Transcription
Think it's uh I think it's less about free speech. I think it's more about do we get to choose how the algorithms are programming us? Because the algorithms are definitively programming us, and uh it's very, very hard to tell what an algorithm is going to do and predict what it's going to do, and that's where the danger comes in. But if I can choose what algorithm filters my tweets and what I get to see, and I have instead of like an app store, an algorithm store, um where I get to put these on my my timeline, then I have a lot more agency in the content and the experience. And I think it ends up creating a much healthier relationship with the technology. And I'm not just speaking about Twitter; this is for YouTube and for financial technologies. Um, we are being programmed. Uh, these algorithms know our preferences better than us; that's only going to increase. How do we increase agency at the individual level? It's by choice. It's by being able to turn off the algorithm. It's by being able to choose different algorithms. It's being by being able to make my own algorithm.
So what kind of algorithms are you are you thinking of here? Well, I mean a simple one like if I were um more left or right leaning, I could choose a more right or left leaning algorithm. If I hated politics and I only wanted to focus on science and um Arts, I could choose an algorithm that filtered everything out but those things. Um, right now most of these internet companies and most of these internet services, the algorithm is driven towards one thing, which is maximizing Impressions to maximize advertising Revenue. That is not that is not maximizing my experience, my learning of the world, or um aligned with my goals as an individual.
But if it shows you what you have shown to be interested in, is that not a good thing? Oh, it's a great thing, but I I want to be able to choose that. And you can build a great business around that. Um, you can sell the algorithms; you can subscribe to them; you can put more directed topical advertising on these algorithms because they actually are programmed in a way that you're actually interested in the outcomes; they're not just random, um and they're not trying to guess; they know. So like uh I I think it lends itself to a much better business, but you have to have companies and individuals who are willing to let go of the secret sauce, which is the algorithm, and and democratize it a little bit more.
How will um generative AI change the way we use this? I think we're seeing the extent of that right now. Like I I think um I think we're at, you know, the edge of one horizon. I think the next Horizon for these for these tools is probably around agent systems and and software that I task to do things for me, and they work with other agents uh on the on the internet um to complete those tasks. I think the generative AI stuff, um especially the large language models, have the ability to obviously create a bunch of information, and it becomes important like what is real, what is reality, what is truth, what um what is fictional, and these tools are going to get so good that like you won't be able to tell, and we'll truly feel like we're in a simulation because it looks like and we perceive that anything literally can happen or could happen or did happen because these tools are so realistic and feel so authentic. Um, so I think the the only way around that really is, you know, to just have more information and better filters, which leads to agents and and and that they be directed by Me, by the individual, and and do more of that work. So I'm less interested right now around LLMs and generative AI because I do think we've we've hit some on it and more interested by how you take this uh intelligence and make it mobile uh and and make it something that like people can send and actually it can do work for them.
Where do you think uh regulation of online platforms is going? I don't know. I I the the problem I I see there's a bigger problem, which is I think regulation generally is becoming more and more fragmented. And you look at like internet regulation; states are now considering internet regulation. Australia just banned um social media for anyone under 18, and that's different from Europe, and that's different from the US, and that's different from the entire rest of the world. So now you have to have a team that's dedicated just to Australia for this one restriction, and if the rest of the world follows with their own specific regulatory uh aspects, then you can't build a company; it's just you can't build a company that serves the world; you can only build companies that serve very particular markets. And that goes against the spirit of the internet. So this is why I think again Protocols are important, is protocols don't have to correspond to these regulations; they're they're not owned by any one company; they're not owned by any one individual; they're Untouchable by a government. You look at Bitcoin um as again the biggest scaled example of this um that's how you get around these issues, and uh and and to me that's that's the biggest that's the biggest concern.
Now two years ago um Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X. Anything um you regret not doing with Twitter before it became X? I mean, there's a lot of things I would do differently in retrospect. Um, I think I think we became we I I wasn't there at the time running the company, but we we um raced to modernization way too quickly, and we force-fitted a modernization path that created a bunch of issues for us, which was advertising. Google had an advertising business that scale; uh Facebook had one that was growing; um Twitter's goal at that point was to grow and go public. Being public meant you had Revenue, so we copied the model of the day, model of the internet, which was advertising, and that just set up a bunch of issues um in terms of growth, in terms of um competition, in terms of how we were valued. Um, it didn't really Express Twitter's True Value, that model, and I wish we took a little bit more time to figure out a better model or that we um that we uh had multiple at once. The second thing is in the early days Twitter felt like a protocol; it felt like HTTP; it felt like SMTP, yet we owned every single part of the stack, and I think that was a mistake because I I don't think a company can necessarily control this without having some sort of choke point that makes it open to manipulation of some way. So if you have an open protocol for social media, which I think Twitter could have been instead of just a company, it could have been both, um you have a a lot more freedom, and you have a lot more agility to do the things that the platform actually needs to do and the protocol needs to do. But if you wrap all that up in one company, um you have a you create a lot of issues for yourself, um including heads of government and advertisers wanting to dictate content policy um or get the numbers of journalists who are uh critiquing them or shut you down because you won't take content down in their country. Um, if it was a protocol instead that was owned by the public and you're building a business on top of that, you couldn't do those things. Um, this is where I learned a lot from Bitcoin.
