Andy, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me on.
It's my pleasure.
And I am very excited for the conversation today
because we're going to cover something that, frankly,
I don't know enough about.
And I know that I don't know enough about it
because I've been reading some of your newsletter.
So we'll dive in straight away there.
Late last night, I'm like,
oh, look, here's a fresh article.
Let's have a look.
And you're talking about Iran
and you're talking about mind control and the ability to, in some ways, shift reality is probably
how I would kind of summarize it. So how on earth did you end up writing about that particular
subject? And I'll let you just take it away with wherever you want to go with it.
Yeah, sure. I think shift reality, I wouldn't say shift, but definitely
shape someone's perspective on reality. Okay. But the way I got there, so I grew up in a,
I was born into a cult. I was in it only until I was seven, but many decades later had to sort of
go back and understand all of the psychological impacts that had on me. And as part of that
process, I started really diving into this concept of mind control. So I think, you know,
most people understand that cults use mind control, or there's something pretty weird going
on in any case for kind of cults. But I was reading and reading and it's just kind of consumed
my life and and what what i realized and all of the literature talks about this is that mind control
is not just in cults but it's used across many facets of society it's a very analogous process
so you have a very strong crossover between cults and terrorism for instance you have very well
documented that um the chinese the rouse the rise of the maoist party used mind control cult-like
mind control indoctrination in how they kind of created the the movement and then ultimately took
took over China and use it now in China. So there's a lot of all the literature talks about
how totalitarian regimes use mind control. So I kind of went looking for the articles and the
books and the literature really detailing how they do it, and I couldn't find it. It really
doesn't exist. And I was quite shocked at how kind of absent from the public discourse this
discussion around mind control was when it's really driving so much of global geopolitics,
whether it's understanding what's going on in the minds of Chinese people, the Chinese government,
what's going on in the minds of, you know, the Iranians or all of these different regimes,
why they behave the way they do, how they control populations, how terrorism operates,
and then even how political division. Anyway, I can go into it, but it was just really surprising
to me how much it seemed to be driving the world and how little there was being kind of talked about
and spoken about on the topic.
Wow. Okay. I mean, what a way to tee up a conversation.
So fascinating.
I cannot go any further than the moment that you understood
you were in a cult yourself.
So what on earth happened there?
I always had this story that I had grown up in a spiritual community.
That's kind of what we called it.
And I didn't really think much of it.
we left when I was seven, as I said, you know, we got kicked out basically long story, my mom had
left. And then, you know, they were not okay with us having a relationship with someone that wasn't
in the cult. So it was sort of this ultimatum. And ultimately, my dad and my brother and I left.
And so I didn't think too much of it. My parents then got divorced. You know, my we were still
quite close to my dad. But at some point, he started going back to to the group, we called it
the group or just Kenja was what it was called. It still is. And still didn't really think much
of it in my 20s. You know, still had a relationship with my dad, would see him once in a while,
but he would always speak what we call Kenja speak. Like you couldn't have a conversation.
It was like I would say something and then he would say something which we would call Kenja speak.
And even then I just was like, this was just this weird thing in my life. You know, it wasn't,
I didn't think much of it. And it was really not until four or five years ago. Well, he sort of
stopped having contact with us over time um sort of just refused calls refused texts so then i
started to sort of think about it more and realized okay it's become a cult was was the framing okay
it was a spiritual community was how i thought about it that became a cult over time and that's
why my dad you know no longer wanted to talk to us but then it was a conversation with a friend
who'd grown up in a high control um she calls it a high control kind of um jewish community and she
sort of said to me like have you actually thought about whether what you grew up in was actually
always a cult and you know thought about maybe how that's impacted you because she had been going
through that that process herself so that's really what kicked it off it was um sitting in a cafe in
LA that I still remember the conversation and she recommended one book to me and then I started
reading that and then it kind of has just really gone from there wow it's so extraordinary how one
can almost map very specific moments to the timeline that is life that radically alters
the trajectory of where you end up going.
So what were the, were there a lot of similarities between your friend's experience in the high
control Jewish environment and what you'd been through?
And immediately just like the penny started dropping, oh, hang on.
What if this wasn't, and how did that feel as well?
I mean, it must be such a difficult moment to start to recognize what that was.
Yeah, I think it's funny because so many interests in my life sort of had been pointing me in this direction.
And I just like I always had this fascination with kind of I know it's weird, but like violence and how people could do such violent things to each other and genocide.
And I would read Hannah Arendt and the origins of totalitarianism like long before this.
So I always had this sort of interest, I guess, in what now I understand is how people can be controlled and manipulated and the people that do it to do really horrific things.
So I always had this interest.
I just didn't.
So it was almost like it was always coming up and trying to sort of integrate into my into my conscious mind.
And when I did, I honestly, it was liberating because it was it was like, oh, now it all makes sense.
And now I have this sort of framework and this path to understand myself and understand the world.
