26 Cyan Banister - A Fool’s Dérive

Cyan Bannister
And so I started asking myself who along my journey helped. What were the inflection points along my life’s path where if that person wasn’t perfectly there at the right moment, I wouldn’t have survived. And they start highlighting in the timeline. You start to see them and you’re like, wow. So the first realization is we are not alone. We think that we’re, you know, individuals and that everything that we do is through our own will and might. Yeah, we’re in our own, you know, we’re geniuses. All of our thoughts are ours. These are things that the ego does to play tricks on you. And, you know, I, it’s not like I spent every moment on this thought, but if I had an idle moment where, you know, I told you that when we met that I’m infinitely curious, I will sit there And ask questions and try to come up with answers. Because I’ve just, there’s so much to think about, I can never be bored. And so I started going down that rabbit hole. And then about the pandemic, so a lot of art, art is amazing. And art can often reach you at the exact right moment where you need it. So you might watch a movie and then walk out of the theater and suddenly everything is a little brighter and everything smells a little better. And you just have this aha moment, this epiphany. And so I try to immerse myself in as much randomness and art and experiences that I possibly can so I can receive these epiphanies. And I had one such epiphany after the pandemic. And the pandemic I like to think of as this great shock. It’s a moment where you

Cyan Bannister
For some. Wow. And so you can imagine when you come out of that, you have a type of trauma and suffering that is universal, that happened to all of us at once. And the questions that come after that are typically, if there is a God, you know, why would God create a virus? Why would we have a pandemic? Why would this even be allowed to happen? You know, and you’d think that a lot of people would turn out to be atheists and they would be like, there is no God. But the interesting thing is a lot of people turn to spirituality. Bible sales went through the roof because people went inward and started discovering things about themselves that they didn’t even realize. And so I’m one of those people. I had an experience that completely shifted my view of the world and of reality. And I haven’t been the same since. And so part of my, I just learned a French word. I’m probably going to butcher it, deriveereve, which means to drift intentionally.
Jackson Dahl
Wow.
Cyan Bannister
And I felt very seen when I, you know. Wow. They have amazing words that you don’t have that just so beautifully describe something. And.
Jackson Dahl
Yeah, great website. It’s like all the words in the different languages that are only kind of captured in that language. There’s all these Japanese words, for example.
Cyan Bannister
Yeah. Yeah. Japanese words are amazing too. They have like words for shadows that come through leaves. Komarembi.

Cyan Bannister
I know. You know? And then in Finland, they have words for like all the sounds of snow when you walk on it. They have like 15 words. Yeah, they need those words. But we don’t, I mean, English is amazing, but we don’t have something like Dereve. And, and so I, I’m a wanderer. I am tethered by some of obviously my life’s choices. And, but in general, I like to roll around like a tumbleweed and a lot of my decisions and my gut instinct and what I like to do comes out of that random space. And my mindfulness practice has taught me how to trust my instincts more. And so that’s one of the things I would love for people to realize that a practice that is only two minutes a day can change your life. You don’t need to meditate for hours. You don’t need to go to a silent retreat for seven days. You don’t need an ayahuasca. You don’t need, because I see all these people doing ayahuascas and they’re not changing. They’re not happier. They’re not better. They’re not, you know, going inward like they should and really, really surgically dissolving some of these false selves and integrating these lessons that they’re getting. And so I feel it’s imperative that people start being more mindful and, you know, can come through forms. We were talking about Bobby McFerrin. It can come through moving your body or singing. It can come through a daily exercise of walking, making your bed in

