people have to put into those systems
and unfortunately they're also very attractive to people that don't put in
and if truth be told you probably end up with more people taking out than putting in
I think we'll have to wait and see because in a way it will be a free market of ideas
at the moment unfortunately we have those socialized systems without being asked if we
want to put in or not we don't have the option not in my country anyway you have to put in
but if we if i had the choice no of course i'd much rather a different system but um yeah i don't
know i i've got a question about um the the the strategy like what before we go on actually can
you define exactly like your role in the community there does prosper have a person in charge of
community relations or is it just that you've been there so long and you you're you know you've
organize lots of events and that kind of stuff it's not an official title right
yeah so um i have an independent business i'm not part of prosper though i'm an advisor to them
right so i have some skin in the game i have a lot of skin in the game that's my success is
staked on the success of prosper right so um when i came there three years ago i kind of noticed that um you that Prosper just didn do enough yet with community and bringing people or whatever
So I just saw that as a gap that I started filling.
So I started organizing these conferences with the VC fund, bringing startups and people.
Then with Vitalia, we got like 500 people to come.
And then with Infinita, now a very large percentage of the people are here have come through us.
right so um but i chose to have my own business and i think in a way the separation
makes sense right or is kind of an important potential industry distinction for us
um and biology observed that actually when he looked at prospera and vitalia now infinita right
so he was saying hey prospera is kind of this layer one they focus on like the jurisdiction
getting a limited degree of sovereignty
and layer two is built on that.
And you have layer twos in blockchain or in crypto
because the layer one is often sometimes not that scalable.
So they don't have the bandwidth to do the other things
versus the layer two can reduce transaction costs,
especially for specific kinds of users.
Like this is your Ethereum layer two
that makes DeFi or lending or whatever super easy.
right and it kind of makes sense because the layer one and going back from the analogy to
our industry the layer one and the layer two have to do very different be good at very different
things right so to do what prosper does you can't like go out there shouting this is who we are we
are like these tech bros or whatever and get like huge social media following of like the tens of
thousands of people, because that's not the kind of discretion or approach that governments like.
And look, another very material thing, it makes it harder to buy land if you announce it everywhere,
because your prices get higher. So when you look at Solano County, they sort of clandestinely
bought all the land, and they didn't want everyone to know that they're doing that,
which seems a bit shadowy in some of the hit pieces. But you need to do that, because otherwise
you get like huge land prices instead right so that's the kind of layer one work you need to be
more quiet a bit more kind of um sort of presentable to governments versus the layer two you
need to create a lot of buffs you need to create excitement with people and bring people you need
to kind of be out there and sort of you know be maybe a bit like controversial or just you know
say things that kind of get attention and get people excited so maybe that distinction generally
makes sense. So companies like Prosper can be layer ones that have multiple layer twos.
So we have the Infinita layer two, which focuses on longevity and crypto. And now a couple of
friends, probably people you know that presented recently in Prague are working on a Bitcoin layer
two, sort of a Bitcoin district. So you do some of the real estate and things like that.
I think that is important to notice. So Prosper could have done much more with
community development or whatever but you know a few years ago it was just like the diplomatic
stuff the Honduran government whatever that always has urgency like whenever you do PR
um you know that's just like the most urgent thing and there's like a new fire each time
so you know the other stuff with community development it's just like very hard and
organizations can't it's very hard for organizations to get good at multiple things at the same time
So that's kind of a niche or an important gap that I filled in Prospera in bringing and building community.
And now Prospera has Lonus, the VP of growth, who started about a year ago.
I'm very happy that he's there now because now he's taking some of the learnings that I took and does that for Prospera as well.
So it's not just me alone doing that.
And sort of the kind of work also for anyone in the industry who's thinking about that.
it's very hard work, right?
Instead of getting people here,
you kind of need to drag them.
You need to do it like in a very personalized way,
create these opportunities for them to come,
like the events,
and you won't get sponsorship for the events
because, you know, nobody knows about your events.
So you kind of have to do it in a very bootstrap way.
So it's like very, very hard work
and very few people can do it, right?
So, and that's offering like multipliers
that bring a lot of people.
And, you know, Dushan is bringing a lot of people,
Max from Minicircle, now me, now Lonus.
So having a community developer who's able to bring people
is really, really crucial and really hard, right?
So you've seen that we had sort of the peak moments here in Cross,
but we had when we got the visits from Balaji Srinivasan
and Naval Ravikant at the same time,
from Brian Armstrong and from Tim Braper.
Like we got these people here
and we're still not like overrun by people.
So is that what it takes to make these projects successful?
that it's like a very it's very difficult kind of business model a go-to-market to pull off
but i think we're getting closer right so my thesis was always you know it's hard and there's
like a very low conversion rate and sort of the people that come don't have a lot of you know
income and necessarily get your economic base but now we're starting to see little by little there
is permanent residence especially the duna building made a big difference i think we're
probably at now like 40 or 50 percent filled with permanence right and then these people start and
then that hopefully creates some sort of a network effect where like every additional person that's
now considering moving gets a higher value out of it because there's more existing community there
right so the reason that people go to like san francisco even though the city is like is like you
know garbage in many ways is simply because there's so many other smart peers that they want to have
there right so i think if we continue little by little we'll be at a point where um we sort of
gain network effects and it's just a much easier sell for people to move here i think it's interesting
what you say about when you had that influx of very high profile people that came um i've learned
that actually from running this podcast is and the theory right from the start for me was always
it's a slow grind it's like a melt up it's a slow grind and it's just up and to the right which is
true and you do get pumps every now and then from you know famous people on the podcast you're well
known people but they tend to retrace back to that line which is up and to the right in a sort
of like 45 degree angle or whatever and it's interesting because i've spoken to a number of
people about this and i think a lot of people when they discover the idea of free cities or free
private cities like um you know prosper is they think oh my god everyone's going to hear about this
and then everyone's going to want to do it because it just makes so much sense but it's actually not
true it's a much slower process than that i find people who say the same thing about libertarian
ideas as soon as they discover them they're like my god how did i not know this shit i've got to
tell everyone and when they discover this everyone's going to believe this and it's not true either you
know it's always a sort of quite small number of people but it has to be said though that what's
happening in prosper currently is quite amazing because what what i mean this is me as an outside
observer i watched the honduran government literally face up to this project and say
you are illegitimate we're shutting you down and within a pretty short time after that i saw the
biggest influx of new money coming into prosper to sort of build it than ever before so what was
that all about like how did how did that even happen it seemed like the complete opposite of
what would happen yeah i mean the short story on that specific part is that some of the money
agreements were made kind of before and actually that did ruling did actively make it harder it
did not make sure i mean it's still it's still a terrible time it would have been because i mean
And I know that because I'm speaking to Sioudad Morozan, who kind of put all their things on hold at that particular time.
