Future Ventures: Scaling with Clarity
Future Ventures: Clarity at Scale is the podcast for founders, operators, and investors who are building companies worth owning for the long term — and who need to think clearly about capital, structure, strategy, and growth to get there.
Each episode cuts through the noise around scaling: how to structure a deal, how to position a business for institutional capital, how to build operational leverage without losing control, and how to make the high-stakes decisions that compound in value long after the moment has passed.
Hosted by Maxim Atanassov — a four-time founder and the Managing Partner of Future Ventures Corp. Since 2018, FVC has invested in, incubated, and scaled companies across sectors — with a focus on platform opportunities that compound in value. Maxim's background spans executive leadership inside Canada's largest energy companies and senior advisory at Deloitte and EY. He's a CPA-CA who has sat at the table where capital gets deployed, governance gets built, and hard decisions get made. Now he helps founders get there faster.
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Future Ventures: Scaling with Clarity
Dave Guttman — From Terminal Diagnosis to 9-Figure Exits | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 42
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Dave Guttman has spent more than three decades building, scaling, acquiring, and exiting businesses — racking up multiple 8- and 9-figure outcomes along the way. But the thing that shaped how he operates wasn't a deal. At 24, fresh off an acceptance to Wharton, three doctors misdiagnosed him and told him he had six months to live. He survived, and the experience rewired his definition of success from accumulation to impact. That shift is the throughline of this conversation.
Why this one matters: Guttman is rare in that he speaks fluently in both registers founders actually need — the hard mechanics of raising capital, building budgets, and engineering an exit, and the harder questions of what you're scaling toward in the first place. He's blunt about where most founders go wrong (no financial model, raising too little money, mistaking confidence for competence), candid about AI as both a force multiplier and a genuine risk, and refreshingly unsentimental about legacy. If you're scaling a company and quietly wondering whether the climb is worth it, this is a conversation worth your time.
Key Topics Covered
- The misdiagnosis that reset everything — How a death sentence at 24 reframed his entire approach to work, relationships, and what he was building for.
- Raising capital the right way — Why he argues raising $5M is easier than $500K, and the break-even math most founders get backwards.
- AI as a creative force multiplier — How he built a 100-page business plan in three hours and is co-writing two books in months instead of years.
- The coming collapse of traditional education — Why he begged his daughter not to go to college and where he thinks learning is actually headed.
- Fortune vs. specialness — His case for radical humility, and the legacy question he poses that stops most people cold.
Key Insights
- Self-awareness beats raw skill. Being weak in an area of your business is survivable; believing you're strong where you're actually weak is what kills companies. Knowing the difference is the founder's real edge.
- Capital needs come before valuation, not after. Most founders fixate on their valuation first, then back into a raise. Guttman flips it — figure out two to three times what you genuinely need to reach break-even, because running out of cash is the business equivalent of a plane running out of fuel.
- AI rewards people who already know the hard way. The tools are a multiplier on existing expertise and creativity, not a substitute for them, which is why those who learned to do the work the slow way may end up with the biggest advantage.
Links & Resources
- Full episode: https://youtu.be/DreXyifEPBs
- Dave Guttman — https://www.linkedin.com/in/drguttman/
- Future Ventures Corp: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/future-ventures-corp
Today's guest is someone who has spent more than three decades building, scaling aquarium, exiting businesses, and along the way has developed a very different perspective on what success actually means. David Gottman is a serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and speaker with multiple eighth and ninth year essay to his name, a graduate of both Brown University and Wharton. David is also the creator of the anti-MBA movement, host of the David Gottman podcast, and a passionate advocate for servant leadership. After overcoming a life-threatening diagnosis in his twenties, he has dedicated his career to helping entrepreneurs build wealth, purpose, resilience and lives they don't need to escape from. David, welcome to the Future Ventures Scaling with Clarity podcast.
SPEAKER_00Maxim, thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_01It is my absolute pleasure to connect and uh learn about the journey. Um it's uh it's certainly very interesting. I'm curious as to how you um how you overcame the challenges in your early 20s and and what led you into entrepreneurship.
SPEAKER_00So my um my dad started a software company in his late 20s that eventually IPO'd. Um and I and so I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And and I also, you know, my dad's a very smart guy. Um he actually wrote before there was artificial intelligence, he basically did something similar called a fourth generation language, where you would design the screens and the reports and it would generate the code automatically. My company eventually was called Knowledgeware and IPO. So I always knew I wanted to be an IPO, but he I uh entrepreneur, but my dad got pushed out of his company prematurely. Um, and I learned by observing that um it's okay to be bad at things in business, but it's the kiss of death to think you're good at something you're bad at. So for me, part of why I went back to get my MBA, which by the way, I wouldn't do that today because it's a different world now. But back when I went to business school, there was no internet. Um, and so I wanted to make sure I knew enough about every area of business that no one could bullshit me. Um be an expert, but I wanted to at least know enough that I could manage people that were experts and to know enough if people were doing what they needed to. So um, yeah, so that that that's basically how my uh how kind of I started. And and it's funny, I um it's funny how the little tiny things in your life can change the entire trajectory of of things. I remember I read um I read this one article that said the most successful people have an undergraduate degree in computer science or engineering, again, this is before the internet, and then get a master in MBA from like a top five business school. Um that's literally all I did was read one article, and that's what I decided I wanted to do. There was very little thought that went into it. I'd love to say I had all this big master plan and all this intentionality, but not true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, how would you describe your personality, David? Are you a fairly impossible person? I mean, obviously making a decision just off one article kind of gives me a bit of a glimpse, but how would you describe yourself?
