Katherine Boyle on the Army's transformation initiative and what's next for American Dynamism investing

than ever. Um in some ways uh mission mission accomplished. I mean uh last week in DC um it was American dynamism on display, right? Everyone everyone is a believer and the question is where do we go from here? And that's what I'm excited to dig in with her today. Katherine, welcome to the stream. How are you doing?

Thanks for having me. It's about time. I'm so happy to be here. Long time listener, first time caller. Great to have you with the flag in the background. Yes. Fantastic. Um, where should we start? Uh, I I'm curious about just a state of affairs with the American Dynamism movement.

The project uh feels like uh it's maybe time to rest on our laurels. Uh what do you think? We we've achieved American dynamism. It feels like it. Yeah. Uh but I mean seriously, it feels like like it's broken through. It's mainream. Cultural victory may be coming before actual victory. Sure.

Um in that in that American dynamism is is almost mainstream now at least in the venture world. Yes. But jobs not finished. Job's not finished. So what are the key uh asks in DC from uh from Silicon Valley right now? What are the top projects?

Where should uh tech be focused in terms of the American Dynamism project broadly right now? Totally. So, it's nowhere near finished. I mean, this is like three or four years into a 30-year project, which is always good when you have those sorts of aims.

And I'd say it's even longer than that when you think of defense 1. 0. It started around 2015, 2016. You know, it sort of has b it's become this this very large movement.

But I'll tell you like last week was a huge huge week for American dynamism inside of the DoD and the news sort of got buried in in techland but it was just it's probably one of the biggest things to happen in the first 100 days of of the Trump administration.

The Army announced what's what they're calling their army transformation initiative and it was with Secretary Driscoll, General George. They actually went on Fox and Friends which was like a huge deal that they actually went public with it and they said it's been way too long.

Like we we have so many platforms we want to modernize. We want to divest from technologies that are no longer useful. We want to to modernize the force. We want to make sure that we get rid of civilian jobs that are not important anymore. We want to make sure we are not having wasteful spending.

I mean it was sort of like you know what I I had read in um NBC after it came out they said like the army is doing itself. Yeah.

I think the the real story of what the army is doing and and kudos to them because they truly are the first mover is there are people inside of the DoD who have been saying these things for years pounding their head against the wall saying they want acquisition reform saying they want to work with startups saying they have to have new platforms that come in and actually support the needs of the war fighter.

and they've been pounding their head against the wall with little results.

And so when you have a Doge effort going on in Washington and an administration that really wants to see, you know, the the waste disappear, it allows for those people who are really forward thinking like General George and like um Secretary Driscoll to come forward and say, "Hey, we're going to do this ourselves.

We're going to pick out the the new technologies that we need. We're going to get rid of things like Humvees that we haven't needed in 20 years. We're we're going to figure out what is actually useful useful for the army and we're going to do it ourselves. " So it was a huge week.

I think it was probably one of the most um it was reported but it didn't get sort of the the praise from from technology that it should have.

Like this is an extraordinary movement that that I think has really been a long time coming and it's something that a lot of the the early American dynamism companies have been pushing for for a long long time. So congratulations to the army. Yeah.

So can you give me it's better to doge yourself than get then get dogeed. Always doge yourself. Doge yourself. Yeah. Can you give me a little bit of a a tour of the market map of the beneficiaries of this transformation?

Obviously, everyone knows the palunteers and the Anderles, but I imagine that there are tons of pockets of value and projects that need to be overhauled. Um, is it mostly drones, weapon systems, vehicles first, or are there other areas that companies that you talk to are focused on in this transformation process?

Totally. So, I mean, in the in the early days, that's what's been called out. So, it's, you know, it's it's early UAVs that were developed 20 years ago. They're not relevant post Ukraine war. I mean, it's it's it's actually sort of um I don't want to say comical because it's not funny.

But when you think about the fact that the Humvey was developed in in 1980, it went into production in 1985 and that the army said in 2004, this actually isn't useful for us anymore because there's this new type of warfare called IEDs and we're not going to use it. And these and these are still in production in 2025.

And and so that's a perfect example. And I think they're sort of, you know, they're showing certain programs that are are so long overdue that they're to be changed.

