Podcasts

This podcast features a profound intellectual dialogue between Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Naval Ravikant, centered around the concept of 'Skin in the Game.' Taleb, drawing from his personal experience as a trader, critiques the 'gap between theory and practice,' pointing out that academia and Intellectual Yet Idiots (IYIs) are disconnected from reality due to their lack of a Profit and Loss (P&L) statement. He emphasizes the value of true experts who operate with practical stakes. He illustrates the principle of symmetry inherent in Skin in the Game through examples like the Code of Hammurabi and the Bob Rubin Trade, stressing the equivalence of responsibility and reward. He views Bitcoin as a counterattack against the traditional financial system's 'socialization of losses and privatization of gains.' The podcast also discusses 'Minority Rule,' highlighting how the firm stances of a minority can profoundly influence social rules and market preferences, such as the widespread adoption of Kosher certification and Halal meat. Furthermore, concepts like the 'Lindy Effect' and 'Antifragility' are touched upon, underscoring the vitality of things that withstand the test of time and strategies for gaining from volatility and uncertainty. The entire conversation profoundly reveals the operating logic of the real world, offering valuable insights for technology practitioners to understand complex systems and make more informed decisions.

This podcast episode features a conversation with Freda, partner at Altimeter, delving into discussions about the AI bubble by the end of 2025 and the investment outlook for the 'Year of R' in 2026. Freda shares Altimeter Capital's experience investing in both primary and secondary markets as a Silicon Valley firm, emphasizing AI, re-industrialization, and digital finance as the three main investment pillars in the current US stock market, and analyzing their interconnections. The podcast focuses on OpenAI's business model, highlighting its transformation from a model company to a product company, and explores its revenue pillars, competitive landscape, and IPO outlook. Simultaneously, it thoroughly dissects Robinhood's investment logic, growth potential, and team characteristics, believing it has the potential to become an all-in-one financial application. Furthermore, the podcast discusses the comparison of autonomous driving and robotics development between China and the US, especially data advantages and hardware design challenges. Finally, Freda shares Silicon Valley investors' preferences for founder archetypes and high-conviction investment strategies, exploring AI company valuation methods, potential impacts on traditional industries, and the long-term benefits emanating from AI advancement, despite ongoing discussions about an AI bubble.

In this podcast episode, Zheng Qingsheng, a partner at Sequoia China, shares insights from his 20-year investment career and his profound observations on technology waves. He defines the essence of human economic history as a 'flow revolution,' analyzing the evolution of key access points and business models from the PC internet to mobile internet, and now to the AI era. Zheng Qingsheng believes that the shift from traditional text content to short videos reflects the evolution of human cognitive styles, with short videos even challenging the primacy of text itself. Entering the AI era, he emphasizes that AI-driven deep digitalization will foster new flow hubs and hardware opportunities. For instance, integrated hardware-software devices can acquire and process vast amounts of offline information. Although AI networks have non-zero marginal costs, are results-oriented, and involve technical 'black boxes' due to their emergent mechanisms, their commercialization prospects are optimistic, offering unprecedented opportunities for global entrepreneurship. Consequently, Sequoia's investment strategy focuses more on early-stage AI and smart hardware, prioritizing teams' technical prowess and unique product intuition. He notes that entrepreneurs need both product sensitivity and the ability to personify their organizations, maintaining an open and optimistic attitude towards the cognitive and social transformations AI might trigger. He considers the AI 'bubble' a normal phenomenon, marking the prelude to another great technological revolution.

This podcast features Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code and former Principal Engineer at Meta, sharing his unique career development path. He details how he integrated Messenger with Facebook Groups in Meta's early days, driving product innovation through the principle of "latent needs," and emphasizing the importance of personal projects and tech sharing in career growth. Boris also shares his experiences in large corporations dealing with cross-functional collaboration, cultural differences, and large-scale project planning, as well as the insights gained from consistently building trust in a title-less culture. After transitioning to Instagram Japan, he recounts how he re-established credibility and drove codebase migration, demonstrating pragmatic leadership as a technical leader. Finally, Boris delves into his motivation for joining Anthropic, which stems from his focus on AI safety and the transformative potential of LLMs, and how Claude Code, as an AI coding tool, is disrupting traditional software development processes and significantly boosting engineer productivity. The podcast not only showcases his outstanding engineering leadership and product thinking but also offers valuable insights for tech professionals on how to adapt and grow amidst the rapid advancements in AI.