Ross Zeiger

How much I enjoyed it: 6/10 A woman receives a package containing a manuscript for a book written by her ex-husband. Her current husband leaves on a trip to NYC and she starts reading the manuscript. As she reads, the movie’s storyline becomes that of the manuscript which opens with a couple and their daughter taking a roadtrip through the desert of West Texas. They’re driving through the night and they get stuck behind two cars driving slowly side by side. One of the cars drops back and the ...

How much I recommend it: 10/10 I first read this book in 2020/2021 when I was running a small business. After six months of running that business, I hadn’t paid myself yet because I was “reinvesting it all back in the business.” That changed the moment I read this book. Without changing anything else, I started to pay myself and take Profit First. From that moment on, the business was sustainable and I had a lot less stress running it. The traditional accounting principle is that [ revenue - e...

How strongly I recommend it: 6/10 Most of the advice in this book feels pretty generic but there was a few things that stuck out and made it worth reading. 1) Sales are your main priority in business. Everything else is a distraction. Sales, sales, sales. Without sales, there is no business. And you’re not just selling your product. You have to sell yourself, your vision, be able to recruit star employees, etc. 2) Pick an hourly rate for yourself. This is the value you can/should provide to th...

How Much I recommend it: 7/10 Wow. The opening of this novel is vivid and horrible (in a disturbing way, not the quality of writing). The type of scene I’ll never forget. Set in the near future (maybe 2040?), an entire town in India gets killed in a horrific heat wave. Across the country, 20 million die. That scene sets the stage for the urgency and gravity of what’s to come. The book is cleverly written in a way I haven’t seen before. Each chapter is written from a different perspective and t...

My best career advice is to get obsessed with and master “one-to-many” skills - writing, speaking, and video. In that order. Writing is the foundation. Writing pulls ideas out of your brain and brings them into the physical world. From there, it requires you to revise your message until it’s as clear, simple, and short as possible. The writing process itself sharpens your thinking and reveals new ideas. Writing requires the least production of the one-to-many skills. It’s as simple as typing ...

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KNtxkKzb8Y My notes from watching How to Win the Game of Youtube by MagnatesMedia Youtube is like a video game; you need to level up in different skills: storytelling, camera work, editing, etc there are strategies that can help you win Everyone starts at 0 skills, 0 subs, 0 strategy There are level unlocks like becoming a YT partner Most people post without any strategy Like losing weight (eat fewer calories and exercise), growing on Youtube is si...

1: Get a Credit Freeze. If you’re a US citizen or resident with a social security number, this is the lowest hanging fruit for you. A credit freeze - according to the FTC - restricts access to your credit report, which means you — or others — won’t be able to open a new credit account while the freeze is in place. You can temporarily lift the credit freeze if you need to apply for new credit. When the freeze is in place, you will still be able to do things like apply for a job, rent an apar...

1: Use Brave Browser - Brave is a Chromium-based browser meaning it’s based on the same foundation as Google’s Chrome, which is currenlty the most used brwoser in the world and which means it’s highly compatible with modern websites. Brave has built in ad blockers so you won’t see ads on search engines, Youtube, social media sites, or anywhere else. And Brave is free to download on all devices, you can find it any app store. 2: On all of your browsers, possibly Brave from the previous step, i...

Step #1: Get a passport. If you don’t have that, well, you’re stuck in whatever country you’re from and your options are super limited. Even if you don’t plan to travel or move internationally, it’s wise to have a passport in case you have to get out for any reason - whether that’s for business or possibly a natural disaster strikes your home country or a political revolution makes it no longer fun to live there, then it’s good to have the option to leave. Step #2: Get visas for wherever you w...

From the beginning of human history until about 1800, the way humans traveled didn’t change all that much. And nothing was much faster than a person could run. Whether you were on a boat, on foot, on a horse, or in a wagon, you were moving at maybe 12 miles per hour or less. Anything faster wasn’t sustainable over long distances. From 1800 to about 1970, the modes of transportation developed rapidly. Anyone born in that period had faster modes of transportation than their parents had. First t...