And it was just the more I started reading, the more I found it interesting.
And it has helped me so much in my own psychology.
And because there's, you know, it's, I'm not the first one to go through this.
And, you know, lots of children who grew up in these high control environments have very similar, similar psychological traits.
And so just having a roadmap, having someone that's written a book about this, and then I can just read it and say, oh, this is great.
Yeah, this makes sense.
and it just makes it all, yeah, it's quite liberating actually.
Okay, cool.
And so I'm feeling drawn to asking about this.
Like, does evil exist?
And like, what are the people that drive these types of scenarios
also conscious of what they're doing
or indoctrinated by the ideology itself?
And what makes people do it?
this is such a good question it's been such a good question because you see the same
sort of psychological manipulation tactics that cult leaders are using and i've always
i've been kind of questioning do they read it do they study it or do they just kind of figure it
out as they go and i think it might be a combination or it's probably different for each one
but the more i kind of study this and it's you know this is not i'm this is not an original idea
lots of people have come to the same conclusion or you know the theory has been out there that
so much of history is driven by a very very small minority of people who are genuinely
kind of on the psychopathic tendency kind of narcissistic psychopathic that i would
class i don't like to be black and white you know because that's but that are genuinely pretty evil
people um and there are just genuinely people that are born without the capacity for empathy
and so they're driving a lot of history.
And so if you look at sort of all of these really intense things
that have happened or wars,
there is often one or two people at the top
that seem to be driving a lot of it,
which maybe you could call evil,
but it certainly creates evil in the world.
Yeah, and it's that interesting idea of like history
is written by the victors.
And this is something that's really only coming to my consciousness
in the last five years as well, frankly.
It's like, oh, hang on.
Why do I know what I know?
Do you know what I mean?
It's like, who taught me that?
And, you know, in particular,
reading your article last night
about some of the tactics of the Iranian regime
and the age of the schooling system
that's specifically wielded,
like as a weapon,
to indoctrinate a set of ideas.
and just to, I guess, mention a very specific use case in my life,
like if I think about growing up in England,
a history lesson was learning about the kings and queens of England.
Why?
How did they win?
Yes, they won.
So they write the history book.
And I'm now in a position where I'm looking at my own children
and thinking about how do I want to navigate their education
and we've actually gone down the homeschooling route.
That's almost like a whole other podcast.
I don't want to go down that.
But what does it mean then when the history can be written by someone or when the educational textbook can be written by someone?
It's almost like it's a good example of centralization and then the ability of corruption to get to the very top on behalf of someone else's agenda.
So is that a recurring theme that you've seen through your research you've been doing?
And is that just a natural phenomenon or what do we do about it?
Yeah, great question. I think it is a natural phenomenon. I think it's not all bad. Like mind control, I think is not all bad because there is an extent to it in a functioning democracy. You want a degree of kind of cohesion. You want a degree of shared narrative. You want people to have some sort of shared values, shared foundation.
those values could be for democracy for freedom and for respect you know institutions and so having
an education system that actually does indoctrinate that is actually not necessarily a bad thing
you know in i just started looking into and i need to go more but denmark actually seems to have a
very interesting education system where they they've had some thinkers that they really respect
And so they're bringing the idea of debate and liberal democracy into the education system in a really interesting way that other countries even in Europe don't.
So I don't think that I think we actually have a problem now where we don't have enough sort of we don't have leaders at the top who are actually sort of creating shared narratives and bringing the country together in a sort of positive way.