It's like, no, we're not going to build anymore.
We're not going to do anything.
We've got to see what happens here because we're basically being told we're illegitimate.
I'm not going to put a load of money in and build new buildings if we're going to have them all knocked down.
So how come Prosperate is absolutely thriving more than ever now?
yeah i mean i think um so back then three years ago when i came here for the first time
it was almost in the same week where i was there after i kind of already suddenly mentally made
the decision hey i want to be here that the new government came into power but you know i was
always like okay it might not work but if it works i'm gonna write history right because if it if we
survived his government and I was believing people like Jorge. So Jorge Colindres for me has been
like a big anchor, like his confidence, his boldness, his like, you know, I've been doing
this for 10 years and, you know, they may charge me with treason or whatever. This is like, how can
you sort of stay, how can you sort of not gravitate towards that boldness, right? Sort of
or feel emboldened right The guy is going the higher risk than I am here as a fighter right So I just felt okay I believe in this guy and I believe in Prospera And if we succeed if we fail the story is we got the best legal framework and international
protections in history, and it still fails. So imagine what they would do to our industry.
It would succeed. Then we survived even like a hostile socialist government in a country like
Underworld. So imagine what that means for our industry instead of the delta between these two
different outcomes. So I was just like, okay, I'm all in on this. Even if the chance is like 10%,
that will be enough for me. Because if we make this work, then we're going to make history.
And it has probably also something to do with just my incentives. I'm just not a billionaire yet.
I'm not yet rich. I feel like it's the time of my life to make these kinds of risks,
which is what many people like Brian Armstrong or any of these people made early in their careers.
This is the time when you want to make big bets. Of course, it's harder for you to do when you're
already very wealthy or have kids, whatever, because then much of that or your reputation
can be tarnished. But I think in Prospera, what people are really underestimated or what people
are not seeing is that we're all upstarts. So the core people like Jorge and even Eric himself,
his whole bet is on Prospera. There is no plan B. This is the thing for him. So yes,
he's going to place his bet here. And I think that really led or bred a sort of resilience in
prosper. And that was kind of infectious and that made it possible because this is a big deal to be
under threat by a government like that. It attracted people to investments. So I think
the investment was partly part of that confidence and partly also based on the insights.
Hey, it could actually work. So you have the resilience there and the people committed enough
to do it and again as a venture capitalist if i give this like a 20 25 chance you know then the
outcome is like 10 or 50 or 100 times that is a very good expected value calculation right so
you're supposed to have a backup though in that in that particular instance
you're supposed to be investing in a number of projects yeah of course right so the kind of
exactly but also the kind of investors that got the money and they are invested in other things
right yeah which is we here we we aren't right so this is our one thing and that's kind of also
necessary i think to make something like that succeed it's true though that if you if you win
at this one if you defeat the socialist government who wants to shut you down that is a massive
precedent a massive precedent and i've always said this about prospera is and it's what i respect
most about what's going on there is you are at the sharp end of the wedge literally and you will
face all the problems you are paving the way for other people to deal with way down the line even
your the way you're building community you you know you've you worked out quite quickly hey if
we hold events here it really it really works it's really good people come here you'll see now
new startup societies new free cities they'll probably mimic your model because it works you
know but you will found this stuff even what you were saying earlier about being quite quiet about
things in the first few years that's really solid advice because at the time you might be there
thinking shit we really need to promote this because we're not having enough people interested
there's not enough investment but actually as you've shown maybe it's a good idea to be quiet
in the first few years and take the hit before you actually start moving into that realm where
you really start trying to attract people in more of a public way. Can I ask you about that big round
of investment from, you know, Brian Armstrong and Coinbase and people like that? Where's that going?
Do you happen to know? Do you know what's happening to that money? What's it designed for?
Is it some general pot of money or, you know? Yeah, I mean, I'm not speaking for Prospera
presenting them. What I can say is generally it is to make the layer two strategy work.
So with Infinita and Vitalia, we kind of set a precedent. So Prosper's business model
does not want to rely on us building all the real estate and bringing everyone because that's
really difficult to scale. But with Infinita, we're renting, leasing some of the space,
bringing around people kind of brilliant in this district that can be sort of their go-to-market
strategy so their idea or pitch with the fundraise was that's how we scale this is how we bring more
people this is why they're now doing like the bitcoin district and have like announcement for
people to build like a wellness district or you know financial district and all these things right
so that's the main thing right so the money is spent on making prosper bro enter the next stage
in terms of all its financials and commercial.
And the go-to market, the layer two strategy
is what needs to work for that.
So that could entail things like funding
some of these new projects, building a lab.
As you might've seen, they are advertising jobs
for biotech and wet lab infrastructure and clinic.