Cyan Bannister
Think the very first step is observing your own thoughts. I think if you do nothing else, do that. Everything else comes after. So when you observe your own thoughts, and let’s just say you’re anxious, we’ll start with anxious. Actually, start with happy. You’re happy. And you say, I am happy. As soon as you have this sort of interesting, it’s almost like a magic spell. I am happy. You self-identify with happy and you will magically become happier. It’s weird. You’re like, I am happy. I am. You’re like hypnotizing yourself. Yeah, it’s really strange. And then you have to ask yourself, but who is I? And if you do this little trick, I really love this trick. You say, it is happy. Oh, well, that changes everything. Because then you’re like, if it is happy, then who am I? Then you start to realize that you might be the observer or you might be the true I. And I would go down that rabbit hole as far as you can go so you can figure out who yourself is so you can meet yourself. Because you might discover that there’s this self that thinks all kinds of things that are just false. It might hold on to memories or the past or projections to the future that are completely illusions. So this is why presence is so important, because presence is real. The future doesn’t exist and the past is gone. And the sooner that we can realize that and realize that these are stories or fiction or part of our great work of our life, and we change our relationship

Cyan Bannister
Till they were 12 or 13. Some all the way into adulthood.
Jackson Dahl
Have you ever seen Little Miss Sunshine?
Cyan Bannister
I have. Yeah.
Jackson Dahl
It’s not exactly. He takes a vow of silence for a reason, but Paul Dano in that movie kind of reminds me.
Cyan Bannister
Well, I took a vow of silence. Yeah. Yeah. And part of it was really delightful because people I loved watching how people would treat me. They would treat me as if I was incapable of rational thought or the a lot of things. Lot of assumptions, you know, about this child that doesn’t speak must mean that she’s slow or, you know, not very smart or incapable of understanding what you’re talking about. Now, that part was really bizarre because they would just have conversations that no child should listen to. Right. And so this made me a deep observer. I learned through watching people and I still do. So a lot of the time I will go and sit at a mall or I’ll sit in a park or I’ll sit at the airport and I will just watch people. The phrases that they’re using. It’s just a fun thing to watch people because it informs a lot of my views and kind of the things I want to invest in and the things I want to work on. And so I love to immerse myself in humanity. And that story hit me during the pandemic. So during the pandemic, I was one of those people that took a pause. And in my early life, I didn’t read a lot of books. I read a few science fiction books and then mostly technical

Cyan Bannister
And so we’re all in this very different reality. And it’s shaped by how we view the world, what we believe in, our ideology, our experiences in life. And so that story is really about if you could try on a new perspective, how would you see the world? And that blew my mind. And so I threw this party with Mike Wang, who’s my collaborator at Long Journey. And everyone that came to this dinner party, we had them try on a pair of spectacles. And the spectacles had a role that they had to play written on the side. Oh, cool. So maybe you had to be an optimist or maybe you had to be a pessimist or maybe you had to act like you’re a child or. And what was really interesting was how seriously everybody took their role and they got into it. And so there was someone who was a critic. They’re supposed to critique the food and and act like they were displeased with everything. And so we gave that role to a person who’s like a people pleaser. And then we gave someone who handpicked every role. Oh, yeah. So for this one, we knew the people and we knew their personalities. So we gave them a personality that didn’t suit them.
Jackson Dahl
Yes. So the lovely things about games, things like this is like the people are so willing to opt in. Yeah, something so seemingly ridiculous, as long as you just kind of scope it, or you call it a game or call it a party.
Cyan Bannister
Yeah, it was so fun. So we basically had this eye doctor and it’s a friend of mine and she worked the eye doctor station. And what people didn’t realize is that we had your prescription already filled for you. They thought it was random, which, you know, I hang out with magicians. And so you do something called magician’s choice where you make it look random, but it’s not random. So we had these dice that they would roll a color and it would land on a box and so from that box they were able to pick out a pair of glasses um but it turned out that every box was the same and There was a pair of glasses for them in every box and so um it was a force And so they got these what they thought was a random prescription. Wow. And so they put them on and immediately got into character. And so there was a guy that was supposed to be five years old and he kept demanding bowls of sugar. He’s like, I want sugar and I want it now. And, you know, there was a person that we blindfolded and so they couldn’t see and they had to eat their whole meal blindfolded. And then the person that’s sitting next to them is supposed to help. So they’re supposed to be one of these people that really. And this is a person that doesn’t like to help anyone and is deeply uncomfortable with that role. But he got into it.
Jackson Dahl
You’re sort of group therapist slash party host.
Cyan Bannister
So I have a motto, which is you should never throw an event if it doesn’t change people and doesn’t at least give them a memory that will last for the rest of their lives. It’s a high bar. Really play with reality in a way that’s just delightful and you become kind of

