Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier

Welcome to?The?Art?of?The?Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces?of?content which I hope will both inspire?and?embolden you.

This week’s title came from me actively searching for optimism this week. When the world seems to have lost its mind, I look for the creators, the doers, for the people quietly getting on with their work. They are the people who change the world.

The actual quote Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier is from Colin Powell, Former US Secretary of State.

PODCAST

This week’s guest Today’s guest is Danielle Strachman, co-founder of 1517 venture fund which, in their own words, backs dropouts working on hard problems and sci-fi scientists at the earliest stages of their startups.?Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Prior to starting 1517, Danielle worked with Peter Thiel, and Michael Gibson (who I Interviewed in Series 8, Episode 60) and together, they ran The Thiel Fellowship for five years. For those who don’t know, The Thiel Fellowship was set up to fund students who were 22 or under, giving them a total of $100k over two years so that they could dropout of the traditional education system and pursue important work. The Fellowship guided them through this process which would often involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement.

Past founders backed by the Fellowship include Vitalik Buterin ?who was still a teenager when the fellowship allowed him to drop out and work on Ethereum full time, as well as Laura Deming, the founder of The Longevity Fund and Dylan Field of Figma. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts from.

In this episode, we discuss how Danielle went from tutoring to starting the Thiel Fellowship to venture capital, what common traits the founders she has backed share and the lessons she learned from Peter Thiel.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts from.

QUOTE

“Like an explosive awaiting a spark, unimaginably numerous environments in the universe are waiting out there, for aeons on end, doing nothing at all or blindly generating evidence and storing it up or pouring it out into space. Almost any of them would, if the right knowledge ever reached it, instantly and irrevocably burst into a radically different type of physical activity: intense knowledge-creation, displaying all the various kinds of complexity, universality and reach that are inherent in the laws of nature, and transforming that environment from what is typical today into what could become typical in the future. If we want to, we could be that spark.” ― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

INTERVIEW

Jessica Livingston, co-founder of Y Combinator, and author of Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days talks to Garry Tan about her upbringing, what she knew about entrepreneurship pre-YC and what she and Paul found to be a great formula for startup success through the early days of YC.

The Untold Stories of Y Combinator with Co-Founder Jessica Livingston - watch the full interview here. Also, worth reading this post that Jessica wrote about her life story - I can assure you, it’s not the story you would have imagined.

BOOK

Around the World in 80 Games: A mathematician unlocks the secrets of the greatest games by Marcus du Sautoy

I am not sure what my husband was expecting when he bought this book for our son but it’s even better!

Book blurb: Spanning millennia, oceans and continents, countries and cultures, Around the World in 80 Games gleefully explores how mathematics and games have always been deeply intertwined. Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy investigates how games provided the first opportunities for deep mathematical insight into the world, how understanding maths can help us play games better, and how both maths and games are integral to human psychology and culture.

For as long as there have been people, there have been games, and for nearly as long, we have been exploring and discovering mathematics. A grand adventure, Around the World in 80 Games teaches us not just how games are won, but how they, and the maths behind them, shape who we are.

Buy the book here.

FILM

The Last Repair Shop

This Oscar award-winning short documentary from Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers is a beautiful film. It’s about the public school kids who find solace in music and the master crafts people who work to fix all broken instruments that come their way.

There was a time when every kid at public school in the US had the chance to learn an instrument for free, and these instruments would be fixed for free. Now, LA is the last place to continue this tradition for the children and, thus, offering them a chance to find themselves in music.

A lovely film to end the week on.

Watch the film here. Trailer here.

Thank you for reading?the?newsletter?and?for listening to?the?podcast, and?if you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too. And if you have two minutes, please do leave a review for the podcast - it would mean the world to me and helps others to find it too

Danielle