Cyan Banister

Tizz Venture Artist @longjourneyvc, joy amplifier. subscription fees go to Inflection Grants:

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

https://t.co/W7EVDmHlvj

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

@svarncapital Yup

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

BriBri is my name for Brian. He's one of my best friends, greatest mentors and someone who believed in me every step of the way. In many ways - he was my second believer.

[Molly O’Shea @MollySOShea]

NEW: Brian Singerman, fmr Founders Fund, now GPx, on why he only invests in *people*

SpaceX is the reason he joined Founders Fund in 2008

"If SpaceX didn't work, Founders Fund would not exist."

From Elon & SpaceX to Karp & Palantir, to Anduril, Airbnb, Stripe, & Stemcentrx, @briansin's whole framework is one question:

Is this the best founder in the world at their particular thing?

We get into:
- What makes Founders Fund unique: a team of strong-willed, genuinely authentic individuals
- Why a 3x fund loses to the S&P
- How a lifetime of strategy gaming shapes how he reads founders & now GPs
- Why he bets against the end of the world every time
- Why he's bullish on N-of-1 human cultural artifacts in an AI world
- Why Cyan Banister & Palmer Luckey are genuinely N-of-1 people

Thank you to @mlevchin, @traestephens & @ScottNolan for great questions

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Brian Singerman, Co-Founder of GPx, Former Partner at Founders Fund
(00:42) Founders Fund
(02:09) Max Levchin's unfiltered questions
(05:25) How gaming shaped his investing
(06:11) Joining Founders Fund in 2008
(07:34) Silicon Valley's most fascinating characters
(09:29) Lessons from Peter Thiel
(11:26) Building a culture of conviction
(11:59) The art of spotting A+ founders
(13:55) Trae's biggest lesson from Peter Thiel
(14:41) Is socialism a threat to America?
(15:58) Why capital is leaving California
(17:03) The obsession with Hawaii
(20:59) The Founders Fund playbook
(24:51) "If SpaceX didn't work, Founders Fund would not exist"
(26:03) Why Elon is one of one
(27:30) Why everyone knew Starlink would win
(28:42) Inside Founders Fund's biggest bets
(31:06) The Founders Fund founder archetype
(33:25) Backing fund managers instead of startups
(35:22) The new generation of GPs
(36:34) The most authentic people in tech
(41:38) Why other VCs aren't the audience
(44:05) Music, Memorabilia & N-of-1 Artifacts
(46:25) The story behind Brian's music studio
(49:22) What's next for Brian?

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Sergey Dashevsky won the Guinness World Record for the smallest functional bicycle in the world with a creation that measured just 8.4 cm (3.31 inches).

Here's one of his performances.

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

Could people that claim to see UFOs learn how to steady their cameras?

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

Congrats!!!!!

[Anna Gát 🧭 @TheAnnaGat]

This girl is now a permanent resident 🇺🇸

I promise to live as the most annoyingly patriotic person imaginable ❤️

[Blonde of War (JJ) @BlondeOfWar]

Swimmies for Weenies 🥰🥰🥰

Weenies playing fetch in the pool is the timeline cleanse I needed today. It looks like they are having the best time.
The very end is worth staying for. 😍

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

@zmwang I collect those and love them so much!!

[Brian Singerman @briansin]

My video from the Hawthorne office of the final Falcon 1 launch (first ever success with deployment). This is one of those startup moments you never forget, and why you get into tech in the first place. 7/13/09.

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

@operationdanish He's a very special and amazing human being

[Joshua Kushner @JoshuaKushner]

in markets, to go long on something is to bet it grows more valuable over time. much of the conversation today is short on humans, wagering that ai makes people redundant. we believe the opposite is true for the industries @ThriveHoldings operates in.

we are long humans.

https://t.co/oqygDJKZGO

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

What 10 books, if they were lost somehow, would be a huge blow to humanity?

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

This is what they have to wear

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

Before I forget this, I am going to share it...