Cyan Bannister
I think it was those first five years where I was alone in my mind. And because I’ve been thinking about this, like when did I lose my innocence? When did I start listening to adults that I should grow up and get rid of my foolish nature? When did I decide to start cosplaying? Because we all do. Yes. We all have this. I don’t know if you have a mental model of what you were supposed to be when you were grown up. But if you look back, if everybody looks back, everyone would always ask you like, what are you going to do when you grow up? And you might have a fantasy. And I had fantasies. And I remember those fantasies of what I was going to be, how I saw myself in the future. And, you

Cyan Bannister
Yes, stay in line. And I chose at a very young age to never, ever give it up. It was one of these things where I was like, I want to be to the best of my ability, true to myself and authentically me. And I don’t want to ever lose this sense of wonder and childlike curiosity that I have. It served me well. It’s been my companion in lonely times and hard times. You know, how I got through all of those hard moments, including the stroke I had five, six years ago, I guess, is just looking at it with questions and just saying, why am I in this situation? You know, instead of saying I’m a victim of this situation, I would say, what are all the external factors that led to this occurring? You know, is it really just targeted at me? No. It turns out I’m part of this big ecosystem and my mother was probably, she probably has mental health issues. I haven’t been able to identify what sort of trauma she faced in her life that turned her into who she is. But my dad’s trauma is very clear. And so when you start to look at trauma is cyclical and family members reenact the trauma sometimes that they experience themselves, you start to realize that they couldn’t help themselves. And when you start to realize that people are mechanical and they’re not even awake, you know, we were talking about that term.

Cyan Bannister
But in those rare moments where you are conscious, you are mindful, you are present, you know where you are on this planet, and you will something into existence, then at that moment, You might, might have free will. And so I think a lot of my success actually comes from this reckless abandon that I have. And it looks counterintuitive. Like to a lot of people, they’re like, she didn’t grind away at university. She didn’t follow the path that everyone’s supposed to follow. But yet I ended up in the same place. That should tell you something. Am I an outlier or is everyone cosplaying and afraid? Maybe both. Right. Could be both. Yeah. It could be both. I think, uh, I think life is not as hard as people want to make it out to be. And when I say that, people are like, say that to someone who’s in prison or say that to someone who’s starving or, you know, I’ve been starving. I’ve been homeless. Yeah, you’re a better messenger for that story than most people. Yeah. And it turns out, you know, read Man’s Search for Meaning, which is probably one of the most powerful books ever, which you can be in the darkest place and think that there’s no hope whatsoever And still find joy and still find something to learn and still find your love for humanity because it’s still there. And as long as you can find those things, you can survive anything. And so for me, it’s a survival tool and it’s served me well. And you’ll never hear me say I’m a victim of anything because I always say, wow, you know, again, look at the ecosystem, look at everything that happened to get

