48: Henri Stern - Principled Enough to Be Pragmatic

[00:00] The sheer arrogance of Silicon Valley in thinking that you can just do things to the French mind is so absolutely incredible. And this is why Silicon Valley is what it is. And there's so much to be excited about that we think we can reshape the world. And we can, in fact, because we believe we can. We wrote a strategy paper early on, which basically said there are three markets. There's the extremely diehard crypto natives for whom storing a mnemonic is a non-negotiable fact of self-sovereignty, and we will never be able to convince them. [00:30] developers who want to build for a mainstream audience. And then there are mainstream developers who want to use crypto. And basically we said we will never win one and three doesn't exist. And so we have to go for two. We have to build for basically crypto devs who want to cater to a wider population that will teach us the things that we need so that when three comes about, we'll be ready. And that is like, we just got massively lucky with timing that three is coming now. Three is here. Most of our biggest customers aren't here because they care about crypto. They're here because they care about the impact that the technology can have on their users. Pivot was probably the hardest moment in the company's life where we were doing an offsite [01:00] the atmosphere sucked and it was like six or seven of us the entire team and at some point i think i said so like clearly things aren't working right and like you felt the body language change and people relax we have eyes of course it's not working we all see it but now it's like part of the conversation and we can do something about it the conversation that i think had a real impact on me a little bit was i went to see rolof from sequoia and i asked him what would it take for sequoia to be excited to do ra he was like you're talking to me about how far you've come and i don't

[01:30] looking forward. And I think that was like such a wake up moment. The obvious searing pain of trying to create something from nothing is so wild in your mind that you end up saying, oh, but we've done so well. [01:40] Welcome to Dialectic episode 48 with Henry Stern. Henry is the founder of Privy, a crypto infrastructure company that allows every developer to put a crypto wallet in the hands of its users. [01:51] In the middle of 2025, Privy was acquired by Stripe, but remains an independent organization within Stripe, and Henry works across Privy and a number of Stripe's other crypto efforts. I got to know Henry when I was a venture investor at the crypto firm Paradigm, which shortly after I left, ended up investing in Privy. Henry is one of the most thoughtful and principled people I know, and I deeply admire the way [02:21] like crypto that is laden with incredible amount of both speed and velocity and change, oftentimes dogma and ideology that ends up going too far, and people trying to push things far beyond they should or exploit things. [02:37] I think the way he has been able to remain focused, to serve developers and customers, and build a product and a team and company that he can be really proud of is deeply admirable. We talked extensively about morality and technology, privacy, crypto wallets and where all of this was and where it's going, the thought process and the decision to join Stripe and what it's been like since he joined, and where crypto is going, even if it might be a little boring at times.

[03:07] play philosopher with us despite his best efforts. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Henry. And before we get into the things, I would like to thank Notion, Dialectics' presenting partner. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life's work that has natively integrated AI and agents into the place where you and your team do the actual work. Over the course of the last year or so, Notion has totally transformed itself into an AI-native company that is first and foremost [03:37] agents, which allow you to have little guys in your workspace that can automate everything you don't need to do or don't want to do and allow you and your team to focus on the important work that you don't want to delegate. The biggest news in Notions world lately is Notions developer platform and workers, where you can design a wide range of ways that agents can better help you and your team focus on the actual work while they take care of the busy work. The range of what's possible with Notions developer platform is pretty incredible and still very early days, but I just [04:07] something from Brian Lovin about how you can basically get your entire Twitter graph downloaded into a Notion database, categorized, updating constantly. I'm really excited to play around with this more, both in terms of how I present dialectic episodes to you all, but also the ways that I can hopefully continue to push the bar on how I research for these conversations. It's a delicate balance between trying to find a way to manually sink my teeth into all of my guests'

[04:37] places and unexpected things that I might not have found otherwise in the research process. Thanks again to Notion, and you can also learn more at notion.com slash dialectic. And with that, here is my conversation with Henry Stern. [04:51] Thank you. [04:52] Henry Stern. [04:53] Thank you for having me here at the Privy office. It's a pleasure. Thank you for being here. We've got all the secrets on the whiteboard. Let's see. These are, you can see this is hard-hitting work we're doing here. Yes. [05:04] Well, if we have to explain anything, we have the whiteboard available to us. [05:09] I want to start with, first of all, thank you for doing this. This is an honor. I've known you for a long time and been rooting for you for a long time and you keep winning. So. [05:17] yeah it takes it takes a village as you know but uh but i we have a long way to go indeed uh [05:26] at the preview website, [05:28] At the very bottom, the bottom right. [05:30] you have a phrase. It says, technical decisions are moral decisions. [05:35] Why is that important to you? [05:42] Sorry, I'm thinking. I mean, the reality basically is like as software eats the world, the question of like what [05:49] is the part of moral valence that software builders are accountable for, just like grows. I think when we set out with Austin to build Privy, we were building something that had to do with ownership and with privacy. [06:00] and with how the web works. [06:04] I want to start with the premise that, you know,

[06:07] we are fallible and we will make mistakes. [06:10] And the best thing we can promise is... [06:13] We care so deeply, and when we make the mistakes, [06:17] We will... [06:18] react accordingly. [06:19] And I that that's what it stood for. And I was like, we should actually just have this on the site and just have it be something that we remember, because whenever we start LARPing as we know truth. And if you don't agree with us, then, you know, you're a heathen or conversely, like, you know, some some nihilistic converse, but they kind of meet of like, it's all about, you know. [06:41] uh pragmatic distribution and this has no you know this stop overthinking it i think that the truth is more nuanced and so i think starting off a premise of uh uh [06:50] This is going to be complicated, but we're in it. [06:53] And we're thinking about it and we're accountable to our work, which was kind of the bottom line that we wanted to set in starting the company. [06:58] You mentioned [07:00] sort of like close to the metal. In some sense, the story of computers is like abstraction. Yeah. Like getting farther and farther away from the metal. Obviously, there are elements of crypto that... [07:10] Um, [07:12] involve technical rigor and proximity, ideology, all these things. [07:17] But like... [07:18] I want to talk about different elements of this, whether it be privacy or self-custody or otherwise. But what we've sort of seen is that people prefer convenience over whatever ideological or technical or force of the metal thing ad infinitum. And so how do you think about that? [07:34] That may be under the lens of that statement.

[07:38] Crypto is a very interesting foil, and I have many views, but it's a very interesting foil because it is... [07:45] the best and the worst of a lot of like creative endeavor. And you have a lot of extremely ideological people who, [07:52] who are fighting for what they see as, uh, [07:56] a future path for the internet and that's like the best version and at the same time that often veers into like such an extreme level of non-pragmaticism yes and belief that actually you know [08:07] Uh, [08:09] everyone will adopt these experiences that if you actually just take a step back for a second, are so obviously broken and there's no world in which it happens. And so I think [08:18] Um, what we had was a few experiences where we would go to talk to a user. We would say, this is how we've built it. We would get absolutely like basically destroyed for like, but you guys are building this on AWS. How can you trust the centralized cloud? And we're like, everything's encrypted end to end. The keys are managed by the user. And they're like, yeah, but no, the data won't be available if AWS decides to censor you. Like, that's a really good point. Um, there are solutions we can come up with it when that becomes the threat model. But also for now, the threat model is more about privacy than censorship. [08:48] of horse, nothing would happen. This person would say like, you were like demeaning the space. Um, and then you'd go back to this person three months later and they were taking PII and dumping it in a Postgres database on their side. And you're like, what happened? And they're like, well, you know, [09:03] gone for gone, in for a penny, in for a pound, insofar as I'm going to do this, I might as well just do it easily, and I will take on the risk. And I was like, there's no intellectual consistency here, basically. I think a lot of the lesson here was

[09:17] Uh, [09:18] One, let's move away from trying to please everybody. Let's try and figure out what's right for us as users. [09:24] You're right. A lot of tech is about intermediation. But we want to know that if we scratch, we can figure out how things work. [09:31] And so that like stood out as becoming like this is the right line for us to have as a company. And like if you go to our security website, we have a security FAQ makes me deeply uncomfortable. It's very transparent. It's how, you know, Andrew McPherson, who runs our security team ended up joining the org. He was like, okay. [09:46] This is like a very unusual security FAQ, but it's like very honest in a way that I haven't seen and makes me want to work with you guys. Um... [09:54] But I think that was the line is like, I think intermediation is a fact of life. I think privacy is not something people will go out and buy in and of its own right. But I think that doesn't mean that we can't try and build privacy. [10:04] better tooling just the same. And this is why I'm, you know, in many ways, and it's obviously a very complex issue, but like a big Apple fan boy is like, sometimes things are just nice because they can be. And like, uh, [10:17] catering, [10:18] to [10:19] Human qualities is not a good product building thesis. Catering to the seven deadly sins. [10:25] is a much better product than Leaf Thesis. Yeah. And in our case... [10:29] We tried to appeal to privacy, and we actually found privacy. [10:33] that appealing to convenience and greed were easier [10:37] but baking privacy and sovereignty in was the way that we could do it. [10:41] What do you think? Maybe back to that first statement.

[10:53] Yeah. And you're abstracted probably even a further level and that you ultimately use server developers. But yeah, for sure. Um, [11:01] I talked to a philosopher late last year, um, [11:06] ad nauseum kind of about a bunch of elements of, of kind of how things have started to fall apart. And one of the big parts of it is that at least in his view, um, [11:17] This Silicon Valley or the technology industry writ large has this sort of view that technology is morally neutral. [11:23] And so like you should just build technology and it's a, it's about what people decide to do with it. Yeah. [11:30] I guess I'm curious about your reaction to that idea in general and then how that sits next to this... [11:35] technical decisions are moral decisions, which if not [11:38] I've been complete. [11:39] disagreement with that idea, but it's certainly not [11:43] In total alignment. [11:44] I think it's just a narrow field of view in a sense. Like if you again, like software has eaten the world in many ways, like technology is everywhere. And if you take a wider lens at it, like maybe the technology itself is neutral. [11:59] But... [12:00] the way in which you market it, the people you cater to, [12:03] you're ultimately trying to spike the ball to tell people how to use it. And that's certainly not neutral. And so I think I broadly, [12:10] I guess agree with the idea, which is the same technology can be used for great things or bad things. Nothing is inherently one way or the other. [12:17] But basically, I think by the time like a human, it's like Schrodinger's cat. The technology is the moment you've looked at it. It has moral valence to it. And again, I'm less interested in.

[12:30] defining what is moral and what is immoral. And I'm far more interested in people not being hypocritical and like owning up [12:36] to what they're trying to do. That's my main piece is you should own basically the outcomes that you're trying to drive the world towards. And as someone building tech, then you have a responsibility towards that. [12:46] Um, [12:47] I interned at Palantir for a hot minute and absolutely drank the Kool-Aid. But during that internship, there was a privacy and civil liberties board that they would put the interns in contact with to just show them this is how we make morally complex decisions. And at least at the time. [13:04] The viewpoint was... [13:06] as an engineer on the team, [13:08] You need not work on anything you don't want to work on. Right. [13:12] However, the company may choose to work on things that you personally disagree with, [13:17] Please voice it. [13:19] We will take it into consideration, make a company decision, including this Privacy and Civilities Board as to whether or not we want to continue doing this. [13:26] Um... [13:28] And ultimately, the bottom line is, [13:31] There will be someone to do these things. [13:33] and given a choice, we would rather sit at the table and be a part of building it, rather than let someone else who cares let's do it. - Or do the Google thing, where it's like, we're not going to... [13:42] We're not going to bother. We're not going to work with the government at all. Exactly. So I think that's my point is like you lean in and you own up. But like there's certainly – [13:51] the tech itself as a cold instrument. [13:53] I agree is probably just an instrument, but as soon as a human touches it, that's gone. Right. And part of the, I think, intrinsic to this idea, at least his criticism, was...

[14:04] if you believe technology is morally neutral, you sort of take this view that we should just like more technology is always good. [14:10] Maybe put it a different way. [14:13] You are morally motivated, is my sense. [14:17] Thank you. [14:18] I come out of it thinking, [14:20] Action is good and creation is worthwhile in its own. [14:25] And having to lie to yourself as to why you do it or what it means for you to do it is the thing that cheapens the whole the whole affair. And so I think broadly that I am the thing that impresses me so much for the US. I was having this conversation with my wife yesterday, which is the. [14:40] - Ah. [14:41] sheer arrogance of Silicon Valley in thinking that you can just do things [14:46] to the French mind is so absolutely incredible. And this is why Silicon Valley is what it is. And there's so much to be excited about that. We think we can reshape the world and we can, in fact, because we believe we can. But, but I think like, [15:03] You know, it's the I'm. [15:06] a lot of like very mission aligned companies that like espouse, [15:10] giant worldviews. [15:11] And then the actions just don't match up to the world. That rubs me a lot more poorly than say, like, you know, I want to build the world's best toaster oven because I really like toast. I think as long as people, like, speak it the way it is and acknowledge, like, the complexities. [15:23] I'm good with it. I generally find that more technology is probably better. And if nothing else, more technology is inevitable. [15:29] like we are on an accelerationist like world path. [15:32] And so, again, I'd rather sit at the table.

