4 ms·

Tim Ferriss's second episode with Balaji was great. It was around 4-5 hours, and Tim just steps aside letting Balaji brain dump on all sorts of interesting topi

Tim Ferriss's second episode with Balaji was great. It was around 4-5 hours, and Tim just steps aside letting Balaji brain dump on all sorts of interesting topics and ideas. https://tim.blog/2021/11/15/balaji-srinivasan-2/ https://tim.blog/2021/11/15/balaji-srinivasan-2/

tailspin2019 5y ago
Just started listening to this on your recommendation. (Thanks!) I wasn’t familiar with Balaji before now but he’s clearly a smart guy and a deep thinker. I find myself disagreeing with quite a lot of what he’s saying (to the extent that I’m educated enough on some of the topics to even have an opinion), but will keep listening as it’s interesting to hear a viewpoint that’s perhaps slightly outside of my normal bubble.
- andreilys 5y ago
  That's probably my favorite part about Balaji, is his thinking is so multi-faceted and original that you're naturally going to come across things you agree with him and disagree.
f0e4c2f7 5y ago
Hopefully posting this doesn't get it taken down... I really enjoyed that interview on Tim's podcast and I've been working my way through some of Balaji's other interviews and videos online. I'm currently watching this one someone posted of his coursera course from 2012 all pasted together into one video over 7 hours long. I have come to like this format more and more on youtube becuase you just resume and don't have to worry about finding the next video etc. Anyway, watching this in the context of it being from 2012 is pretty mindblowing and the advice has seemed like it would have been quite good back then (some of it still now too I'm sure.) The name of the course was Startup Engineering. I don't believe it's available on Coursera or anywhere else anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QC1FK2_pqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QC1FK2_pqg
guidovranken 5y ago
I used to follow Balaji on Twitter, he frequently had original and eloquent perspectives on things, but his incessant web3 evangelism turned me off.
- m_ke 5y ago
  He's the Jordan Peterson of tech, profound sounding with zero substance.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    The crazy thing to me is that he gave an interview? once in how genomics is not "big data" in the same way that anything else is big data in tech and that interview seems to have been memory holed, even though imo it's the most profound analysis I think he has ever given (I used to work in genomics and now I work in ml), and there is a real sub community of the tech sector that needs to understand what he said but doesn't.
    - heymijo 5y ago
      Memory holed is a good term for balaji. I don't recall the specifics but a few years back I put him in a bucket of people not worth listening to. It was when he was sort of an a16z partner, but also had a bitcoin startup (hardware to mine cryptocurrency) funded by them, then he made a bid to be a part of the Trump administration and scrubbed his entire Twitter timeline. This was probably 6 years ago now. He seemed disingenuous then. Don't know about him now.
porknubbins 5y ago
This was an incredibly broad ranging episode though I think Balaji throws out a lot of ideas with an unwarranted level of certainty. The parallel of historical centralization-decentralization-recentralization cycles (ie the Protestant reformation-Catholic counterreformation) to the internet was pretty interesting.

tailspin2019 5y ago

Just started listening to this on your recommendation. (Thanks!) I wasn’t familiar with Balaji before now but he’s clearly a smart guy and a deep thinker. I find myself disagreeing with quite a lot of what he’s saying (to the extent that I’m educated enough on some of the topics to even have an opinion), but will keep listening as it’s interesting to hear a viewpoint that’s perhaps slightly outside of my normal bubble.

andreilys 5y ago
That's probably my favorite part about Balaji, is his thinking is so multi-faceted and original that you're naturally going to come across things you agree with him and disagree.

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

Hopefully posting this doesn't get it taken down... I really enjoyed that interview on Tim's podcast and I've been working my way through some of Balaji's other interviews and videos online. I'm currently watching this one someone posted of his coursera course from 2012 all pasted together into one video over 7 hours long. I have come to like this format more and more on youtube becuase you just resume and don't have to worry about finding the next video etc. Anyway, watching this in the context of it being from 2012 is pretty mindblowing and the advice has seemed like it would have been quite good back then (some of it still now too I'm sure.) The name of the course was Startup Engineering. I don't believe it's available on Coursera or anywhere else anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QC1FK2_pqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QC1FK2_pqg

guidovranken 5y ago

I used to follow Balaji on Twitter, he frequently had original and eloquent perspectives on things, but his incessant web3 evangelism turned me off.

m_ke 5y ago
He's the Jordan Peterson of tech, profound sounding with zero substance.
- dnautics 5y ago
  The crazy thing to me is that he gave an interview? once in how genomics is not "big data" in the same way that anything else is big data in tech and that interview seems to have been memory holed, even though imo it's the most profound analysis I think he has ever given (I used to work in genomics and now I work in ml), and there is a real sub community of the tech sector that needs to understand what he said but doesn't.
  - heymijo 5y ago
    Memory holed is a good term for balaji. I don't recall the specifics but a few years back I put him in a bucket of people not worth listening to. It was when he was sort of an a16z partner, but also had a bitcoin startup (hardware to mine cryptocurrency) funded by them, then he made a bid to be a part of the Trump administration and scrubbed his entire Twitter timeline. This was probably 6 years ago now. He seemed disingenuous then. Don't know about him now.

porknubbins 5y ago

This was an incredibly broad ranging episode though I think Balaji throws out a lot of ideas with an unwarranted level of certainty. The parallel of historical centralization-decentralization-recentralization cycles (ie the Protestant reformation-Catholic counterreformation) to the internet was pretty interesting.