SPEAKER_00I'm a very positive person. You know, part of it is, you know, you alluded to it when I was 24, misdiagnosed by three doctors and told I had six months to live. In fact, I had just gotten into Wharton, and now I was being told I would be dead before I enrolled in the fall. Um so, you know, you can imagine, right? Like, yeah, I worked my ass off my whole time, my whole life. I've been a division, I was a Division I college wrestler, which was super hard. Got into Brown super hard, getting into Wharton super hard. I busted my ass my whole life, and then I'm told I'm gonna die. And I'm like, what the hell was all that for? You know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh it just got me to re-examine my life, and uh, and I don't take things so seriously anymore. Like I used to take myself way too seriously uh back when I was in my you know teens and early 20s, and uh, and now I'm you know, I think I'm a much more you know playful attitude than I used to.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. So you got the wake-up call in your 20s, whereas people may wait for their 50s, 60s or whatever um before they they realize. Um what what what are kind of the guiding principles that that lead you, David?
SPEAKER_00You know, they they they changed, right? I mean, obviously that was a big inflection point in my life. Um and and ultimately what I decided was uh because again, the other than a few like family and friends being sad, like it really genuinely bothered me that it would not matter that I lived. That that that thought troubled me. And so I'm like, well, okay. Um I I basically vowed if by you know some chance I survived, which I didn't think I would, um I would every opportunity that I had to touch someone's life in a positive way, I would take advantage of it. And I feel like I've stayed pretty true to that for the last 35 years.
SPEAKER_01So I mean that's that's I'm super curious. Um, I normally ask this question at the end, but I want to ask it now. Like in and I want to put a twist on yours. What is the kindest thing somebody has ever done for you? And like if if we given your whole uh philosophy on life, what is the kind of thing you have done for somebody?
SPEAKER_00Kindest. Um so you know, it's funny. I I for a long time I really was seeking out a mentor, right? Um, and the problem I ran into is well, I could find people that maybe they were um good role models from a health and fitness standpoint or an athletic standpoint, but they weren't very successful professionally, or they were very successful professionally, but their relationships were terrible, or their health was terrible. And the problem is if you have someone who's a mentor, but only in one area, they're not really a great mentor because, like, so if someone is a role model from a professional standpoint, but they never go to their kids' baseball games, soccer games, like you know, their relationships are terrible. That's not really someone you want to emulate. And so I was always frustrated by the fact that I just didn't have anybody that that was able to play that role for me. I had people that were role models in in certain areas, but not in total. And so part of me, I guess part of what drove me was I wanted to become that for other people. In particular, I wanted to become that for my daughter. So, you know, um as I as I think about, you know, the kindest thing that um anyone's ever done for me, I don't know that I would call it kindness so much as I would, they had just a huge impact on me. I mean, I had um I had a seventh grade English teacher that changed the entire course of my life. I at the time I really struggled academically, which is ironic given the schools I went to, but I was tested at a third-grade reading level when I was in seventh grade. Um and so I really struggled because I was severely dyslexic. I didn't know it at the time. I was diagnosed in seventh grade. Um, and I had a seventh grade English teacher that saw my intelligence before I did, and he genuinely believed in me. And he really encouraged me to take honors classes and things like that. And if it wasn't for that, my the entire course of my life would have been different. And so I don't know if I consider that a kindness exactly, but but I guess in a way I really do, because um the fact that he could see something in me before I could, um I don't know. It was just it really, even when I think back on it, it really touches me in a deep way. Um, in terms of the kindest thing I've ever done for some someone else, um I don't know. I I I I I certainly have uh I've done a lot of very nice things for my daughter. Um probably the the one that I uh that I was really excited about, um I wanted my daughter grew up the poorest kid in the richest neighborhood in Chicago. So there's a suburb north of the city called Lake Forest, and that's like where like like the the one of our girlfriends was the head coach of the Chicago Bears or the CEO of like Garrett's Popcorn. These are people that have like indoor swimming pools, right? Like, you know, brand new car on their 16th birthday, people like that. So um it was, I think she was 10 or 11, and I wanted to do something really unique. So I basically had a song professionally written and recorded for her. Um, and then I I basically took the song and I took all the pictures of her and I throughout her life, and I basically put those pictures to music and I gave it to her for a Christmas present. So that's probably the most thoughtful thing I've ever done. Um but uh but I don't know. I know I've tried to travel through life and be as helpful and generous as I can be.
SPEAKER_01Amazing.
SPEAKER_00And how how long did it take you to produce the the song uh to to have it made and put into uh the having the song written and recorded maybe only two months because we iterated a couple times, um, and then maybe another 30 or 40 hours to go through all the photographs and decide which ones and have them be at the right place and stuff like that. The pro the thing that was so hard was I had it done like three months before Christmas, and I was just dying to give it to her. But of course, until Christmas.
SPEAKER_01So of course. And uh do you mind me asking how old is your daughter?
SPEAKER_00She's 26 now.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and so I'm a father of two girls. How do you survive the teenage years and and kind of like how do you maintain the relationship?