[15:34] then move to the woods somewhere and try to not participate. [15:40] Thank you. [15:41] You aren't building a toaster. [15:44] You are also a French mind. [15:47] How did... [15:50] I guess the root of this, and I think one of the reasons you're such an interesting person is you are, [15:55] Deeply pragmatic. [15:56] And you've been successful. Like this isn't just this purely like looking ahead, idealistic thing. I realize much more, much more ahead. And you're super principled. [16:06] And you do care about certain ideological things. And so I guess I'm curious about like... [16:11] Maybe twofold, like one, what caused you to... [16:15] maybe from previous parts of your life or academia or whatever to want to [16:19] just do things. And two, like why this part of the world, why is this important to you? And why does this matter in a way that maybe, [16:26] No offense to toaster makers, but like, [16:28] is a little bit more [16:30] Of substance. That's a lot of questions. [16:36] I'll go to the last one. I mean, I think there's so much path dependency, basically. I went to grad school. So why this field? The honest take is I... [16:45] have... [16:46] a lot that I'm very excited about in terms of building. And I think that when I was in college, [16:52] I... [16:54] It's very embarrassing, but I... [16:57] is also is a very good snapshot of a version of a millennial, but I'll go with it. I watched The Social Network in college. And the thing that struck me was not actually the whole story about Facebook and so on, which is great, by the way, like good movie. But the thing that struck me is there's a moment in which...

[17:15] Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg, I think has to relabel files and writes a Perl script for it. And I was like, fuck, what am I doing manually relabeling my files every day? Like, I need to do computer science. You're the only person with that take away from the social network, but beautiful. And so I came into it thinking... [17:33] I need to learn to talk to computers because I cannot be a functional human if I don't do that. And then I got to really love the people who were in the computer science department at Columbia at the time when I started doing it. And then I think through that, when I went to grad school, I thought I was going to do... [17:50] coursework in AI because I was like, this is where the future is headed. And this was in like 2016, 17. [17:57] And then I took one class by a professor called Dan Bonet, who is a cryptography professor. And I was like, oh man, I just need to take all of his classes. He's amazing. [18:06] And that's how I ended up basically doing the like, you know, crypto curriculum more or less and ended up in this field. And so I just I really find that there are so many areas of deep meaning in like human endeavor. And I just happened to via pure path dependency gravitate towards this one. And I think the future of like, [18:23] Ownership and money and what it means to be a stateful actor on the web as pertains to these things is something that I find very interesting. But I don't think I was born thinking like, you know, I want to work on crypto. [18:36] When did it flip for you, maybe to go back to the French part, when did it flip from academic to... [18:43] Entrepreneurial. And obviously that's a dramatic way. How did that gradient happen? Yeah, I think it took a bit, but I finished my undergrad, went to work with a friend of mine, and we both had real jobs lined up, quote unquote. This is the first company with Rho back? This is the first company I started with Zach, who started Rho now, which is a really successful direct-to-consumer healthcare company. And I think we really both just wanted to work together,

[19:11] and we went through YC and [19:15] At the time, I think what was most shocking to me was just that people took us seriously. We were just making shit up as we went along, and people... [19:24] just saw that we were going to grind and like were willing to give us a shot. And I felt that was very, very infectious as a, [19:32] I guess this was pre-grad school, actually. This was pre-grad school. And I went into it, and I felt like I had unfinished business with CS. I got into CS too late. And I was like, I really should try and get a PhD or something at some point, but let me do this. And basically, when Shout with the company we started failed, I went back to grad school, and a core part of my endeavor there was, do I get a PhD or not? And I think at that point... [19:54] it stood to me that like, [19:57] I wanted to build products and like what was a good place to do research and build products. And that's how I got into crypto post fact was like, actually, this is the job I should take out of grad school was in crypto where I can do research, but it leads to products being shipped. Remind me, you when did you move to the US college or earlier? I know earlier in middle school. [20:15] And so did you, was it because of that that you didn't, like, what created this sort of more American bug in you around that? [20:24] some mix of ambition and to go back to the agency or whatever, like, [20:28] I mean, I just spent the time here. Yeah, the arrogance. I became arrogant when the, no, I mean, I think the honest take is I lived in New York a very long time through when I was like, you know, 10 or 11 to college. And then I think probably a lot of it, I was in a French school, and a lot of it, I think, came through college and the people I hung out with. I started my undergrad at Stanford. I was around folks.

[20:50] who [20:51] We're just very... [20:52] unusual in the best of ways. One of the projects I was very lucky to get involved in through one of my RAs, Alan, was we built a tree. [21:03] We went in a backyard of one of the row houses, and this was the wide-eyed freshman joining along because it sounded fun. But basically, this is folks who are really into theater tech who had decided to try and build a physical sculpture to something. So I think one year, they built Egypt in a dorm room where they put down a tarp, stolen sand from the volleyball courts, and put it down and then tried to rebuild that. [21:33] of life. [21:34] from Norse mythology, and they wanted to host dinners in the tree. But what they did is, like, it was a metal structure that had been welded together with then some chicken wire, monster mud, and we had shaped this, like, theatrical tree that then ended up having a table for, like, 12 people and, like, hosting theirs and so on. And so I was just like, this is... [21:53] really fun and cool and I think I [21:56] finding myself in that environment felt very intoxicating and so that's i i think honestly the take is like [22:01] A lot of it is just... [22:03] I was... [22:04] the pure product of like that plus, you know, going through YC in 2014. It's like a very specific part of the world at a very specific point in time that ended up making a big impression on me. [22:13] When you went back to grad school, did you think you would do another startup? Yeah, no doubt. Okay, so there was always sort of a matter of time. And I think, in fact, the first startup, we ended up shutting down, and I specifically remember at the time thinking, I do not want to be a founder for founding's sake.

[22:30] There's nothing inherently valuable to the act. And so unless I have an idea that I believe is worth having in the world, why should I do this? [22:40] And obviously, my mindset changed a lot because I came out of grad school being like, I want to build something. And as long as I start with that premise, there are too many interesting things that are broken in the world for me not to find an idea that's going to be interesting. [22:53] Speaking of that, I suppose... [22:58] - I think it'd be cool to trace a few of the arcs of Privy. - Sure. - I think it was on Cheeky Pint you said to John or to Zach, every year we look at the company and it's unrecognizable from the prior year, even the last few years. You're also dealing with a market, crypto is a market that is [23:14] Both probably, I think a lot of people had an experience of it not moving as fast as they would want, and it moving maybe in directions that they might not want. [23:23] I think you probably have experienced both of those. [23:26] Um, [23:28] And I think that has made it a really interesting substrate for your – [23:34] deafness in balancing ideology and pragmatism. So maybe to start, [23:39] you mentioned it earlier, like you, you have all these old medium posts about like, how do we actually have a world where we can smuggle in privacy or whatever it might be. Um, let me see if I have it. Uh, [23:52] Well, one of the titles of this poster is great. There's too little to be gained from treating your user's data as [23:58] with respect, which is probably...

[24:00] I think maybe broadly still true or still felt, and really an example of like, [24:06] Nobody actually cares about this. Why does... [24:09] Why does digital privacy actually matter? [24:12] I think for me, basically, just the reality is like the majority of our lives are now spent in the digital medium and you have this like data exhaust that you're putting out. [24:21] I actually just went through a digital audit by a firm, or they went off of my name, and they tried to pull everything. It's really impressive. [24:33] aware of what's out there and what is like intentionally out there versus not. And there were a few things that surprised me, but broadly, it's like pretty wild. They like went through my entire like family tree, all of the like things both. [24:46] in crypto terms and not. It was a very interesting experience. And basically, I'm just deeply aware. [24:51] of how much digital exhaust we all drag with us. [24:54] And I think there is this disconnect in terms of, you know, risk and danger of the fact that, like... [25:00] our sense of fight or flight has been developed in the physical realm. Like, you know, if you go like this, I can, I feel that viscerally, but the amount of risk I'm taking on in a digital surface is very real. And yet my brain is not at all wired to perceive it in the same way. And so unless it like slaps you in the face, AKA somebody finds a Snapchat of you doing cocaine or whatever, and people lose their minds, but, or, or the iCloud photo leak. But, but even then just

[25:30] real world that I think just like we're not exercising the same judgment in digital spaces as we are in physical spaces. And so at least I grew up, [25:37] just very aware of like [25:40] those risks and dangers and thinking, how do we build back into that? Why did you grow up? [25:46] So where are them from a technical standpoint? [25:48] I think from a technical and personal standpoint, I think what I really valued maybe as an immigrant coming to the U.S. and so on, the most privileged version of random white French dude coming to the U.S., but I... [26:03] I think it was being able to control how I present myself to people is extremely important. And, you know, the idea for a long time of people being able to Google someone, [26:12] made me very uncomfortable, which is it was always the case that you could show up and you decide what you brought with you into the room. And now actually there is this like, you know, hidden baggage that you're dragging with you everywhere. And that like felt very like real to me. And so I think to that end, I think digital privacy ended up being something I really care about and I was very interested in and still am. And I think the thing that's so interesting in the moment today in tech is, [26:38] is just that the [26:40] the arms race has changed completely. Like the, the, the launch of Sora, uh, [26:45] makes it that you can spend a lifetime trying to be careful about your digital exhaust. But now all you need is like two angles of your face and three sentences spoken aloud. [26:55] Um, and that's it. You have been, you know, [26:59] uh,

[27:01] ingested by the machine who can now output you uh at infinity saying anything they want we won't even need to do this podcast that's the point one of the things that came up in this audit was like there's too much of you on youtube and like the deep fake potential is like infinite now and like that is just a cost of living at this point in time and it's true but so i think that's very interesting which is we're not we're in a shifting threat landscape and maybe this is the place where i reject the french ethos the most this is going to be a very like europe or themed uh uh podcast [27:31] But, you know, the French response to global warming is turn off lights when you leave a room. Yeah. [27:39] not a useful mindset as opposed to thinking about how do we change how like nuclear waste is recycled? How do we and so like I think that the acceleration has been to see the world as it is be truth seeking, understand the way things actually function. And given that fact, [27:55] How do you then counterposition to lead to the best outcomes as opposed to trying to rewrite the world? So I'm coming back to the prior question, but I think crypto's biggest sin is trying to reinvent the Internet and financial systems from scratch. It's a very useful intellectual exercise, but that is not how change happens. Change happens. [28:12] based on where we are today, [28:14] to then moving the machine in the direction that we want, and very seldom, in my opinion, [28:18] is there such a disruption that completely negates past innovation? Yeah. And we just get, you know, the Neanderthal to compete with the Homo sapiens. Like, it ends up being some... [28:30] inner binding of the two, and we're seeing it play on an AI today. But I think the question of, like, you know, how do you protect your digital privacy on the web when AI...

[28:39] just makes it that the level of input that you need to destroy privacy is [28:43] infinitely small is actually quite interesting. And so I'm actually, you know, not here lamenting AI and saying is the end of everything. Just saying like, you know, the stakes are super high. [28:52] And the tools at our disposal are very interesting. And to the earlier points still of like, you know, moral valence of tooling, uh, [28:58] creation of like napalm led to the creation of the best like burn creams we've ever had and so like the the solution isn't the problem if we know how to look for it is I guess my my hopeful take. [29:08] you use the words destroy your privacy. There was a, in one of those old media posts, you have this interesting distinction between privacy and security, but I like to go a little deeper on. You say, [29:20] You can define privacy as the state of being free from unwanted public attention or observation. This is different from security whereby a product or service works as its creator intended and does not unwittingly expose or leak information. The relationship is one way. Bad security means bad privacy, but good security does not necessarily mean good privacy. Secure products can degrade their users' privacy. In that sense, security is about creator intent while privacy is about user intent. [29:46] making sure you are [29:47] secure or safe. [29:50] What is... [29:52] What are the ways that privacy actually matters? I think to me, it's like the most hokey sentence ever. So bear with me. I think it just comes down to like, you know, how much right to self-determinism do we have? And that's the distinction between like privacy and security. Security is systems work as intended. Privacy is to me a problem.