But I think it's also smaller things like, you know, the program of record was developed when you had to build out these very very large platforms and you and you had to plan years and decades in advance and when someone won a program, it was understood that they were going to to run that program for for decades.

and and now the army has ways to acquire things where technology is changing at a pace and at a speed um that that really needs to have a genuine competition every year every couple years and so that really benefits all startups that that benefits all you know uh incoming emerging technologies that are going to serve sort of the fight of the future so some ways I think it it's you know they have specific callouts that they're that they're pointing to now but there there's definitely um this is sort of a a this is great news for startups because what it's showing is that there is actual actually the will inside the DoD to change things bigger than just okay we're going to give you a uh is there any movement on uh procurement reform?

I remember I watched this uh hilarious movie Pentagon Wars all about the development of the Bradley fighting vehicle and it's a very funny movie but it kind of uh you know everyone has a different requirement they all get put together and becomes this kind of platypus of a vehicle that is part tank part troop transport all these different problems uh part of the benefit of modern technology is that we do develop platforms and things like and ghost can do ISR and also do uh munitions and a whole bunch of There there are projects that do need flexibility, but um is is is there a cultural shift around um moving away from exquisite systems or just when when folks in defense tech say we need procurement reform?

What are they really talking about in 2025? Yeah. Well, I think they're talking about different things because I think what what this initiative is going to do is it's going to allow the army and I think there'll be a lot of, you know, replicas of this as well.

I think other branches will look at this and say this is a great idea. Instead of being locked into a program for decades, they're going to be able to say actually we would love to use that capital for something new. We would love to recompete that that program. We would like to be able to be better capital allocators.

Um because now their their hands are tied and and I think when you when you talk to people who are just in normal business, not in defense world, and you say, "Hey, if you had to make a decision about a purchase that's going to last for 10 years and get no updates and you would not be allowed to change it, what would you do?

" We would say that's insane. Like, how is a CEO going to say they're going to acquire technology for their company that they're going to use for 10 years and there's going to be no software, no updates, no nothing. And if it's not working, you can't get rid of it. Yeah. uh because you're told you can't get rid of it.

I mean, that that is that is literally what the the DoD has to deal with. Yeah.

Um and so I think what what's great about this initiative, again, it's it's one the fact that the army is going public says that they mean business and that they have air cover to do this, but I think the the meta story that we're going to tell ourselves is, you know, Doge has been very public in the last week of what they're doing.

Um there's been some push back on, you know, why are you working on IT systems? You know, everyone has sort of their their favorite Doge meme of why it's not working, but the story of Doge, I think, when we look back even in a year is going to be that it gave extraordinary air cover to reform in every department.

And the first example inside the DoD, this is the biggest example in the last 100 days. To see General George out there saying like this is what we need to do and we are committed and we're going public because we are so committed, which doesn't usually happen.

I just think it speaks volumes and and tech should be celebrating. This is a big big day for everyone in the American Dynam dynamism ecosystem, for every defense company that's been fighting for this for a long time. Yeah. Yeah.

And for for all of this to be to actually achieve those sort of 30-year goals or execute against that 30-year plan, things need to be bipartisan. People need to realize we want efficiency and innovation across every branch. Um, I'm curious on the on the investing side.

Uh, I'm sure you have this painful experience all the time where you meet companies that probably are going to be great businesses, are good for America, but maybe aren't a fit uh for venture.

What What's your sort of updated thinking on understanding if something can be a great important business versus something that can truly be, you know, a generational outcome? Yeah. Well, one of the one of the biggest mistakes I see investors make is trying to predict TAM.

Um so so you know early early days of Andreal a lot of people you know didn't want to look at and because of ethical reasons or because they were worried about being involved in defense but there was another meme that was going around which is almost comical now which is well it's kind of a small town right like a border security company like oh they're selling to DHS Department of Homeland Security doesn't really have that big of a but like like these were real things that people said um that are hilarious now um as you guys can imagine.

So it's like like I I think it is very difficult to predict a growing markets eventually what some of these incredibly important technologies are going to be worth.

Um but I but I agree with you there are some examples of companies that might not be you know standalone businesses but will ultimately you know end's done a very good job of acquiring businesses that aren't going to be these venture outcomes but work you know very well within their platform.

Um, but I think in in some ways, uh, there's always surprises, um, with with companies that were initially passed on or or people were very skeptical of their TAM in the early days and and then you look back and you see just how how much they've grown or how much the product has shifted or how how important the platform actually is.

Yeah.

