American Agency Assembly

Member of Billionaire Staff. Private club for people shaping the future of culture.

[Suffiyan Malik @suffiyanmalikk]

My first conversation with Dan Wright (@danwrightSF), Cofounder and CEO of @armada_ai, a decentralized cloud for the edge. They are valued at $2B according to their last round and are funded by some of the friends of the show at @foundersfund , @Lux_Capital , 8090 Industries, @overmatchvc and strategic capital from firms like M12 (Microsoft's venture fund), Pinegrove and a few others.

This is a special edition of our show from @RonaldReagan National Economic Forum.

@danrothschild @invariant @zebulgar @Farshchi

[Suffiyan Malik @suffiyanmalikk]

Elon Musk's (@elonmusk) Most Useful Ideas, The Alpha in Long Form Writing and Investing with Eric Jorgenson (@EricJorgenson). E33 of @WeThe_Builders now available wherever you get your podcasts.

Eric started a nights and weekends projects compiling the most useful ideas @naval had publicly shared, this has sold five million copies so far, the book is called Almanack of Naval. He has since doubled down on this niche of curating the best ideas from the best thinkers and entrepreneurs in the technology industry. He went on to write the Anthology of @balajis and most recently, The Book of Elon. I talked to him about the process of writing with a high density of useful ideas and compiling, curating and shaping the final form of the book.

He took five years to write the Book of Elon, I asked him about some of the concepts Elon has shared in his own words that he has highlighted in his book and his biggest takeaways having studied Elon for half a decade.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction
00:37 - The success of “The Almanack of Naval”
02:22 - Writing the “The Book of Elon”
04:32 - Inspiring a million future builders
07:56 - Finding useful ideas and cutting out the noise
11:17 - Clawing up the power law of book sales
15:44 - When Mike Moritz passed on Tesla
19:14 - Chasing problems from clean sheets to janky car demos
23:47 - The high internal metabolism of Elon companies
27:53 - How the Twitter (@X) acquisition changed the startup world
32:06 - Treating tech companies as a form of philanthropy
36:37 - Completing a tour of duty at warp speed
40:57 - Mission first empathy and the hardcore Tesla culture
44:57 - Leading from the front lines like military generals
48:37 - Self-education and learning anything you want
52:58 - Re-reading sci-fi to break technological stagnation
56:46 - What happens to money in a post-scarcity economy
1:01:09 - Aligning raw talent with genuine interest
1:04:49 - The high effort way to sample and shadow careers
1:08:52 - Forcing breakthroughs through tight constraints
1:12:31 - Guerrilla battles inside the early @PayPal Mafia
1:18:09 - Mapping the maze with long root building
1:23:00 - Closing

[Suffiyan Malik @suffiyanmalikk]

E25 of We The Builders with Seth Winterroth (@Sethwinterroth) who is a Partner at Eclipse (@EclipseVentures) where he has been investing in the physical world for over a decade. The firm now has fresh $1.3B in funds taking their AUM (Assets Under Management) to ~$10B to build and invest in critical technologies in the physical world.

His portfolio alone is collectively worth over $13B at least (based on publicly available data) and includes: @wayve_ai, @The_TrueAnomaly, @MytraUS, ForSight Robotics, @ursamajortech and more.

In this conversation we cover:

--> The talent density in frontier tech is growing, fueled by leaders and decision-makers trained at organizations like SpaceX, Tesla, and Rivian, alongside software builders “bored” of the “long tail of SaaS”.

--> Eclipse’s investment framework prioritizes “market, market, market,” alongside a strong team and a differentiated technology-driven product.

--> The firm focuses on taking engineering execution risk—following the Jeff Bezos adage that “hard is our moat”—while actively avoiding science risk or net new invention risk.

--> Seth is excited about distributing large foundation models into physical world applications for multi-variable problems, but notes that hard engineering execution challenges must be solved to proliferate this capability.

--> He defines Eclipse’s opportunity set as every problem that exists in the physical world, viewing the 80% of global GDP in that domain as an unbelievably large opportunity.

--> A key insight for early-stage teams is the willingness to ship, knowing they will get “punched in the face” during the pilot phase. The most important factor for success is how teams incorporate those messy learnings into Gen 2 and attack the next phase with vigor.

--> Seth’s most contrarian view is that “physical AI” is currently “a lot of hype,” and that humanoids and general-purpose models for robotics are “ninth-inning robotics,” suggesting the category will unfold through an iterative grind, not a sudden “ChatGPT moment”.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction
02:14 - Breaking down techno-optimist Tech Twitter
04:45 - Rediscovering Silicon in Silicon Valley
08:45 - The SpaceX and Tesla Training Grounds
12:45 - Hard is the Moat: Engineering Execution vs. Science Risk
16:45 - Institutionalizing a Thesis-Driven Culture
20:45 - Partnering with Highly Prepared Minds
24:45 - The Wave Series A Case Study
28:45 - The Willingness to Ship: Managing the "Gen 1" Failure
32:45 - Managing Design Partners and Expectations
36:45 - The Hard Reality of Defense Tech Go-To-Market
40:45 - The First Chapter of Company Formation
44:45 - The Mytra Thesis
48:45 - The Build-Co Strategy at Eclipse
52:45 - First Principles Thinking and Avoiding the Small Idea Trap
56:45 - Why General Purpose Robotics is a Ninth-Inning Game
1:00:45 - Breaking the Industrial Food Complex: A Decade-Long Opportunity
1:04:45 - Finding Value After the Hype
1:08:45 - The Rigor of Capital Allocation and Returns
1:12:45 - Reindustrialization: Market Dynamics and National Security
1:16:45 - Sustaining Long-Term Value and Discipline
1:20:45 - History, Podcasting, and the Next Generation of SaaS

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@Markmanson How much time have you been spending with @brian_armstrong ?

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@ManOfFocus_ Why

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@Munalozy Yes

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@stijnnoorman Tell me more. I’m at 1

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@pmddomingos lol

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@TTrimoreau Instagram and TikTok

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@KaiXCreator The team DNA.

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@jawwwn_ Did Adam work at Palantir?

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@garrytan Italian, Indian or Thai?

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@droidbuilds English

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@jaltma 🚀

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@joni_vrbt You’re a genius

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@girdley Use Replit and vibe code it

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@TTrimoreau Depends on the product

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@NTmoney It’s the best thing ever

[American Agency Assembly @AgencyAssembly]

@elonmusk Gorgeous