[30:10] people can have the expectation that the things they think are happening are in fact happening. And so it's much more in the eyes of the beholder. And again, like privacy is, there's just no single definition for it. Like privacy, [30:21] Some people love being extremely public on Instagram and they have a very different and yet they can have a sense of privacy that matters to them. But their definition of privacy is very different. Yes. [30:31] Yeah, I don't know. I think in a world in which basically you were just a composite of all the things you've ever said, written and done, this maybe has some like weird ties into cancel culture as well. But like, in a world in which you are just those things, and that is what exists of you. [30:43] then like, [30:44] There's just very little ability to make mistakes. [30:48] willful decisions to change things in life. Like you are the sum product of everything you've ever said or thought and [30:54] And [30:55] saying actually i've changed my mind on this doesn't really matter anymore yes and so i find that there's something like deeply problematic [31:02] with not being able to have like maybe humans, this is we're so far down a rabbit hole. So please take us out. But humans, I guess intrinsically have some version of like a decay function. [31:12] where the things I thought a year ago are not that interesting to me anymore, the things I thought six months ago, a little bit more, and so on. And so there's probably actually some weird curve where the things I thought when I was seven years old remain extremely important to me. Yes, yes, yes. [31:26] I think the way we're able to [31:28] filter out opinion, hold opinions, and then over time, filter them out to get to where we are today is really important. And I think in a world in which everything is recorded. [31:37] and stored and can be brought back [31:40] it just completely changes our ability to like, you know, determine what we want to do moving forward.

[31:45] Lightness is a virtue. Lightness can be... You don't want to... [31:48] accountability matters and being able to move through the world without the weight of everything. [31:57] is freeing in a way that I think is like... [32:01] - This might seem so strange, but I was listening to Kevin Kelly talk about how having like [32:08] a belief in the future is really important for being able to move forward in the world. And this almost feels like the inversion of that. It's like not having to know that your past is chasing you. [32:17] Again, it can be easily taken out of context and applied. It's not an argument against accountability, but... [32:24] And maybe this is like, you know, this maybe just points to my deep cowardice, which is one way to do it is to try and be extremely vocal about the ways you change your mind and have original viewpoints felt strongly. Yeah. [32:38] that you embrace. And you have, you know, a handful of figures on the web who have very strong ideas, very polarizing ideas, and they change very quickly. And again, as long as I can see some version of like an intellectual through line for how they got from A to B, I like love that. And I find it to be so inspiring. But I think the alternative is like, that's the point. And I think the alternative is, [33:01] Don't engage in that way. Don't let people see these things. These are conversations that we get to have, you know, in this case on a podcast, but typically one on one. And I've also in this been very careful to not espouse any opinion here. I'm like spewing about what it means to have opinions, but I've not said anything of any like valence on on any topic. But but that's the other point is like basically given that I don't know how this plays out.

[33:24] be more private. [33:26] is the way in which I get to keep my thoughts to myself, have those thoughts and move about in the world unencumbered by having to, uh, relate my present set of actions to my past set of thoughts in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. And, and maybe to tie it back to identity, there's some level in which maybe, maybe part of what this informs is an ability to like move lightly through the world with multiple identities to that, that don't need to be like, [33:47] . [33:48] the classic thing, like who you are with your mom versus your wife versus with your best friends from college, like those being different doesn't mean you are [33:56] in conflict as a person. And yet our digital lives, like... [34:00] make it harder for those things to be harmonious. There's this rumor going around, [34:05] crypto circles and Stripe that I am in fact, [34:09] the heir to the Patek Philippe. [34:11] uh, family. And that's because there's a Henry Stern. [34:15] And, uh, [34:16] And it's obviously very untrue, but I've had people come up to me and say, man, your watch, it's so cool. Like what a fuck you to your family. And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. But then I found out that that's what I meant. And, um, [34:28] And I find it really fun when basically like, you know, that version of like the substrate of information that we have in the world ends up being completely wrong. And so actually, that's a fun idea that I like to toy with, which is like, can you have like misinformation canaries about yourself on the web where you just put out every here and there a completely false fact, but just to kind of trace information. [34:49] how data makes it through in identity. So various musings. It's fascinating how we are just like so, we evolved to like have this,

[35:01] gossip and these sort of like local context of information you might have heard about a person. And now over the last, really the last 25 years, but sort of over the last 80 years, [35:12] Now there's a possibility that actually someone can know a tremendous amount about you. [35:16] or have a tremendous sense that they know a lot about you. [35:19] and bring that in and some of it's stated and some, yeah. - But I think the other interesting question, and for one it's worth, like no one cares about me, which is so lucky, at the end of the day, like the version of, [35:29] We're trying to change that here. Clear. Thank you. [35:33] You know, there's a Victor Hugo coach to live happy, live hidden. And the point is anonymity in itself is such a blessing. And I think it's a very complex thing, right? Because I only have a Twitter because of work. [35:47] uh, personally, but also like, I'm, I'm a deep lurker. I enjoy reading other people's stuff, but I, exactly. But I, I don't enjoy putting out my opinions because it feels so valent in a sense. Um, um, [35:59] But I think the point is this, which is living in a world where... [36:03] We basically went from phase one, which was we exist in the moment and the activation energy to capturing something for the future. [36:12] is while there actually maybe phase one happened with the printing press. So we, there's a pre Gutenberg days where it was oral history for the most part. And you have to get a scribe to do anything. Um, [36:22] then, you know, post Gutenberg capturing information for posterity becomes that much easier to, you know, probably the advent of the internet and like micro blogging where now, you know,

[36:33] Um, [36:34] putting out information [36:36] to be captured for posterity becomes that much easier. So we went from like, uh, you have the activation energy and putting out basically like long lived information has gone way down, um, [36:45] But we were always saved. [36:48] by the fact that no one cares. And the amount of work it would take to do a really deep psychological draw up of someone on the internet is probably not worth it economically. [36:57] And that has changed. Like it is now really easy to send out three agents and, [37:01] to like cut these things. And I'm curious how your, you know, research for the podcast has changed and so on. But my guess is just that basically you can get a like, [37:08] deeply harmful psychological profile of anyone for really cheap in a way that used to be reserved for, you know, blackballing someone in a deep way. Yes. And the question for me is, like, what happens next? [37:20] And the reality is society will be too schizophrenic if it becomes too easy. I mean, this is what we're seeing in many ways with like what has happened from 2018 to now in terms of what was happening. [37:32] the moralization [37:34] To now, like, just tech itself is an interesting foil for how society is evolving. I find it's a good Rorschach test for, you know, cancel culture to now like, very abrasive masculinity to like, some version of what will come back and we're just swinging back and forth here. Yes, yes, yes. [37:50] And I guess my question is, is that, [37:52] in a world where everybody has that power, I actually suspect it becomes a lot less powerful. - Yes, the overtime window has to, I always used to joke, back to my crude Snapchat analogy, like at some point we will get-- - If everybody's got dick pics, is your dick that interesting? - Yes, yes. - And I think like,

[38:09] That's like how do we keep carrying on meaning in a world in which everyone's sticks are out there is the question that I have. [38:19] - Yeah, two things that come to mind, and we'll finally move on, although I could talk to you about this all day, is, I think his name is Nathan Jergensen. This guy used to write for Snapchat. [38:29] It's possible I made it wrong, but basically this philosopher in residence thinking about the impermanence of digital identity or the permanence of it. I feel like you would find it interesting. I don't know what he's doing now, but it's an interesting dumpster dive. Somebody was thinking about this actually quite early. [38:44] The other thing that brings to mind actually hilariously is I don't know if you've heard Tyler Cowen talking about how he's writing for the LLMs. [38:51] And this whole thing is like, [38:53] He wants the LMS to know as much as possible about what he thought. [38:57] So I think part of it is like someone he's gone, but also, I don't know, he's reading some interview and he's like, [39:02] talking about Iceland. He's like, now the OMS know what I think about Iceland. And like, if people want to know what I think about it, they can ask. They can ask. I mean, and for what it's worth, this is maybe my draw to like action, which is like, ultimately, what we're going through right now is the quintessential like, [39:17] intellectual masturbation exercise on so many levels. And I think, [39:22] Again, Silicon Valley kind of sometimes talks itself up in histrionics around like, you know, all of the ways in which these are all very deep. But like, I think then taking a step back and seeing like, what action was taken? How has it actually impacted the world? And like, is this good or bad? [39:36] it ends up being quite simple. And so I think being able to like move in and out of like,

[39:40] this context to just like, is this company producing something valuable? Does it make me happy as a consumer? And like, it isn't that much more complicated than that is, uh, I find like very important to get back to maybe this is why working in tech in New York is, is, is this is a, a call to arms to tech in New York, which happens to be much more easily to ground in reality than probably if you're, if you're operating in Silicon Valley. [40:03] In what ways does Privy still work on privacy? [40:07] And it's really tough to a large extent. Like, you know, we pivoted. The core product failed. And I think a lot of the infrastructure and architecture that we built remains. Like, you know, data encryption, key splitting, running secure environments in which we can provably show that no one knows the information. It used to be about knowing information. Now it's about securing keys. [40:27] But the core concept is very much the same, just the substrate of data has moved from, you know, intelligible information to now like, you know. [40:35] key information. [40:39] So I think that the reality is basically it works on it because I do believe – [40:44] that [40:45] Encryption is key to privacy. [40:47] And having everyone have keys. [40:50] is key to enabling encryption to exist throughout the web. [40:54] And so I'm probably holding out hope that the self-sovereignty project of Web3, [40:59] We'll come back. [41:00] Um, [41:01] as we distribute stable coins across the world and as we make it that, you know, digital currencies work. And I think the project itself is at risk in a sense. There have never been darker days for Web3, and yet I've never been more optimistic about crypto. I think finally the space is having real deep impact.

[41:15] on people who otherwise don't care about the technology, which is maybe the definition of impact, is the only space that has ever so deeply pandered to itself for so long. So I'm as optimistic as I can be about the space and about the ability to do meaningful, impactful, positive work in this space. But also I think... [41:34] this idea of we're going to build an alternative internet that is user-owned. [41:38] has never been in more dire straits. And I think my hope is that Privy is still working on privacy because we're sort of laying the groundwork for how to enable people to [41:48] have keys to signify intent and encrypt data. [41:52] To jump forward a little bit, I think around the time I met you, you were – [41:56] and I'm sure I'm skipping over some stuff, but you were starting to think about embedded wallets, which sort of became this massive, amazing wedge in. The crypto wallet... [42:08] at the time, and certainly for most of the early history, it was this sort of idealistic, to go back to the point you were just making, this idealistic idea that you were going to bring your self-custodial wallet wherever you went. And it wasn't just your money, it was all of the things you were. It was your identity, whatever. Um... [42:24] Do you think that there's still merit to [42:26] the idea of the wallet in that form factor at all? [42:30] Yes. And I think in a sense, this was the interesting take we had. The biggest issue of identity. [42:37] writ large. Like how you define identity on the web? Typically, people will say this is about basically portable identity. I record something once I get to have it everywhere. It is controlled by me, not by a platform. That's at least a very like, you know, common way I would think about it.

[42:51] and basically... [42:52] any work on identity. [42:54] ends up being a question of how do we... [42:57] incentivize platforms to play along in a game that cuts out their edge. [43:02] And that this intermediates them from their users, which is to say their lifeblood. And so I think that's the core reason why identity projects end up going astray is if you are pure enough about following the identity path, you end up building a protocol. [43:15] that you can never get anyone to adopt because all of the people who have the greatest impact in adopting it are the most dis-incentivized. [43:21] from adopting it. [43:23] Um, [43:24] And yet I think [43:26] Well, we'll end up with [43:28] is maybe federated, like versions of identity, localized. Like, I think there's basically a gap between... [43:35] you only exist within the platform ecosystem, or you exist at a government mandated level. [43:41] And I think basically being able to federate different parts of identity between platforms is still a very viable dream. And I believe that like having basically digital currency that can flow between platforms. [43:51] is actually a very easy test bed. [43:53] for figuring out what a wider wallet can do. If I have a wallet that allows me to take... [43:57] Currency. [43:59] in the digital form from platform to platform, and then saying, you know, currency is just one type of data, but I can take other data, I can take KYC information, I can take my driver's license, is just a spring from there. So I think there's still merit to the wallet, but in itself I would recommend that no one work on that wallet in itself because it doesn't solve a lived problem for any user in a very direct way. [44:19] And yet,

[44:21] in some inverted way, [44:23] As I understand it, feel free to correct me, the embedded wallet was really the [44:27] I don't know if that was the exact pivot, but that... [44:29] was the sort of like... [44:31] unlock [44:33] to really make things start to work for you guys, at least in terms of the kind of core goal of serving developers and having... [44:39] Do you disagree? No, I completely agree. But I think what we did in doing this was also we, you know, there's a reason the embedded wallet doesn't have a first-class feature right now around, like, you know, social security number encryption. [44:51] or things like that. Like we move to saying, not only will we give, uh, [44:56] we will basically move from being this like horizontal platform that can capture any data to being a very verticalized one that capture one type of data, which is what assets do you hold and how do you make them easy to spend? And then what we did was we'll say, and this moves from being something the user has to willfully intentionally bring with them to this is something that a developer can build into their platform. So they are now building, you know. [45:19] global store value or, you know, fintech, whether or not they sought it. But like now value can be captured at the app level. [45:25] controlled by the developer in the UX that they want. And so I think like the, the, the unlock was saying, uh, [45:32] developers can build with crypto without needing their users to be crypto people. [45:35] I see. And is that the... [45:38] Is that what made the company work? [45:42] to wildly play. Yeah. Um... [45:44] When did it go from [45:46] - You were working on allowing customers to basically manage their users' data in a way that was responsible. It wasn't really working.