So these are the kinds of things
that would allow people to spend more time here
to stay here or something that would contribute
towards the efforts of some of these layer two projects like ours i'm actually i'm planning on
putting this out within a week this particular recording so it might be worth just giving us your
view on the current situation with the government or what do you've you know morale number one at
local morale but also what's actually going on because obviously the government backed themselves
into a little corner where they had to act and it appears that they didn't really act is that
doing government things again or what yeah i mean um i'm trying not to celebrate too soon
right because we were also very optimistic before the supreme court ruling right and
i wasn't really expecting that um others were sort of but um broadly speaking the morale was
very high back then then that happened now again the morale is super high um you know we're very
certain that the government is not going to be re-elected like the approval ratings and polls
are abysmal.
And so the change in government is very likely.
We do see the other alternative administrations
as aligned with us.
So almost all of the major candidates have visited
and know about the project.
They see its value.
We've proven we can get the politicians' pictures
with Tim Draper or Brian Armstrong.
That makes them look good, and that's good for the country.
So I think the message that this can be good
for either alternative or future administration is very strong, is very resonant and very good.
And that also coupled with the arbitration claims and settling that, we are pretty confident in that setup right now.
And it seems even that the current government is retreating from some of its claims.
So I'm not sure if you know about Fernando Garcia, who was the anti-ZEA commissioner.
where he was kind of the main responsible to get rid of the days it's like this old school marxist
right and you know he signed in an interview a couple of weeks ago um sort of he had this
face-saving story so he was saying like oh we got rid of like 27 zs but the last three ones we
couldn't get rid of because they have the international protections right so he was
having the story of how he had this like success anyway he just couldn't go away what are the 27
is that is he got rid of i don't understand i don't know yeah i know there's some other
applications that went in i know at least one or two i think oh right i'm sure it was 27
where that number is coming from yeah but i mean i know if at least one way that's true right so
the new government came into power and like the application was submitted but they came in and
they killed the application right so right so okay so and when's the um when is the election
due just out of interest in november i think in early november well really so quite close now
so is there a lot of canvassing happening at the moment is there a lot are there a lot of
politicians politicking around honduras already yeah i mean i'm not that involved in that right
now we can't say much other than so when i hear the news from you know from cordial system people
right so back then in the supreme with the supreme con ruling we kind of all work together to get
some of these meetings and do some of these things um but since then i i'm not really um seeing or
hearing a lot of that is my impression that prosper has now a much better response than before right
So through some of these iterations, they were realizing they have to be very present in Tegel Sigal, have a narrative, have a story.
Since then, they hired a guy who was specifically just focusing on these kind of relations.
So I do think that, or it seems to me, I'm quite confident right now in Prost's ability to navigate those politics.
Can you give me a bit of a rundown on what it like day to day these days do you live in doona tower yeah you do i mean man i peter went there there our ceo peter was there a couple of weeks ago and
he did a walkthrough with uh on what's going on there and it's pretty impressive as to be said
last time i was there was you know when we started this podcast so more than two years ago and the
doona tower was being built there were you know but it really does look like the kind of place
that you can almost just hang out and live in now i i'm not sure there were thousands of people
walking around but can you describe your day-to-day life yeah uh boy i'm honestly really
enjoying living there right so um i mean it's drop dead gorgeous right so you knew that already
and that was the tune that's how you have really nice views um i'm living on the third floor and
i start my day sort of you know i would like to work out a bit more early i should do more of that
I don't always do that.
But like I go to the co-working space very early and just like work a lot from there.
Other people drop in, some team members.
We do whiteboard sessions, you know, later in the day.
We might just often like rooftop barbecues and parties going on, right?
So we have this like infinity pool.
Then in the P1 lab space, they often do like parties or have like a food lab or like growing
like plants together.
So some people here have these like little gardening projects.
We have a football group that's going out every Sunday.
We have our regular scuba diving groups.
We have our regular like Pilates and yoga groups, right?
So we have this like restaurant on site there now, Spirit Animal, and sort of people hang
out there very regularly.
So now it really feels like a real community.
Like you know everyone and you're kind of aligned with everyone.
So you always have like something interesting to talk about.
boy I honestly really really enjoy that
and we're sort of adding more and more
kind of to the life stack
of what you'd have
sort of in another developed society
so my wife for example
she was always complaining
that she doesn't have like
the New York City level gym classes
and now she does
right now she's a really good instructor
and that she's going to
sometimes they come into the Duna building
to do things
so I really think Duna added so much value
and we now have a real community
and when like when you say you go to the co-working space etc like who else is there
and how many people are there and oh yeah is it is it i mean yeah is it still the infinita co-working
space yeah um so you should definitely visit some time right so it's it's a bit fluctuating right so
um you know currently is a bit of a low month right but then sometimes we do these like theme
months or events right so and when we have something like the draper challenge you have
100 plus people there. So the co-working space is really full and vibrant.
During normal times, on an average low-season
day, you might have three to five people there that are working there during the day.
But the space is just gorgeous.
We have this Honduran artist in this land, Núiz.