they're actually dividing it and it's almost like you need to figure out what are the shared things
that we all can agree on and focus on that and bring people together that then you're sitting
on top of it and having debates about sort of the sub issues um so i don't think it's necessarily
all bad um but it can be become and it can be used very very badly depending on who kind of
wheels it, I guess. So you could have, sorry. No, no, that's okay, Andy. I don't mean to cut in,
but the thought that's on my mind that the relevance of this is just if you map back to
nature. It's like, okay, I more and more become persuaded by libertarian type thinking. And
there's no doubt that Bitcoin plays a part in this, right? And separating money from stage and
all the problems that that represents. Again, a whole other podcast. But it's interesting because
if I was to strike out alone as a single human being and not live in a tribe, I would really
struggle slash it's not worth the effort because you don't get the economies of scale, you don't
get the shared skill sets, you don't get the collaboration, you don't get trade, which is so
clearly something very unique to the human being species versus everything else that
we share this planet with So I intrigued by this idea then that maybe mind control of a group is actually a defense mechanism like a trial Yeah absolutely Yeah Okay There definitely
an evolutionary reason. Yeah, exactly. I completely agree with you. It makes complete evolutionary
sense that this happened. So if we think about humans being programmable, so mind control
effectively says you can program a human yeah which we kind of know children can you know
children grow up basically indoctrinated by what their parents think by what's around them
but that's a really logical survival skill for a child because if you have a child that grows up
independent thinker and doesn't fit with the tribe that's quite dangerous for them so you want people
to sort of and and you would have had a natural selection for people who do actually have this
ability to conform and fit in with the tribe and believe in the tribe. And so there's, there's
definitely an evolutionary basis for why you want a degree of programmability, innate in a human to
sort of fit into the tribe. At the same time, if there's too much cohesion, you don't have
innovation, you don't have exploration, you don't have people who are ambitious and leading and
moving the tribe forward. So over time, you would have if you have too much sort of cohesion,
too much mind control in a group that group may not win out in the long run and that's certainly
what we see in say highly authoritarian countries over time versus countries with more democracy and
freedom you see a lot more innovation um a lot more economic kind of growth in those countries
versus authoritarian countries which can't produce the same level of kind of forward forward progress
interesting so that's almost like there's a movie i was attention yeah it's like a it's like almost
like a scale um there's a movie i watched years ago now it's a british comedy movie called hot
fuzz and it talks about the greater good and there's this little village and they're trying
to save the village for the greater good and it's the analogy being is there's there's so clearly so
many places I see in my life, in business as well, where it's like the business has to survive over
and above perhaps individual members of it. And it's like, okay, that's interesting. Why would
that be the case? And what we're describing here is a very obvious reason for that, is it's a
defense mechanism. But then equally, these organizations couldn't survive unless someone
splintered off and then the next way i'm really thinking about that i guess is at some point
a european ship sailed west and at some point they hit the americas and it was it was inevitable that
it would happen because of the outlier wow okay and so now that you've started looking at this
in a more rigorous manner do you see it everywhere i do really i try not but i try to not like with
iran for instance it would be i could write an article and say oh it's all about mind control
and it's not like they use so much just outright repression um and so where you you say okay they're
trying to use mind control like let's actually evaluate it and a big question i have is say
somewhere like china this is a research question i'm going to try and kind of work more on this
year is like how what's the level of actual belief what does it do like how many people actually
believe or it's just sort of physical repression that's causing it i mean so that i do see it
everywhere in society in general and particularly in spiritual narratives and spiritual teachers and
you know personal development um i do see it everywhere but i also see like a lot of really
constructive positive kind of things as well so i try not to get too caught up in yeah well and
it's one of those things you can get a bit bogged down can't you like oh you know and you recognize
this pattern and you kind of want to shake someone perhaps. Andy, I'm intrigued though. So you started
your newsletter in the last few months. Why? And has it been valuable to you so far?
Yeah, I just started. I do want to write a book about this. I just have so much research I've done
across so many different things that I have found so fascinating. And I have so many conversations
with people and many I find many people find it quite interesting so um but I wanted to just start
sharing and start becoming a better writer kind of getting into the habit of writing um figuring
out how to share things how what resonates with people um so it's it's really kind of an exploration
and I'm just getting started but I love it I love writing I love researching so you know I absolutely
love the process regardless of kind of where it goes and so teach me how you do that everyone has
different ways but um do you do you have inspiration moments you know that would that
be a cool idea to pull upon or do you have like a weekly slot you sit down and you just you just
write something um yeah what's the creative process i've been traveling a lot still the
past few months um i'm shifting my life to be much more um in one place so i'm still not in a good
have it but um i would say it's more ad hoc i have a whole list of kind of topics that i would like
to write articles about i had this idea of writing sort of a foundational series of this is how mind
control works um but i think that's a little too abstract and technical for people so what i'm
going shifting to is more sort of case studies and stories um and then particularly as i see world
events like what's going on in iran i had wanted to write articles about iran for a while and so i
thought it made sense to bring that up and and kind of do those earlier interesting and and like
always the the ideation or creative process it's like build it and they will come or study the
market and create something that's definitely needed and there's a sweet spot somewhere where
obviously that list that you've got that's that's that's very much like more of a build it and they
will come type vibe is that I want to write about this stuff. Oh, but hang on. What do people want
to read? So how do you, how do you dovetail those two things? It's very natural, I'm sure, but
no, I'm figuring that out. That's very much kind of what I'm figuring out right, right in this
moment, I would say is, um, what it's, I think that the sub stack is very much, that's what I
kind of was saying. It's like for me to write and see what resonates with people, see how I can
communicate and what people want to listen to or read ultimately. So it's very much an iteration,
get lots of feedback, start kind of just putting the ideas out there more and get feedback and go
from there. And then there's also research that I want to do and that will go into sort of the
longer term work on it. Yeah, and Substack seems to be great for the longer form writing.