[45:55] you [45:56] were acquired by Stripe last year. [45:58] and you were quite successful, [46:01] in some dimension of things. And you have, if we wanted to put maybe the crudest analysis on it, there are millions of people who have Privy wallets by way of your developers. Like what? [46:12] What was the inflection point? I think there were a few chapters, but basically through the first version of [46:20] It was purely vision built. [46:22] And it was, this is what we think ought to exist in the world. Can we get people to agree? We launched a product in like December of 2021. [46:30] 2021, by April, Asta was like, [46:34] This is not working. We weren't. She was like, this is too hard. We're pulling teeth. And I was like, yeah, but this is about grit and so on. By July, I was like, all right, yeah, you're right. This is too hard. It should not be this hard to get people to care. We are trying to... [46:48] Reshape nature. [46:49] As opposed to like the market always wins and we are trying to change human behavior and that is not the right path. Like we need to figure out some ways. What were you most trying to change? You were trying to, you really were just trying to sell developers something they didn't care about. [47:03] Something they didn't care about and something their users weren't asking for. [47:06] I see. And we were trying to convince them you should care about this. And by the time you're doing that, you've already lost the game. You've lost the plot. We're not an advocacy group. We're a company building products. And so I think by July, I came to agree with her. And we had a few paths. We were like, okay, what have we learned?

[47:28] You had already raised from Sequoia. We had already raised from Sequoia. And I think this is where there's real truth to the IDMAs really matters. [47:36] Like in so many ways, we pivoted, but like it's so related to what we were doing before. And I think part of the question we had over that summer was, [47:45] Do we just reset, start something entirely different, go to AI or whatever? And I think the take was like, no, we still really believe that there's something here in the idea maze. We just went in through the wrong gate. So let's like get out of the maze. [47:57] "What did we learn about the path we charted? "And let's go back in." We were pretty methodical about it. And we came to a few ideas. - How sacred was selling to developers? - Very. - Okay. - 'Cause I'd worked on consumer products before, and I know how hard it is. And so that was not questioned. - But it was always developers specifically. Developer infrastructure. - Yeah, and I think that was, the sense here was like, it's what we know. We're both developers. We care about the craft. [48:21] And like, frankly, again, like if, if, if like, [48:25] you want to be selling the means of creating the future. That is a very good way of like having impact. And so like, [48:32] developer tooling, [48:33] is the way in which we get to start. That wasn't questioned, interestingly enough. [48:41] Yeah, and so we got to this idea of we need to change onboarding. It started with onboarding and we knew that embedded wallets were part of it, but actually the first launch was not embedded wallets. It was enabling people to off into crypto apps and link their existing crypto wallets to an off system more easily. And we basically just we'd seen the data and the data was people want to have key management be easier. So we'll have to build that next. But we're trying to cut very thin MVPs. And so basically by January of 23, so a year later, after the initial launch, we relaunched.

[49:10] with this new product. [49:13] And [49:13] We had like very, you know, one foot in front of the other goals. Our first quarter, we were like, we need to have five customers in prod. Our second quarter, we're like, can we make it 12? Our third quarter, it was like, can we make it 25? [49:25] And we got very lucky because there's an application called Frentech that used us. [49:29] And we were very clear that like, [49:32] that used us, that blew up. And then everybody started copying them. [49:36] And so we went from our goal being 25 in Q3 to having about 150 developer teams building with us at the end of Q3. At that point, we had enough data. [49:44] and enough customer contact that we, uh, oblivion or irrelevance was no longer the threat model for like why this wouldn't work. It was like us just messing the product up, not being able to scale. And so I think that- Was there any fear of like, will there be, because interestingly, I, I, we, we knew each other back then. I remember well before Frentech, you had like envisioned this correctly, which is like, I need to get enough developers that one of them is my, one of them rips basically. Yeah. After that, [50:11] One, I guess, do you think that was a reliable strategy that can actually work? And then two... [50:17] Was there any fear that like, will there be another front tech? I think the fear was can crypto... [50:22] exist beyond... [50:25] called Following It Has. And I think we were basically very comfortable, or at least appropriately uncomfortable, making a core bet, which was... [50:36] We have to have one, like we can't stack bets. I think that was a very important like mindset that we had, which is like the startup can be a series of like, you know, bank shots and pools where you have to hit like three sides before you get the ball in. There needs to be one core bet that we're making.

[50:51] But then if that macro Corvette works out or doesn't work out, [50:54] we can succeed or fail. And I think our core bet was... [50:59] crypto, be it in the Web3 version and digital assets version or something else, is such a fundamentally interesting idea. Having crypto, [51:06] state. [51:07] that is not owned by any party, but that every party in the world can connect to across the Internet, is so clearly valuable. And the first application of it is like magic Internet money, which is the old name for stablecoins, I guess, now. I was going to say, back then it almost felt like... [51:21] Like web three didn't work. [51:24] Yeah. And so in some sense, like it was – [51:28] At the very least, it didn't seem that obvious then that there was still this very long-run bet that... [51:34] stable coins and like the quote unquote boring stuff was still. I think that for us, the point was we. [51:41] Frentech gave us relevance. [51:44] and enabled us to test things. And I think the guiding star was, can we work with tasteful developers? If we find customers who have taste, [51:54] what they're working on is far less important than the fact that they understand what they're working on. What does taste mean? It means, I mean, the negative signals is someone who is mimicking a trend as opposed to doing something because they believe in it for first principle reasons, whether the first principles are correct or not. And it means somebody who understands their audience and their customers deeply and is making decisions based on that understanding rather than just based on proxies for what an audience might be.

[52:24] And so I think we've been able to just spend a lot of time with our customers and identify [52:29] Who? [52:30] has real vision for what they're trying to do. And then let's just... [52:34] be better for them. And so I think we basically spent this first, you know, chapter one was, you know, pre-pivot. Chapter two is this period of getting to a place where we had enough of a customer base to start iterating. Chapter three is, um, [52:48] how does this stretch the product and what are the places in which we can just build better tooling for these people uh leading to chapter four which is seeing the emergence [52:57] of stable coins that a new class of user [52:59] coming into crypto and making sure we were well built to support that use case. And so I think we wrote a strategy paper early on, which basically said there are three markets. [53:09] There's the extremely diehard crypto natives, [53:13] for whom storing a mnemonic [53:16] is... [53:18] a non-negotiable fact of self-sovereignty. And we will never be able to convince them that actually, you know, these are, [53:23] really viable self-custodial systems that they should use. There is crypto developers who want to build for a mainstream audience. [53:31] And then there are mainstream developers who want to use crypto. [53:35] And basically we said we will never win one and three doesn't exist. [53:40] And so we have to go for two. We have to build for basically crypto devs who want to cater to a wider population that will teach us the things that we need so that when three comes about, we'll be ready. And that is like, we just got massively lucky with timing that three is coming now. Three is here. I mean, it wasn't like it. I don't know if you got massively lucky. It was the course of four years. Yeah, we were patient and lucky. You hung around. We hung around. But we're now in a place where basically most of our biggest customers are.

[54:07] aren't here because they care about crypto. They're here because they care about the impact that this technology can have on their users. They're here to build better financial systems. They're here to enable people to hold US dollars globally if they don't have access to local currency or stable currency. They are here to build better products for orgs that already exist and are massively scaled. And we're really well set up to work with these people because we have two markets. We have the folks who are really pushing the technology. [54:34] And these are the like deep experts, the crypto natives who are like forcing us to be faster, to scale globally, to, you know, the reality is DeFi, [54:44] is just doing so much more transaction volume today than stable coins. So we know that we can scale to hold any stable coin-like thing because we've scaled to support, you know, Hyperliquid and Uniswap and Jupyter. And on the other side, the, you know, [54:59] fintechs and marketplaces. [55:01] will kind of actually distribute this technology more widely. So it's very much a two pronged approach to product development and being very clear on what is our customers optimization function here so we can make sure that the product is right for them. [55:12] but then making sure that we're able to work with startups and enterprises in a way where they feed each other in terms of product quality. [55:17] So, [55:18] You referenced on an earlier podcast, [55:21] having written this document, I think probably in 2025, but maybe it was 24, about the sort of two paths between trading and silver coins and not choosing. Yeah. [55:30] Yeah. [55:31] Maybe that's a similar cut on what you were just talking about, but like, there was somewhere else you talked about like...

[55:38] uh, [55:39] Part of the role is to be a hoodie amongst the suits and a suit amongst the hips. How has that been? Maybe it was especially relevant pre-stripe, but it's certainly still relevant today. And I know you've talked about this, like making sure that you don't just go after the... [55:55] the stablecoin kind of rise. Yeah, I mean, I think... [56:01] That was probably the second hardest moment. Like the pivot was probably the hardest moment in the company's life where, you [56:07] You know, we... [56:08] We were in a room on [redacted address], or [56:12] Avenue, I think, in San Francisco. It was a WeWork. We were doing an offsite. [56:16] And just the atmosphere sucked. And it was like six or seven of us, the entire team. And at some point, I think I said... [56:24] So like clearly things aren't working right. [56:26] And like you felt the body language change and people relax being like, finally, at least we're not just like, yeah. And at least we're all we have eyes. [56:35] Of course it's not working. We all see it, but now it's like part of the conversation and we can do something about it. Yeah. And that was like the start of like, [56:41] broadly a very painful i mean it was already quite painful to be working on something no one cared about but like it was the start of like just figuring out what are we doing and it was done very publicly uh we have one teammate uh ankush who was like this is his first job out of college i think it was like he was probably like a few weeks into the job and i'm like just so thankful that he hung on because that was uh not a fun time to be around the company still here he's still here wow uh and uh and he's he's amazing and his job has changed 18 times in the course of like the

[57:11] but I think like that for summer we were doing like, [57:15] we'd set it up so we would do like random research to try and figure out what we would do. [57:21] The second hardest moment was basically much more of a private moment, but it was me and Asta and like just seeing the market is changing. [57:30] And this is when this is October 24. I wrote it. I wrote this doc that I sent to one investor being like, [57:38] I think we're headed towards a wall. [57:40] And like, I just like hyperliquid is already a customer. Hyperliquid is already a customer. The trading stuff is working. [57:47] The training stuff is working, but I think our stance was always we are – [57:53] We want to be big fish in a small pond and then grow the pond. Okay. [57:57] we will not focus on monetization and we will not focus like we have built a SaaS business. And so in many ways, like this was the actual like crux of the dock, which was we're seeing the boat depart from the dock. We are on the dock. We have to either jump on the boat or stay on the dock. The boat is stable coins. The boat is the new vertical coming into the space, stable coins, tokenized assets and generally like the fintechs entering the space. [58:22] that will clearly be massive and requires a set of changes to our product in the org that we need to make to stay relevant. And, [58:31] I think the point was, [58:33] If we stay on the dock, we cannot be a SaaS product. We have to figure out how to be a very different type of product because there are great businesses to be built in trading, but we have not built such a business. We never intended to. SaaS in trading. Exactly. It doesn't make sense.