SPEAKER_00You you have my you have my great sympathies. Actually, actually, now that I say that, I I have a I have a better thing than it. So, um, because it answers this question, but I had forgotten about it until you just reminded me indirectly. So when my daughter, we were very close. So I got divorced from my daughter's mom when she was only when my daughter was only one year old. So she doesn't know us together. Now I've always been very involved in her life and you know, a really present father, but she knows us only separately. And when she we were very, very close through her whole childhood. And when she was going off to college, I was really genuinely worried that we would grow apart. Just because we wouldn't see each other as much, we wouldn't talk as much, she's gonna have her own friends. And you know, to be honest, like when I was off to college, it wasn't like I was hanging out with my parents, you know what I'm saying? So it's like I love my parents and all, but I don't want to spend time with them, right? Yeah, so I was really worried about that. So I was like, what could I possibly do that would allow me to stay connected? And my daughter's nickname for me is Podge. Uh honestly, I don't even know where she came up with that name, but whatever. He calls me Podge, her friends call me Podge. Anyway, um, what I decided to do was every Sunday I would record a five-minute video um of me talking. I was, and I called it coffee with Podge. And I basically pretended like I was having a cup of coffee with my daughter, and I was just having a conversation with her. And I would pick a topic like how to manage stress, how to be a good friend, how to think about um, you know, your career your future, whatever it might be. And so I would record a five-minute video, I'd send it to her um Monday morning, and then she would watch it on her way to campus. And she told me it was the most thoughtful gift I ever gave her. Um in fact, what she started to do is she started to share it with her girlfriends, and then her girlfriends would like be like, hey, tell Podge next week to do one on this, tell Podge next week to do one on that. And uh anyway, it was it was a lot of fun. So, but my daughter said that was the most awful thing I ever did.
SPEAKER_01I mean, joking aside, this is a brilliant idea. Yeah, when my kids were young, I used to do gratitude moments with them, just lying in bed and just gonna, hey, let's let's let's remember what was the best thing about the day. Um, now the only time they really get to talk to them is windshield time when I'm driving them to and from volleyball or school or something like that. Uh, but no, that's that's brilliant. So, was this the start of your media journey? Or was it a better?
SPEAKER_00It's funny you say that. No, is the short, but I guess it really was without me really thinking about it. Yeah. Um, I actually resurrected with Podge. I think I did about 15 or 20 episodes back about a week ago. Um, but it just wasn't getting any traction, and my daughter didn't really seem to care that much, so um I stopped doing it. But um, but yeah, I guess it indirectly it really was. And and I, you know, look, I'm I'm comfortable on camera and I'm comfortable doing public speaking and stuff like that. So, you know, it's it's it it comes relatively easy to me, thankfully. Um, and my my daughter seemed to appreciate it. So I did it. But but it's funny, like it really, thankfully, you know, it are we didn't grow apart. And my daughter, much to my shock, loves spending time with me. Um lovely. And like I was just in Austin for a longevity conference, and um, you know, she lives in Austin, Texas now. So any excuse I have to see her, I I take it. Um, so yeah, she's uh believe it or not, my misdiagnosis when I was 24 and my daughter, the two best things that ever happened to me.
SPEAKER_01Wow, wow. Uh before I move off to business, um, I mean you you seem very grounded, very centered. Like what is a day in the life of Dave David Gottman looks like? Like like uh because you seem to have like a very holistic perspective. You said I had a role model for sports, or I had a role model for this, but not one that kind of defined or covered the whole basis.
SPEAKER_00You know, every day is a little bit different. Um, I split my time, so I do two weekly podcasts. Um, so I don't record every single week because I have a backlog, but I record most weeks. I'm also on a fair number of podcasts. I probably do half a dozen podcasts a week where I'm a guest. Um I'm writing, uh, I'm finishing two books. One I'm co-writing with an 18-year-old who's also a kid who I mentor. Um he's running a seven-figure AI business already, and he's only 18. He dropped out of high school when he was 15. Um we're co-authoring a book called Life Maxing, um, which uh should be coming out here in about four or five weeks. Uh I'm finishing a leadership book um called Lead Like You Give a Shit. Um and uh and then I I mentor eight different CEOs, you know, that I have I have equity in their companies and I and I mentor their CEOs. And so, and I and I also you know launched a longevity business with two co-founders. So um I probably work 80 or 90 hours a week, but I feel like I don't work at all because I'm only doing things I like with people, you know, who I enjoy, you know, doing things I'm interested in.
SPEAKER_01And that's how it should be. Um pursue the things that you're interested because otherwise it doesn't feel like the what like work. So how did you I I mean you said like you saw your dad uh start grow scale a business. I think you you said the name of the business was Knowledge Works, but how did you get your start? Like when was the the first company?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, Knowledgeware. Um so I I went to after my so I was a software, I my undergraduate degree was in computer science, believe it or not, with a concentrational artificial intelligence back when AI was a very different thing than it is now. Um and and so I did software development for a few years before I went back and got my MBA. And then after my MBA, um I got my start doing uh something called a search fund. So in I don't know if you're familiar, but basically you raise money from angel investors and they give you the equity capital to acquire a business. So at the age of 29, having no management experience at all, I was running a 400-person call center business. Um and and one of those professional mentors, she technically worked for me as my chief operating officer, but I basically worked for her. I mean, she was the one of the best leaders, one of the best managers I've ever met. Uh sadly, she passed away from brain cancer, but she was an amazing leader. My leadership style definitely came from her. Um, and that's how I really, and we did we did a dozen acquisitions in that business. So I learned a lot about how to value businesses, how to buy businesses, how to sell businesses, uh, how to run and scale, how to how to centralize back office functions. So it was a five-year um, you know, crash course in how to start, scale, and and grow businesses. And um, yeah, it was it was a great, it was a great learning ground for me.
SPEAKER_01How long did it take you to raise the search fund?
SPEAKER_00Not that long. Um, it was funny. At the time, I thought there's no one in the planet dumb enough to write me a check, right? Like I'm like, I haven't done anything. Like, why would anyone write me a check? Right. Uh, we raised 400 and about $450,000, I think. And uh I actually raised two-thirds of it. I had a partner. Um, and it was um uh it was an interesting experience, but I would say probably we raised the money in about five or six weeks from starting to finish. It didn't take that long. It is, I will say, having raised a bunch of capital throughout my career, it is harder to raise a smaller amount of money than a bigger amount of money. Raising five million is easier than 500,000, in my experience.