Cyan Bannister
Yeah. So this type of accountability is pretty radical. I recommend that you try it as a thought experiment. All these things are thought experiments. And if they don’t work for you, they don’t. But if you ask yourself to be really honest and you say this situation that’s causing me great pain and unrest, how was it my fault? You will discover almost without fail, it’s your fault. And I’ll give you an example. So let’s say that you hire an employee and that employee is a junior employee and they, you know, for six months you’re in the honeymoon phase. But then after the honeymoon phase, you start to see their juniorness. It starts to grade on you. You start to be like, how could they make that mistake? Such a rookie thing. And you start this narrative. But if you stop and you realize I’m annoyed, but I signed up for this, I chose to be a mentor for a young person who is inexperienced. I made the bed. Right? And you start to realize I’m supposed to show up as a better manager. If they’re not succeeding, it’s because of me. And the other thought experiment I like to run is pretend that every day that you wake up and you get out of bed, you’re in a movie and you’re the main character. And I’m right now, Jackson, your side character. And if you’re an actor and you’ve just been cast in a role, you could be a villain. You could be a good guy, good girl guy person. You could be a comedian. You could be a lot of things. But one of the things you should look at is how do you appear in everybody else’s story? Like when you’re writing that story too, like how do you show up? Right? So I like to think about things like this. It’s just like, you know, every one of my actions and every action is something that could profoundly impact someone else’s life. And am I perfect? No. But I just think that taking accountability at least allows you to have sympathy and empathy for the human experience that’s around you. And almost without fail, you know, I will discover the truth of how somehow I was responsible for what is happening to me. You know, and then you realize what feelings are real and not real.

Jackson Dahl
You’ve talked about randomness being this way to break up our bad patterns. It’s a really healthy, cool thing. You rolled dice to do things I mentioned. You’ve said you don’t like the word believe and you prefer suspect. Yeah. And you’re wildly experimental and iterative. And so I’m not sure that they’re actually at odds, but at least on the surface, there’s maybe a notion that this sort of like letting go and randomness and like, I’m actually not the decision Maker is sort of at odds with conviction and agency. So I suppose my question, maybe that’s part of the question, but my real question is like, what is your relationship to faith? Is faith what’s happening here?
Cyan Bannister
It is a kind of faith, right? You’re trusting that going back to the, if I were a tarot card, I’m the fool. You’re trusting that if you step off a ledge, you’re not going to fall.
Jackson Dahl
Yeah, yeah.
Cyan Bannister
And you’re also trusting your conviction in feeling or knowing on a level that defies logic. So, for example, I have all of these things that just magically happened. The world speaks to me in poetry. If it doesn’t make sense to you what I just said, that’s fine. Because I think that if you go back to Plato’s cave, if you’re in a cave and everybody tells you that there’s this world outside that can speak to you in poetry, it doesn’t make any sense. It makes zero sense. But Whitman used to make no sense to me and like blades of grass until I started seeing the poetry everywhere. And I realized like, okay, if I always say suspect, because I can’t tell you that I know how any of this works, but I think there’s a non-zero chance that we’re in a simulation. And I think that if you were to take this thought experiment out and say if there’s a simulation, then obviously there’s an architect of some kind. Call it God. Call it an engineer. Call it a magician. Call it whatever you want. But there’s something that started the simulation. Something. What could that something be? And so you start thinking about, okay, well, the only thing that’s perfect in the universe is nothing. So maybe that something is nothing. And you start going down that hole and start thinking about it. But then you also start thinking, okay, well, if I’m in a game, this game called life, there’s rules to this game. And I’m a hacker of my background. Like I come from a security background and I hung out with hackers and I like to poke holes in things. And so, you know, what happens if you go left instead of right? What happens if you introduce dice? What happens if you analyze a thought and wonder if it’s yours? What happens if you look at a sign and you feel something and

Cyan Bannister
Like, I’ll give you an example of what might look insane. And I decided at A16Z Speedrun the other day to just say it because I was like, you know, it’s what I’m doing right now and it’s working. So they’re like, how do you get deals? And I said, well, I’m going to say something nutty. But lately I’ve been daydreaming and I think about how the world could be better. I think about what people could be creating and I imagine it in all the various ways I can imagine it with my perception and then I let it go my attachment to it because I used to be a founder I used to think like oh I want to go build that I want to do that or give it to a friend or whatever instead maybe I’m giving it to some kind of collective subconscious and I’m putting it in A cloud and maybe someone gets that spark and maybe they decide that that’s the company they want to go do. And then maybe they show up on my doorstep and then maybe they tell me exactly what I want to hear, what I want to invest in. And it turns out that’s been happening. So I’m just like, well, I don’t know if this is how this is happening, but I know that I think about something I want to invest in and it shows up. So do I really need to go out to every demo day? Do I really need to grind away and look at every presentation or do I need to daydream? Do I need to make believe? Do I need to use my childlike mind?