[58:45] And conversely, if we want to jump on the boat, that's great, but we're giving up the [58:50] what was hard-earned, but also what was, like, I think a very meaningful set of customers who have great ideas, who are really insightful, who we want to keep working with. And so I think the point was, like, [59:01] This needs to be a very intentional, deliberate decision that we make for how we want to be in the world. And I think the point was, we have to do both. We can't control the timing of stablecoin adoption and re- [59:13] Like not using the platform we have would be such a mistake because it's a valuable platform. And I actually think it feeds product quality in a deep way. And, you know, to the point, I think we're now like, you know, on the latest part of that transition, we have made the transition. Most of our customers are moving stablecoin volumes. They're fintechs. Again, they're folks like Ramp or Klarna or Deal. And these are very like, you know, modern companies who are here for the user impact. But at the time it was we actually have a platform. We just need to rethink our customer base a little bit in order to make that movement. [59:43] little bit was I went to see a roll off from, from Sequoia around the time we were raising a series there, right after we had raised it. And I asked him, [59:52] What would it take to [59:53] What would it have taken for Sequoia to be excited to do RA? [59:57] And we talked for a little while and I, [1:00:01] He was like... [1:00:03] You're talking to me about how far you've come. [1:00:06] And I don't give a shit. Like, the only thing I care about is am I excited looking forward? [1:00:14] And I think that was like...

[1:00:16] such a wake-up moment for the obvious searing pain of trying to create something from nothing. [1:00:22] is so... [1:00:23] wild in your mind that you end up saying, oh, but we've done so well. And no one gives a shit. We're not dead. We're not. Exactly. And so I think that that's been a very useful lesson to carry forward, which is the only thing, like, let's restart the clock today. [1:00:36] What do I have to do? And this is why I find, you know, [1:00:38] just the entirety of like, say SpaceX as a company and the way they were operating in AI, give a fantastic business. [1:00:44] and you're now going to [1:00:47] you know, [1:00:48] I'm speaking a little bit, uh, uh, [1:00:52] but you're not going to risk the entire business to go after the next bigger, biggest thing. And so that ability to only look forward is like, it goes back to- - Elon's good at that. Elon's good at that. So that's very impressive. - So easy to say from the outside looking in, but like, [1:01:08] I guess. [1:01:09] You could say like, obviously you should have done both. [1:01:11] What did you have to compromise on and what did you not compromise on to actually make that happen? And why was it so hard to do both? Yeah, and to our credit, maybe the thing I like is we did not ape into the space. This is at a time like, you know, I really do credit like Zach and Bridge for inventing a lot of how people think about stable coins today and making fetch happen. I think we were basically... Making what happen? Fetch happen. Sorry, Mean Girls reference, please.

[1:01:41] Yeah, fetch. It's a technical term. [1:01:45] I think we were early enough that it felt very risky to make this bet at the time, which now, you know, every company that is still operating in crypto has pivoted to stable coins. So it seems very obvious post fact, but I think we were lucky to see it a bit earlier. [1:01:58] I think they were probably like... [1:02:00] three core trade-offs, one [1:02:05] marketing and product positioning. We like, you know, we rebranded, we did a number of things to actually self-actualize for the market we wanted to build toward to actual decisions in the stack. [1:02:17] Privy, you know, while key reconstitution was all happening on device at the time, and we're like, man, [1:02:22] And key management wallets were very tied into off because most of our customers did not have authentication systems. We're like, well, there's no world in which like a bank is going to rework their off system to integrate wallets. Like we've completely fucked up the stack here by like tying these things together. So we need to rethink core abstractions. We need to rethink the relationship between wallets and off. We need to rethink key management because it can't keep happening on device. [1:02:52] one could touch but the rightful owner, but also it did not need to run locally in order for that to be true. So it was a deep set of, it took us the better part of eight or nine months to restock. Yeah. It was focus and resources. And then it was clarity internally. [1:03:05] Like the question of who are we building for then comes up a ton. Right. And I think like basically, you know, building a resilient culture in startups is getting everyone very comfortable with ambiguity.

[1:03:16] end of saying we don't know, but we know that we don't know, so we can figure it out. And I guess my core theory of startups, great start to sentence, is you basically have like three – [1:03:27] audiences [1:03:28] You have your users, your team, and your investors in that order of importance. [1:03:33] And whenever you start to talk to one of these audiences in a way that is too unlike the way you talk to the others, [1:03:41] You're setting yourself up for failure or reckoning. [1:03:44] And so I think trying to keep the right tension on the rubber band so that [1:03:49] We know the ambiguity. We're transparent internally. We know we haven't figured it out, but we have to figure it out. That's the most costly thing is like, you know, just feeling on a day to day basis, man, this could be wildly wrong. [1:03:59] And we're wasting like precious brainpower trying to figure out this made up thing when in fact we're doing pretty well on the crypto native side of the house. [1:04:06] And so why should we threaten to destroy the entire enterprise? [1:04:11] in order to make the sleep. [1:04:13] when in fact post-fact [1:04:15] Not doing that would have been disastrous. [1:04:17] Thank you. [1:04:18] And again, this is so easy mode, right? I had this other conversation. I'm going to keep name dropping Sequoia Partners. I had this other conversation with, I think, Alfred Lin, who was talking about a company that was at $100 million run rate and had to decide whether they were going to destroy their business to start a new business. We were doing this as a teensy 20-person org company. [1:04:38] Seeing something that like was, was in hindsight, very obvious, but like there are companies that are having to reinvent themselves at such massive scales. And that's like real courage in many ways. Hmm.

[1:04:47] Thank you. [1:04:49] I think you benefited certainly post-pivot from being very customer obsessed. [1:04:54] through this period, despite a customer base that was a little off the place and moving target. Where do you think like vision has... [1:05:03] Remained really important [1:05:06] Thank you. [1:05:07] Yeah, it's a really good take. And I would argue that this is one of the things I'm not very good at as a founder, which is to say like customer obsession in many ways is the vision itself. [1:05:16] By the way, lots of amazing companies have been built basically on that alone. We're working in an interesting place that is complex and hard technically, that is morally valent and important, I believe, in the future of how the web gets built. [1:05:29] And as long as we pick the right customers, [1:05:32] and we kill ourselves to serve them really well, things will kind of work out. [1:05:45] Imagine a world in which every Uber driver... [1:05:49] can get paid out globally in a currency of their choice. [1:05:52] can save in the app directly and can refinance their next vehicle to build a bigger business. [1:06:00] Off of that. [1:06:01] that world exists today and that world is no longer just one that only uber can build [1:06:06] Any three-person team actually has the means of doing that. It's extremely powerful. We're rebuilding the financial stack from the ground up. [1:06:13] in an internet native way. [1:06:15] And I really do believe that, but I think I'm a very skeptical person. And so when I hear founders talk about vision, I'm like, oh, this person's trying to sell me bullshit. And it makes it less exciting to me than actually talking about the craft. And...

[1:06:28] That last example, or frankly, a lot of the stable coin examples are kind of boring to Americans who have a pretty good financial system. Yeah, fair. So the vision part, it's like lowercase v. [1:06:40] I answer. Um, [1:06:42] When was the acquisition? [1:06:44] Mid 2025? Yeah, it closed in, we now sit in June of last year. Right. [1:06:51] You run Privy as a somewhat separate org inside of Stripe, and you also work on, I think, some Stripe things. Like, what... [1:06:58] What is privy today? Like, what is... [1:07:02] Um... [1:07:04] What is the right way to model what it is and what it is? [1:07:08] will continue to be. [1:07:10] - That's a great question. - Versus being just folded into Stripes, sort of massive crypto effort. [1:07:16] I mean, I think a lot of what was exciting about joining Stripe was just the quality of leadership at Stripe. Here, you have me brown nosing up to my bosses. But the reality is that it was generally just impressive to see [1:07:28] the scale of ambition, the commitment to craft and the humility. [1:07:32] with which... [1:07:33] all three being true together, they were approaching the space. And that made me feel like if there were to be a home, this is the right home. And I think the point was when we entered, I think we had sort of three principles, which is to say we need to continue to operate as a startup. If we stop, we die. [1:07:48] Because this market does not exist. And we are in like market formation phase. [1:07:52] Same is true for AI, in my opinion, by the way, which is like the market is annealing. [1:07:56] and we need to heat the product and the market to the same temperature to shape where the market goes. But product market fit is not a good framework for working in a market like this today. What do you mean?

[1:08:06] Like the market moves too quickly. If we start settling down and just like trying to scale the shit out or something, it'll move out from under us. And so we need to be much more dynamically questioning everything all the time and making decisions that don't scale. [1:08:17] accordingly. So I think that was like the first. The second is we can't just be a stablecoin shop. [1:08:22] I think stablecoins are the lion's share of where value is being built. And I think they are such an exciting development, but I think there's a lot of interplay between different parts of the space that needs to be fed over time as well. [1:08:35] We should continue to work on both in appropriate measure, but we should continue to work on both. And then I think the third is like we have to be able to work with like Stripe bridge competitors. I'd include Tempo in that now, but like basically a lot of the stack is being built as an open platform. And if we try to overly verticalize, like the product experience needs to be seamless in the parts where we are working together. [1:08:54] A developer should not have to see where one product begins and the other ends. Like it should just feel like a cohesive whole. [1:09:02] For those developers who want to shape their own stack, the pieces should work modually as well. So those were like three very clear things that I felt strongly about coming into the conversations. [1:09:10] Was tempo already a part of the conversation? No, or at least not for me. And so a lot of like... [1:09:19] That was an explicit part of the conversations that we were having. And then I think it came down to, you know, some version of like, [1:09:28] Do I believe? [1:09:29] the powers that be [1:09:32] that they mean this and that like we get to do really excellent work together and that in places where we disagree with,

[1:09:39] we will come out better for the disagreement with something that is actually something I can be just prouder of building. And I think – so that's a long-winded way of this is the, like, core substrate within which I operate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I think the point is, like, you know, Privy is two things. [1:09:56] a developer tool that people can use to embed wallets and access and ownership of visual assets into their platform. And Privy, in many ways, is like Stripe's wallet stack. [1:10:06] And so within Stripe Products, Treasury Link, we were working to power basically the inner piece. And we're like spending a lot of our time with... [1:10:16] Stripe teams to help shape this. And then we're spending a lot of time with our other customers that are extremely important. And again, this is like the two feed each other, which is the work that we're doing for Stripe benefits everyone, because it is like extremely demanding. It scales, it like has all of these requirements. And likewise, like a lot of our customers are running so far ahead of the market that like we get to build a future proof tool. So I think that is like the core definition of Privy. And then increasingly, we're trying to [1:10:46] the on-ramp team at Stripe. And this is one where Privy basically just really needs on-ramps to work better in order to enable people to load up their wallets with assets, after which it becomes much more interesting to have a wallet. And so the question of like... [1:11:00] How do we work both with, you know, on-ramp vendors across the board? [1:11:03] because no product is perfect for everyone. But how do we also make sure that the like integration surface between these products is really good and that the integration surface across the entire, you know, crypto ecosystem, which is to say tempo bridge, privy stripe is really good. That's, that's what I would say. Like my, my, my, I guess three hats today are, you know, focusing on stripe products wholesale that touch stable coins and crypto. And there's many of those that I had just managed a few of them, which, which is to say like, you know,

[1:11:29] merchants getting paid with stable coins and unwraps. It's privy. [1:11:35] And then it's how do we build an ecosystem that can run at speed on point solutions and yet build a greater whole as we do so. [1:11:47] to let users have crypto. [1:11:49] Yes. In my definition of it, yes. I think there's... My sense is you have consumer wallets. It's a way for a consumer to hold and trade crypto. You have... [1:11:58] developer wallets, embedded wallets, which is a way for developers to build, you know, [1:12:03] these assets into their app. And then basically digital asset accounts, as you were saying, is like this higher level of traction that brings together the many integrations that brings together, you know, card issuing, [1:12:12] orchestration wallets so that a developer doesn't have to think about putting the stack together themselves, but can just like, [1:12:18] Filled with one thing and it just works. It's a bank account in a box, so to speak. What does it mean for Privy to... You talked about customers. What does it mean for Privy to be... [1:12:27] a startup within Stripe versus you working on other things like on ramps at Stripe, which is another team is privy. Just a team at Stripe. Like what is that? It's an interesting question. And one where, you know, my answer is probably very different. The more I do work within Stripe and the more I understand Stripe. Yeah. Uh, [1:12:44] And the short answer is like, yes and no. I think one of the great things that startups have going for them is like continuity of vision and continuity of culture. And like, in a sense, Privy is another team within Stripe, but... [1:12:56] It's another team that's had basically very, like... [1:12:59] consistent staffing and direction for four years. And so like we have a lot of internal memes