SPEAKER_01What just because you're going through institutions that already know uh kind of like what they expect, or the the checks are bigger.
SPEAKER_00No, I think I think it comes down to um you know, most angel investors, and again, I got burned on this. My first angel investment is is the the biggest, you know, the the they say the the most common reason uh small planes crash is they run out of fuel. The mo the reason most businesses fail is they run out of cash, basically. And so when you're raising a smaller amount of capital, most investors aren't interested because you're not raising enough capital to because ultimately you want to probably raise two to three times the amount of capital you think you're gonna need to get the break-even if you do if you can get the right valuation. So um, yeah, so but but I but that was the first time I'd raised money. It didn't, it took less time than I thought it would have. Um, but it was a it was a challenging process for sure, and a very humbling one too.
SPEAKER_01The the the the people that better better than you were friends and family, or people that you you never met?
SPEAKER_00There they were of the 450k, maybe 50k were people I knew, and the other 400k were people I didn't know.
SPEAKER_01So interesting. And so just how did you go about finding them?
SPEAKER_00You know, I didn't think I knew anyone wealthy enough to write a check, but you know, you're only one or two degrees of separation from most people, you know? And um really I just networked, and you know what I you know what I what it really came down to, what I realized it really came down to is the kind of people I was raising money from, they could all afford to lose the money that they were investing, right? So it wasn't meaningless to them to stroke a $25,000 or $50,000 check, but it also wasn't gonna change their life if they lost the money. So they were doing it mostly because someone had helped them early in their career and they wanted to pay it forward. And so, you know, I was just very honest about the fact that, hey, look, you know, I'm gonna, I have no plan B. This is all I'm gonna focus on. I'm gonna try to do everything I possibly can and make your investment pay off. Um, and uh, if we if it we fail, it won't be for lack of effort. Um, and uh, you know, I think that people appreciated the directness and sincerity of it. And, you know, not everyone said yes, but enough people said yes that uh you raised capital.
SPEAKER_01If somebody's come in to you to to write a check, what would you expect to see from them?
SPEAKER_00Well, again, because I learned the hard way, um, the very first thing I do is I'm like, first of all, I want to understand how much capital you're raising and why you think that's the right amount of capital. So um, in order for me to even consider making an investment, I have to be convinced that the amount of capital you're raising is two to three times at least twice as much as you need to get the break-even. And if not, what I usually do is I help them think through that because people like, you know, um, you know, people will be like, well, first they think they need to figure out how much capital they're gonna raise, and then they think about the valuation. It's the other way around. It's the other way around. The valuation is completely fungible, you know? And so, you know, it's like at the right valuation, you should take as much capital as you can possibly get, but you still need a budget and a forecasting model that lays out the the because the part that's amazing to me is something like 95% of businesses under say 25 million in annual revenue don't have a budget, right? Which is amazing. It's like you know, like it's just you're you're you're not being um professional enough, in my opinion, if you don't have a budget. Even one of the guys who I mentor now, um, you know, he's tracking to a nine-figure exit early next year. Um, he only launched the business in August, but we went into this year with a budget, you know. And and part of why I think we're gonna get the exit valuation that he deserves is because we have a budgeting and forecasting model that allows us to um demonstrate that we had a plan that we're executing against that plan. And then we know what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm a CPA by background. And so that's one of the areas we help out companies that it's it's the same. Like, how often would you get a pitch deck and then no no financial model behind it or the math doesn't math? And you're like, well, how did how do you come up with those numbers?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's extremely common. Um question for you. So if you were starting from zero today, not having the David Gottman name, not having the network or the capital, the reputation, um, what business would you start? What business would you focus on building?
SPEAKER_00So it would it would depend on what my talent stack looked like, right? So um the the wonderful thing about the world today is you know, with AI and the internet, like you can become. I mean, I don't know, I don't know how old you are, but I just turned 60. I don't think maybe we're probably not that far apart in age, like probably not more than 10 years apart. Um, when we were growing up, like you know, if you wanted to accumulate knowledge or information, you know, you had to go to a library, yeah, or a bookstore. And by the way, there weren't even book reviews. So it wasn't even like you say, oh, this one got 2,000 four-star or five-star reviews. There were no reviews, right? And so even to identify, had to identify if it was a good book, you'd have to like read through the table of contents and read a few pages, like, or maybe someone recommended the book because they liked it. Like knowledge was so hard. Now it's so easy. There is no topic on the planet other than maybe something really technical, like physics or something like that. Like, I can't put someone on Mars like Elon Musk. But let's say, but there's almost no topic I couldn't become an expert in. And when I say that meaning in the top 1% of the people on the planet, about any topic in 90 days. So if I were starting from scratch, I would, I would probably do some AI brainstorming about what my interests and aptitudes were, um, and then basically identify sort of you know holes in the market and then use AI to come up with a business plan. I'll give you an example. Um, my my my dad is 84, and I was a Division I college wrestler. My dad wrestled a little bit in college, and so we do this father-son college wrestling trip once a year where we go see a wrestling match together. This year it was stayed in Iowa. So we're driving seven hours round trip to drive back and forth from Chicago to Iowa. Uh, so my dad was lamenting the fact that he doesn't have any reason to get out of bed in the morning. Um, and I said, Well, dad, if you could snap your fingers and do anything, what would it be? He said, I want to make the world a nicer place. I want people to be kinder to each other. So I came up with this idea called 30 Acts of Kindness, where basically, so my 84-year-old father, with AI's help, built a mobile app called 30 Acts of Kindness. We set up a 501c3 not-for-profit, and basically we're we're gonna launch it July 1st. Um, and basically, you document your kindness journey for 30 days, and at the end of the 30 days, we send you a uh a bracelet that says you're certifiably kind with a serial number tied to your acts of kindness. So the entire idea for this business, I brainstormed with AI in three hours.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so, like a completely new idea, blank slate, had the entire hundred page, hundred pages worth of business plan and notes about how I would execute it in three hours. I couldn't have done that in six months. You know, it wouldn't have been as good as what I did in three hours. So there's no excuse. It really just comes down to do you have the discipline and tenacity to actually execute and not give up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that you're based in Illinois. Um, David.
