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Patrick Collison — Why Silicon Valley's most talented should leave

21 Feb 2024 30 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Patrick CollisonDwarkesh Patel

Claim mix

belief 13evaluation 5uncertainty 3prediction 3commitment 2recommendation 2observation 1preference 1

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Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

30 published records

01 / evaluation

Whereas, in the standard university academic context, scientists would virtually always have to do that in-house. Because of the natural scale constraints on any given lab, that effectively circumscribes the ambition of a possible research program.

“Whereas, in the standard university academic context, scientists would virtually always have to do that in-house. Because of the natural scale constraints on any given lab, that effectively circumscribes the ambition of a possible research program.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

03 / belief

Stripe would be a less effective company without either of us. And I'm just meaning from a bandwidth standpoint, but I think we both bring different things to bear.

“Stripe would be a less effective company without either of us. And I'm just meaning from a bandwidth standpoint, but I think we both bring different things to bear.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

04 / belief

I don't quite know how to synthesize it yet, but as I think about advice for people in their 20s, I'm not going to normatively pretend to know or presume in which direction one should go in life.

“I don't quite know how to synthesize it yet, but as I think about advice for people in their 20s, I'm not going to normatively pretend to know or presume in which direction one should go in life.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

06 / belief

As we think about these ad valorem fees and figures, the place where there's even more change at the moment that we find ourselves thinking more about is the changing structure of global tax.

“As we think about these ad valorem fees and figures, the place where there's even more change at the moment that we find ourselves thinking more about is the changing structure of global tax.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

07 / belief

As I think about the funds flows on the internet and how all that's evolving and unfolding, I think changes in tax law are actually a much bigger deal than anything about the transactional economics.

“As I think about the funds flows on the internet and how all that's evolving and unfolding, I think changes in tax law are actually a much bigger deal than anything about the transactional economics.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

08 / belief

There's still an awful lot of low-hanging fruit in just asking some of these incredibly basic questions. So, when we think about the way in which Stripe will continue to grow in the future, in some sense, it will obviously involve a lot of big businesses.

“There's still an awful lot of low-hanging fruit in just asking some of these incredibly basic questions. So, when we think about the way in which Stripe will continue to grow in the future, in some sense, it will obviously involve a lot of big businesses.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

09 / belief

We would much prefer that Stripe plugged into every existing system, rail, domestic organization, rather than that we tried to come along and supplant them. And this has been Stripe's strategy very deliberately from the beginning, where there were lots of companies, when Stripe started out, that were trying to do their own thing and go their own way, whereas our belief was: you get these classic Metcalfe's law stuff — by enhancing the capabilities of an existing ecosystem, you create quite a bit more value.

“We would much prefer that Stripe plugged into every existing system, rail, domestic organization, rather than that we tried to come along and supplant them. And this has been Stripe's strategy very deliberately from the beginning, where there were lots of companies, when Stripe started out, that were trying to do their own thing and go their own way, whereas our belief was: you get these classic Metcalfe's law stuff — by enhancing the capabilities of an existing ecosystem, you create quite a bit more value.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

10 / belief

I think you're being too humble. Staying on Fast Grants, now we have the retrospective of how effective the fast grants recipients were, compared to the other grants that were given out by, let's say, the NIH or NSF.

“I think you're being too humble. Staying on Fast Grants, now we have the retrospective of how effective the fast grants recipients were, compared to the other grants that were given out by, let's say, the NIH or NSF.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

12 / belief

None of this sounds like rocket science, but defining what it is, that we care about, and then building automated measuring systems to measure to what degree it's happening in practice, to then try to figure out the cases where we're not living up to that, and determine what is the reason, then to actually intervene and improve the system, so that that's not happening, then importantly, to build secondary controls, that detect instances of deviation long before they cause a production problem, but where we understand the behavior of the system in sufficient detail, so that we can instrument it in some upstream way — most of what I said there was well understood by production engineers in 1930s.

“None of this sounds like rocket science, but defining what it is, that we care about, and then building automated measuring systems to measure to what degree it's happening in practice, to then try to figure out the cases where we're not living up to that, and determine what is the reason, then to actually intervene and improve the system, so that that's not happening, then importantly, to build secondary controls, that detect instances of deviation long before they cause a production problem, but where we understand the behavior of the system in sufficient detail, so that we can instrument it in some upstream way — most of what I said there was well understood by production engineers in 1930s.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

15 / prediction

By the way, it's not the Dwarkesh podcast, it's Lunar Society Podcast LLC registered on Stripe Atlas. Any merchandise I sell in the future, Stripe will take care of that.