[1:13:04] that exist through... [1:13:06] pain and good times that can carry forward, and that's extremely powerful. [1:13:13] which accounts for some difference in how we operate. - Oh, like I'm an American and I'm a New Yorker. - Exactly, that's exactly right. And I think the reality is actually the Privy and the Stripe culture are very well matched for each other, and that's not a mistake. [1:13:28] Like we literally looked at Stripe in terms of how do we want to build this company? And so we tried to fashion ourselves after the bizarro version of or after the marketing version of Stripe. And we're very lucky in that the marketing version of Stripe and the reality are like very close together. So that worked out pretty well. But but but yeah, I think culturally we share a lot of things. And I think there's like, you know, cultural quirks, ways in which we work, some operational tendencies that are a little bit disjoint. [1:13:53] just because we want to keep running at scale for our customers and like trying to fall in line has no intrinsic value. [1:14:01] What does is like being able to do good work together quickly. [1:14:06] What do you say... [1:14:07] maybe to go back to some of our ideology and pragmatism, um, [1:14:13] I'm not the best person to ask this, and you may not be the best person to answer this, so I don't want to, we don't need to spend a ton of time on it, but, like, there is concern. Yeah, it's nice that Privy's a team within Stripe. It's nice that Bridges is a team within Stripe. Tempo's not just Stripe. Like, there is concern amongst people in crypto. You're building the monolith, and, like, great technology, [1:14:31] After all of this, you're going to be able to really amazing perform at

[1:14:35] database-ish thing that basically, like, the mostly good guys at Stripe [1:14:40] It's a pretty benevolent God. [1:14:43] What do you think? [1:14:46] I'm conflating many things here. If you were pitching a Henry from 2020 who is unconvinced on this, what would you say to him? [1:14:56] I have three takes. The most blunt one to the Henry from 2020, and this is not a good sales pitch for the folks who are very worried about this, but it's like, what do you prefer? A space that is irrelevant, that has no adoption, or a space that is making pragmatic decisions to drive things forward? I think they would say that on some level, that's a cop out. [1:15:13] Yeah, I just I really don't think it is like, you know, first, I think that, you know, reports of crypto's death have been greatly exaggerated to quote Winston Churchill. I think we should be as optimistic as we've ever been. And now is a great time to build a business into, you know, again, crypto is a stable coins like the word itself is carries too much. Yeah. But like, I think it's a great time to be thinking about what does ownership on the web mean? And what does it mean to have like global? [1:15:35] financial rails. [1:15:38] So that would be the first one. I don't think it's a cop out because I genuinely think some people – [1:15:43] Like, [1:15:44] would rather... [1:15:47] Nothing at all. Yeah. Then this like, so that's, I think that the first part, I think the second part is, is there is a real commitment and this is such a lived reality that, [1:15:57] to an open stack. [1:15:59] Like, we work with... [1:16:01] Uh, [1:16:03] uh, light spark and plasma and Solana and base. And these are all very close partners, some of whose, uh, infrastructure we power. And just like the reality is we have made commitments and hopefully lived up to them. And I live to get called out basically because, uh, uh, that's, you know, the point, but to, to, to actually building an open ecosystem and an open stock. And so now like, basically I'm saying, uh,

[1:16:27] Stripe is an ambitious company that wherever it runs into issues, we'll try to solve them by building software, which is what we know how to do, especially when we feel like we have good instincts for what the software should be. And this is how I think Tempo was born. It was like born out of issues with chains. [1:16:39] that needed help. [1:16:41] uh, managing. And I think choosing not to do something that we think we can do a good job of because it looks bad, right. Is like such a bad way of like trying to have impact on the world. So I, um, [1:16:51] I would say I think it's a very valid concern. [1:16:53] I think... [1:16:54] the commitment to an open stack is absolute. And so the pieces work well together and you don't need to do the whole thing if you don't want to. But also, you know, [1:17:04] I wish there were a lot more people in the space. [1:17:07] trying to build... [1:17:08] end-to-end solutions that could transform like [1:17:11] transform developers and consumers lives. And, uh, I genuinely think it's a really good thing when some people do, uh, [1:17:18] So that's, I think, kind of my take. And again, I... [1:17:22] whatever people like dunk on us on Twitter, it's usually, ah, like, of course this is the stripe acquisition. Uh, Privy's gone downhill since or some version. It doesn't happen that often, thankfully. And we work our asses off. So I'm glad it doesn't happen that often, but like, [1:17:36] Let me say our incompetence is very much our own. In the many places where preview falls short, it's because we are incapable in those instances. It is not because there's something else. And I actually think working in service to the user is a deeply ingrained cultural value that both orgs share. And that's kind of True North. It's something I was thinking about recently. There's a nutrient...

[1:17:59] In the AI context, people are talking a lot about values. And I'm more interested in... [1:18:05] incentives that I am in values. I don't think Facebook necessarily has bad values. Maybe they do, but [1:18:09] I think they've had some bad incentives. Even something as simple as a commitment to being open source. It's nice that you can say that, but what are the structural things that actually allow this to happen and have it still be aligned with Stripe's business goals? [1:18:25] My honest take is – [1:18:28] Stripe being a private company and having very strong willed founders is a lot of that, which is to say, you know, Tammy and Stripe Press existing, Stripe Climate being a thing, Atlas being a thing. There are just so many examples of things that make a priori no business sense, but happen to be intellectually interesting and meaningful. [1:18:50] And I think Stripe's ability to try and like, I think Stripe's core belief, this is the core incentive. I think Stripe's core belief. [1:18:57] that [1:18:59] startups will always have a place in moving the world forward and that serving companies [1:19:04] individuals and small teams who are trying to build things. [1:19:08] is intrinsically valuable. Yeah. [1:19:10] Uh, [1:19:11] is that core incentive. It is a belief in the future, in a sense. It's a very optimistic place in that regard. It might be closer to a value, but it's a value that they really are showing that they believe. Exactly. And so I think it's a very long... [1:19:23] Again, these are all conversations that I had before joining. [1:19:28] I kind of had my bullshit meter on to try and make sure like –

[1:19:33] we knew what we were getting into. And so, uh, [1:19:36] at least for me, [1:19:38] It feels like a very real hill that they'll die on, not out of a principle. [1:19:42] but out of sheer economic interest, which is... [1:19:46] The future will be very exciting. And the only way to stay relevant is to embrace it. And that means to embrace new things being built, including competition. [1:19:54] Uh... [1:19:55] And so I think, frankly, a lot of the decisions that have driven [1:19:59] uh, strike products being built in the crypto space have been bored out of frustration as users. [1:20:05] that we can't build on this substrate. And so we need something better. And, oh, in fact, we have this idea. And so I think in many ways, the short-term economic interest would be much easier to not do these things. So I think, again, it's up to us to stick the landing and make sure that the developer experience building on these rails... [1:20:21] is absolutely excellent. [1:20:23] What do you think Stripe is becoming? [1:20:27] I've heard a sentence, and I don't know that this is canon, so don't quote me on it. I'm not asking for the company view. But I think... [1:20:36] I think it's, [1:20:37] First great developer tooling that can be used for anyone to build meaningful businesses on the web is probably the like lowest level true thing. And you see it because Atlas is a way to build a company and, you know, strike payments as a way to like monetize it. And now we have like, you know, these financial rails for money movement, um, [1:20:53] And all that. So that's the first thing is the platform that developers come to, to power the financial infrastructure for businesses they want to build online and in the real world. [1:21:01] I think the second one is like much more of a tooling first perspective, which is like kind of AWS for money in a sense. If you move into a world where money is data, then what are the core goals?

[1:21:14] tools and infrastructure pieces that have to be assembled to build with [1:21:19] that construct money. And I think, you know, a lot of the things happening in the agentic world speak to that, which is we are moving in a place where just, you know, subcent transactions, [1:21:29] We're never a very big concern, I'm guessing. [1:21:32] because no one was making subcent purchases. But in a world in which agents can stream payments for content, and you're buying by the megabyte, terrible idea. [1:21:41] the physics of money change. [1:21:43] And I think that role as like, you know, [1:21:47] How do we [1:21:49] build the tools to power it and how do we become guardians for like the sanctity of the basically like consumer and business interest in being able to rely on these rails [1:21:57] to grow is I think a core part of what Stripe is becoming. [1:22:04] And then I think, you know, the third and here I'm just reading through the same lines, you know, everyone else is by looking at like what is trying putting out in the world is like hopefully an agent for like. [1:22:12] acceleration of like tasteful things in the world. Like, you know, the commitment to like beauty and craft. Uh, I've spent more time than I, uh, care to think about talking to, to like Patrick about the, uh, [1:22:23] floral arrangements at stripe offices and the smell of stripe offices, like not actually a joke. And so, uh, there is a real point of like, you know, craft is in itself, uh, [1:22:34] something that is worth pursuing and if we can [1:22:37] help people hone their craft by focusing on the right things. And we ourselves can put out things that are beautiful. [1:22:43] That is intrinsically valuable and something that moves the world forward.

[1:22:50] You can see I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but I believe it. [1:22:53] a couple of questions on crypto broadly. [1:22:57] Um... [1:22:59] You have a line somewhere. You say the difference in crypto, uh, between the theoretically possible and the actually true, which obviously runs through a lot of our conversation. Um, yeah. [1:23:12] I guess at a super high level, I mean, like, I did a tour of duty in crypto, that's how I know you. There was this grand vision, there were different words for it. I never really loved the Web3 name. Maybe the thing that felt most... [1:23:24] important about it was ownership. [1:23:26] And that could be digital ownership of different types of assets, some of which may be worth more or less than they were in the past. But even something as simple as like users should own the networks they use, the tools they use. Do you think that that dream is dead? [1:23:43] I don't think so. [1:23:46] I think things are cyclical and I think this is going to be a very cop out answer, but like, I think things are cyclical and I think frankly, frankly, [1:23:55] Again, the tension between hype and reality in any space. [1:23:58] is such a dangerous thing. And you can only go so far in stretching the band towards hype before reality and impact has to catch up with it. [1:24:05] Or the band breaks and bubbles burst. And I think... [1:24:10] Right now, us focusing on delivering value to the world through concrete economic tools that are empowering to people in the Western and non-Western worlds alike is so powerful.

[1:24:21] fucking important to actually [1:24:23] building the means of [1:24:24] bringing that back. So I'm feeling very optimistic because I've basically never seen crypto deliver so much value to the world. [1:24:30] in a way that wasn't necessarily what we tried. But I think this will come back if only and this doesn't necessarily mean the crypto boroughs of old. [1:24:38] will come back. I think many of them have washed out. [1:24:41] forever because it's such a hard space to work in in many ways. But I think if you give it, you know, 10 years, uh, and, uh, [1:24:49] Impact can wash some of the stink off of crypto. [1:24:53] then like it just stands to reason that people thinking about what does ownership mean on the web? The web is becoming more and more important. AI and general digital cognition is not going anywhere. [1:25:04] Like these questions are becoming more important than ever. [1:25:07] And we are building out, again, just a very important rail for reasoning with what does it mean to own things on this platform. So I actually feel very good because... [1:25:15] This is an essential question. [1:25:17] for the future. And now whether it ends up looking like what we thought Web3 was going to look like or not, I'm less, you know, I've learned to be less fussed about trying to, [1:25:26] shape the market to my will rather than hopefully make forward progress in a positive way. [1:25:31] Thank you. [1:25:33] Yeah, I guess my feeling is... [1:25:35] It sort of feels that crypto has barbelled, which is that there's the boring part, which is stable coins, which basically can't have speculation. Yeah. [1:25:42] I shouldn't say camp, but it's very hard. And then wherever there can be any speculation, there's max speculation. [1:25:47] Which basically means trading. But this is the interesting, there's a good Vitalik tweet, which was some version of what we thought was going to happen.

[1:25:55] crypto will become sane and start resembling normal markets. What actually happened, normal markets look like crypto. And so I just, I think crypto has been a like forerunner [1:26:06] and distillation of a lot of what's happening in the world. But I think you see it [1:26:11] in so many other places. [1:26:12] And maybe, you know, in that sense, crypto, you know, there's such a thing as crypto native culture. And I think it is like, you know, a hyper concentration. It is the moonshine of the Internet in many ways where. Yeah. [1:26:23] Um, [1:26:24] It just front ran what happens when you over financialize things to a large extent. Right. And when internet memetics take on. [1:26:32] an intrinsic importance. And I guess my point is, [1:26:36] I think the barbell is real. I think in both cases, each side of the barbell is seeping out of crypto. I think prediction markets in many ways where a lot of the – [1:26:47] uh, [1:26:48] speculative liquidity from crypto. It's a bigger market because there are a lot of people who are using those in very different ways that have no relation to crypto. But a lot of the folks who were dabbling in meme coins or prior to that in other spaces have recycled capital to move towards those markets. And so you're seeing two worlds meet there. And on the other side, on the stable coin side, you're seeing two worlds meet of folks like me working with financial institutions and traditional global marketplaces. [1:27:14] to deliver real value to the users in that way. And so I think both sides are very interesting, [1:27:19] And basically, I think the question of like, [1:27:22] You know, very soon we're moving into the age where saying I'm a VC.