SPEAKER_00No, no, so I'm I my dad lives in Chicago. And I lived in Chicago for a number of years. I live in the Phoenix area now.
SPEAKER_01Okay, okay. But I'm assuming that you were an hour ahead, so you're that's 9.22, 1022 for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so right oh right now, right now it's 720.
SPEAKER_01Oh, 720, okay. Um so I mean for me this this goes to show that like um people with good people perseverance, tenasty, they they just wire it differently, like you know. Um if if if if the if the will is there, you can persevere through anything. You've you've had the first moments you overcame. Um so I I agree with you. There's no excuse not to use it. Um I'm curious what is your uh uh favorite A AI app and how how do you use it? Like uh you you mentioned brainstorming, uh, I I get that.
SPEAKER_00So um it depends. I use different ones for different things, and I and I actually almost always use multiple AIs. So I recently did uh a couple of TED talks, and when I was working on my TED Talk, um what I would do is let's say I had a paragraph and I just didn't quite like the way it sounded. I would take it and I would give it to three different AIs. The ones I usually use are Grok, which is the one that's inside of X. I use GenSpark, which is a meta-agent. It uses different LLMs and it integrates the results. And I use Claude. Those are the three I use the most. I use Manus and some other ones too. It depends on what the task is. So if I'm doing writing, I might do use Manus, you know, more than I might use some others. Um doing legal docs, I tend to use those in Claude. So it depends on what the task is. But um the uh, you know, so what I did was I would take the paragraph, I would give it to three different AIs and say, I don't really like the way this sounds. I want the listener to feel these emotions. Give me three options that do it better than my paragraph. And I'll have nine different variations based on the three different AIs. I would then use my own discernment to you know synthesize and integrate those. And then I would feed it back to the three AIs and say, What do you think about this? Right. And I would just keep iterating until I got something that was perfect. And um, and it worked out. My my TED talk, believe it or not, I only released three weeks ago, and uh, it's already a top 1% TED Talk of all time. If I fingers crossed, if I get to the million view mark by six months, I can credibly claim a top 100 TED Talk of all time.
SPEAKER_01Wow. How achievable is it? I'm assuming given the numbers guy that you are, that there's uh there's some kind of a KPI and trajectory curve that you're uh tracking against.
SPEAKER_00I've uh I'm tracking to 100k in my first month, and then I've gotta I've gotta have to put a social media marketing strategy to get to that million. But that's what I'm that's what I'm working on.
SPEAKER_01So amazing. Yeah, I mean I I I I I echo your comments. I mean, we've we built orchestration layers, try to work like use agents, but my favorite app at the moment is is uh Whisperflow. Uh you were talking, you were talking about uh brainstorming. I uh I take my dog for walks every day, and so in Whisperflow, um it just it's voice a speech to text, but it's it it polishes it. And so I would be just literally talking because it cuts you off at five minutes. I'll be talking for five minutes until it gets cut off, and then restart the session. So my prompts in some cases are five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes long, depending on what I'm doing, or just either way, just give it a context. Um, the output that they get is absolutely phenomenal. So, from a brainstorming perspective, it's my favorite time. Take the dog for a walk. I usually do six kilometers, uh, which is what about four or four miles, and uh it takes about an hour, and it's it's it's super creative time. It's a super creative time for me.
SPEAKER_00I have not tried that one. I'll I'll I'll check it out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I downloaded it in uh I think it was March, and so far I've spoken 400,000 words. Oh my god. Yeah. Well, I I stopped using my key, my fingers as a as an input. Uh I I I talk to the computer, uh, I I talk to my phone. It just well, I'm going from 60 to 70 words per minute to now going to 140, 150.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I don't do it as much as I should, but I much prefer to talk than I do to type for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I hear you. Are you using AI to write the books that that you're currently writing?
SPEAKER_00I absolutely absolutely am. In fact, it's so funny. People are people like, oh, it's not you if you use AI. Oh bullshit. Of course it is. Like it all depends on how you do it. I don't say write a chapter about this. Yeah. So, like, I'll give you an example. The way I'm doing the um the life maxing book that I'm co-authoring a year old. One, he's an AI expert. So he's built an entire LLM, you know, kind of protocol on the back end where it knows a lot about me, it knows a lot about him. He fed it a bunch of our content. We gave it an overall structure. And then what we did was we had an outline of about 40 chapters, right? And then what we did, we we recorded a one-hour conversation between the two of us for each of the 40 chapters, right? It created a transcript. We then took those, we took like the first 10 transcripts, yes, create a uh a chapter structure that best is suited to these 10 chapter summary. It then created a chapter structure. We made adjustments to it, and then um, once we're done, basically we run all 40 chapters through that structure. Um, and then what we do is Joey takes half the chapters and edits them and gives them to me. I take half the chapters, edit them, and give them to him. And so, and not only that, we even give it write examples. So, hey, this is how I talk, this is how I write, so that it sounds like us, and ultimately it is us. It's just we're gonna finish something in four months that would have taken us two years.