And an email is a very private process in a way. It's like, boom, I've literally got an email to
read from whoever it might be. Andy, I'm intrigued to just kind of almost maybe go a bit closer to
home and think about some of the experiences that I personally went through the last few years that
essentially everyone did, but had a unique journey. But the 2020 COVID-19 experience and
global lockdowns, digital censorship, I mean, there's so many different things we can talk
through here, but a clearly globally organized plan, intra-government at a level that basically
we've never seen before. It's like, oh, all businesses shut down except for the ones that
we say are okay and blah, blah, blah. It was just crazy, crazy time. But it really highlighted to me
in some ways, it's like, who are the government that I've trusted my whole life? It's very easy
like China this or Iran that from a, oh, we're okay in their authoritarian, totalitarian regimes.
But I was under house arrest essentially in central Melbourne in Australia for almost two years.
Extraordinary experience. And there's no way that it's possible without a form of mind control.
Because otherwise everyone's like, hang on a second, no one's actually sick. And I can't go
the football, I can't go to the office, I can't work, my kids can't go to school. This is crazy.
I say no, but no one did that. Everyone just stayed at home on an extraordinary scale. There
were some marches and stuff that we got involved in at one point, and you could see the social
unrest building and building and building, the government becoming more and more, the police
more and more threatening, like literally just police everywhere. It's crazy. It's like, no,
Now, the populists don't have guns, so you can't fight back.
So you have to trust that this organization is having your interests at heart.
And then it's like, oh, by the way, you've got to take this medicine to get out.
And the medicine's then made a whole lot of people really, really, really sick.
And it's like, what the hell just happened?
So when I think through, like, democracy, sounds great.
But, like, is it?
And does it exist purely with mind control?
so I don't know if that resonates at all but it's like hang on a sec what's going on
who am I voting for yeah absolutely and I completely agree with you and for me personally
COVID and what happened during that was a big waking up moment I mean I really had trust in
the government before that in Australia I never thought about these things I always thought
the Americans who care about individualism were crazy you know gun-toting rednecks from Texas
um i know i live in texas and see things differently yeah um and it was completely crazy
um and so this is why i think it's so i i kind of kind of thought okay this is what
mind control is this whole topic okay so what's the opposite and so i've come up with this term
cognitive sovereignty and this idea that you kind of have ownership of your own mind you have agency
you're actually making decisions, you're not stuck in someone else's worldview.
And as I think about democracy, do we really live in a democracy if we don't actually have
freedom of thought, if we don't have individual cognitive sovereignty? And so I think about
cognitive sovereignty as being foundational for democracy. And I don't think we have that right
now. I think democracy in its current form still is much better than any other form of government.
So I don't want to sort of get into the democracy is bad.
Everything in the West is bad.
More what we have needs to be improved and protected.
And let's figure out how to do that.
But I do really worry about what's going on in Australia and places like the UK and Europe and parts of the US around particularly speech and freedom of speech.
And it's really scary because freedom of speech is completely fundamental.
Being able to have conversation, being able to dissent, being able to have debate.
is foundational to having democracy and to having freedom of thought and democracy
and i don't think we have that right now in australia and in the in in the uk and europe
where you have effectively speech laws and and kind of hate crimes and government censorship of
you know online censorship and identity verification and it's gradually eroding
the freedom that democracy is built upon and makes it much easier to sort of get
get the nation as a whole into a sort of single feedback loop of mind control.
And that's certainly, I think, what we saw through the pandemic.
You know, mind control is very, it's very, it's very interwoven and you can't separate
out from this concept of groupthink.
So a lot of mind control is driven by conformity, by mimetics, by identity, by in-out group
language um which is so it's so it's very driven by group dynamics and so in covert i think you had
that happening in an extreme extreme way where you had this true and mind control really needs
works best when there's a threat when there's like fear and fear is the most profound emotion
so all mind control works by attaching to emotions and so you had a genuine fear like
I remember at the start of COVID, we didn't know what was going on. It was genuinely scary. Like it
was the first time we, you know, we'd been told we had a pandemic. And so once those ideas get
latched in on the emotional level, it's very hard to sort of deprogram to sort of break those. And
so I think that's really what you saw during the pandemic was this sort of like identity, this fear,
this in-out group. You had behavior control with the masks. You had so much of sort of the classic
mind control things that were going on i don't know i don't you know i don't know if it was some
big orchestrated thing i think there were a lot of people in government genuinely thought they were doing the right thing and then got stuck in their own messiah complex of them saving the world and therefore ends justifies the means um i think that maybe
what happened more than necessarily sort of some i i just don't know i don't have evidence that
there is like a cabal driving the world but certainly what ended up happening looked like
that and so whether it was some crazy group think phenomena um and i but i i think there was this
ends, justifies the means, Messiah complex, people in power. Suddenly it was, you know,
their day to get to be in power. And it was really, really bad. And democracy, you had
suddenly no freedom overnight for an unjustified reason.
