Marc Andressen with Tim Ferriss

Click Here for this good interview with the founder of pioneering web software firm browser Netscape and disruptive VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Parts I liked best:

Difference & Similarity between VCs and Value Investors [42:25]

"Anything Warren Buffet is willing to invest in, we run screaming in the other direction. He invests in Heinz Ketchup since people have been using it for over a 100 years and therefore it's a good guess that they will continue to do so for the next 100. Basically, he's betting against change and we are betting for change. When he makes a mistake, it's because something changes that he doesn't expect; we make a mistake when something doesn't change.

But what both schools have in common is Original Thinking and the willingness to look at things as they are ("the core of the business") as opposed to what somebody says about them or it's believed to be. Also, Value Investing is the only place in the market where there's Long Term investing."

Importance of inculcating a Culture of "Building Things" [44:50]

"Smart People Should Build Things" (based on a book title) and "Be So Good that they can't Ignore You" (from the book Born Standing Up by Steve Martin)

Importance of Reading Biographies: "Technology changes; people don’t." [22:28]

"While following contemporary stuff is good, I find it more useful to go further back and read (well written) Biographies about Edison, Disney, Ford, Rockefeller, etc."

How he deals with FOMO (fear of missing out) when it comes to investing [38:47]

Why he does not believe AI is going to either kill jobs or people . [48:01]

Why & How to Harness Young Men: The Sebastian Junger Interview (by Tim Ferriss)

Awesome Awesome Interview with the Author and War Correspondent.  Huge insights into human behaviour - especially into what makes young men tick and why some kind of national service must be made compulsory. Once you listen, you would also understand exactly what Winston Churchill meant when "Never let a good crisis go to waste".

My Favorite segments:

• On striving for political correctness in gender [43:59]
• PTSD, the C-Train, and returning to New York City after being at war [1:08:14]
• On the lonely nature of society [1:12:01]
• On the role of journalists:
• “The point of journalism is to tell the truth. It is not to improve society. There are facts and truths that feel regressive, but that doesn’t matter. The point of journalism isn’t to make everything better; it’s to give people accurate information about how things are.”

Quick Link: Seth Godin with Tim Ferriss

Fun & Thoughtful interview.

Highlights include:

How Seth Godin processes email [51:44]

What would Seth do to educate children [1:34:22]

Quick Link: Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Ventures

From Stanford E-Corner.

Highlights: Thesis Driven Investing

Quick Link: Scott Cook of Intuit

From Stanford E-Corner.

Highlights: How he validated the idea for Quicken, People Management, Need for having a Coach

Quick Link: All About Acquisitions

Jeff Seibert, a techie who founded one company while still a student at Stanford and sold it to Box and then founded and sold another company to Twitter (where he still works), describes - in this returning to campus talk (at Stanford eCorner)  - "what went well and what didn't during the acquisition of his earlier startups by big-name technology companies, stressing the importance of culture fit, maintaining your team's trust throughout, and continued investment in growth after being acquired. Seibert also explains how an acquisition isn't always the best exit strategy for a promising startup.

Quick Link: Rami Essaid of Distil Networks on Startup Grind

The downloadable and streaming audio is here, the video is here.

Highlights:

• Worrying about Competition Copying Ideas: The Unique Way in which you Execute Is Everything.
• Equity split among founders who are full time and moonlighters who will join only post funding. He was the only one doing it full time, so he had a majority stake while the moonlighting co-founders split the  rest.
• Starting without tech co-founders is an up hill battle. If you can't sell your vision for the product  to a techie, it would be difficult to sell it to investors.

Quick Link: John McAfee with James Altucher

The interview is titled "John Mcafee: The Most Interesting Man In The Universe. And, given the sheer colorfulness of his life - from selling his anti-virus company for Billions (to Intel), to becoming a fugitive in Belize, to his views on cyber threats and  now running for President - he almost lives up to the hyperbolic claim.

Quick Link: BREATHE and all the rest will follow

In this fun interview with Tim Ferris, endurance athlete and trainer extradionaire Wim Hof emphasises the importance of deep breathing, why he eats only one meal-a-day and other techniques.

More Tim Ferriss-isms

Tim Ferriss - of Four Hour Work Week fame- has a new TV Show out titled "the Tim Ferriss experiment". To promote the show, Tim appeared on two recent podcasts - Mixergy and Product Hunt - Maker Stories - both of which are well worth a listen.