SPEAKER_01I agree, agreed. Um, is it fair to say that you're uh an optimist based on what you're describing?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, it's funny. I I'm a little bit of both, right? Because I'm a little terrified about you know, AI deciding that maybe we're taking up, you know, humans are taking up too many resources, and I'm thinking a little bit of Skynet, you know. Um, so there's a little bit of that, like there's a non-zero chance that's gonna happen. With that being said, um the for me personally, what it allows me to do is all the stuff that I hated about, you know, whether it's writing or whatever it might be, I can outsource all the things I hated to AI and keep all the creative stuff myself. And so, like, that's the best of all worlds. And it's so like all the mundane stuff that I didn't like, I can have AI do most of the heavy lifting there, which is why I can write a book in a few months that would have taken me a couple of years. So, um, but I do think that partly because, you know, I'm worried about centralized, you know, digital currency, I'm worried about, you know, um, you know, uh social scorecards and stuff like that. You know, you see people depending on who's in power, you see people getting canceled, you see bank accounts getting frozen. You look at what happened in Canada, where people that donated to a cause had their bank accounts frozen. They weren't even the ones protesting, they were just donating to the people that protested and they were banked. You have people in the UK being arrested for memes. I mean, it so, and and unfortunately, something like 80% of the world's population is easily brainwashed, and AI is really good at brainwashing. So I'm you know, I am nervous, I'm not gonna lie. Um it's gonna be interesting. I don't know how it's gonna play out, but at least I know in the meantime I'm gonna make the best of the good parts for now.
SPEAKER_01What safeguards do you think that need to be in place to make sure that we use AI in a responsible way?
SPEAKER_00Unfortunately, I don't know that there is any way to really have true safeguards. And I think the reason that that's true is you have a bit of an arms race. You know, it's kind of like the nuclear arms race in a different flavor, right? Um, because the difference is with the nuclear, with the nuclear one, like at some point you had mutually assured destruction, right? With AI, while you might have mutually assured destruction, it may not be seen that way. And I think that everyone's racing to get ahead. And once you get ahead, I mean, once AI can recursively learn, who knows what's going to happen. And and if you really understand, and again, because I have a technical background and an AI and a and a deep understanding of AI, like I understand that it's a bit of a black box. Like, we don't even understand how it comes to the conclusions that it does, it's unpredictable by its very nature. And so I don't think there's any way to have real guardrails that would be ubiquitous across the entire world. Um, so I don't I don't I don't I wish there was, I wish I had a better answer. Uh maybe you have one, but I I don't.
SPEAKER_01Well I I mean, probably the most important element of of UCommon was the fact that we're in a in an arms race. And so unless you get to a coordinated orchestrated effort, how do you make sure that everyone behaves in the right way? Um without it. Like if if you have let's say that there's five five parties, if four of them behave the right way and one doesn't, it in it invalidates all of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and the the difference is a nuclear weapon used for its intended purposes will cause destruction. With AI, it's not that obvious, right? Um because you know, once AI can can recursively learn, then you, you know, you again you just don't know where it's gonna go. It could decide that that um, like I here would be an amazing example, an amazing use case for AI. It would be great if there was an AI that was the the closest thing we could possibly have to a real source of truth, right? Um, that you know, it would cut through all the noise and bullshit that you could ask it, hey, what's true about what's going on in Iran, or what's true it's going on with the Epstein files, and you could get a real answer, right? The thing, the only thing is anything I see in the media now, that's the only thing I know that's not true. Like I don't know what's actually true, but the only thing I can be certain of is whatever they're telling me is not true. Yeah, um, and unfortunately, that's the world we live in. We don't have a news media, we don't have journalism anymore, we only have propaganda, not to get too political here. But it's like that would be a great use case for AI, but I don't know that it's doable, unfortunately. I know Elon was sort of trying to do that with Grok, but I don't think it's I don't think it's there, not even close.
SPEAKER_01I mean, from a technology perspective, there's a lot of competence to trying to uh um drive AI from probabilistic to deterministic models, and and so I get the idea, I get the concept, but if we're if we're taking the example around knowledge and and veracity or truth how how how do you get this? Because I mean ultimately who who decides what is true? Is it like the people, is the humans kind of where does where where does the badge of authenticity come from? Because the math is math, you can compute anything, but like kind of like who who decides what is true?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's I mean, you know, the the if someone had told me when you know, say 15 or 20 years ago, that people would have an would actually think that it would be a good idea for 10-year-olds to you know change their gender, I'd be like, there's no way people would agree to that, no way in a million years, and I'd have been, you know, yeah, it's you know, to what's true, we can't even agree what's we have things that are on video from yesterday, and we can't agree about what's on the video, you know what I'm saying? So you're right, you know, understanding you know what's true is that's why I'm saying, like maybe AI could could manage it, um, but I don't know. It's uh it's a it's a it's a tough one.
SPEAKER_01What scares you and what excites you about a future?
SPEAKER_00Again, I would say AI is both of those for me. It's it's okay, it's scary and it's also inspiring at the same time. Like I have never, I mean, I just turned 60, you know, uh a couple months ago, and I have never been able to be more creative in my entire 60 years than I have in the last six months. I've done more creative work in the last six months than the rest of my life combined. And uh it's all because of AI. So it's so incredibly inspiring that um it's a force multiplier. If you already have knowledge and expertise and creativity, it's an amazing force multiplier for that. Um and it really is more around governments and the misuse of the technology that that troubles me.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. Um this is a curiosity question based on my own personal observations, but when I go into a group and inadvertently the question around AI pops up. Um I'm surprised that more people haven't adopted the AI in a bigger way. What has been your experience, you being an early adopter, uh in your 20s studying AI, machine learning? And kind of like so you need your AI native. You understand the two, you understand technology, you understand how to use it. Um in your circle, is this the same? Are people in your circle adopting AI in the same fashion, or are they staying on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens?
