Jackson Dahl

@dialecticpod 🟦🎙️

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Dialectic Ep. 48: Henri Stern

Modern technologists--especially in crypto--are often deeply principled or impressively pragmatic.

@sternhenri is both.

I talked to Henri about digital privacy, the moral weight of building technology, the painful reality of realizing the market doesn't want what you're selling, and crypto's 'boring' era.

Henri is co-founder and CEO of @privy_io, which @stripe acquired last year. Privy focuses on enabling developers to let their users hold crypto, and Henri works across a number of Stripe's efforts to bring more of the financial world onchain (in large part thanks to stablecoins).

Timestamps:
0:00 - Opening Highlights
1:40 - Intro to Henri
4:51 - Start: Technical Decisions are Moral Decisions
15:41 - Ambition, Startups, and Crypto
23:39 - Why Digital Privacy Matters: Self-Determination, Security, and Identity
41:52 - Embedded Wallets, the Pivot, and Privy's Core Bet
55:18 - Reinventing Around Stablecoins Without Abandoning Crypto-Natives
1:06:42 - Joining Stripe, Privy Today, and What Stripe Is Becoming
1:22:54 - Crypto's Future, Power Laws, Optimism and Pessimism
1:38:14 - Closing: Asta, Stripe's Leaders, Being French, and Never Compromising

Available on all platforms below.

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@gerstenzang Congrats Sam!!!

[Citrini @citrini]

I give it a year until we see a new breed of AI native private equity firms that acquire companies just so they can move their workflows from Claude to open source Chinese models and flip them.

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@segall_max 🫡🫡

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@joshm @sternhenri Truly

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Dialectic Ep. 48: Henri Stern

Modern technologists--especially in crypto--are often deeply principled or impressively pragmatic.

@sternhenri is both.

I talked to Henri about digital privacy, the moral weight of building technology, the painful reality of realizing the market doesn't want what you're selling, and crypto's 'boring' era.

Henri is co-founder and CEO of @privy_io, which @stripe acquired last year. Privy focuses on enabling developers to let their users hold crypto, and Henri works across a number of Stripe's efforts to bring more of the financial world onchain (in large part thanks to stablecoins).

Timestamps:
0:00 - Opening Highlights
1:40 - Intro to Henri
4:51 - Start: Technical Decisions are Moral Decisions
15:41 - Ambition, Startups, and Crypto
23:39 - Why Digital Privacy Matters: Self-Determination, Security, and Identity
41:52 - Embedded Wallets, the Pivot, and Privy's Core Bet
55:18 - Reinventing Around Stablecoins Without Abandoning Crypto-Natives
1:06:42 - Joining Stripe, Privy Today, and What Stripe Is Becoming
1:22:54 - Crypto's Future, Power Laws, Optimism and Pessimism
1:38:14 - Closing: Asta, Stripe's Leaders, Being French, and Never Compromising

Available on all platforms below.

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@sternhenri Thank you for philosophizing with me on the mic, my friend. I am always grateful for your wisdom and curiosity. And I am deeply inspired by you!

[Henri Stern Ꙫ @sternhenri]

Some musings on crypto and morality on the web.

I first met Jackson 4-5 years ago when Privy was embryonic and he was diving into crypto after 100 thieves.

We've had a huge number of conversations since across so many topics -- loved recording one of them!

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Transcript & links: https://t.co/mKTCyNoJCY

Spotify: https://t.co/4OFXEMLf4c

Apple: https://t.co/qRDmbHvI1Y

YouTube: https://t.co/96vzW5zjPW

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Markie has always been wise beyond her years, which is not something I always find myself saying about the most ambitious Silicon Valley founders.

She has unlimited drive too, of course. But she doesn’t let grit and grind get in the way of what counts. She is so joyful and soulful.

I am excited for the world to see and hear more from her and the team at @PoeticHQ as they build resilient software and systems for some of the world’s largest institutions.

Hard to think of a more compelling place to go work for scrappy people who love solving problems.

[Markie Wagner @markiewagner]

Introducing @PoeticHQ: a new AI system that executes complex multi-hour tasks with 99%+ accuracy and 10x fewer tokens than agents.

We raised $50M at $500M from Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, First Harmonic, and Genius Ventures to build AI that does complex work inside Fortune 500 companies without hallucination.

While code is too brittle, agents are too unpredictable. The work that runs the global economy - anti-money laundering, fraud investigations, underwriting - needs extreme accuracy.

So we built a new kind of software that pairs the flexibility of AI with the predictability of code.

When the world stays the same, Poetic runs fixed code: fast, cheap, identical every time. When the world changes, Poetic uses AI to regenerate its approach and find its way back to the objective.

In one year, we went from zero to an eight-figure run rate as a team of four.

Since then, we’ve scaled the team and executed the highest-stakes processes at AIG, SoFi, and Chime. At SoFi, a large US bank, Poetic reached 99%+ quality on fraud investigations in five weeks.

[jpa @josephpalbanese]

1. i joined @tryramp last november to work on ai

2. we’re building Penny — an agent for the finance work that lives across spreadsheets, inboxes, and late-night tabs

we’re looking for a few design partners to shape what it becomes. sign up to build together. (link in reply)

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@WillManidis Hahahaha

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@jxnlco So fun and lively

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

NBA but League of Legends rules

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Last night, our friend was shocked to learn that the game was the first of (potentially) 7 in the NBA finals. She thought we were screwing with her. "Seven games???"

We later learned she thought this meant they'd play all the games continuously into the wee hours of the morning.

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

So many fun possibilities for this

[OBJ @owenbjennings]

introducing a brand new form factor from @CashApp:

< Cash App Tags >

just tap your wand at checkout and go.

no phone. no card.

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@micsolana So excited for this. The greatest game there is. Man, so fun!

[Adam Iscoe @iscoe]

i have a substack now - this is the first post

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

@henhen @blakeir OMG

[Jackson Dahl @jacksondahl]

Surprisingly great dinner party idea: have everyone bring and discuss a chart*

*charts may be actual charts, or drawings on paper, or props, or made up arbitrary correlation charts** created with AI

**Unrelated: the Knicks are on quite a roll since @DialecticPod was started...

[David Rosenberg @david_rosenberg]

so this happened last night. turns out people want to Think Together™ in a backroom in chinatown.

dm me for the next one. utmost discretion guaranteed (except for @jacksondahl).