Let's talk about people might be

surprised by this, but Bob Dylan, right?

I think this is just like the

quintessential example. Why is he

relevant to what we're talking about?

When this idea popped in my head, I had

finished a third biography and

contrasted it with these other two, and

I just saw all these patterns. You know,

VC's a game of pattern recognition. I

guess my brain's just developed cuz

like, "Oh my god, it's all this kind of

lock thing where these three people had

all done the same thing." And one was a

basketball coach, one was a

restaurateur, and the other was Bob

Dylan. You know, not people you would

not industry hell, this is where you

should get career development advice,

right? There's a part of the Dylan story

that most people wouldn't know unless

they had read all the biographies or

maybe seen the Scorsese documentary, but

the new movie misses the whole thing,

which is the pre-New York Bob Dylan was

hanging out in Minnesota studying folk

music at such a deep level that I feel

confident in saying when he left, he

knew more about folk music than any

other human in Minnesota. And he was

borrowing, maybe that's even a

euphemism, he was stealing his friends'

albums. He was going into the record

store, into these listening booths.

Like, he knew all there was to know, and

had studied every bit of it. And he's

referred to by Scorsese as a music

expeditionary.

And the people that knew him in New York

City could mimic anyone's song. It's not

what you would think of when you hear a

Dylan song that he had kind of mastered

[snorts] the bedrock underneath and then

started innovating. Picasso, by the way,

same thing.

Perfect realist painter at age 14. If

you go to the Barcelona Picasso Museum,

it's in geographical order, and you're

kind of shocked at how good a realist

this this kid was before he went and did

this other thing. That bedrock knowledge

I think is so

differentiating Mhm. for someone to have

all the history and then to start doing

the innovation. What was the

before and after

on Dylan, sort of Minnesota

New York City? And why is that such an

important

>> the way,

>> thing?

>> and and just to even pile on more on

this kind of studious part of Bob Dylan,

he did a podcast series for a while

where he just walks through all these

different genres of music, and You're

talking about Bob Dylan himself? Oh, I

didn't realize this. You can go find it.

He stopped, but he And then that book he

put out of the 50 best songs, that

coffee table book that came out 2 years

ago, it's incredible the amount of

knowledge he has about songs, you know,

[snorts] outside of his genre,

everything. So, he's just clear student

of what he's doing. I think this is well

known and is covered at the beginning of

the movie. He went to New York to find

Woody Guthrie, probably the single kind

of most deterministic and ambitious

mentor pursuit story that I've ever

heard of. Like, [snorts] he hitchhiked

there with no money. Mhm. And found him

and became friends with him. This echoes

back to go where the action is, also.

Oh, no doubt. And by the way, he landed,

you know, in Manhattan at the center of

the folk music scene, and all those

people he was studying when he was

listening in Minnesota, they were all

there. Mhm. You know, he got to know

them all. If that doesn't happen, I

don't think Dylan happens. How relevant

do you think the go where the action is

now, considering the access to

information

using ChatGPT or other tools, etc.,

etc., etc.? Maybe less so access to

mentors, although you can have virtual

relationships, but how how [snorts]

relevant do you think that is? I've got

my own opinion, but

You can certainly

have the type of peer and mentor

experiences that are remote. I have a

great anecdote about Mr. Beast in the

book that we can talk about that was a

remote one, but the benefits of being in

and around a whole bunch of people that

are chasing the same thing is so high.

Like,

>> Mhm. and I think the intuition is, "Oh,

well, it's going to be even more

competitive, so why would I go? It

wouldn't it be better to try and do this

in a town where it's less of a big

deal?" But the problem is your learning

is impacted, your access to peers and

mentors is drastically reduced, and then

probably most importantly, your

optionality gets cut so dramatically.

People think that a lot of success

stories, they attribute it to luck, but

you know, there's that famous saying,

"Luck is when preparation meets

opportunity." And when you're in the

epicenter, both your preparation and

your opportunity go up, you know, 10x.

And so, your ability to just have that

lucky moment where you get brought into

something is so much higher.

So the lucky moment

is I think really important to

underscore in terms of going where the

action is because there's a lot you can

do virtually.

But let's just say you're using chat

GPT, you're going to get what you

prompt. In other words, like you're

asking for something Yeah. and that can

take you down a rabbit hole. But there

at least in my lived experience and

certainly I still see this happening

when I moved to Silicon Valley in 2000

[clears throat]

and then I look back at my angel

investing career, I look back at all

these collaborations, the vast majority

of them did not come from me going out

with an agenda and seeking something,

they came from serendipitous

bumping into somebody at a coffee shop.

I literally met Naval Ravikant cuz I was

hitting on his girlfriend at the time

when she was getting her coffee, didn't

realize they were together.

And then you look at Garrett Camp, Kevin

Rose, these were like at a barbecue, I

met Kevin Rose and you go down the list

and you look at all of these formative,

massively impactful, personally and

professionally relationships, they

almost all came from serendipity.

And you just don't seem to get that

density unless you're in the center of

the action. And perhaps it's easier to

relocate yourself, I'm sure it is, when

you have fewer responsibilities.

But God, I can't even imagine what my

life would have looked like had I not

left Long Island and then ultimately

moved to Silicon Valley. Same for me, I

had thought about the notion of venture

capital and practicing it and probably

would have jumped at any job I could

have got. Like when I was at McCombs

here in Austin, I tried to get an

interview at Austin Ventures, like I

didn't get one, but had they said yes,

maybe I practiced there and I I'm glad

that didn't happen. Going and practicing

it where I did

was the exact right place to do it. I do

think if you can, cuz there are

financial constraints, you know, if you

want to be great at a field and that

field has an epicenter, I think you

should go.

And there are different types of

epicenters, too. Like you think about,

let's just say AI, not to repeatedly

bang that drum, but you could just say,

"Okay, AI, first thing that comes to

mind, Silicon Valley." But this is going

to be a bit of a digression, but I

remember asking Derek Sivers, a friend

of mine, amazing entrepreneur, kind of

philosopher programmer, people can look

him up. But I asked him, "Who's the

first person that comes to mind when you

think of the word successful?" And he

said, "Well, actually the most

interesting or more interesting question

might be who's the third person that

comes to mind because I might say

something really obvious like Richard

Branson, but is he successful? I don't

really know what his goals were. So I'd

have to compare his goals to his

outcomes.

And then you get to the third, similarly

with an epicenter, you could say Silicon

Valley first, but there might be

something that is a dense in learning,

but

has other advantages.

Like I think it's the University of

Waterloo, but one of these universities

where industry is trying to raid the

academic program because it's so strong

in terms of teaching Yeah. the technical

side.