He made this traditional mural art depicting ancient
Mayan symbols. And he just got
super interested in the whole like cyberpunk thing and is now like making murals on like crypto on
robots on like biohacking and engineering so his murals on the co-working space just have this like
epic futuristic vibe so it's just like a really cool space to head out you know you have good
chairs you can sit on you have extra monitors you even have like a small kitchenette there
and not kitchenette but you have a small like fridge where you can buy food right and you can
pay there in crypto with a qr code you have a little mini mart where you can also pay in crypto
if you know need toilet paper late at night or something like that or water so um you know one
of the rooms is for presentations so we do mini conferences there and you know we could even we
even do like karaoke nights there because we have a projector yeah and is that is that co-working
space you called it the infinita infinita right so that's not a generally available co-working
space or or is it is that just for people working in the biotech um it's for it's for infinita
members um and but we want to make it really easy for people so we allow people in at like 15 bucks
per day okay and what about families on site because that's always one of the things when i
think about the tough nuts to crack in in a startup city or a free city it's families how do you get
families there you know have you got any families yet yeah there are a bunch of families right so
there are a bunch of people a bunch of families with children and they like you know take them
take them around in the sort of walk around in the first level around the co-work and so yeah
there are a couple of families there i'm not sure i know of at least one with two children is they're
fairly regularly to another one um that i see from time to time we have plenty of visitors with
families as well um yeah and then also you still have sort of the pristine bay part right so you
know eric has his three children there and he has the school there which has like 50 or 60 children
so i do think it's quite possible with children or with families like i'm planning to have a family
year so all right good luck um the i want to talk a little bit about what you're doing infinita
infinita how do i say i can't get it right infinita i say infinita but i'm not correcting
people on the pronunciation okay infinita and correct me if i'm wrong but you you are you
involved in project your own projects or are you a kind of umbrella organization that try and
promote these kind of projects and help them yeah we're an umbrella organization right so we want
to create a faster go-to-market for biotech and healthcare companies right so currently takes 14
years with the fda right so and we just want to reduce that timeline right so um by the way of
the prosper regulatory system the medical reciprocity and the sort of more streamlined
regulations and things like that um and then also through other jurisdictions like montana give access
to a very large market.
So in practice, we worked a bit like an accelerator.
So we bring startups, we advise them,
we do demo days for them, we help them get investment.
So we've got a startup that's more than 20
or even 30 million in investment.
But the next step really is that we develop
kind of an end-to-end pathway for them.
So you can do your testing here or animal studies
or there, sort of maybe a new lab in Prospera.
Then you can do like a phase one trial there
And then, you know, could you collect additional data like in Montana, maybe you can give it to a larger set of patients.
And then, you know, that increases your chances with the FDA.
So we want to get people or companies to the whole pipeline and then get part of the revenue from treating patients from equity and from royalties and the assets that they're developing.
Explain when you say Montana, explain what that is.
I don't understand.
Montana is a U.S. state, right?
yeah but what's what why why are you working with montana what's happening there
yeah so um you know the question i always get in prosper is okay great i can you know iterate a
bit faster here um and i can do cheaper clinical trials and give it to some patients but you know
i'm funded by vcs i need to become a multi-billion dollar company i need to get to a large market
right and you might have heard of minicircle which is sort of the first pioneering biotech
company that does that did the gene therapy clinical trial here you know pottery got the
injection and several hundreds of people like the folistatin gene therapy right so that was kind of
the template that we wanted to emulate and now we have some other companies like unlimited bio
it's also doing gene therapy you can also get the chip implants now but yeah the question i always
get is well how do you get to a big market right a mini circle is kind of you know it's talking to
other jurisdictions to like Mexico, Costa Rica, Japan, Dubai. But the ultimate price is to be
approved in the United States, right? Under the FDA, it's like 50% of the global markets in
biopharma, right? So what got to my attention was Montana's right to try laws, right? So right to try
is a federal law by now,
and there's more than 30 or 40 US states
that have a right to try law.
And it basically says,
well, why shouldn't you be allowed to try a drug
even if it's not approved yet?
And the premise is it has to be at least safe
because safety testing is actually a smaller part
of the overall regulatory cost,
much more about the efficacy part
that adds a ton of the cost to the process.
So, right to try was basically, hey, if it's safe, then you should be allowed to get access
to a drug or treatment even before it's FDA approved.
But there was a very strong limitation.
The limitation says, okay, you need to be terminally ill.
And then the condition for that is quite strong.
needs to approve it. You need to be dying at your bed. And also, the commercial incentives
are not very good for it because for a company, when you give people this treatment and try to
prevent them from dying, they might die anyway because they're in critical conditions. And then,
was it because of the drug or because of the natural condition? And you have to report that
death as an adverse event. That adverse event often lets the FDA shut you down.
Not a good way to do things or to do science, right? So the FDA is not following the science
always, right? Because they're following the political incentives, right? Because any of
these things kind of makes them look bad and makes people like, something happened or whatever.
So the solution really came with Montana in October, 2023, when they said in Montana,
and states regulate medical services.
They don't, the FDA does drug development.
So this is like fine-tuned legal distinctions.
And Montana said, hey, right to try.
This goes under medical services here.
So doctors are allowed to treat patients under right to try.
And they're allowed to treat any patient, not just terminally ill.
Now that is huge, right?
because it allows two things, right?
It allows for drug companies or clinics
that don't only treat terminally ill patients
where they have that risk of adverse events, right?
It allows a broader set of therapies.
And also second, it allows sort of a more preventative
and the longevity paradigm to take hold, right?
So the longevity paradigm and sort of disease prevention
doesn't neatly fit into the current regulatory model,
which is kind of sick care and sort of symptom palliation, treating people when they're sick,
not preventing them in the first place. So that was a really big revolutionary change in Montana.
And when I looked at it, I was like, great, but still there's some work to do in creating a clear
regulatory pathway. So that's why we recently worked on passing a new law in Montana that sort
of makes that sort of creates a very clear regulatory pathway, reduces the risks for
providers of these therapies even further, and increases the economic upside for companies
providing these therapies to patients.
So that, you know, is now a very exciting opportunity to get for two things, right?
So to get patients medicine of the future, right?