Do you think uh it could have existed without advertising? Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. And financed in what way? There's tons; there's subscription; there's Commerce; um the uh you know, because because the internet didn't have was not born with a native currency protocol, advertising was the way to subsidize free um free services, and it was it it was taken as a given that these internet businesses had be advertising businesses in the early early days. Netflix showed a different path, um obviously others, eBay showed a different path, but for an information tool like we were, advertising was it it was the way to get the biggest Network because you could offer it for free and subsidize it, but the but the reality is the people that are using it are truly the product, and your customer is the advertiser, and your customer is dictating where the product should go.
Let's talk about um Bitcoin. You uh um started something called Block; tell us what is Block? We originally started a company called Square, um and changed the name to Block because we have multiple business businesses now, and if you make a square three-dimensional, it's a block. Um, so Block is focused on uh um economic Empower; building tools to empower people into the economy. We started with sellers, so enabling sellers to accept credit cards was our beginning, and then we added another business called Cash App, which allows people to easily move money between two people or businesses with their mobile phone instantly. That is becoming more and more a bank in the form of an app, um and today uh we have two massive ecosystems at scale, Square and Cash App, that serve Sellers and individuals and uh give them very simple Financial tools to um do things that they want to do in the economy, or let be send money to their friends and family or get a debit card, um go to an ATM, uh set up an e-commerce shop, um or do customer relationship management.
When do you think these things are in five years' time? Well, the the the other thing that we um wanted to do is like our business is constrained right now by that fragmented regulatory environment. For us to launch Square in any Market or for launch Cash App in any Market, we have to have a partnership with a local bank; we have to pay attention to different regulatory um approaches within that Market within that country, and it's a very, very heavy cost. Um, so we have to weigh that cost versus building new features for the markets that we're currently in, and what allows us to move faster if the internet had a protocol for moving money around. Enter Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a protocol for moving money around. If Bitcoin is used not just as a store of value but as a currency to move money around between people or between businesses and people or businesses and businesses, as that becomes more and more a thing, which I do think it becomes over the next five years, then we can launch up we can launch Cash App and Square in every single country that has the internet, and that allows us to serve more people better, faster, um and because Bitcoin is open, it's not controlled by one company; it's not controlled by any one government; uh it's completely transparent because again it's the internet and it goes to internet principles. So I'm hoping these Financial systems take on more internet principles, and we can truly be an internet company instead of going Market by market by market, which is just a really slow way to build for the world. You can't build for the world; you can only build for these particular markets that you happen to be approved in, and again you're you have to be approved by another company; you have to be approved by um by these things that don't have your interest or even their customers' interest at heart.
So what needs to happen uh for Bitcoin to function more effectively? I think it it's happening right now, like more and more people see that it's valuable. Every time that number goes up, people get more interested in it. I don't believe in Bitcoin and its final stages just a store of value, but I think it's a necessary part of the path to get to um I think the next big one, which is remittance across border, moving money between businesses, moving money between people across borders, which is happening in um many countries outside the United States and Western countries today because there's no other options, um and then it gets to currency as people get more comfortable with it, as they see that it's not going away. Bitcoin is over close to 16 years old right now; um it's never gone down; it's never had a security uh issue; it has no leader; it has a completely open road map, and it's determined by a consensus development model. If Bitcoin existed before we started Twitter, we'd be in a much different state, and I think we'd be in a much better State, and we wouldn't have all the issues that you see with social media today because it's not a tax on the system; it allows for a a business model that's aligned with the people that are using it every single day.
Uh, why would social media be better if you had Bitcoin? Because you you could get to Commerce right away; you could get a subscription right away; you didn't have to get permission from Visa, Mastercard; you didn't have to wait for the security of such uh uh payments on the internet um by virtue and by the grace of Visa, Mastercard to build it. Um, it's built into the internet, um and it works at massive scale. So if we had that tool and we had Commerce at that scale, um we could build a pretty phenomenal business that's like all all communication is exchange of value; Commerce is exchange of value. If you pair currency with communication, you ease Commerce and you ease buying and selling of things, and the internet wants to create efficiencies there, but the biggest friction in that creation of efficiency were the payment networks and the banks and the way we currently deal with with money. So Bitcoin upends all that and changes it and provides a completely different path, which is in my view far more exciting and allows us to build a much bigger business, more valuable business.
I'd love to spend a bit of time on being an entrepreneur. What do entrepreneurs have in common? Well, they're all different; they all have different paths. Um, I think like if I think about that word and the the concept, it's um my experience, my path. I never wanted to be a CEO; I never wanted to build a company; I never wanted to be an entrepreneur; I could care less about it. I wanted to build; I wanted to build, and I wanted to be you; I wanted to use what I built, and I want other people to use what I built. And I realized somewhere along the way that in order to sustain the thing that I built, I needed money, and that's where building business came in. So I had to learn about building a business and running business and being a CEO, but the spirit of all that is you do whatever it takes to make it work. I learned how to program because I needed to understand how to build things on my computer in front of me. I um I need to learn how to be a CEO; I need to learn how to raise money; I needed to to learn how to hire people, how to fire people, how to build cultural Frameworks, how to build uh systems investment Frameworks, um uh feedback mechanisms, all these things that I had no desire to do or to build; I had to do and learn because it was the only way to take the idea to the next step; it was the only way to enable um more and more people to use the thing that I wanted them to use and and to mature it.