[1:27:27] investing in internet companies. So obviously makes no sense. We have that version. Then we have cloud. Makes no sense anymore either. And we're moving to an age where we're saying like, I focus on AI now. [1:27:37] makes less and less sense. And I basically just think crypto is slower. [1:27:42] But there will come a point where saying like my products touch digital value. [1:27:46] will be part of the fabric. And so I just I don't know basically that like [1:27:50] What won't happen, I believe, is crypto native culture will be everyone's culture and we will move to a cypherpunk world in which everyone's carrying a ledger in their pocket. I love ledger. But like, I just think it is going to become part of the fabric of the Internet in a much deeper way and it will not resemble what we thought it might. [1:28:06] So yes, Live 3 is dead. I think I agree with all of that and... [1:28:12] the bar, but like neither of those things is these more idealistic ideas of like users being able to own a network. [1:28:18] Oh, sorry. Yeah. Bringing that back. I am... [1:28:21] Or even something as like... [1:28:24] Whatever. Digital assets that aren't rampantly speculative or whatever. When I got into crypto, what excited me was visions of LimeWire and Kazaa. And this was basically, we've taken the very cool distributed systems research from the early 2000s. Yeah. [1:28:37] And we have now... [1:28:38] bolted incentives into them in a very deep way, and that will be the resurgence [1:28:43] of federated and decentralized networks as the core substrate for building information. And like you see it even right now with the AI labs, the fact that we're now, you know, [1:28:53] depending on how you look at it, version of an oligopoly for intelligence.

[1:28:58] There are so many fundamentally centralizing forces in the world. I'm just unconvinced that user-owned networks. [1:29:05] I think it is a beautiful idea. [1:29:08] And I worry that market realities and the human reality, [1:29:13] nature. [1:29:14] make it that actually like... [1:29:16] You know. [1:29:18] Kibbutz. [1:29:19] And... [1:29:20] - Isn't this part of the dream of markets? Like aren't markets supposed to be how we-- - Well, so far capitalism is winning. So like the kibbutz and the commune, great ideas, works at a small scale. The facto-- - Oh, I don't mean that. I more mean like let a thousand flowers bloom. Why don't we have, like the fact that there are two AI labs or three AI labs and like, it seems that the power law is gonna keep hitting harder and harder and harder, which is the, if you were gonna create a bear case against [1:29:46] capitalism and markets, it would be that they actually enable the extreme end of the power. I realize that's a... No, no, I understand. But I guess I worked on Falkoin for a number of years, which was trying to decentralize access to storage. And basically, there are two things at play. There's market forces, and then there's technological advancement. The reality is Moore's Law is continuing to run. [1:30:06] And so the relative value of decentralizing storage is much less important because storage is in itself getting cheaper. And so the market need... [1:30:14] will be reduced and we were already up against like, you know, centralizing forces in the market. And so like, [1:30:19] I believe that we're seeing the same thing play out with AI, like the incentives determine outcomes. [1:30:25] There is clear demand for intelligence and, you know, GPU production and general like ability to do

[1:30:30] matrix multiplication is growing like a weed where we are now energy constrained as like the core bottleneck rather than chip constrained. [1:30:39] believe that there's too much path dependency for such a system to come out because people have thought it was a better alternative. Yeah. [1:30:46] To me, it's the same futility. [1:30:48] is asking AI labs to pause research while we figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Fair. There are two threads I want to pull out that I'm going to conflate into one question, which may deliberately be difficult, which is... [1:31:00] There's this power law thing. [1:31:03] Which it seems like the world's actually, technology is making the world more power-lotted, more concentrated, not less. Well, yes and no, because at the same time, I remember an era... [1:31:12] circa 2014 to 2018, where it was like we are kind of at the end of history. [1:31:17] in terms of what big tech can mean. Like you've got the Fang at the time, and like no other big platform can compete. Like AWS has got the like, you know, this, and Facebook has got the that. And that's just like clearly so not true anymore. Like disruption has come from left field. [1:31:34] But so, like, basically, I think what is so cool and exciting about working in this space is we're just expanding what is possible for humanity to do. You've got, you know, SpaceX and, like, multi-planetary systems existing in a very real way. And you had Loom versus, you know, Starlink. [1:31:51] So I'm just saying like, [1:31:53] I actually think [1:31:55] old systems ossify, and the power law is relentless. Ah, no. [1:32:00] But innovation and sort of creative destruction is a nonstoppable force. The power will keep getting bigger and bigger, and yet we have new disruption. Exactly. Right. I guess there's a question about optimism. My other question about optimism. Which is a very optimistic take for what I have. Yes. Yes. What I was going to conflate is, are you really that optimistic about the future? And that was one piece of it. The other piece, though, you brought up the Vitalik tweet. I had written down, you had retweeted Andrew Reid on the same note, and you had likened it to Vitalik. He says, everything is crypto now.

[1:32:30] the affiliate kickbacks, the coordinated pumps, the group chats, the random five from competitors. [1:32:35] Um, [1:32:36] wild financialization of the world. Yeah. Um, [1:32:40] You are one of, you are like, I always joke with people, crypto is hilarious because you have like, [1:32:45] the worst people ever. And then just like the most thoughtful, brilliant nerds ever. And they're like, they're combined into one thing. Um, [1:32:54] Maybe that's less true than it was three years ago. [1:32:56] What do you think is, and again, you're not working, although you guys pumped up fun uses Privy. Absolutely. We're very proud of our work with, again, these very tasteful developers. What do you think is going to happen? [1:33:07] Are we just headed to a world where we all have UBI and people gamble their lives away and the government – [1:33:14] That's overly nihilistic, but... - First, who the fuck am I to espouse any of you in regards to this thing? So I'll just say I'm wildly outclassed. I can share my personal opinions as a... - I'm more curious if you're more optimistic or pessimistic in how you think about what... [1:33:29] My take is twofold, which is I think the permanent underclass meme – [1:33:35] is very powerful. [1:33:36] And, you know, for those who don't know, like the meme is basically if you move to a world in which intelligence is on tap and you have a slot machine for intelligence, then basically – [1:33:48] Being the richest and being the smartest are the same thing. [1:33:51] and there is no upward mobility anymore. Because how much capital you have by the time Singularity comes around [1:33:57] is the direct determinant of how successful you will be in the future.

[1:34:01] And that is, you know, the escape from the permanent underclasses. We have two years. By the way, a lot of the world, including probably a bunch of Europe, has believed this a lot longer than AI. For sure. I mean, this is like, you know, this Marxist theory. I don't know. But my point is, I worry a lot about, like, AI safety. But I also think humans are extremely resilient. And we're talking about something that is unknowable. That is the definition of, like, the singularity. But I... [1:34:24] I don't know. I'll take that out of the equation for a second because that's another topic. I think my main response is... [1:34:31] I actually really believe in market forces and creative destruction and like destruction and the fact that like. [1:34:38] There are always ways of building newer, better things. And I think broadly, the thing I'm most worried about is social upheaval as a response to these things. I think we are probably due a very big tech backlash. [1:34:53] Like, you know, [1:34:55] France was never so innovative than in the post-war years. [1:35:00] And it's very hard to think that it did not take World War II and the Shoah and all these things to actually got us to a place where we could do this. So I think I'm basically like. [1:35:10] Macro, very optimistic. [1:35:12] about the future. [1:35:14] micro, I think, the path to getting... [1:35:17] and to continuing is going to be a little rough. And like, I'm very worried about how polarized things are. [1:35:23] and how...

[1:35:28] how much stock people are putting in things that I think, [1:35:32] Just everything has become a litmus test for... [1:35:35] Like just, it's a definition of polarization, but like, I worry that the path to getting there is going to be a little bloody. Is there anything we can do about it? [1:35:42] The point is to say, like, I think being intellectually consistent and nuanced across both sides, because nothing is ever as bad or as good as it seems, is is the only thing I can way I can find to, like, deal with it. And so if you're. [1:35:53] utterly convinced about something and you can't be spoken out of it, I would treat that with extreme caution because it probably means you're wrong. [1:36:01] Thanks for bearing with me on the impossible questions. Sorry, I'll just come back. I'm trying to think about this for my kids. I have very young kids. And I think the main thing I'm trying to do is make sure they are agentic. [1:36:15] like make sure that they feel like they have the power to change things around them. And again, I've grown up with so much privilege, that's easy for me to think so. But the point is, [1:36:23] that [1:36:24] and remembering that the folks who are making the rules are no smarter than you are. [1:36:28] is I think such a powerful reminder that you should try and be an actor rather than a, uh, [1:36:34] victim of events. How do you teach that? I think through small things. I think it's like, you know, my son is like super into [1:36:44] the Eiffel Tower and we made a bet that I lost. And so we're going to go to the summit of the Eiffel Tower. It's like just showing that. [1:36:50] I honestly forgot what the exact vet was, but the point is showing him that I take him seriously as a kid and that basically I'm putting stuff on the line in the relationship. In this case, we get to go to the Eiffel Tower together. It's not a terrible loss. But I think the way to prove it is to have him question things and not to say...

[1:37:07] I haven't questioned things that I haven't be an agent. So like if he wants to ask someone something on the street, he's, [1:37:12] he has to go and ask someone something on the street. Um... [1:37:17] There is a low-hanging fruit joke about how you're teaching your kid to be a wild gambler. [1:37:21] True. [1:37:23] True, true, true. In fact, I bet him yesterday a watch that he would not come wake me up in the middle of the night. And after two failed bets, it has now worked. That's a bribe. So, yeah. Yeah. [1:37:35] You have to earn it. [1:37:37] I think in that sense the thing that maybe pisses me off most with tech is Galman Amnesia Galman Amnesia as you read a [1:37:47] a newspaper column, you think, oh, I know about this field and this is all bullshit. And then you read another column that you don't know about and you take it as gospel. Uh, uh, [1:37:55] And I think, like, tech tends to forget this. And I think, like... [1:37:58] the way in which extraordinary tech leaders then think they know everything about everything is a little odd. And so I think just kind of remaining... [1:38:07] nuanced and humble, but also knowing that [1:38:09] you can shape things is like the way at least I'm trying to, [1:38:12] behave. He wrote... [1:38:15] a [1:38:16] founder variation of the Proust questionnaire, back on Medium. [1:38:22] What? [1:38:23] makes [1:38:24] Asta... [1:38:26] wonderful and great in her own right and what makes her such a good compliment to you. [1:38:33] It's a great question. [1:38:35] Um, [1:38:36] Perfect.

[1:38:37] I think in our own right, [1:38:40] Like she is, you know, the meme I really like is like Paul Graham's like formidable founders. Like I think she's formidable. [1:38:47] And I think it comes in two different ways, which is she is – [1:38:51] extraordinarily [1:38:52] self-confident. [1:38:54] And, you know, [1:38:56] extraordinarily good at what she does. She is the [1:38:58] epitome of competence. She's just very good. And she's very self-confident. And so she doesn't waste time [1:39:05] But she's also very low ego. [1:39:07] And so accordingly, she doesn't waste time [1:39:11] Thinking about the meadow of it all. [1:39:13] or anything beyond what is the most effective path and who is the best person to do it. [1:39:18] And that makes her just such an amazing person to work with and leader at the company. [1:39:24] because [1:39:25] She has very strong opinions. [1:39:27] or she has very weak opinions, and she knows exactly which is which. And she's very clear in how she states both. And so I think Asta is probably the toughest, say, manager, [1:39:37] that I've ever seen operate. [1:39:39] but that's because she has maybe... [1:39:41] I don't know how good this is, but she has the slight tizz of being... [1:39:47] She's very no-holds-barred and straight with people, but in a way that really pushes them. So I think she's, in that sense, really, really formidable. And I think she's a very good fit to me because I, and hopefully me to her... [1:40:01] but because I think we're very different in the areas where we spike and we have been able to build implicit trust so that we know where to lean on the other. And so I think like basically basically,

[1:40:12] There's probably some sanctity to our relationship at this point that goes beyond any given question or outcome. [1:40:18] It's interesting because, again, I started working with Z as... [1:40:22] a really close friend from college. And we spend so much time [1:40:26] assuming that our personal relationship is [1:40:29] was all you needed to be business partners. [1:40:34] And I think with Asta, I didn't know her at all before starting Privy. And so we came in. [1:40:39] And for me, it was, am I finding the right business partner? And it is costless, is the answer is no, because then I don't have to see this person again that I have spent these last 20 whatever years not seeing. [1:40:50] And so we went in very intentionally. And there was for the first year a question that we kept asking each other, which is, when is the honeymoon over? Like, when will the shoe drop? And we'll find out all the ways in which we suck. And there's enough mutual respect and admiration, basically, that... [1:41:02] The honeymoon hasn't ended. I can say all the ways in which she's not good at what she does, and she can do the same for me. But like we... [1:41:09] have found a way to build that trust and buttress each other in really good ways. And there just isn't that much ego when we work together. [1:41:15] It is about the work. [1:41:17] And, you know, [1:41:18] I think any relationship where when you work with someone, it is about you or it is about them. [1:41:23] is a telltale sign. [1:41:26] That. [1:41:27] the fit isn't there. Yeah. When you say different spikes, is that domain expertise? Is that [1:41:33] way of working with people? Is that? I think it's domain expertise. I think it's things we value and respecting it. Like for example, I'm a pretty atrocious manager. She's a very good manager, in my opinion. And we know that about each other. I think I'm...