Stuff that's like 10 years before it's widely allowed, right?
and second to allow biotech companies to get data much faster and cheaper that they can then use for
trials and to iterate on their patient profile and sort of to increase their chances to be approved
under the fda or the united states eventually here lies the part of prosper that always makes
me feel uncomfortable and i'm sure makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable when you talk about
things like this is you know this idea this kind of frankenstein monster type you can do what you
want experimenting on people you even mentioned chips in your in your in your skin that scares
the crap out of me i'm never getting a chip in my skin i don't think what is that for by the way is
that for paying for things or is that uh is that is that something you can like open doors pay for
things right now just use it for a gimmick right so you can like see my website or my business card
with it yeah i that stuff that's i'm i'm on the kind of it's the mark of the beast side with regards
to that kind of stuff but but but the truth is that a lot of people do find stuff like that
uncomfortable and and especially when they hear that you get your you're kind of working around
things to make things go faster blah blah blah most people would look at that and go
shit that that's dangerous what are they doing like why why they're doing unregulated things
What's the general comeback conversation that you have when people bring that to your table?
Yeah, I mean, similar to the whole story of Prosper in general, right?
So my business, including Montana and everything, is kind of very inspired by these kinds of ideas, right?
You know, I think the moral premise of right to try is established.
Like if you tell someone on the street, hey, should someone be allowed to take a drug that's safe, even if it's not yet proven effective?
Yes, we do that all the time, right?
So you have supplements all the time that are not proven.
And, you know, people want to have the autonomy to choose, right?
So I think that argument is generally widely accepted.
And they also want to choose to say no, right?
So I think with COVID and with all the restrictions and all the vaccine mandates, I think there
was a bit of a, like, you know, I want to do it on my own terms, right?
I don't want to be forced to take something new, right?
So I think that reduced a bit trust in the existing system, right?
So not only from the angle it doesn't allow all the interesting new stuff that I want,
but also, hey, it pushes all the new stuff that I don't yet want or trust on me, right?
So I think the idea to have a genuine choice and autonomy is very compelling to people.
I was kind of very surprised actually that especially in Montana or generally in red states,
people are like, you know, listen to Joe Rogan and like, you know, these peptides and stem cells
and, you know, gene therapies and all of that, that sounds really cool. And I want that, right?
And sort of the idea that pharma is treating a sick care or whatever, like we want the preventative
paradigm, like the lifestyle changes, the PDRT, all of that, that actually has a much bigger appeal
than you think now, right?
So, and, you know, some of the,
some of the, you know, sci-fi
and out there stuff,
and very quickly reassuring people,
actually we're not that innovative
and prosper on these things, right?
Instead of the gene therapies that were used,
you know, almost anyone can agree
that that method to inject it
into the body was saved.
Like that's already proven, right?
It's just like, you know,
it's just like very expensive
to do within the United States, right?
But the pathway is already proven.
And like the ships and implants,
you know, Neuralink is doing that. And much of the stuff was done in the United States before.
And it's basically at the level of like tattoos or piercings, which is in fact how it's regulated
there. So much of this stuff is really not that scary when you actually see it and when you
actually get the whole education on it, right? The actual scary stuff that I also see, that's
done in research lab in the United States, right? So that's done at like Harvard, you know, that's
done in like Stanford sort of, for example, like replacing the full body of someone of like a
mouse, of course, not a person, but that stuff, you know, we get some of the scientists here to
talk about it, but we don't actually do it in Prosper, right? So I think I, you know, I'm giving
people a whole picture of these things and that's really like about medical autonomy and your
decision and things like that. And that usually works like, well, and then of course people are
like, okay, but there should be oversight. Like there could be accountability and there should
be regulation like yes of course here's how we do it xyz right so can you explain i show them hey
can you explain how it works the accountability while you're on it yeah yeah yeah and of course
there's the prosper model right so the prosper model is that you have to convince an insurer
right so you have to be regulated if you're in health care right you have to be insured right so
and the insurer then gives you a policy that you have to be under right and you have to negotiate
with the insurer, hey, but you can't go with something crazy, right? Where you have like no
oversight and can do whatever you want that has no liability. It just doesn't work in the
prosper legal system, right? So if you don't have insurance, you have extremely strong liabilities
and you can get severely punished if you do that, right? And if you do it in a regulated way, well,
the insurer is not going to agree to something that is like very reckless and crazy, right?
Because then they have to pay if you mess up, right? And at the same time, they also don't
want to over-regulate you, right? Because otherwise that increases the cost of doing business for them
and gives them less customers and things like that. So the insurance regulatory flexibility model
and practice how it works is of course people pick and choose. They don't like innovate on
every new regulation. We're just like, okay, we do this part of what the FDA and what the WHO does,
right? Especially for the safety stuff. That makes sense anyway. It's not the most extensive part.
We just do the same stuff right It just like we can save a lot of money in the administration because the Garm Clinic or another clinic in Prosper that would do that or it has an IRB which can improve these studies And they just have a lower cost of doing business
for the company. You need to pay 20K to get a meeting with the FDA, where it takes like three
months. And then it costs 150K to submit your investigative new drug application. That's just
like a lot of cost of doing business right so just by you can do the same rules but just like a more
startup more business-friendly administration they're often already save a lot of money
right so and you know that explaining that to people sort of the difference between safety and
how regulations work um that quickly resonates right and that we can especially do the safety
stuff pretty much the same way it must be your hardest battle pr battle i would imagine not not
least prosper has got its own problems but then the sort of biotech industry itself has even more
versions of that and even harder and deeper and stronger versions of that i'd say
stronger versions of that that narrative competing you know the prosperous problem is
it's unregulated that's what people think oh it's this free-for-all which is fine but but in the
biotech industry that's even worse i would imagine you know you're you're you're facing more
almost see it as like um almost like i and i think it might be also an important learning for
industry right so um it's a bit my suspicion i'm not sure i have enough experience to confirm
but it's not a good idea to be too like hidden or not say like who you are right so we're kind
of self-censoring kind of polishing our language like it's about like innovation or it's about like
um you know you can have messages that are more kind of politically speaking to like a more
mainstream audience and whatever and sort of hide yourself behind sort of press releases and things
like that and i think that was sort of prosperous approach which was kind of my biggest critique
so that they were not out there enough with their personal authentic voice.