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hASHO5ap1Sw Sabri: has made $7.8b for thousands of clients in hundreds of country over the past 17 years. Marketing is the most important skill in anyone's career - whether an entrepreneur or an employee Product vs Market: is it all about having a great product? Or great marketing? It's not all or one, it's both. You need both The best businesses have great product and great marketing. Launch your business with an MVP, no more. Only expand once you'...

If you want to set up a private server, I highly recommend this tutorial by Derek Sivers: https://sive.rs/ti ...

Show opened with Tim, the gambler Trump Fundraiser Recap Sacks: Organized the presidential fundraiser for Trump. A whole different level of planning coordinating with Security Service and team. There were no anti-Trump protestors and tons of Trump supporters out on the streets in SF. A huge number of first-time Trump donors came out. Trump is extremely charming and entertaining, has an ability to instantly connect with people. Very sharp, very funny, very high-energy. Chamath: There is a huge ...

How much I recommend it: 9/10 Mastery by Robert Greene was exactly the book I needed at this time in my life. Mastery is finding your “life’s task”, doing an apprenticeship in that thing, then continuing to practice that thing until after years of focused effort and practice, achieving Mastery. Very few people ever achieve Mastery yet every human is capable of it. Most people are too scattered to achieve Mastery. You can only be mastering one thing at a time. For some of the great Masters ...

ChatGPT 4o is here. It’s a massive upgrade on speed, reliability, UI, cost, efficiency, and more. So many amazing examples coming out like live translating, math tutoring, note taking in Zoom calls, and much more. Friedberg: It’s become apparent that there is an evolution underway on the model architecture where each version isn’t a big, bulky overhaul but rather continuous tuning and slight upgrades like apps. This OpenAIs first step toward that future. ChatGPT 4o is close to Claude Opus on pe...

Sam Altman is a guest on the episode today. Sam Altman is the former president of Y Combinator and CEO of OpenAI. When is GPT5 coming out? Sam: We take our time, it won't come out until it's ready. GPT 4 has gotten better even since it was released. These models continually get better and this is the future, a constant improvement. You may just continue to keep training models. GPT4 currently only available to paid users but the goal is to balance a certain amount of tools available for fre...

https://youtu.be/OxbtNsenZJY?si=VZP6rvBDtP9jIrss Sheryl Sandberg is on as a guest. She talked about the sexual violence that occurred on October 7, 2023 by Hamas in Israel. She has been interviewing survivors of the sexual assaults that took place but many people in the media are denying it happened. Sexual violence in war is unacceptable. Throughout history, it has happened with every war but for the last few decades it’s become something unacceptable. There is no black and white here, the wor...

I’ve never enjoyed art. I don’t appreciate or feel pulled toward music or drawing or painting or anything else. And I felt a bit of jealousy toward people who had a creative outlet like those. But, it recently occurred to me: video is my art. Since taking video production classes in high school 15+ years ago, there is something I enjoy about planning, filming, and editing a video. But I never considered it “art.” Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, and tons of other greats throughout histo...

We might be entering an era where aging becomes a thing of the past, obesity gone, where even paralysis is temporary. I recently finished the book How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley and there's an idea that I can't stop thinking about. I'm obsessed with the intersection of history, science, and business and that book hit that mark for me. The idea I can't stop thinking about is that there are eras to innovation and that during these eras everyone from the politicians to science fiction autho...

How much I recommend it: 5/10 By Devon Eriksen I heard about this book from a post on X, someone was asking for the best science fiction books and this title came up in several responses. It was published last year, 2023, which is what caught my attention. I’ve read lots of sci fi books from the likes of Isaac Asimov and other 20th century sci fi writers but wanted to expand to more contemporary books to what types of futures are being imagined now. Theft of Fire takes place mostly in space w...