How do you uh how have you been kind of reacting to uh you know ignoring the politics of it all but reacting to you know the trade war in many ways like when you have these like big um geopolitical uh you know events playing out that that doesn't necessarily mean start to make a lot of venture investments because venture investments take a long time to play out and and it's very hard to predict the future.

uh are you are you seeing new opportunities related you know to the events of the last month or are you still just you know continuing like I I imagine when you guys invested in Hrien you weren't like betting on a trade war in two years or something like that right but how how do you um how do you think about timelines and and is American dynam and is the benefit of sort of thinking in that 30-year timeline that you're kind of able to broadly you know uh ignore or not place too much focus on the headlines of today and just think about what America needs in the long run.

Yeah. No, I mean I I would say my my bias as a very early stage investor is to not think about the immediate time frames. Um these are very long cycles. Um you know you you can sort of you can sort of see trend lines but it's hard to know what actual events are going to happen obviously.

So I think even when we made the investment as in Hadrien as you called out there was a movement towards re-industrialization and towards investing in manufacturing that was early and nent but if you were hearing the signs or spending a lot of time in DC or even you know both sides were very focused in Washington on how do we think about um you know in investing in America re-industrialization how do we bring back manufacturing so it it it didn't feel like it was you know it felt like it was a message that was being heard then it's just of course be been accelerated and I think truly if you if think about kind of the next 10 20 years, re-industrialization is going to be a very important theme.

Um, so so you know, it can feel like uh like everything is is hot right now or or feel like we're in the middle of of something, but ultimately I think we're again in this like very very early, you know, three or four years into a 30-year journey of this this sort of um you know, it took it took decades for globalization to really hit its peak and and now we're sort of seeing the pendulum swing again.

And so you're going to see a lot of companies that are built in the next few years that become generational companies. Yeah. H how do you think about the kind of broader market map of American dynamism? Obviously Anderl is like a just a great case study in the American dynamism thesis.

But uh at the same time as you go through the American dynamism website you can go back to like the moon landing and uh that the development of the iPhone as like examples.

Um, at the same time, there's this question about like the anderol of X is Anderoll potentially, but then that doesn't always come true if you're talking about something that's truly outside of their purview in Consumer or in um, you know, Flock Safety or Hadrien.

These companies are not competitive, but maybe fit in the thesis. Um, what uh h how are you seeing the the investing landscape of American Dynamism kind of evolve as more people come into the to the category? but then think outside the box and address different issues.

I mean, I've seen even like some education stuff kind of fit the uh the the broader thesis. So, how has that evolved over the last couple years? Yeah, we define it as companies that are actively supporting the national interest. Sure.

So it's it is a very simple definition and founders have you know different interpretations of what it means but there's there's common themes and actually this goes into why we decided to to have a separate fund why we decided to build out the platform uh is because these companies need something entirely different than a true enterprise or a true consumer company and when we looked back at our our early portfolio of Shield AI and Android you know these astron that were sort of what I would call space and defense 1.

0 know, y we'd sort of like put them in the enterprise category as though they're like no different than a company that's selling business software to to the Fortune 500, right? It doesn't make any sense. They have totally different needs.

Um, you know, Andrew's famously said that they had a lobbyist on staff on on week one.

There's things that companies need that our view is that we could build a platform to help support these companies, namely in Washington, understanding who their buyers are on the BD side, which is a very difficult kind of role to hire for inside of um early stage startups.

but then also understanding kind of the the Washington game which is very important for for companies to understand if they're going to be selling directly to the federal government.

Now you mentioned education and there's a lot of companies in our portfolio too that are selling to state and local and that is a totally different sales motion.

You know, that's that is something where, you know, company like Flock Safety has has sort of rewritten the rules of how you sell directly to a police force or or how you how you even follow what I would call kind of like a second city strategy of not going to the biggest cities but going to these smaller municipalities and getting a lot of, you know, almost circling a big city with the the suburbs around it and kind of getting a lot of momentum from the citizens.

But all these companies have very similar uh needs and sort of things that they have to think about early rather than later.

And we've now seen enough of sort of the early success stories in public safety and uh and you know aerospace defense like sort of these these sort of generational companies that came up in the last several years that the boom that's happening in these categories many of them want to replicate those playbooks and and and have I think with with a lot of success.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about uh almost like lobbying as value ad for venture capital?