I mean, just crazy experience to go through as adults, something that I'm sure in many years to
come be like, what was that like? You're like, well, I mean, my wife was pregnant. I was laughing
to myself. I know what you mean. For the first time in years, I was watching the news and I was
here in Byron Bay with my wife who was like six months pregnant with our first child and my mum
was visiting from England and we got so quote-unquote scared by what this thing was that we
were thinking about how do we get back to Melbourne are we going to drive back because the airport
might be dangerous and then my mum was like much more like chilled about the whole thing
it was like cruising to restaurants and stuff and and we had to make this decision it's like well
What if she's caught it?
She might have got it in the last 24 hours.
So the last time I saw her for two and a half years
was at a three-meter distance on a beach,
like just up the road, to say goodbye.
It's like, you've lost your mind.
You completely lost your mind in that moment.
And you're like, what happened there?
Completely rational person.
And you're thinking about protecting your wife.
So the first wave of that...
But that is rational, in a way.
Correct, yeah.
The first wave of that was just so effective at hitting the fear button.
Absolutely.
And it was a number of months later.
Hang on.
You're still there?
Sorry, my Google map has popped up.
A number of months later, I'm like, oh, hang on a sec.
This doesn't make sense.
What's going on?
So I can see why people get into that state.
And I'm sure it's also, again, it's that nature thing, the group thing.
It's like threat.
get rid of it you know oh wow what an experience well Andy what I'd love to do
now if that's possible about halfway through his shift gears into more of an
investment lens and your day job and just hear about how it's been going so
you know you guys one of the leading venture funds in the Bitcoin space and
I've just more and more been looking like how these companies gonna really
start to grow and what's the next chapter actually look like so so how are
finding things on that front and you know the mind the mind control stuff fascinating but i assume is
a piece of the day that you kind of sneak a bit here and there and you're focused mostly on on
your investment stuff yeah absolutely um but it's it's been interesting how it sort of links in and
i'm just about to sort of start promoting it and it's like what i realized is in bitcoin we talk a
lot about we think about a lot of the external controls and the how the government is controlling
I guess how the financial system, how the monetary system, like external freedom and external control.
And I think what I'm really now focused on is the sort of the internal freedom and the internal controls.
So anyway, I think.
Well, Andy, let me.
That's good.
Am I still there?
Yeah, all good.
Let me draw on that for a second, because it's actually really interesting.
There is a community called Decentralized Consciousness, which you may or may not have come across.
and I've had Caleb on the podcast in the past and Sam Gustafson as well.
And one of the things from that experience that I thought was so interesting
was this idea of meditation as a way of connecting to consciousness
and that being sovereign.
So whatever your meditation tells you is a sense of cognitive sovereignty
because no one else is telling you that.
Have you had any experiences along those lines?
And the second part of the question will then be is like,
if you can see people thinking more like that, are they a good investment?
Are they good investment? I think self-awareness is always something we look for in founders.
That's definitely something we would invest in. You know, meditation is an interesting one.
Meditation can be used, can kind of go either way. I've done a lot of study. I've studied Buddhism.
I've gone deep down a lot of spiritual practices actually and meditation can be used either
so a lot a lot of mind control is suppressing emotion so emotion is always true emotion is
sort of this incredible evolutionary tool that humans have evolved to navigate the world and
social kind of environments and in a big problem at the world right now is emotion is sort of
demonized and we try we repress it instead of integrating it and so when we all repress it as
society then it gets projected outward in one or comes out in one way or another so what a lot of
cults do is actually use thought stopping practices um so if you're in a say a high control environment
or an abusive environment or a cult and you have this feeling that comes up which is like what the
fuck is going on i shouldn't be here i hate this so the cult wants to teach you to suppress all of
your emotions so oh that's just a reaction all we need to do is sit for 10 minutes you know chant
this mantra and you can get rid of that reaction and be a good little cult member so a lot of
meditation can so meditation can be taught that what we want to do is have no thoughts have no
emotions and that's like the sort of mind control version the better version of meditation is meta
awareness so and you can use like mantra there's nothing wrong with it as long as it's not to
repress and to stop and every time you get upset you just go chant a mantra for 10 minutes and
then come back and you're like totally dissociated um so when meditation is used to increase hands
awareness so you're now taking a step back and observing you're observing your thoughts saying
oh wow that's interesting i had this thought come through okay i'm not going to like focus on it i'm
just going to let it go um but maybe i'm going to come back to it so it's just being able to sort of
take a step back and being able to observe yourself and build greater self-awareness
and not be stuck in that thought and in that fear,
but being able to sort of observe it and understand it.
See a fear come up and say,
oh, is that something that's just a trigger
or is it actually a genuine fear?
Do I need to take some action?
I upset, it's about integrating
and taking appropriate response to an emotion
as opposed to kind of suppressing it.
So with meditation, yeah,
it's very interlinked with the idea of cognitive sovereignty,
but it also is very nuanced.
I would say. Yeah, that's a really fascinating reply because an idea comes from somewhere,
the idea maybe is a thought, thought becomes a word, there's then a big step to action.