Cyan Bannister
So I usually tell people, I’m like, if you meet Peter and he does that, give him space. Don’t try to fill the space. Yeah. You know, let him do it because it’s a gift. And when he does that, I don’t know, because he’s never verbalized it, what he’s searching for, or how his thought process works, or how he arrives at something. But every now and then he’ll open his eyes and he’ll just be like, we’re going to do this thing. And it’ll sometimes be the most jarring, possibly life-altering decision with crazy amounts of money that you’re just like, how did you come up with that decision that quickly? And I’ve seen him do that over and over again. But interestingly, again, people are mirrors. I do the same thing. So I think that the first thing was we were coming back from an investment team meeting, and he offered to give me a ride back to the office. And the ride was mostly quiet. And then he said, Cyan, I want to tell you something. And I said, okay. And he said, you’re really good at feeling, not so good at knowing. And he looked at me kind of, and there was this unspoken, you got it. And there was nothing else said. I didn’t ask any questions. I just looked at him. I said, got it. And he goes, okay. Because his house was very close to Founders Fund. It’s like a five minute ride. And then he like dropped me off in front of Founders Fund and he said, see you later. And that statement kept me up for many, many nights because I was like, what kind of knowing is he talking about? And this was before my spiritual moment in Boston. This was before understanding that there is a type of knowing that is not words, that feelings can be knowing. And how can you know if a feeling is accurate or not takes a level of discernment and understanding your inner world a bit more than I did at the time. So I asked him a clarifying question recently, and he didn’t respond yet. And maybe he’ll respond someday in person. But I said, you know, were you talking about financial acumen? Because that’s the way I took it. I have to become a data room junkie and I have to get better at spreadsheets and being able to rattle off numbers to justify more quantitative and I have to become more quantitative. But what if he didn’t mean that? Cause I don’t know now. So now I’m just like, well, I actually don’t know what he meant, but it did result in me quitting because I, the ego gets in there and the ego is like, wow, you are terrible at, you know, looking In data rooms and, and quantifying your decisions. And, you know, there’s this bizarre path that you take to get to where you are. And to even explain to people how I arrived at a decision is, it’s just exhausting.

Cyan Bannister
Investor, for the most part, I can get on any cap table. There’s no competition. Like I can just walk in and say, I want to be in this company. And most people are excited or happy to have my name on the company, which is great. And it’s such a privilege and honor to be that person. But when you’re with a fund, it’s different. Because a fund has a lot of responsibility for whether they follow on or what kind of signal that sends or, you know, it implies that there was a consensus between the partners and it implies A lot. And so, you know, the deciding to strike out and start a venture fund with Lee was a decision I had to make because I wanted to grow. I wanted to, obviously I could be solo. I can deploy my own capital and run my own fund. But you don’t get that water cooler thinking. You don’t get that team that you can bounce ideas off of. And you don’t get a chance to have people point out your flaws. And so one of the things I love about Long Journey is we have a coach and we are constantly pushing each other to be better people, to resolve conflicts, to think about, you know, our egos And the things we want to invest in and the types of things we want to invest in. Even the LP base that we have is all intentional. And so a lot of this is an exercise in consistency, which I told you I’m terrible at. And so, like, I have to show up every Wednesday. I have to be in the stand-up TAC meetings is what we call them, the absurd committee, where we decide what we’re investing in. I have to show up on

Cyan Bannister
But you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got to throw. I always marvel at like ceiling fans, right? Like there’s some person who looks at a ceiling fan and says, you know what the world needs? Another ceiling fan. And it’s a problem that we’ve solved. But yet we somehow aesthetically want a different one or a spoon or a glass. Those are the entrepreneurs that blow my mind. It’s like, who are you and why are you doing this? Because it’s really a race to the bottom. And so you’re just like, wow, I marvel at you. I want to meet these people. But there’s an example. That’s a piece of art that someone wanted to will into existence, into the world, the ceiling fan.
Jackson Dahl
John Collison has this line that the world is a museum of passion projects.