I remember I was running an Andrees back company a decade ago and there were I met the CEO of McDonald's through Andre at some happy hour and there were trainings on B2B sales and PR and all this stuff but there was no concept of uh regulatory or lobbying but I imagine that's a piece of it but it's at the same time you need to eventually staff your own government affairs team.

Um how are you working with early stage founders to get them up and running in Washington? Yeah.

Well, I mean there a lot I would say a lot of the founders that we backed are very I would say sophisticated in their knowledge of who they need to be meeting with or the types of company or the types of uh people they should be meeting with in the DoD.

But the thing that I think we're we're actually I would say even more successful in doing that's really important is making all that knowledge public. You know, we make our playbooks public.

You know, my my partner Leila, who who runs runs our go to market in DC, she wrote this incredible glossery of things you need to know if you're even going to approach a venture capital firm about, you know, about a defense tech company. Like these are the acronyms.

These are all the acronyms you could possibly hear in a conversation with the DoD. And it's it's things like that where we we do want to make that public and we want to help educate the ecosystem.

And I can tell you like you know five or six years ago the number of venture capitalists who understood the difference between contracting you know the different types of contracting vehicles u that understood the names of you know of different um you know people on the appropriations committee.

I mean these these things that are now sort of I I'd say taken for granted um were were not well known. Um and so I think that's a huge part of it too is really helping the ecosystem get up to speed.

Um helping companies sort of speedrun that early stage process of like you can ask any dumb question and we're going to help you with it.

But then there is also something to be said of it is much easier to get a meeting with certain people if you are at a dinner that's sponsored by a group of people who are always in Washington. I mean we have a Washington office now.

We are fully staffed in terms of both Republicans and Democrats and people who work um on both sides of the aisle. People who specialize in DoD's people who specialize in certain types of the DoD.

Um, and I think that is like a very important thing to be able to say, okay, you're you need to meet with X, Y, and Z people or you need to understand the glossery before you can even begin to have those conversations. Do you think uh defense tech is now mature? It's oversaturated.

I was joking with Jordy that I think uh world peace is like maybe six months away and then I'm going to start poaching top defense tech talent to build the next generation of advertising optimization because I think that we just got to get them back in next company. You know it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh but I mean uh but but I mean seriously like it does seem that would be the most you know the the open AI you know AGI is always six months away defense tech founders need to just go like yeah just two more two billion more and like worldace world peace. Yeah.

Um, but I mean there is a serious question here like uh there I I know some people who are like just so excited that they're jumping into things but but you know being even I'm not even in the industry but I'm a little bit more tapped in and I'm like there are already seven companies working on that exact thing.

I don't know if this is the best time.

Um, is it is it worthwhile to steer you know these incredible hackers, these great entrepreneurs like maybe towards the the more like uh the more tangential hard tech problems like what I see with like what base power is doing is like it's hard tech it has defense roots but it's not directly something that's on anderol's road map.

What advice are you giving to kind of the entrepreneurs that are like in between things thinking about serving the national interest but not necessarily putting themselves on a collision course with a you know multi-billion dollar founder mode company. So, so I'll say deterrence is a constant project, right?

So, like your whole like the meme of maybe six months away from world peace, course like I I actually think that was was part of the problem in the '9s, right? Like like seriously over Yeah. democracy, the end of end of history. Yeah. End of history. We flourished and we don't need to be working on these things.

So the the the kind of it is very important that we've gone back almost to the roots of the DoD saying like hey actually we remember what it's like to be a country at war and we need to be constantly focused on the next technologies.

We need to be focused on deterrence thinking of it as deterrence because we want to prevent war but we have to be continuously building.

So from from that perspective I think we're again we're we're only a few years into this this real movement of Silicon Valley caring about working with the DoD and I hope that it's a 30-year project. I think that's what we all really should be should be focused on is making sure it's a 30-year project.

Um, and even longer than that. But to your point, what what I think is so interesting about companies that, you know, are founded out of Andre or out of SpaceX, you know, we've done an analysis where we looked at all of the founders who've left SpaceX um since, you know, in in the last say 10 years.

And there's hundreds of companies that have been formed in just wildly different sectors, whether it's, you know, radiant nuclear working on nuclear energy. Um, you know, Castellian, which is in our portfolio, and they're building hypersonic weapons. I mean, some of the best founders are trained.

I always say they go to the school of Elon Musk. They learn manufacturing, they learn production, and then they want to take that to something that, you know, is pretty lowhanging fruit.

like they they they want to make sure that they're competing against the incumbents of of of yesterday who who have not modernized their production um who've not modernized a lot of the technology that they're working on.