That's who we are.
If you're trying to hide that you're libertarian or whatever
and that you want to work on some of the future, people figure it out.
Then they make up what you're not saying in their head or in their stories.
Then they accuse you of things.
But when you're out there and telling the real story
and sort of not hiding behind it, right?
Sort of, hey, you know, yes,
we want to do regulatory faster.
We want to do things faster.
And here's how we do it, right?
We're, you know, we're thoughtful about it.
We're not responsible about it.
So this way people don't have to make things up
on their minds.
And, you know, when, then when people
who are not yet on either side or the other
see the different stories and like,
hey, you know, this is actually a very thoughtful person.
And that article says there's no regulation.
Like, that's not true.
Like I listened to the person who's like,
I have their story in mind. So I do think we do want to be sort of genuine and authentic and
saying who we are and what we do. I do think we should under-highlight sort of the ideological
premise. So we should communicate what we do in terms of how it can add a benefit to you.
Not necessarily in like, this is like your libertarian enclave or paradise or whatever.
I think that's a mistake anyway to assume you need to build a society of libertarian society with libertarians, right?
For various reasons.
I think as a free private city, you know, the underlying mechanisms, the underlying libertarian philosophy and economics works because it adds more value to people's lives, right?
And so we need to highlight that value that it adds to people's lives rather than making it about like your ideology or your model of the world.
and then i think you should have a story or a narrative um that is authentically and genuinely
you put it out there tell people that story like i have honestly not gotten much if any strong
backlash like the whole biotech thing sort of you were saying hey maybe there's like you more than
prosper whatever for me personally it hasn't been right interesting i think you know maybe it is
you know and i'm not doing anything like special in the pr department but from the beginning i was
not trying to hide anything it's like yeah these are the chips here's how they work like here's the
gene therapy here's how it works here's how we do all the safety stuff right so i think that didn't
give people as much opportunity to like lie about it or present the story that is not true
i hear what you're saying about um not necessarily pitching prosper as a libertarian paradise or
whatever not least because even uttering the word libertarian already you're dealing with
a huge amount of different misconceptions and conceptions, perceptions in general about what
that even means. But also, I don't think it's even important. I mean, Morazan is a libertarian
utopia, basically, and there's not a single libertarian in there. I think it was Mark Edge
that said it. You don't need libertarians to create libertarian utopia. And that's a really,
really deep and important understanding to have i think like you're saying all you need to do is
tell people how it benefits them and by default they're probably aligning with a bunch of principles
which are quite libertarian in their nature and um yeah it's been a it's been an interesting
journey for me to come to that conclusion and and we now have a working example in not in um
in Morazan, the other Zedai, where it is. If you look at the way it runs and how it operates,
it's very libertarian. But not a single person living in there even knows what that word means,
I would imagine. Exactly. And I think you see also in Morazan how community-oriented it is,
and how cooperative people are, and the same in Prospera. The experience very much there is
this very community-oriented, people are cooperating and helping each other a lot.
It's sort of the whole stereotype that libertarians, I think it's kind of a bit true.
I think there are some people that are kind of more on the kind of libertarian stereotype
that you'd expect sort of a bit less cooperative, like very focused kind of on themselves and
how to get an advantage out of that.
And these people in Prospera, I've seen, are not having the best time because they're not
integrating themselves well into the community.
And they're just not good at sort of the community cooperation
looking out for each other part, right?
So that's why it's very important to just not filter
just like for ideology.
I mean, that can help.
I think it can give people an additional kind of,
hey, I get why you guys are doing that.
And I'm excited about that.
I think that can change a lot.
But most of all, you want to select for people that are fit,
like that vibe with the community, that fit in,
that have something to contribute.
And that just adds a lot of value to their lives, right?
And you generally build a society that's cooperative.
And that's very important.
Yeah, like we were saying earlier,
this is a free market of living together.
And hopefully, if it's not working for you,
you'll go to where it is working for you.
And if you can't find a place,
that might mean that the way you're doing it
is not generally a good way to be doing things.
And that goes for very intense libertarians as well as communists and whoever, you know.
But yeah, that's what I love about it most.
Have you ever, can you give me a lowdown on what you know about sort of other potential projects around the world that you're actually excited about?
Especially in the boots on the ground kind of free private city or whatever kind of way.
because we hear so much about Prospera and obviously Morazan a bit less, but because you are living examples of what this model can produce.
But when you look at the rest of the kind of market of living together, there seems to be a lot in the pipeline,
a lot of sort of vaporware, which is just people creating ideas, but nothing really happening.
and then across the spectrum but I'm more interested in the really you know the boot
the you know like Prospera these kind of projects have you got wind of any other projects like that
around the world yeah I mean you know Prospera and Morazan I think are by far the leaders in the space right so I don see much that comes close at least when you care about the regulatory autonomy part right
So there are some of the private city projects in Africa, like Tatu City, for example, that
Tyler Cron has visited.
I think it's Steven Jennings.
