Shruti Rajagopalan: commitment

Transcript context

…Shruti, what’s your answer? I don’t have a very good one. One of the answers that people give me when I talk to them and tell them, “Oh, you received the EV grant in India,” is, they say, “Oh, you believe me? ” Not believe in me, but they can’t even believe that someone actually trusts them with the money and really trusts the story that they’re selling to me, and so on. The first thing they say is, “I won’t let you down. ” That’s the only thing I can pinpoint, a moment when I feel like something is changing here. I don’t think I’m responsible for it. I think it would’ve happened anyway. Someone else would’ve given them funding or believed in them, but pretty much almost all of them say that. That tells you more about how broken things are in India than about me. I can think of that as a tangible thing where my faith in someone is somehow such a big signal to them that they have a — even if it’s marginally higher — self-belief. It’s worth it. Hello, my name is Riley. Tyler, you had a conversation with Marc Andreessen, and you asked why Peter Thiel could spot talent so well. He countered that this is the concept of a Bat-Signal. He throws up a Bat-Signal, and people come. You have your own Bat-Signal. Daniel, you have your own Bat-Signal. There’s a portfolio of ideas through your blog, all your books, with Pioneer. It might be this Turing aspect of gaming, whatnot. I’m curious, what components of that Bat-Signal do you think are the most effective? People come to you and they say, “Oh man, I really love this about your portfolio. I really love this about Pioneer.”…

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