I was once in an Ebola treatment simulation with Jeff Bezos. It was an art project to show people how difficult this disease is to treat under mild temperatures, to imagine what it's like to be a nurse in a tent in worse conditions.

I went in before him and they mark your suit with your entry time and you try to last 15 mins. I lasted, even with an ice vest on, 8 minutes and during that 8 minutes, he entered the tent and we tried to somehow write notes on pads and administer IVs to dummies together.

When you came out, you had to disrobe in the proper order and if you didn't, they let you know each step you fucked up that exposed you. It was brutal.

Pretty sure he was able to hang in there the full 15.

My thoughts are with the responders dealing with the outbreak. They are real angels.

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

@CorwinPrescott @annalee_belle ♥️🩷💜

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

@Sniickersnee @annalee_belle ♥️♥️🩷

[Christian Garrett @CGarrett_15]

https://t.co/qROIQfGfm7

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

@Slim_to_No_Odds Best response ever

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

Someone asked me if I was excited about tomorrow and I said "what's happening tomorrow?".

That's pretty much the answer.

[🐢 The Old Turtle Den 🍕 @TheOldTurtleDen]

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizzeria has opened in Santa Monica California!

[Mind Matter @MindMatterr]

GET OUT OF THE HOUSE

1. Walk somewhere you've never been in your own city. No destination. Just go.

2. Eat alone at a restaurant. No phone. Just you, the food and your thoughts.

3. Talk to a complete stranger today. Not small talk — a real conversation.

4. Go to a local event where you know absolutely nobody. Stay the whole time.

5. Wake up before sunrise and watch it happen. Just once. It'll change something in you.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.

He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?

Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself...

Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees." He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely.

This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot. Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.

The hobbits meet Bombadil early on in their quest, before they reach Bree and the Prancing Pony Inn. He rescues Merry and Pippin from Old Man Willow, and invites the hobbits to stay at his house in the Old Forest.

There, the hobbits realize something strange about him: the Ring has no power over Bombadil whatsoever.

When he wears it, he remains visible. He treats it as a plaything, making it disappear with a magic trick. Indeed, at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf rejects the idea of giving the Ring to Tom, for he would likely misplace it or forget about it entirely.

So just who is he, exactly?

When Frodo asks this very question to Tom's wife Goldberry, she simply responds "He is." It's a cryptic answer that echoes God's famous answer to Moses in the Book of Exodus: "I am who I am."

Thus, many theorize that Bombadil is God, some kind of angelic being, or even the spirit of the Music of the Ainur (due to the fact that he is constantly singing). But Tolkien's letters reveal something considerably more interesting…

In April 1954, Tolkien wrote:

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship… but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control.But if you have, as it were, taken a 'vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself… then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless…"

So, Bombadil is a representation of what it means to take pure delight in the world around you — to experience people and things simply as they are, without any thought for what they could be or how you could use them. And this is why the Ring has no power over him.

To Bombadil, the One Ring is simply a ring, and the possibilities of what can be achieved through its power are of no importance. He is able to resist its evil precisely because he is entirely content with the world around him.

At the end of the story, having accomplished what he set out to do in Middle-earth, Gandalf pays Tom a visit before returning to the Undying Lands:

"I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time."

If Bombadil is the epitome of simply enjoying life and being, Gandalf is the epitome of doing. He guides the hobbits, fights the Balrog, and runs up and down Middle-earth to help destroy the One Ring.

But now that he's finally liberated from doing, he immediately heads to Bombadil's. He does so with a sense of relief, as if he's at last able to access a purer and higher mode of being — a sort of innocence that cannot be fully experienced by those consumed by doing.

Of course, by this Tolkien doesn't disparage the value of action. The entirety of LOTR displays the importance of rising up against evil, even in the face of all odds. But with the inclusion of Bombadil, he does remind readers that fighting isn't all there is.

Bombadil reminds us that while it's important to strive and *do*, it is just as important to occasionally step back and *be*. Indeed, your ability to do so plays a crucial role in helping you resist the allure of evil…

Read the full piece here:

https://t.co/aqK2daehIL

The unsung hero of The Lord of the Rings...