How much I recommend it: 8/10 Over a decade ago, as a high schooler, I played the game Fallout on Xbox 360. It’s set in an apocalyptic world with radioactive creatures, underground vaults to explore, and a mid 20th century aesthetic. Fast forward to 2024, that video game franchise has been turned into an Amazon Prime series and a very good one at that. While I enjoyed the game when I was young, I didn’t expect to like the series as much I did. The characters are great, the scenery is stunning...

Google fired 28 protestors who were protesting the war in Israel/Palestine. Google is involved in a $1.2b Israeli government contract. Friedberg: On the one hand, it’s good that Google took a stand but on the other, it’s reflective of a company culture that has been too tolerant of social activism to the point where these employees thought they could get away with it without consequence. Chamath: The Golden Gate Bridge protest and the Google protest are different issues. In a democracy, being ab...

Jason’s out - hurt his tooth eating ribs Fridberg: Announcing All-In Summit 2024 in Los Angeles - September 8-10, 2024 Chamath went to an AI conference with Jonathan Ross, founder of Groq AI. Chamath: Groq could have 50% of the world’s inference compute by the end of next year. Nvidia is following the Intel playbook by defining a metric that defines the market. Intel picked clock speed, which isn’t actually super important to the end user. “All major cities are crumbling”…lots of petty crime,...

I write this from the Atlanta airport on April 4, 2024. This is my first time stepping foot in the United States since December 2022. I feel like a stranger in a strange land. In that spirit, the following is my observations of the customs of this place and its humans. The very first thing I noticed was upon taking my phone off airplane mode. The cellular data is blazing fast! My WhatsApp messages were sending immediately and webpages loading instantly versus taking 3 or 4 or 5 seconds. The 5G...

SBF Sentenced to 25 years in prison FTX customers lost 8 billion due to FTX fraud; no possibility of parole Sacks: SBF turned out to be an actually good investor - he put money in Anthropic (now worth $884M) and Solana. Unlike the Madoff situation, SBF actually made some money but his messiah complex caused him to do shady things. Friedberg: 100% of the investors and account holders will be made whole according to the FTX trustee. Jason: They were hopped up on speed and that lead to some of...

DOJ sues Apple for anti-competitive behavior in five categories. Sacks: Both Apple and the government have good points but the government has no smoking gun in this case. Friedberg: Apple makes great products and consumers are free to switch to Android or Windows or alternatives. Jason: The fact that the App Store can tax every app by 30% is outrageous. They should allow consumers to choose whether they want to get apps off the App Store. Friedberg: Government needs to stay out of this situatio...

A beautiful thing about life is none of us know where this thing is going to end up. And if you're reading these words, you still have a chance to write your story. The thing is, in this story, you get to be both author and main character. You may not get to choose the obstacles or even the supporting characters. But you get to craft your own character and story around them. You can write it in an unintentional and uninspired way. Most do. Or you can be strong, resilient, kind, honest, foc...

Most Based CEO Jason: CEOs seem to be getting more candid and saying what they think rather than filtering everything through a PR team. Played Jensen Huang clip saying “I hope you suffer” and Palantir CEO talking about Wall Street traders doing coke. Friedberg: It seems like the cancel culture mentality is fading away - clearly a positive trend. Sacks: These CEOs aren’t saying anything dangerous. They still aren’t attacking any sacred cows. There wasn’t necessarily any political courage in the...

How much I recommend it: 6/10 The movie was decent but way too long. The movie starts with a woman getting murdered and her body discovered by her boyfriend. The rest of the film is an unraveling of whodunit. The boyfriend, who initially seems innocent, is revealed to be part of a mastermind family behind a corrupt police department and real estate company. The police department was planting drugs in houses, raiding them, capturing the drugs and properties, then selling the properties to the...

Elon is suing OpenAI for starting as a nonprofit and turning into a for-profit. Sacks: Elon feels like he was swindled after having donated to OpenAI as a nonprofit. The meme battle is excellent. Chamath: They used Elon’s name to raise more money early on. But, the personal matter is less important than the legal precedent. If non-profits are allowed to become for-profits, that’s a dangerous loophole to have. Friedberg: OpenAI released a set of documents with Elon himself saying the org should...