SPEAKER_00I think the adoption curve isn't so different from what we're used to. So, you know, first we had the internet, everyone was like, oh, it's a fad. Clearly, not a fad, right? Then you had social media, you know, then you had Bitcoin, right? And I still, you know, to fact the fact that the fact that every person doesn't have at least five or ten percent of their liquid net worth in Bitcoin to me is insane. Um paying any attention um to what's going on in the in the world from a monetary policy standpoint. The fact that people I I know people that have hundreds of millions of dollars and have no none of their money in digital, you know, in crypto, which is crazy to me. Um, I mean, I can send a hundred million dollars to anywhere in the world in five minutes for for pennies, right? If you try to take that from a bank account, it would take an act of God, you know? And so, I mean, they have to like pass legislation to be able to do that. So it but it's amazing that even that's not adopted. And I feel like AI is the same thing. The Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule is unbeaten in human inhuman existence, which is there's always gonna be that 20% that are gonna embrace it, um, and 80% are gonna be late to the game. And I think AI is the same. People are using AI the way that you use Google. Like you don't type, you know, if you just type in a you know, Google, what's the the best movie last year, and you ask AI question, you don't get that different of an answer. And so a lot of people, because that's their they don't know how to leverage it, they're like, oh, it's not that different. It's completely different if you know how to leverage it.
SPEAKER_01Massively different. Yeah, massively different. Um so play uh um following that thread. I'm curious. Do you think that if you're not using AI, if you don't adopt AI early enough, that the gap between people that are not adopting it and the people that adopt it early is going to be so massive that it's it's not gonna be clawable?
SPEAKER_00Um, it's an interesting question. I I don't think that's gonna be the issue because I think what will happen is as AI gets better and better, embracing AI will become easier, right? So, right now, like if I want to write an AI agent to you know review my email and write draft emails, like I could figure that out, but the average person's not gonna be able to figure that out. Um, a year from now, three years from now, anyone will be able to do stuff like that. So I do think that it will become easier to embrace AI. So I'm not worried about that. What I'm actually more worried about is anyone, say maybe past the age of 15, you know, that today, that today is 15 or older. Um to some extent they've learned how to do things, right? The old-fashioned way, if you will. But someone born today, they're never gonna learn to drive a car. They're never gonna know how to do laundry or fold laundry or any of that. They're not gonna, um, and they're never gonna write a term paper. They're, you know, they're it's never gonna happen, right? And so they're never gonna write a line of code, like all the things that I so I know how to do the things the hard way, which a lot which gives me the capability of being more creative when I'm having AI do the grunt work. You know, in my dad's case, you know, 84 year old guy. You know, had AI basically build a mobile app. Now, he would not have been able to do that on his own. Um, but because he had the background and the experience, he was able to interact with AI in a way that allowed him to do that. So, my concern is really for the people that are sort of under 15, where they may never develop the core skills necessary to leverage AI in the in a way that's useful. I don't know, human beings are very um, you know, adaptive. So we'll we'll have to see how that plays out. It's a it's a question. Because you know, think about if you think about the way education is currently, and again, I say this having gone to two of the better schools in the world. If you know, I practically beg my daughter not to go to college. Um, I know I just thought it would be a waste of four years and $200, right? Um, I'm like, I'd rather just give you the money and have you put it in Bitcoin, you'd be way better off. Um, and and so I I think that education in particular is gonna change dramatically here in the next 10 years. Um it's just not gonna make sense to go to and think about how inefficient going into a classroom and listening to you know, a teacher that really hasn't done much pontificate about a topic that you know they might have uh an academic intellectual understanding of, but they've never actually done anything, especially if you look at things like entrepreneurship. My entrepreneurship professors were useless. Um, they never did anything, you know, and they're teaching me about how to be an entrepreneur. Um, as opposed to I can go on YouTube and watch you know talks from the most Elon Musk, from a Steve Jobs, from uh Larry Ellison, you know, the best entrepreneurs you know in the history of the world, and hear about, you know, hear their hear the lessons from them way more useful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. I agree. Um I mean, ultimately, I think that the future of education would be very, very different, very immersive. It will be very much on demand. I mean, there's already like schools that they're kind of like playing. Uh I mean, the old model was kind of the more this already plane on these transplane interests, but if now with with some of these new schools that emerging, like it's dynamic curriculum, it's personalized, it's one-on-one. I mean, probably the biggest biggest observation that they have about around AI is that uh what used to be math is now one. Like there's everything is you can get the personalized personalization for anything and everything.
SPEAKER_00Well, even like for me, I was severely dyslexic, right? Um, my learning style is different. You know, I I would imagine with an AI-driven learning model, you could help someone with a learning disability like I had, you know, you know, learn better, read better, you know, have better reading comprehension, things like that. Uh, kids with autism, ADHD, stuff like that. You know, there's no doubt in my mind that one-of-one education is going to be the way things go. I mean, when I was growing up, homeschooling was very unusual. You know, like only the really weird, like maybe if you're Amish, you know, or something like that. But now, nowadays, it's fairly common, you know, partly because the schools have become pretty woke, but but also just because the education itself, um, I mean, Elon Musk's not putting his kids in private in public school, you know, or even private school. He's, you know, educating them himself. You know, it's not that it is kind of weird when you think about it, that you know, that for so long we chose to outsource the education of our children to institutions that didn't shepherd that with the um with the right level of responsibility, in my opinion, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I agree. Um couple of rapid fire questions. What's a book every entrepreneur should read?
