#115 - BRIAN ARMSTRONG

Pod of Jake

Podcast Notes Takeaways Brian Armstrong felt like a failure when he was 28: all of his friends were making good money and had careers, and he was a failed entrepreneur All of his “failures” contributed to his eventual successes when looking back with hindsight, but at the moment they only feel like failures A heuristic for entrepreneurs unsure what to do: work on something that is the most interesting and most awesome thing to youTechnology is one of the greatest levers to improve the world, which includes money as a technologyBitcoin is a technology that can inject economic freedom into countries all over the world “Everything in business comes back to hiring great people.” – Brian Armstrong Coinbase has taken a philosophy from Amazon.com called “Disagree and Commit”: even if you disagree with a decision that has been made, you must still work really hard to make it a success Brian Armstrong borrowed the 70/20/10 resource allocation strategy from Google: spend 70% of resources on the core business, 20% on adjacent bets, and 10% on venture bets Trying to change the world with policy and government intervention is inefficient and tends to create unintended consequences; it is better to change the world with science and technology Asking the mainstream media to objectively cover the tech industry is like asking Pepsi for a fair review of Coca Cola “The business section of the New York Times is basically an anti-business section.” – Brian Armstrong  

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

Brian is the Co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, a leading cryptocurrency company on a mission to increase economic freedom in the world. He is also a Co-founder of NewLimit, a biotechnology company working to radically extend human healthspan, and ResearchHub, which is aiming to accelerate the pace of scientific research. In 2018, Brian launched a nonprofit called GiveCrypto.org and signed the Giving Pledge, committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes throughout his lifetime. Follow Brian on Twitter @brian_armstrong.

[2:18] - Brian's origin story

[9:33] - Reflections on his early career and how it prepared him to start Coinbase

[16:02] - Coinbase’s mission to increase economic freedom in the world, and why economic freedom is important

[23:34] - The challenges of building through crypto's hype cycles and scaling Coinbase at a rapid pace

[31:08] - An introduction to The RAPID Decision-Making Framework

[35:36] - How years of experience with remote employees helped Coinbase become a remote-first company

[45:24] - Repeatable innovation and the rationale for Coinbase’s 70/20/10 strategy for resource allocation

[54:34] - Coinbase’s contrarian decision to work with regulators from the beginning, and how it is increasingly leaning in on decentralization

[1:03:38] - Extending the human healthspan, an overview of NewLimit, and epigenetic reprogramming

[1:15:25] - Prioritizing "new media" over mainstream media

[1:21:12] - How ResearchHub can enable more open science and help build a bridge from scientific research to commercial products

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