So that's like a very serious business and sort of a scalable model to build a better
city with many of the services private.
and not sure how much that allows in terms of like legal or regulatory autonomy right so like
some of the indian private cities like gorgon or lavasa i think right so these are almost like
already sort of the more established um markets that's the more established projects on the market
right on the newer ones um you know i'm keen to see um how itana works out in nigeria right
he just recently had a change of ceo and i met the new ceo in zanzibar i think he's a really good guy
right so i think the concept of sort of having a delaware in nigeria sort of in terms of like the
business and corporation that you do and then like have a co-working space campus with good
functioning electricity especially in such a dense entrepreneurial hub such as lagos is i think a
very good idea. And, you know, besides the new CEO, Mayowa, there's also Ian Oluwa Abojeji behind it,
who is like the most iconic tech entrepreneur from Africa, right? So he's like a friend of
Joe Lonsdale and some of our friends who are supportive of this movement, right? So I think
that has tremendous potential. I haven't been there myself, but I find the model of small farm
cities in Malawi also very exciting, right? So at least in Pachulis Talang, that just makes a lot
sense when I see the videos. So similar to Morazan, but even on the agricultural side instead of the
blue collar worker side. So making these small farms and having a minimalist city community
and then teaching people there to how property rights work and how they formalize it,
giving them education in business. I think that's a very good model.
um but yeah um then there is not much um there's not much after that right so i do think um you
know what biology is doing um is exciting in malaysia right so i think he's collecting a lot
of experience and iterating there and he's not sure if you heard about that project yet in network
school he's yeah they've opened a natural education center there right is it a university
almost really yeah and it's like you know it's in this place close to singapore in malaysia
which has like 700 000 apartments like it's a ready-made city wow and it's empty it's a ghost
town right so it's been this like chinese real estate developer conglomerate and it's developed
it and then i don't know it was covet or something like the plants didn't pan out so it's a bit weird
it's a bit of a ghost town but on the other hand it's so much space available that has this very
nice solarpunk vibe sort of a nice speech and then you know biology is able to get a lot of people
there like and really good people from tech especially from asia from india right so um
you know he's someone who's iterating very fast so maybe you can also get like meaningful autonomy
there so i think definitely a force to be reckoned with right and i haven't read yet much about it
but very much looking forward to like titus's new project right so not sure if that's yet public
right it's public but not spoken about just yet because it's going through a lot of
you know as you discovered the first year two years it's very important to be
pretend under the radar because you know otherwise too many conclusions get drawn before
something substantial exists and and it's true it's absolutely true it's a great insight to get
actually because the sometimes the the you know you feel this urge to talk about something really
especially in this space because we have um so many potential projects and everyone wants to be
the next person to say wow we've got a new free city that's being built but actually we're playing
the long game here and everyone knows that we are playing the long game and um it may not be
something we we ever see in our own lifetimes but it doesn't matter this is a sort of this is a
change that's happening and it doesn't just change like that we're we're living through that time in
history where we're probably at the complete opposite end of the spectrum complete you know
we we're talking about moving the sort of like you know the goalpost just to the center even
is going to take a long time.
So, yeah, it's one of those things.
Actually, I can see we've been quite a long time already,
but I've got one last question before we go.
What about the future?
And let's talk Prosper here,
since you're the man on the ground in Prosper.
What do you see?
What do you expect and what do you want to unfold?
over the next period of time i don't know you choose the time period yourself
yeah i mean um so this year is of course very crucial i mean my thesis has always been
right if we make prosper work as sort of the flagship and if we can prove that we survive
like even a hostile socialist government then i think that can like give our industry you know
free cities, a 10x boost. And I think that's necessary because when more people are doing it,
then it's more robust. Then people kind of get the value out of it. And why haven't we been doing
that before? I think broadly speaking, Prosper is an example of a model that works as a win-win
for existing governments. So that's, I think, the very crucial part about it. So I think at any
given time, there are like, you know, 10, 15, 20 governments that are open to these things.
And now that we have more experience, how to actually get deals and how to actually like
build stuff and how to survive even against setbacks or whatever, the things we need to
put in place against that is on the legal side and on the PR side and things like that.
I think that will be tremendously valuable, right? So like to see sort of hundreds of projects
in the next 15, 20 years,
like successful projects.
And sort of my goal is,
or my contribution,
I want this especially to fit new technology.
So I think new technology like biotech
and like crypto,
like the robotics and all of that,
just the current regulatory model or paradigm
just doesn't work.
So we're slowing things down
and that is to the detriment of progress
for that the entire humanity could benefit from, right?
So I'd like to see these new cities harbor like the next SpaceX
or the next like space station.
And, you know, maybe my dream was always when I read science fiction
I was young that we have sort of an underwater city
and a city above the clouds and something like that, right?
But we're really able to build the industries of the future there
and are building sort of accelerating
and bringing to the science and technology that we have at hand to benefit all of humanity,
right? So the improved governance, I think, to me, is the vehicle for all that positive change that
can come out of technology. You mentioned earlier, actually, that one of your first inroads into this
world was through seasteading. Is that right? You're hearing about the ideas around seasteading.