Cyan Bannister
It was Founders Fund. You’re right. And so I went to South Bend, and part of the tour was meeting Mayor Pete. And he showed us these data centers he was building at the time to mine Bitcoin. He turned a Peugeot, or not Peugeot, I forget, it starts with a P, car company plant into a data center. And so we went in there and it was just so great to see a public official, like, understand how technology works and how he should be investing in Bitcoin back then and think about what It’s worth now. And getting rid of, and this is controversial, but at the same time, you know, he would, I think the city would buy back certain types of land that was in disrepair so that they could free It up to become yards for buildings that were actually better looking aesthetically so that you could get rid of the blight. People don’t live around blight. They naturally care for their communities more. And so you start to see the quality of those communities go up because there’s not a pile of rubble that no one can afford to take away. So he took away all of these dilapidated homes that were falling apart and they buy them and take them out. And then the other thing is he became kind of a beta test city. He was very proud of it. So LimeBike, a lot of the scooter, you know, share programs started out in South Bend. And he quickly identified that the unbanked couldn’t use them. And so like, how can you develop a solution for the unbanked?
Jackson Dahl
Wow.
Cyan Bannister
Then there’s like college kids that wanted to figure out how to do water filtration. So he gave them use of the entire city’s water filtration. Very experimental. Very experimental. Exactly. But the thing that impressed me the most was his ability to say, I don’t know. So I would ask him, like, how are you going to solve this problem? And he’d look at me and he’d go, Cyan, you know, that’s a very good question. I would bring in panels of experts. I would talk to as many people as possible and I would try to get to the bottom of it. And he goes, but to be honest with you, I don’t know. And I was like, wow, how refreshing. Yeah, it’s pretty rare. It’s so rare. Most politicians will tell you whatever it is they think you want to hear and they lie. And, you know, all politicians are flawed, including Pete. But I’ll take a person who will admit that they don’t know any day over anyone else. And the other thing is he was a military person. So he understands what it means to carry a firearm and also what it means to be sent off to war and possibly killed. And so if we’re going to be sending our sons and daughters and children off to war, we should at least understand what it’s like. And so I really would love our commander in chief to be trained by the military and have served, you know, Trump did not serve. And so it makes me uneasy when someone can make decisions that cost taxpayers tons of money and also cost lives without ever having to experience that themselves.

Cyan Bannister
But with Cameron, one, her background really echoed mine. Her behavior, how she acts echoed how I act. I remember watching it and just being like, wow, this is just really hits hard. It’s like a little too close for comfort. And but it was remarkable to see myself reflected in some way in art, you know, and the only other experience I’ve had like this was meeting Bill Murray. You know, it was the first time that I saw myself reflected in someone I admired and looked up to. And I wanted to know how could someone like him navigate a world and still remain human and present and be among us when everyone wants a piece of him? You know, when everyone’s clamoring for his attention you know how how is it that he’s able to really be in it with us and why and

Cyan Bannister
Think that We need to embrace change because the one thing that’s constant is change. And every time that we hold something dear, we try to become protective of it. It gets ripped from us. And this has been repeated throughout history. And so there have been entire industries that have been displaced by technology or advancements in something. You know, there’s the printing press. There’s the industrial revolution. There’s the train. There’s the car got rid of the horse buggy. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. Photoshop, you know, disrupted photographers. And so AI is going to, we didn’t predict that AI would come after knowledge workers first. If you were to go back in time and ask people which jobs would be displaced first, that was not what people thought. And so I think what we’re going to experience is ego disruption on a massive scale, probably the biggest ego reset ever, where people are going to cling on for dear life to some concepts That will be ultimately challenged because we do live in a world where there are different ecosystems, different governments, different rules. So if we don’t build something or we outlaw something, it really doesn’t ultimately matter because someone else will build it. And so when you’re in a Petri dish like that and it’s going to be done anyway, my recommendation is to accept it and to try to figure out in a post-scarcity world what matters. And so there’s a book called The Diamond Age that I would recommend that all kids read. I think it came out in 1999 written by Neil Stevenson.