So like you can think about killing someone, you can talk to someone about killing someone,
but then you actually have to do it. And the same can be applied to a good thing, right? You can
think about having a child, you can talk about having a child, and then you actually, you know,
you have to have the child um so so great point because just just because a meditation tells you
x doesn't mean you you go and specifically do that so the the filter that one has on that experience
is crucial and i do think that's perhaps where you get these like spiritual gurus where they say oh i
meditated and i went to this place and i now have this enlightened view of the world and now you need
to listen to me it's like it's classic classic right this is oh my god this enlightenment and
it's unchallengeable so you always want an unchallengeable source in a good mind control
good mind control system unchallengeable source god oh this is a revelation yes interesting okay
and so and this is something i really find interesting because at the the stage of investment
that you're functioning, it's a bet on a person or a group of people. And so how you understand
that person's mind is possibly the biggest decision you have to make. So how do you figure
that out? Yeah, absolutely. I would say in the second fund, we're investing slightly later,
we're more at the series A stage. And so the nice thing about that is we're looking for
real revenue you know the business that by that point has multi-million dollars worth of revenue
of revenue so what we look at when we get to know founders is um we'll have conversations with them
but it's very hard to get to know someone because they're always presenting sort of this best version
of themselves and you're talking about the business we'll always meet them in person
but what you look at is sort of what's going on under the surface in the business so you can look
at how they respond to things what have they prioritized what are they not doing well what
Are they doing well? What does that tell you about the person?
Are they, or how they respond to a suggestion or how they respond to a question?
And then we might have conversations if there's something that we're not understanding.
It's like, what's actually going on in this person's mind?
Do they have some sort of fear? Do they have some sort of overconfidence?
Some sort of, you know, personal weakness? Do they not?
So it's a huge component, but it's actually very difficult to do, I would say.
So it's something we sort of study and we study these kind of frameworks that, say, police use or different sort of interrogators use.
We don't, you know, we're not interrogating people, but it is something we've thought through.
But it's cool, though. It's about taking ideas from different places and reapplying them to the unique space where you're trying to operate.
And if a interrogation technique helps you understand an opportunity better, then absolutely use it.
It's interesting. So can you please teach me how you've shifted then towards more of a growth phase?
Because it's definitely something I'm looking at more and more where Bitcoin's maturing, founders are maturing, businesses are maturing and starting to see like decent monthly recurring revenue stats come through.
where you're like, well, this is actually a different type of investment to hardcore
seed stage venture. So why the shift to the slightly later? And what opportunity do you see there?
We saw a big gap at the Series 8 stage when we created the first fund in 2022,
which was focused on the seed stage. At that point in time, there was a gap at the seed stage
in terms of funds that were leading rounds. There were quite a few funds that were writing
checks into the space, call it 500,000 to a million, but no funds that were really taking
professional leads and really supporting the founders. So that was the thesis for the first
fund. We would invest at the seed stage and really support those founders. We raised a $25 million
fund and we really did that. We were two thirds deployed through that and two years after looking
at the ecosystem, thinking about raising our next fund. And we saw that the ecosystem exactly,
as you said, was maturing. You had companies that were starting to approach the Series A stage. You
already had companies in the Series A stage, but more of those that were maturing. And you didn't
have a Bitcoin fund that was really investing at the Series A stage and leading those rounds.
So that was our thesis that there might not be enough companies when we started the fund ready
to invest in, but we were seeing the momentum in the ecosystem
and seeing that over that investment period of three to four years,
there would be more than enough deal flow for us to be able to invest in.
And we've certainly seen that.
We've had the fund.
We had first close of the fund around 18 months ago,
and deal flow is kind of stronger than we expected.
We have five core Series A investments now,
so we're really, really happy with it and certainly seeing the maturity
in the ecosystem that we had expected and that is really, really exciting to see.
It's so cool. It really is so cool. And so is there a specific niche within the Bitcoin ecosystem
that you guys like? And I'm thinking along maybe an infrastructure lens or something like that,
where you're like, this is the type of business that we'd like to own part of going forwards,
or is it more opportunistic in terms of what turns out?
It's more opportunistic.
We always have themes or ideas that we want to see built or that we think should be built.
But mostly we're waiting for the entrepreneur to really figure that out and build something
to a point where we can invest in it.
Ultimately entrepreneurs are typically the ones that are more plugged in Maybe they have a problem they solving for themselves or they in a company and seeing a problem or they deep in Bitcoin technology and seeing what possible So generally you have entrepreneurs coming in and they had this
specific lens, which gave them this specific insight to build the company. So we don't have
a specific type of business. We have infrastructure companies, we have B2C companies, we have
yeah kind of b2b really institutional product companies as well so it really just depends
it depends on the company yeah and I love that kind of idea of especially as an investor sitting
at this kind of sweet spot where a person has devoted their life for a number of years on
solving a problem that they felt or that they saw and they have not just got the kind of product
market fit proof, but actually they're starting to make good revenue.