SPEAKER_00So this one might seem a little bit surprising, but my all-time favorite book is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Um, and it's it isn't a book about entrepreneurship per se, but it kind of is. There's a there's a, I don't know if you've read the book, but really, there's a really famous speech in there. Uh, in fact, my the main female character in the book is named Dagny Taggart. My daughter's middle name is Dagny after that character in the book. Um, but there's a really famous speech uh by one of the characters, Francisco Dancona, and it's called the money speech. And he basically, someone he's at a party, and someone says, Well, money is the root of all evil. And he basically gives this 15-page rebuttal about not only is money not the root of all evil, but money is the root of an equitable, you know, value-driven world. Because in in true capitalism, right, in a in a true capitalistic society where the government isn't picking winners and losers, because that's the bigger problem we have right now, is we don't have pure capitalism. We have crony capitalism. We have capitalism that's been bastardized by the government picking winners and losers. And that's both sides. The Republicans and Democrats both do it. Um, Democrats might be a little bit worse, but they're both bad. And um and so this book talks about what capitalism is, it's the free exchange. You're you we basically have to have two willing parties, a person willing to give you, you know, some kind of compensation for a service or product, and it's an equal exchange of value, right? Um and you know, if you've ever read any Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell or any of that, I mean, um, there's nothing that's a better level playing field than capitalism. And I and Milton Friedman had this famous quote where he said, um uh I'm gonna make sure I get the quote right. It was something along the lines of if what you're looking for is equality of outcome, um, you know, you will have you you won't have you won't have freedom and you won't have equal outcomes. Like you can't put your finger on the scale. Um, and the the while you want to have everyone have equal opportunity, it's impossible. It's impossible to have equal outcomes. I mean, I'm five, seven and a half, you know, being in the NBA, probably not in the cards for me, you know. Um, and so is that fair?
SPEAKER_01But being a good wrestler was, that was an advantage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and well, exactly. That's exactly what my dad, I wanted to play basketball. My dad's like, you're three feet tall, you're going to have a wrestling team. And um, but my point is, is that fair? You know, yeah, you know, the other thing that I think that people really get wrong is um, and I consider myself a very humble person. And the reason is I don't feel special, I feel fortunate. There's a very big difference. If I were born in Sub-Saharan Africa dying of dysentery, it wouldn't matter how smart I was or how loving my parents were, how good of an athlete I was, or how or ugly I was. None of that would matter because I'd be dying of dysentery in Sub-Sahara Africa. So, how fortunate for me that I was born on Long Island, New York and not in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, you know, anyone born to the same DNA and circumstances as me would be me. And they'd have accomplished exactly what I accomplished. So instead of patting myself on the back for all the things I've done or not done, or punish myself for the things I haven't done, I'm like, you know, I'm I got dealt a pretty good hand and I feel really fortunate that it played out the way it did. And that's why I try to help other people, you know, that maybe weren't as fortunate as me.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Um thinking about fortune, what legacy do you hope to leave behind?
SPEAKER_00So legacy is an interesting one for me. So I'll ask you a question before I answer it, which is do you know the first name of your eight great-grandparents? No, nobody does. Nobody knows the first name of their eight great-grandparents. These are people you are directly descended from by a couple of generations and you don't even know their first name. The idea of legacy, when I think about a hundred years or certainly a thousand years from now, will it have mattered that I lived? I don't think so. And even if I was so successful that I had a street named after me or a wing in a hospital or whatever, will it really still matter that much? Probably not. And so instead, I I the way I like to think about it is whatever legacy I'm gonna have, I want to try to create and enjoy while I'm still here. And the way to do that is to try to create as many, um, make as big an impact on the people that I do interact with in my life, that I come across, the people that I coach and mentor, the my family, my friends, my daughter, my wife, the people that matter the most to me, to try to make as big an impact for those people because I'll be able to enjoy that during my lifetime. I think that will have the biggest ripple effect. And then the other thing that my wife has really encouraged me to do is do a lot more speaking, a lot more writing, so that I can try to affect more people. And so I am trying to do that just to create as many ripple effects as I possibly can. Even things like the 30 acts of kindness thing with my dad. Um, you know, I'm really excited about that because the goal, it's gonna sound very ambitious. 10 billion acts of kindness in 10 years, more than one act of kindness for every person on the earth. So that's the goal.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's an amazing goal. Um, David, I really enjoy the conversation. Um, I would with your agreement, I would love to drop links to all of the projects you're working on, including your dads. Let's try to promote it. Um I'm not sure if the if the app is out, but but let's promote it. Let's try to get people to uh to achieve 10 at 10 10 billion acts of kindness.
SPEAKER_00I I appreciate that. So we're gonna it's gonna launch July 1st is the is the is the target date. So I don't know when this episode will release. Um, but I'd love to put here's the other thing I'm happy to offer to your audience. So I created a course called the Anti-MBA. Um I wish they had taught me at Wharton, but didn't. Um, four and a half hour course. I never did anything with it. Um, and I've just decided I'm just gonna give it away for free. So anyone of your listeners that would like access to it, happy to give them access to it. Okay. It's a really useful in four and a half hours, you will learn the basics of what you need to evaluate an idea, start, scale, and even sell a business.
SPEAKER_01Is this something? So we're working on launching the future ventures academy. Essentially, uh, we primarily work with scale-up founders, but but we understand that like startup founders need just as much help. So, like, our goal is to launch the future ventures academy, kind of give the content away for free for startup founders and just charge scale-up founders because they have the ability to consume. Is this something that we can put through the academy and just have you coach or teach? I I don't know what the format for the NT MBA is.
SPEAKER_00I'd be happy to do that. Look, at the end of the day, I'm trying to be helpful to as many people as I can. Uh, what I'll do is I'll send you a link to the content if you find it useful that might be useful. Happy to.
SPEAKER_01Please. David, it was an absolute pleasure to have you on. Um, let's stay in touch. Um, and thank you so much for your graciousness for your time.
SPEAKER_00Maxim, thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_01Pleasure.