[1:41:48] a very intuitive decision maker and she's a very rational decision maker. And we know this about each other. And so I think it's in the ways that we operate. And then obviously spikes like I understand parts of the crypto market exceedingly well, but I can't hold a candle to how she operates technically in the way she's been able to like scale the system in a huge way, like the way the way previous scaled. [1:42:11] and our relative basis kept four nines uptime throughout our existence, basically through periods like Frontech, where we had week on week, like 40x the traffic for multiple weeks on end, is so impressive. So it's stuff like that. [1:42:24] Thank you. [1:42:25] You have this three-headed dragon of very impressive people at Stripe. [1:42:29] Patrick and John and then Wilk Gabruck, who's maybe a little less known. [1:42:33] What have you learned from those guys? [1:42:36] Thank you. [1:42:38] So I'm really impressed, and I genuinely really enjoy working with them. The three of them, honestly, the... [1:42:46] A lot of them is operating as a, as a tramvert. Yeah. And the way in which they operate together is pretty wild and impressive to see like the first multiplication that you have is like really great. Um, and I think I've probably learned a few things, um, [1:42:58] Um... [1:42:59] One... [1:43:00] is [1:43:03] Everything at Privy feels really personal to me. [1:43:06] in a way where I, you know, any person leaving any anything happening, that's bad. [1:43:13] feels like such an indictment on my work. [1:43:16] in a way that they've been at it for years. [1:43:18] decades. Right. And so there is a sense of steadiness from them.

[1:43:24] Thank you. [1:43:24] And so they've been able to basically fuel ambition and get more and more ambitious over time. [1:43:31] but also be steady in their vision and their execution and be resourceful in that way. [1:43:36] And so that's one thing that I think I'm learning in real time by just observing them. And it's something that is happening. I'm very grateful because I get to basically scale privy, even though we're part of Stripe in that way. [1:43:48] is I think... [1:43:49] balancing, um, [1:43:51] Um, [1:43:52] you know, short-term kinetics with like long-term, [1:43:56] structure and building it right from the start. [1:44:00] I actually think Privy is quite good at that generally, but that's another area where like there's a lot to be shared. And then maybe I think – [1:44:08] maybe the third and fourth. [1:44:10] Third is... [1:44:12] giving room for wins [1:44:15] Limbs? [1:44:17] Again, I look at Stripe Press, I look at climate, I look at these things that need not exist. [1:44:22] And yet I think both Stripe and the world are better off for them existing. [1:44:27] And I think you kind of have to, my sense was always you kind of have to earn that, like easy to do once you've got a very successful business that is like pumping out cash. It's Google hiding. Exactly, exactly. But I think like finding stage appropriate ways. [1:44:41] of having that exist. [1:44:42] is like really, really important. And then maybe the third thing, and this is the thing I have most to learn on, is like leverage. [1:44:50] Like they're running a massive org. And yet when I talk to Will, I feel...

[1:44:54] Like he is so deep in the weeds. [1:44:56] and basically the breadth and depth of it. [1:44:59] means he has learned to scale himself. [1:45:01] Endlessly. [1:45:03] whereby he is able to be very high context and precise, but he also knows when to delegate and how. And so I think there's like... [1:45:11] something to [1:45:13] leverage and cultivation of talent, [1:45:16] that they are doing. [1:45:17] that I really want to learn from. [1:45:20] What did you learn from Chloe? [1:45:22] Oh, many things. [1:45:27] Thank you. [1:45:28] I think Chloe's interesting because she's endlessly... [1:45:32] pragmatic and she's both very intellectual [1:45:35] and drawn to like, you know, all the things that we've talked about, but she has very low patience for [1:45:42] conversations that spin and don't lead to outcomes. And so I think basically some versions of like, [1:45:48] proper impatience with like, [1:45:50] All right, like should I get out of the pot? Like where are we driving here and what is the thing that we want to get to? One. [1:45:55] And then I think she is also just much more like, uh, [1:46:01] civically minded and like thoughtful about like bigger, uh, [1:46:04] like societal ramifications. Like she reads economics books for funds. And in that sense, she is much more Collison like than I am. But I think thinking about like, you know, what are repercussions or what we're building and broadly the interplay between like private and public is, is something that, that she's taught me a lot of me on the like, you know, infinity, many things that we've learned in like, you know, 20 years of shared life. Hmm.

[1:46:25] Um... [1:46:27] Just a few final things. You... [1:46:29] worked on the declassification engine in Columbia. Yes, this is true. Can you tell us a little bit about what was interesting about that? [1:46:36] It was very interesting. I worked on two things that were AI-related and that are now so quaint, which is so interesting. But one was a system for training machine learning models. At this time, it was really interesting. [1:46:50] Markov chains, so this dates, I guess, where we were at in like the NLP terms. But it was training it on Yelp data to try and work with the U.S. Department of like, [1:47:00] New York Department of Health and Safety, something like that, basically food health. The point was to look at Yelp reviews to try and figure out [1:47:09] what restaurant kitchens should get inspected, 'cause they're making people sick. - Wow. - And like, you know, the interesting problems are like, you know, sick can mean like very different things, depending on intonation and sentence, and so we have to train the models in interesting ways. [1:47:21] 20 minutes of vibe-coded agent tick work today, which was like a research project, so like the space moves. The declassification project was a similar thing, which was... [1:47:33] Can you actually take redacted government papers and try to declassify them [1:47:38] based on [1:47:40] Um, um, [1:47:42] basically like interpolation from other papers that have been declassified. Can you basically, uh, [1:47:47] correlated data across... [1:47:50] different FOIA requests to try and understand what's going on behind the scenes and take, you know,

[1:47:56] best guess, this is how I remember it in any event, as to what's happening under the hood. And so it was both a data structuring problem. There's just the classified data is a mess. And so how do you actually look through the full archives to reconcile things that maybe have already been classified here but not there? And it's an inference problem of like [1:48:14] you know, [1:48:15] Uh, [1:48:16] Cuba's Fidel. [1:48:18] there's probably one word that's going to come after that one. And it's like pretty easy to tell what it is. But so how do you actually like infer the likely piece behind it? It begs an interesting question, which is things are overly classified in many ways. And so how do you get to a better standard? And again, [1:48:33] Like I actually think [1:48:35] This is back to how do systems evolve? You could spend some time coming up with a better classification system or... [1:48:42] you basically introduce a new process of declassification. And like, this is where obviously bureaucracies kind of go wrong, both in private and public sector, which is you create a solution to fix a problem when you should have just fixed the problem. In a sense, the solution, the, uh, [1:48:54] Thank you. [1:48:56] In what way are you most French? [1:49:01] I don't know. I, uh, [1:49:05] I think probably... [1:49:08] some amount of innate skepticism around like, you know, vision and things like that. There's a very like Jesuistic mindset to, to not getting like overly sold on these things. I think probably probably, [1:49:20] Whilst I'm extremely capitalistic at heart and believe in the – [1:49:25] of like, you know, call it private enterprise in moving the world forward. I know what great government services looks like.

[1:49:32] uh, and the extent to which I've missed them in, uh, many a place in the U S. Um, and then probably like, there's a lot of stuff around food, like bread sucks here. Uh, the, [1:49:44] there's, [1:49:45] The sanctity of having a great meal probably is some version of it as well. But yeah, stuff like that. [1:49:52] What's the best French film? [1:49:54] Oof. [1:49:57] Or at least your favorite. [1:49:59] Such a hard question. [1:50:02] Impossible question. I'll give three that are very different parts of the spectrum. Even better. [1:50:07] Three that are different parts of the spectrum. The very wonky cult classic, equivalent of a scary movie, but with a French humor, is called The City of Fear. The City of Fear, which is like an old... I don't think it would be funny... [1:50:21] to anybody not French, and I don't know if it would be funny [1:50:24] To anybody Gen Z. Got it. But that is an open question, and that is like a very quintessentially French movie. There's an old movie called The Rule of the Game. [1:50:35] Rules of the game? [1:50:36] Thank you. [1:50:37] Yeah. Sounds right. That is a great, like, French classic. And then probably the third would be, like, more recent. There's a movie called, like, Heartbreaker with Comment Dieu et Saint-Venécein Paradis, which is a very good, like, French rom-com about... [1:50:52] Um, [1:50:53] Yes. [1:50:55] a guy who gets hired... [1:50:57] anyways to woo a woman it's like the exact right type of like french rom-com that kind of works and i'm

[1:51:02] assuming it has either already been adapted or will be adapted in India. Great. [1:51:08] Thank you. [1:51:09] Can you tell us about your watch? [1:51:11] Yeah, so I'm the descendant of a very famous... No, I am... [1:51:16] This is a watch I find really cool. Sean McGuire is the last Sequoia name drop of the session, but is the investor that we work very closely with, Josephine Chen at Sequoia, a really good friend. [1:51:32] had this watch that was like awesome and quirky and I lose shit all the time. And so, um, [1:51:37] This is the watch that I've actually not lost in a long time, but that is, you know. [1:51:43] I'm just... [1:51:44] Something I like. [1:51:46] My last question, what... [1:51:49] You are very principled despite all the pragmatism. What do you hope to never compromise on? [1:51:57] Thank you. [1:51:59] I think any place... [1:52:02] where I'm not saying what I think. [1:52:05] Thank you. [1:52:06] Hurts me a little bit. And so that isn't to say like I say relatively few things. I'm quite private and I think like I [1:52:13] Being silent is, I think, a very good default mode of operation. Like, you know, how do we save the world? People shut up a little bit more. That might be a really good place to start. And this is why part of this exercise, obviously, is ironic because, you know, I'm just spewing my thoughts on things. [1:52:30] I'm okay with not saying things. [1:52:32] I think being asked to say something I don't believe.

[1:52:35] is very, very hard for me. [1:52:36] And so I think you probably see me get physically uncomfortable in those places. I think it is like espousing a worldview for convenience that isn't my own. [1:52:46] Feels very hard, and I hope not to change in that regard. [1:52:49] Well, thank you for thinking out loud with me. Yeah. Nonetheless, that's all I got. [1:52:54] Thanks again. Thank you. [1:52:56] Thank you again for listening to Dialectic with Henry Stern. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend or give it five stars, a thumbs up, like wherever you're watching or listening and subscribe or follow so you can get new episodes. I'd also like to thank Notion one more time for presenting Dialectic and making the show possible. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, the way Notion is working with AI, both transform the company from the inside out to be an AI native company. [1:53:26] with all our documents and databases and everything else, and use AI and agents that are natively integrated is deeply powerful. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, if you haven't checked out Notion's developer platform and what's possible with workers, it's still tremendously early. But when I was recently in Washington, D.C. with Notion's own and Dialectics, former guest Jeffrey Litt, and he was telling me about the things that he's doing with workers, he's got a rig where he basically just tells his agent [1:53:56] goals are on nutrition. It builds a meal plan. It contacts Instacart and orders all those groceries. It's totally crazy. Things you maybe have seen people do with tools like OpenClaw is now possible thanks to Notion workers. And again, it's integrated with the place where all of your work, all your documents, and all your data actually already live. I think people have just scratched the surface and I'm excited to play around with it more, both in terms of my day-to-day life and

[1:54:26] custom agents and workers have made it truly on the level with the most frontier AI tools that exist. The team is also growing fast. So if you're interested in working with them, you can reach out to me at work at jacksondall.com and I can hopefully route you to the right person if it's a fit. As always, you can learn more at nosha.com slash dialectic. And thank you for listening. I will see you next time.