I've heard you say that entrepreneurs are a bit like artists. What do you mean by that? I think it's expression; art is expression; it's knowing when to end something; it's knowing, you know, what the chapters are and uh where the piece begins and where it ends, and that's very much a product; that's very much a business. Like you could do everything, and it becomes this mess that no one knows what to do with, or you draw the lines and draw the the box and the shape and the inputs and the outputs, and suddenly become something that is an expression of an idea that's successible and that's manageable and someone can actually use and um and and doing that and determining what those boundaries and those lines are and what the end in the beginning is is very, very challenging, um and that that's where I think the art part of it comes in, even though like business people aren't necessarily considered that the the founding of a company, the founding of an idea when it starts as an idea, not I'm building a business to do XYZ, but an idea and how do I sustain the idea; that's when I think the art the art comes out. And not everyone starts that way; there's some entrepreneurs Who start like I want to build a Healthcare company; I need to go find a problem to solve yada yada Y, and they do something interesting, but I think the truly interesting and truly world-changing things are more ideas and then like how do I make the idea bigger and building a business around it.
Uh, what's the way to do that? You deal with rejection. Rejection. Yeah. Well, I uh I kind of take on this mindset that everything I encounter, everything I experience as a teacher, and they have some lesson for me, and it's up to me whether I decide to learn from it or not, and then there is no rejection; it's just like well, I choose to learn from this or I don't, and if I don't then it feels terrible, and I it's a waste of effort, and I feel bad. If I do, I own it; I'm better because of it. So there's no rejection. So I just choose to learn from every single person that's put in front of me, every single mistake, every single challenge, every single encounter I have; there's it's a teacher, and like what is it trying to teach me, no matter how small or how big it is, it's trying to teach me something, and if I ignore it um or if I decide not to learn from it, that's that's the that's the reaction; that's that's the diminishing thing, but if I choose to learn something from it, even if it's tiny, I own it, and there's no hard feelings at all. What is this experience trying to teach me? Like what what am I supposed to learn from this? I I think all these things are ultimately decisions, but it takes time to realize that, and it takes time to hone the tools to act on the decision.
Is this how you come up with your lists, the dos and the don'ts? Yeah, um perhaps you want to explain these lists? Yeah, every day I I write down what I want to accomplish and what I don't want to do. I think we often focus on what you do want to do, and we focus on these very large goals, and if I've learned anything, it's to make the goal very, very small and repeat it and iterate it as quickly as possible, so you see momentum and um so it's it's really important to write down the small goals that you have for the day and then more importantly what you don't want to do because we never focus on like I'm not going to do this; I'm not going to get distracted by politics or like TV or whatever. So J, what's been on what's been on your list today? What's been your to-do list today? I'm learning uh more about quantum physics right now, so I'm I'm doing some study, and uh one of the things I want to do is spend like again I move from like 30 minutes to an hour every day of reading and watching videos around quantum physics, and um I'm also doing some language learning; I'm learning Italian, um so an hour with that as well, and then I'm doing some programming learning as well um to keep my skill High uh and in the field of AI and agents as well, so I dedicate one hour to that and three hours of learning in the morning when I want to do the hard stuff so that the rest of the day feels like a win. Um, those those are the things on my list.
And what is on your don't do list? Don't get distracted by the news because it's kind of all fog of War right now; um don't get distracted by the politics; don't get distracted by entertainment at the moment because I really I I want to learn how to learn better; I want to learn how to learn faster and and deeper, so I'm I'm experimenting with like these three different subjects at once in order to figure out what the patterns are in my own learning um so that I can uh achieve like some novice or Mastery skill in multiple things much faster.
Uh, and what do you think is the key to Fossil learning? Observing for quite some time and then doing, but I think people skip the observing phase too often. I don't think people are good listeners; I don't think people have honed their ability to observe the world and observe nature and observe how things work, um and I think they try to act too soon and um I think the observation part is critical, and I think it mirrors what we do as babies acquiring new skills; we spend a lot of time observing, and we're just inated and immersed in all these things happening around us, and then around Age 2 or 3 we get the ability and the tools to do, but it's come from a place of massive immersion, and I think as adults we skip the immersion part and we skip the observation part, and we try to do, and it gets to the thinking, and the thinking removes the ability to like truly act in an intuitive way based on all the information that's constantly coming into your into your system.
What is your advice to young people? Uh, observe; observe everything; like take everything in; get love information; love receiving information; don't worry about reacting to it; don't worry about memorizing it; don't worry about doing anything with it at all; just be open, and when you need to do something with it, it'll come.