And so, you know, I think you see that with a lot of the you know, yes, there are some extremely crowded fields, but then there are also areas of defense that are really just boring and completely untouched.

And you're seeing founders realize that too, that it's it's not something that that's, you know, interesting to to any of the existing companies and it's a lowhanging you know, it's low hanging fruit. it would be interesting to work on that. Um, or they're interested in being a tier one supplier.

We have a number of companies that are really focused on the supply chain aspect of defense and and they're partners to Andreal and their partners to SpaceX and and other companies in the ecosystem.

So, so you really are seeing founders like understand that question in a very sophisticated way and saying, "Okay, we're going to go after the parts of the supply chain or or the things that DoD needs that no one is focusing on. " Um, and that's been exciting to see, too.

Can you can you talk about M&A in defense tech broadly? Andol's done this very well. Seronic announced a deal last week uh acquiring Gulf Craft. Um that feels super significant. I'm I'm curious, you know, how you advise founders kind of broadly when when thinking about that.

We actually had Augustus on from Rain Maker earlier who had acquired a company in his space. But when's when's the right time to be, you know, thinking about that as as somebody in defense tech? And um yeah, what what kind of opportunities do you think make the most sense? Totally.

Well, I think I mean both Anderl and Seronic, I mean, they they have incredibly unique stories in terms of where they're operating and and sort of what they need to do in order to grow and scale, and they've done it um at at a speed that is just incredible, right?

like they they they they have very sophisticated teams that know a lot about acquisition. Um I'd say for earlier stage companies like it's you know we're seeing more companies that are that are potentially interested in doing that and it can speed up um it can speed up innovation.

Um it can speed up being able to to work with certain customers. That's for sure. If you're acquiring a certain um capability so that you can sell to a to a a major prime that's something we've seen more of too which is which is interesting and exciting.

Like I don't think we were seeing that several years ago and now we're certainly seeing companies experiment with that. But when you when you said actually M&A um I actually thought you were going towards something that I that I think is actually more likely to happen in the future that hasn't happened in a long time.

When you look at these existing prime prime companies, the big five say they've really only acquired um companies that have not raised any venture dollars, right? Like they they don't acquire companies that are kind of seen as these bleeding edge companies to to shore up their capabilities.

And my instinct, you know, we're talking about Army Transformation Initiative. We're talking about a government that's becoming far more sophisticated and a DoD that's becoming far more competitive, right? It hasn't been competitive for decades and now you're seeing all of these startups come in.

My my like prediction if we're looking 5 10 years out is that the companies that have not been inquisitive for the best engineers and the best technologists and and these these capabilities that they need are going to find that as their only solution.

And I think we could potentially even see uh another last supper situation which of course in the 90s was the famous case where the government came to all these primes and said you have to merge you have to have um kind of forced mergers and acquisitions because the budget's going to decrease.

And of course that was that was probably the wrong strategy given sort of the results that came out of that.

But I do think it is something that I would not be surprised if in five or 10 years you're seeing the existing primes that have been around in many cases for a hundred years saying we have to to work with these startups in a in a much more tangible way and you could see a highly inquisitive ecosystem that that people don't necessarily kind of write into their their their kind of thesis today.

How would you uh uh h how do you think about leadership at the individual primes and you know people over the last few years I mean Boeing has been dragged through the dirt uh by pretty much everyone but I think of it as a great uh in in the fullness of time it's a great Boeing I ain't going yeah John is John so lo excitement he'll never fly as a white collar worker you know there's you don't risk your life very often when I go on a business trip and I step on a 737 Max, I'm lost.

No, and I mean I I just look at it as as as as China would love to uh have a company that was actually competitive with Boeing, right?

It's it's hugely strategic asset, but I'm curious uh do you think that, you know, any of the primes, you know, and every now and then you'll see a Prime release a video that's like clearly like they hired a marketing agency and said like make us like an Anderl movie, you know, and then they they they put it out.

Uh but but how do you think about um do you do you see that the the leadership at at the primes? Well, Lockheed Martin invented artificial intelligence, remember? Yeah, they came out last week and claimed that they invented artificial intelligence. They basically just said, "You're welcome. You're welcome, by the way.

You're welcome. " But I'm curious for transformation. Yeah.