Cyan Bannister
And so AI is going to, we didn’t predict that AI would come after knowledge workers first. If you were to go back in time and ask people which jobs would be displaced first, that was not what people thought. And so I think what we’re going to experience is ego disruption on a massive scale, probably the biggest ego reset ever, where people are going to cling on for dear life to some concepts That will be ultimately challenged because we do live in a world where there are different ecosystems, different governments, different rules. So if we don’t build something or we outlaw something, it really doesn’t ultimately matter because someone else will build it. And so when you’re in a Petri dish like that and it’s going to be done anyway, my recommendation is to accept it and to try to figure out in a post-scarcity world what matters. And so there’s a book called The Diamond Age that I would recommend that all kids read. I think it came out in 1999 written by Neil Stevenson. The one with the primer in it? Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things he predicts is everything has AI. There’s these matter compilers. You can print this table. I can print a microphone. I can print a chair. Like it’s free. You don’t even have to pay for furniture. They can print food.
Jackson Dahl
Pure abundance.
Cyan Bannister
Yeah, pure abundance. And so in a world of pure abundance, which is probably what we’re heading towards, what truly matters? And I would argue that being an artist matters and the age of the artisan is coming. So human creativity and human innovation and human production is finite like gold. There’s only so many of us on this planet. And so when we make things by hand, it’s going to be kind of like going to the store and buying organic. So I really think there’s going to be organic, human made stuff.
Jackson Dahl
Yes. And we’re obsessed with ourselves.
Cyan Bannister
Exactly. We’re obsessed with ourselves. So I actually think, you know, there’s going to be more like millionaires, people who create Instagram, TikTok, whatever feeds selling some niche product that they make at home with Their hands. I see it all the time. I see people who launch these like jewelry brands, pants brands, knitting shops, all of these things. And you see these micro entrepreneurs. And so I think we’re going to see more of that and we should celebrate it. Not everyone needs to create a venture return business.

Cyan Bannister
Yeah, pure abundance. And so in a world of pure abundance, which is probably what we’re heading towards, what truly matters? And I would argue that being an artist matters and the age of the artisan is coming. So human creativity and human innovation and human production is finite like gold. There’s only so many of us on this planet. And so when we make things by hand, it’s going to be kind of like going to the store and buying organic. So I really think there’s going to be organic, human made stuff.
Jackson Dahl
Yes. And we’re obsessed with ourselves.
Cyan Bannister
Exactly. We’re obsessed with ourselves. So I actually think, you know, there’s going to be more like millionaires, people who create Instagram, TikTok, whatever feeds selling some niche product that they make at home with Their hands. I see it all the time. I see people who launch these like jewelry brands, pants brands, knitting shops, all of these things. And you see these micro entrepreneurs. And so I think we’re going to see more of that and we should celebrate it. Not everyone needs to create a venture return business. Like they can create a lifestyle business that supports them and their family and gives them abundance and joy and a sense of purpose because they’re whittling spoons or whatever it Is that they want to do. Not everyone’s going to want something created by an AI that looks too polished or is too perfect. You know, human imperfection is actually a beautiful thing. And so I would recommend that young people do not despair and instead look at the world differently and how they can reimagine it if your needs are met. What’s next? So yes, there’s going to be a lot of disruption. There’s going to be a lot of displacement. There’s going to be a lot of potential poverty. And these are all things that we can get together and try to solve together. And I’m hoping that we do. You know, it’s going to be interesting to see how potentially these multi-trillion dollar businesses contribute to UBI through taxes or something like that.