now seasteading and biotech to me are literally best friends and floating cities off off the coast
of you know continents and or like that seems like the perfect way to use a floating city i mean
is anyone talking about that at prosper because you've obviously an island not that you'd necessarily
need i mean you've got the land-based version but yeah yeah i mean in prosper i think it's a bit less
feasible right because of the coral reefs like it has a barrier reef and that you know we want
to meticulously protect right so there's not much to talk about there recently but i love seasteading
like in fact i was like having the idea of seasteading before i knew it existed right so i was
like on this long hike once in like laos or something like that and i thought that was like
the coolest idea ever i even started drafting like a novel that was about seasteading like the
political changes that would come with it and i didn't know about pottery and about resetting at
the time So I think that definitely a seasteading I would be very excited to have seasteading as the ultimate frontier i think what it ultimately depends on is you know some important breakthroughs
in technology and to make it cost viable plus like some of the legal challenges that patrie
always talks about would like the flag or whatever but um i i do see seasteading as kind of still
part of the ultimate ideal for sure yeah me too as well but it is the most i don't know it's not
it's not radical but it is the most you know i speak to joe quirk a lot on this podcast and i
just got utmost respect for him staying with it because when you hear the ideas of seasteading
it's amazing it's true everything he says is true everything he says about you know having a city
that can move is perfect and works and the technology is not too far away even for the big
ones and but really it's just one of those ideas that i think yeah 100 years maybe 200 years maybe
you know but he's just grinding every day trying to get people to understand that this is this is
this is going to happen and i think it will because it makes so much sense and in fact you know it is
it is a stage on from prosper it's like prosper with another defense mechanism which is okay we
can actually go you know we get if the socialists want to come in and shut us down it's like well
hell we're just going to move somewhere else then which is quite mind-blowing in in one sense and
if if prosper works i would say if prosper lives and thrives into the future i would say
that people will then understand we need to make floating cities because there is there
people will hopefully choose the what especially in a regulatory environment or in if you want an
independence they will choose the one that is the safest for their for what they want and moving
cities is a step up from sedentary cities like prosper you know um so yeah i mean i just i just
can't believe people can think and and promote them so hard now and i just think of them as a
futuristic technology but i suppose you probably have a similar a similar angle on biotech because
a lot of what the biotech stuff and the robotic stuff it's all i don't know we're just going
through that period aren't we this acceleration of people having crazy ideas and 10 years later
they're suddenly popping up in real life.
Yeah.
I mean, ultimately, that's what we want, right?
And I think we underestimate how precious that is.
I think the impression that we're doing a ton of progress
is not entirely true, right?
So you might have heard Peter Thiel talk about that
in The Great Stagnation, right?
So you had much of the innovation in the world of bits,
but much less so in the world of atoms.
let's learn, mask is really the notable exception, but you know, what if, and then if you look like
why that is, you know, of course it's like cultural or whatever. Um, but I do think the
regulatory part plays more of a role than people think, right. It's often like very specific,
like the nuclear regulatory commission, the EPA and all of that, um, that you could just like
not have. Right. And I just do think it has an impact, um, right. Because as an entrepreneur
and going through all these bureaucratic hoops,
you're just less likely to do it.
You have to be someone of the gravitaser stamina
of Elon Musk to do that.
And I think with much less of that and prosper,
I think we can have like a 50x improvement
in terms of the regulation.
Maybe, and I do think there is a reason to believe
that gives you 50 times more Elon Musk's,
or the Elon Musk that exists can do more.
And I think that's a good thing.
right so you know i rather have sort of more influence and power by people like you on mask
even though you know i don't believe i don't agree with everything he says rather than you
know with the current nation states and governments right so i think a future where the entrepreneurs
really the driving force or the engine of creation in the world sort of you know the randian
archetype or whatever i do think if we make that work then you know i think our world could be a
much better place and we could truly accelerate in so many of these areas including the sea setting
and going to other planets and things like that and sort of even potentially reversing or halting
or reversing aging right and make us live far longer or even give us a choice as to when we
you know for how long we're able to we want to be on this planet i think it's no coincidence that
the stagnation of technological advance and innovation seems to coincide with a period in
time when the state is the largest has ever been in the history of the world. I think
we all understand that, especially over here in Europe, you see innovators shaking their heads,
saying, no, we're not going to do that here. Let's go and try and find somewhere where we can
actually do what we want to do. And that's the situation we find ourselves in. And
prospera and places like prospera are at the front sharp end of the wedge in in innovating
this you know and changing it hopefully i think you're already seeing that it is it is working
and it is changing well nicholas thanks thanks for spending some time shame we didn't get to do
in person but um i i want to come over and um take a look around again soon i don't know when
it will be because it's a long way from here but yes maybe in september in september we have to
bio frontiers month including a summit on september five to seven what does that involve
what will that involve if i came in september then yeah so we have a lot of um we do this month
kind of for people who want to explore living in prospera and in this case we're specifically
speaking to entrepreneurs in biotech and health care but not everyone will be that right so they
will come from able to other things it will just be like a good time it will be you know very busy
very fun and very exciting um to let us go living in prosper and then um we're encouraging people to
do some of their own like science experiments bring new therapies that people could do here
you know work with the clinic um to offer some of these things um you know the usual conference of
course we'll have like some very cool biotech companies and ceos and some of the major speakers
in the longevity field and in the science coming.
So I think a very good time to explore living in Prosper.
Just out of interest, where do people stay when they come now?
In Duna predominantly.
Duna.
So Duna has a lot of rental units as well for situations like this.
Yeah.
So as I mentioned, sort of about half is probably filled with permanent residence
and the other half is seasonal.
and of course there's plenty of spaces outside where you can stay and of course like pristine
bay or las verandas right so we still have like infinita dome in the pristine bay vicinity
so we do some of the larger conferences there so from las verandas you have an easy way there
and did i see recently that there are now 20 20 bucks a night places to stay
in in prospero is that right for for yes we built a new hostel right so we produce like from local
materials um you know one of our guys in the community um a hundred guy who builds like these
bunk beds and we use some of the model units um to have a hospital so we can stay now for 20 bucks
a night i i mean it's not it's nice i wouldn't i wouldn't underplay it i saw the photos it looks
beautiful it looks lush you know beautiful but um you make it sound like it's a it's a hostel but
It's actually nice from what I saw anyway.
Great.
Well, thanks.
It's a very nice house.
I'll try and make it in September.
But I suppose it would be a great place to do a round of interviews, wouldn't it, at that particular time?
I probably do a Prosper update and right close to the election as well.
So, you know, also interesting time.
Well, great.
Good luck with everything.
And thanks for chatting.
It's been great for an update.
I'm going to put this one out quickly so everyone can sort of get their latest on, you know, on what's going on there.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on, Tim.