And that is a different place to like, I've got this epic idea, or I've had this idea
and I built this prototype and look at how it's working.
It's just a completely different phase of business essentially.
And so to flip that to the other side, because there are so many highly motivated, ethically
aligned, talented people building stuff for Bitcoin or on Bitcoin.
an investor perspective, what are those kind of conversations going like? Is there more
institutional money looking to get into this kind of phase? Is it mainly high net wealth
that are putting money in? And what's the kind of return profile with that? Because obviously
you could just own Bitcoin, right? And that's probably going to do pretty well for you.
So yeah, I'd love to learn more about the other side to that scale.
You mean who's investing in the first check-in?
Yeah. So as the leading fund working in and around Series A and Bitcoin, who's giving you a call and saying, OK, we now like the look of this. What can we do?
There are a few funds in the ecosystem that are investing earlier.
And we do also invest all the way from pre-C through to Series A in the fund.
It's just the largest numbers go into the Series A checks.
sure um so i think if anyone's out there in building the first the best way to get the first
check is usually friends and family or angel investors when you just have an idea and you
just want to need some funding the best way to do it really is if you can bootstrap it invest your
own money um but of course if that's not possible then friends and family is a really good way to do
it and then we there's there's a variety of funds out there whether it's time chain or folgo or
there's a few other ones as well um that do invest earlier and smaller checks as well
so there is pretty decent capital available um andy what i more meant was like so you guys
obviously have a fund structure and you're taking money from other people so who are those other
people just generally speaking right yeah got it yeah so because who are our lps yes yeah so
So those LPs, they can put their money anywhere.
So why are they looking here?
And just, I'd love to have a flavor for those kinds of conversations.
Yeah.
Most of our LPs, I would say, are ultra high net worth investors that are Bitcoiners that
most of them, I would say, have built a business themselves.
So they kind of get what it means to build a business.
They also get kind of a lot of the problems in the world and in the economy.
And most of them, in fact, I'm sure all of them have a very significant Bitcoin investment.
And so the investment in our fund would sit alongside their Bitcoin investment.
We wouldn't really ever have an investor that invests in this instead of Bitcoin.
We really see it as an additional way to get exposure to the Bitcoin ecosystem, which could exceed the rate of return of Bitcoin and is also partially decorrelated with Bitcoin.
So we definitely target returns in excess of Bitcoin.
And certainly founders coming into the space sort of have that mindset already of Bitcoin is the hurdle rate.
So they do need to beat Bitcoin is the hurdle rate.
You have companies that are generating Bitcoin directly and so earning in Bitcoin.
So kind of naturally you're accelerating that accumulation of Bitcoin.
So that's really why our investors invest a lot, someone to support the ecosystem.
but ultimately it is they think that it does have the potential to have really strong returns.
And I think the decorrelation helps as well. Like we have companies that their revenue is not linked
to the Bitcoin price because the service they're providing is payments on Bitcoin, for instance,
for businesses, which the business runs regardless of the Bitcoin price.
Yeah, I'd love to learn more about how you think about decorrelation because, and case study being,
and full confession the last six weeks has been a really brutal experience for me as a private
investor of my own capital and net assets for me over 14 months are like 60 down and i committed to
buying a house and doing a renovation and there's a whole load of headache that's come with that it's
been very stressful for my wife and i and it's i just went hardcore bitcoin i was like this is the
thing that's going to fucking do it and i absolutely still believe that but the volatility
over about three and a half years i was sitting on a 5x i'm like this is a no-brainer why wouldn't
everyone do this and suddenly that becomes i mean it's still two two and a half three it's great but
you're then you're pegged to this previous price and there's a whole i mean talk about mind games
you're playing mind games with yourself all day long and trying not to self-sabotage and i'm having
I do lots of work on that.
But the uncorrelated nature of what you're talking about has for the first time really
hit home to me as to how valuable that is.
Because you're not just getting pure Bitcoin price exposure and it is going to be volatile
over multi-year ranges, not just like six months, but like in four years time, it might
not be where you thought it was going to be.
So yeah, how compelling is that to an investor when you're speaking to them?
And is that specifically what they're looking for?
because after my experience that would be a real selling point yeah i get it no i know it's been it
has been tough and and it is difficult sort of mentally and emotionally to you know i've been
going through the same thing it is difficult mentally and emotionally um to navigate that
um i would say historically that has not been a major selling point for our lps it's something
we've always talked about i don't know how much to be honest that's been a major selling point
but yeah it's interesting maybe after this latest drawdown and that in our next fund it might be
more interesting um i know for me personally it does make life easier that i'm not sort of
with the fund and the business you know if i have people i know that have kind of liquid crypto
investment funds and there it's like the whole everything they've worked for is just like down
80 and that's extraordinarily difficult um yes whereas for us we just our companies keep building
and they just keep going through and if you know we have a company called ln markets which is
derivatives trading and so you when you have volatility they benefit because people want to
kind of trade and do derivatives um so it's it and that's that was definitely important for us going
in but and when we do invest in companies we always look for companies that can build through
and grow revenue through down cycles and through bear markets.