“By the way, it's not the Dwarkesh podcast, it's Lunar Society Podcast LLC registered on Stripe Atlas. Any merchandise I sell in the future, Stripe will take care of that.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

16 / commitment

You could look at it multiple ways, but many people would consider Stripe to be on the wrong side of the interchange cost equation, in the sense that we're giving away the interchange revenue to other companies. So I don't think I'm structurally biased in favor of interchange, and yet, I will say it's pretty interesting what interchange made possible.

“You could look at it multiple ways, but many people would consider Stripe to be on the wrong side of the interchange cost equation, in the sense that we're giving away the interchange revenue to other companies. So I don't think I'm structurally biased in favor of interchange, and yet, I will say it's pretty interesting what interchange made possible.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

19 / belief

I think there's an interesting thread here in how it relates to Stripe climate, in that you're subsidizing learning curves that East Asian countries did for their own internal companies.

“I think there's an interesting thread here in how it relates to Stripe climate, in that you're subsidizing learning curves that East Asian countries did for their own internal companies.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

21 / recommendation

Anyway, I don't presume to know what people should do with their lives. But in as much as I was trying to give advice, especially if they're reading my advice and not someone else's, maybe they're thinking about career paths that look directionally like mine, I think my advice might be: "Maybe you should do something like what I did or I'm trying to do.

“Anyway, I don't presume to know what people should do with their lives. But in as much as I was trying to give advice, especially if they're reading my advice and not someone else's, maybe they're thinking about career paths that look directionally like mine, I think my advice might be: "Maybe you should do something like what I did or I'm trying to do.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

22 / evaluation

Whereas for Stripe, people are, on some level, purchasing our architecture or purchasing their ability to do certain things rather than some different set of things, because of what our architecture makes easy and possible.

“Whereas for Stripe, people are, on some level, purchasing our architecture or purchasing their ability to do certain things rather than some different set of things, because of what our architecture makes easy and possible.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

25 / evaluation

There are a lot of practical applied questions, but I think what you're saying around these autonomous transactions conceivably being an important dimension, is very true and real and is one of the interesting ways in which the economy might change and expand over the next decade.

“There are a lot of practical applied questions, but I think what you're saying around these autonomous transactions conceivably being an important dimension, is very true and real and is one of the interesting ways in which the economy might change and expand over the next decade.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

27 / commitment

Whether we care about the possible dual use harms you just mentioned, or we just care about things that already exist, to ameliorate both of those, we do need enhancement of our capabilities.

“Whether we care about the possible dual use harms you just mentioned, or we just care about things that already exist, to ameliorate both of those, we do need enhancement of our capabilities.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

28 / recommendation

I don't know who the Moncef Slaoui of the problem is, it would depend on the problem in question, but my recommendation would be: "Figure out who Moncef is and go hire Moncef.

“I don't know who the Moncef Slaoui of the problem is, it would depend on the problem in question, but my recommendation would be: "Figure out who Moncef is and go hire Moncef.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

29 / preference

Getting back to what we were discussing previously, in as much as the sociology and "cultural" explanations of defensibility are real, the best people consider themselves crafts people in their domain and they really, above almost all else, want to work with the best other people. It may almost be true, that even if from a customer-facing standpoint, craft was not valued by the market, you might still want to build an organization that indexes very heavily on this, because you just want the best people for other reasons.

“Getting back to what we were discussing previously, in as much as the sociology and "cultural" explanations of defensibility are real, the best people consider themselves crafts people in their domain and they really, above almost all else, want to work with the best other people. It may almost be true, that even if from a customer-facing standpoint, craft was not valued by the market, you might still want to build an organization that indexes very heavily on this, because you just want the best people for other reasons.”
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

30 / evaluation

The specific case for Stripe working with them is: typically they're coming to us not because they want to take the thing that they're already doing and go through all the work of transposing to Stripe, but because either they want to do a new thing, that they're not doing today — so it is associated with some new business line or innovation or invention.

“The specific case for Stripe working with them is: typically they're coming to us not because they want to take the thing that they're already doing and go through all the work of transposing to Stripe, but because either they want to do a new thing, that they're not doing today — so it is associated with some new business line or innovation or invention.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast
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