Do you have conversations with them or is it uh is it I mean even though it's not an opportunity for you know venture capitalists necessarily like it would be great if they were highly functioning in the American interest like as Americans and then you have the you have the the program that was spun out of you know was it Microsoft Microsoft and yeah the hollow lens yeah sorry so I think there's probably more kind of even spinout opportunities where new companies collaboration totally you know value on top of existing programs yeah I think you know Palmer and Brian Shy has has done an incredible podcast on this where he talks about sort of what happened at these primes and why things sort of went by the wayside and it's partially because they really stopped focusing on research and development.

They sort of they didn't really need to. There was no real competition and and they kind of recognized that that you know they they would always get paid by the government to do new things. You know again like it's it's sort of this confluence of factors that led us to be I don't know really complacent.

Um, and I went back actually last night and was reading the first few pages of The Killchain by Christian Bros, which again, it's like it's reading it. It was written, I believe, in 2019. Things have changed so dramatically in terms of the conversation.

But it's like going back in a time warp and saying, "Wow, like in 2019, people really didn't care that Boeing was collapsing or that there were these private or these public companies that were doing no research and development because it didn't matter, right? That was pre-war in Ukraine.

It was sort of, you know, in some ways it was uh security theater, right? Like we don't actually have to remain secure. we just have to pretend we're secure.

And so I think there is this new sort of wakeup call where a lot of these companies are going to say one, if we if we can't recruit the engineers and do the research and development in-house, we're going to have to acquire it.

So again, that's why I think you're going to see a lot more acquisitions over the next several years because I think a lot of these companies are really going to have to change.

But two, like these initiatives inside the DoD that are now getting real steam, that is going to force incredible competition that has not existed uh even in the last 10 years when we've all been investing in American dynamism.

So, I'm I'm actually much more like hopeful and excited about where I think the world is world is going because I I I genuinely believe that a lot of these players have sort of woken up and are looking for solutions because now they know they have to. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, I I was a while ago I was talking to Trey about just the lack of the deeper supply chain specifically in drone motors. Like there are no small drone motor manufacturers in the United States. They're almost all made in China.

Um, and that feels like, oh, there's almost a startup idea there, but I don't know if it's a venture idea. There's actually a drone motor company in Washington. Uh, they outsourced some of their supply chain recently.

that feels like almost like we need an American dynamism private equity fund to just turn those companies around. They're not going to be these power law hundred billion dollar companies, but they might produce 20% returns more reliably and there's maybe no venture style zero uh you know loss of capital risk.

Uh do you think we need a uh American dynamism for private equity? Is that something Andre would do at some point? Uh I mean you're kind of in every asset class now so anything's possible but uh is there is there a flip side to the venture model within invest investing in the national interest?

Well I certainly think we we've we've invested in some companies that are focused on component parts. Uh so we're you know we're invested in AMA. I know that Jay was on recently. So like there are more and more companies that are figuring out ways to do this.

Um and again those are the examples of companies that are that are you know much more focused on how do we you know how do we acquire companies?

how do we how do we how do we make it you know make them I would say tech forward but also think about like how quickly we can get into the supply chain and some of these larger primes.

Um but I think you're you know you're seeing a lot of innovation around the edges on this and you're you're probably going to see u more and more founders who recognize that if that's where the real problem is they're they're going to build there and they're going to build in the best way that that suits them.

So yeah, it does seem like there's almost like a way to turn something like uh MP materials we were talking about like you wouldn't think like oh yeah venture is suitable for like mining at all but like now there's a couple mining companies that are figuring out how to in inject enough technology to make it potentially a venture scale opportunity which is interesting.

Um do you have anything else? I have a couple more. I got a I got a totally switching gears but uh you had a post recently that I that I liked. It was I'm committed to doing whatever the opposite of gentle parenting is.

And I wanted to ask you if you found any Lindy uh books on parenting, anything that's sort of resonated that you're implementing. John and I uh have both have similar aged uh children.

And I always have this, you know, sort of concern around, you know, you want to experiment, you know, with with par parenting and try new things and maybe not just take exactly what the mainstream media says is the right way to do parenting, but then, you know, your your children have one life, you know, you want to to not uh run, you're not trying to run AB tests, you know, on their I have three boys, so I employ what I call the snake pit strategy, which is you lock them all in a room and then they it's just a snake pit and they just like wrestle and, you If there's damage, they'll heal and that's fine.