And that is something really important we look for in companies as well.
Cool.
Yeah, it's not something I would have batted an eyelid at
in terms of correlation previously,
but now it's definitely something, oh, that's interesting.
Another space that personally it's highlighted for me as well
is in a sense I was the same.
I was like a crypto fund, but just on a private basis.
And so it's like all of life that was being paid for previously has now become twice as expensive.
You know, ah, that wasn't quite as good a plan as I thought it was.
And one of my mentors I was talking to last night, this phrase is like, I spoke about this recently.
I would join Daniel Prince on his podcast.
Mike Tyson at some point quoted, everyone thinks they're great till they get smacked in the face.
And you're like, oh, that's kind of what it feels like, right?
Like, oh, why didn't everyone do this?
They're all idiots.
So I've killed it. Here we go. I've got my time. I can do all this stuff. And then you're like, oh.
So now you have to react. One of the steps I will take for sure is making money with my time.
Previously, I was pegged to a net wealth and that was my psychological peg to doing well.
Whereas actually, if you're making money off your time, this sounds really simple to most people, I'm sure.
And first world problems for me, admittedly, that is a natural hedge against any drawdown.
So there's a number of steps I'm going to put in to make sure that I never feel like this again.
Really interesting.
And that's exactly what emotions are for, by the way.
It's like, that's why you're feeling the emotion.
Like, this is why emotions are so important.
You could go and do a meditation and be like, it's all okay.
All the world is fine.
I can just live.
Or you can be like, hey, I don't like feeling like this.
How can I put steps in place to make sure that in future I don't feel like this?
And that's like what the emotion is there for.
Yeah, and I could share as well, just on that emotion front, again, it's my conversation with Daniel that's making me think about this.
So I was at boarding school in the UK from the age of eight to 18.
And Daniel and I were talking in detail about what that experience was like.
But in many ways, it's an emotion suppression process.
And so as a young boy, you get thrown into this environment where it's like you show any emotion and you get bullied straight away.
So you just don't.
and therefore I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
And this system produces,
a British private school system
produces political leaders, business leaders,
judges, the whole shebang
and none of them have felt anything
since the age of eight.
How crazy is that?
And I know that's true
because I've got friends like that
and myself at times.
And so one thing that we're trying to do with our kids
is to allow them to express emotion
and say things like, you're okay, you can be upset.
Hitting's not something that's okay, or whatever the case might be.
But it's so funny because the triggers of your children, I get furious.
And one of the reasons I get furious is because they're getting upset.
And part of me is a little Jake inside.
He wants to be upset and was never allowed to be.
And you're like, oh, what is this journey that's life?
You know, these lessons you're getting is now I'm what?
I'll be 38 in June.
You're like, Christ, you just don't know what's going to come up, do you?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, this British private school system sounds so horrible.
Like, it's very, it's kind of culty.
It's very culty.
I understand.
And actually, it's like really not healthy.
And I have a lot of compassion.
I remember reading Roald, do you know Roald Dahl?
Yep.
And he wrote the book about his childhood and wrote all about his experience in this private school.
and I remember being horrified.
What the hell was the book called?
It's like Boy, maybe?
I read it decades, like years ago.
It's an excellent book, yeah.
But it was like, whoa.
You know what's making me think about, Andy,
is your description earlier of being in a cult
and being like, it's just a reaction.
It's kind of like what you would see in dormitories
when boys are just losing it.
They just lost it.
And it's like, well, it's because they're not supposed to be here, right?
It's like, uh-oh, that's just a reaction.
They can come over here, you know.
Whoa, interesting.
Oh, Andy.
Okay, well, listen, we're pushing up to the hour,
and I could go for like another two or three,
and we touched on all sorts of subjects that we just didn't have time for today.
But really awesome to spend some time with you.
Thank you so much.
And the thing I always enjoy so much about having done podcasts
for a few different years now is seeing people's progress.
Because, you know, we had a conversation before,
and you see what happens in between.
It's really awesome to see.
So thank you for sharing everything today.
Just one final question is,
is there anything that we haven't touched on
that you'd like to talk about?
Oh, no, not specifically.
Nothing comes to mind.
Cool.
No, thanks for having me on.
And it's been a great conversation.
So I appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Where can people reach you if they want to get in touch?
So to follow my sub stack,
it's called the Clyra Passages, C-L-Y-R-A.
If you Google search, it'll come up.
and you can follow me on Twitter.
I am at one, so the number one
and then Andy Pitt, A-N-D-I-P-I-T-T.
Perfect.
And I'll pop those into the show notes as well.
Perfect.
Andy, thank you so much for your time today.
Thanks so much.
Bye.