Ben Hassler_E23: Levers of Eliciting Change [1/18/2020]
EPISODE23: Levers of Eliciting Change
Ben Hassler, GP at Polymath Capital, dialing in From the Cloud [1/18/2020]
https://anchor.fm/posi2ive/episodes/Ben-Hassler_E23-Levers-of-Eliciting-Change-ep54a7
Note: References with links are listed at the end of the show notes.
INTRO:
1:00 Shares background of their Remote-First, and Operator-Led fund, along with their thesis in Longevity, Community, and Fintech.
SECTION1: Intellectual Curiosity
3:00 Ben introduces his personal journey breaking into venture. Highlights his background in Psychology, Biology, and Finance. His systems thinking started from an early age. Sees the intersection of these three topic areas as useful in venture. Talks about gauging earliest stage Founders, as an approach in psychology.
5:00 Talks about inspiration for tech, and how he cold emailed VCs to add value. Led him to internship and eventually becoming a VC Analyst. We break out into how to add value to VCs, and alternatives to landing a great role.
12:00 Talks about the realization of capital as the levers of eliciting change.
SECTION2: Polymath Capital
15:00 Talks about inspiration point for launching their $10M fund. Discusses passion and focus for longevity and biotech. Discusses therapeutics, and diagnostics verticals.
16:00 Draws inspiration from healthspan and lifespan, and increasing both.
17:00 We talk about Dr. Sinclair’s book LIFESPAN, and Ben’s belief that things like cancer don’t need to be here. The regulation component needs to catch up, according to Ben. Shares a spin off from an EIR who started a biotech company.
19:00 Talk about spacetech, longevity, climatetech, and sustainability.
20:00 Ben shares his view on Polymathic Scrappers — and traits they are looking for in Founders. Examples include, natural obsessions for the problem they are trying to solve. Talks about people with intellectual curiosity, and drive, outside of status-quo. Shares Fintech focus, and borderless frictionless experiences as democratizing.
SECTION3: Community
22:00 Shares their new Community Club Fund, co-managed with Mac Reddin at Commsor (see link below). Talks about rise of Social Currencies, and creator platforms.
28:00 We talk about the evolution of physical and digital communities. And discussing Lunchclub and Clubhouse.
30:00 Ben shares experience with gaming communities and moderation difficulties, especially in gaming. We talk about the tradeoffs of oppressed voices, and enablement of members to dictate moderation. Talks about the tricky topics such as trolling, and sarcasm — and how they don’t necessarily lead to better automated moderations.
SOURCES:
-Polymath Capital: https://www.polymathcp.com/
-Ben Hassler [Twitter]: https://twitter.com/benhasslerr
-Polymath Capital [Twitter]: https://twitter.com/polymathcp
-Lifespan [book]: https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/1501191977
-Aubrey De Grey [Google talk]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXJzvo0Jekc
-The Longevity Economy[AARP]: https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/home-and-family/personal-technology/2013-10/Longevity-Economy-Generating-New-Growth-AARP.pdf
-Community Club Fund [Rolling Fund on AngelList]: https://www.community.club/fund
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Song Credit: The Croft — By Joakim Karud
[ No Copyright on Music and Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 ]