The right way to do it. Well, I followed up that tweet with the tried and trueue Irish Irish strategy, which is the hey method. You just shout, "Hey, allowed. " Yeah. Hey. Hey. Hey. You know, it works. Like there's something about where where your sons actually turn around and listen to you.

But uh but sadly I you know there there aren't like any books like oldtimey books that I found that that actually teach I would say uh the best way to to you know to to train children or to to child rear. But you know it's it's it's interesting. I always think that grandmothers kind of know best.

So if there's a grandmother in your life anywhere um they remember how it used to be done and how effective it was and it was you know probably harder in the olden days too. So it's like basically just ask grandma like grandma.

plug uh I would plug Free-Range Kids um all about this that like our society has moved towards like don't let the kids just run around in the neighborhood. They could get kidnapped. There's so many bad things that could happen.

There's been a lot of fear-mongering from the media and so that's kind of led to kids turning in in inside becoming inside kids staying on the iPads or whatever.

Um, but there's this movement in the freerange kids to just be like, "Yeah, actually like you're six, you can ride a bike like ride your bike to the park like and and that will enforce the society to maintain safety. " I need to find the rate the rate of parenting. That's that's the next alpha.

But yeah, my my problem with the grandma method is that uh my uh my mother and mother-in-law just want to let the kids do exactly what they want to do. You wanted two cookies, great. You want three cookies. So maybe they're maybe they're right. Maybe that is Lindy. Who knows?

Maybe it is Lindy and the great grandmother, right? Like the the one who remembers how tough it was. Yeah, that's right. Uh I I want to get your reaction to Warren Buffett. Uh obviously he stepped down over the or or announced his transition at uh Berkshire Hathaway this uh weekend.

What do you take away from Buffett's legacy as an investor? It's obviously a very different type of investing, but there's so many interesting lessons there from company building to investing to everything else. uh what was your reaction?

Yeah, you know, I I'll I'll take a little bit of a different take because I was watching the the you know, the annual meeting last year and there was this moment that happened and I actually wrote about it in a piece on friendship and founder friendship where he was doing his usual, you know, going through company analysis and then he just kind of forgets where he is and says Charlie and everyone stopped.

It was like, you know, I think I I think I teared up seeing it because it was like he he was so in his zone after so many years of working together. He had forgotten that that Charlie had passed. Yeah.

And he was almost embarrassed about it, but I thought it was the most beautiful moment because one of the things I don't think we talk enough about in venture world is founder friendship. And I mean like deep deep friendship. Not like, oh, we went to college together and we were friends or whatever.

We're going to start a startup together. I mean those people who like work together decades and decades out.

I actually think this is why family businesses often work better where you even if you look at like the Collison brothers it's like they've sharing resources you know for for since since childhood since they can remember and like there's something about just the going through life with someone suffering with someone understanding how to like you know end someone's sentences that leads to these just incredibly rich and beautiful companies um and I think if you know if we did an analysis in Andrea Horowitz and just looked at the companies that were true outliers I think there would be stories of these people are like brothers brothers and sisters and and Andrew is certainly this right like it's you know the the founders there were DARPA challenged together like their first day of college right so it's in some ways there's something about just having these deep relationships that that span the test of time where you're you're on a journey with someone and it's real like arisatilian friendship not like faux friendship but true love um and and clearly you saw that with them um it's it's just a remarkable thing how they were able to to kind of be true brothers and and kind you know, each other's better half throughout their business career for as long as they were.

It's amazing. Last question. What should we do with Alcatraz? Oh, you know, I I love all I love all the ideas of turning it into a casino, but I I haven't seen that one. I like that.

I was saying I was saying tax haven and and and general solicitation rules so you can like go out there, no quiet periods, sell your angel, lock up periods, just unfettered libertarian capitalism out there. That sounds good. But I but there is something about bringing it back in its original form.

You know, it's like there is something about these buildings that that the the president likes to restore into their former glory. And so if Alcatraz is the case, like keep the historical details accurate. Sure. Um you can kind of see where it's coming from. He's he's definitely a historicist in that in that regard.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was fantastic. This was great. Come back on and thanks for having me. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Cheers. Um that was fantastic. Um, I hadn't heard the casino idea. She's clearly on a different part of X than I am.

No, I saw I think I saw a little bit of that, but I was thinking if you made it a tax haven, you could just put casinos.