The Count

By editor on February 19, 2018 — 1 min read

Now it’s just not enough. Now it’s a count, and for me I have to make sure that I have as much power to allocate, and capital to allocate, against my worldview as others who I fundamentally disagree with.

I fundamentally disagree with the Kochs, I fundamentally disagree with them. So, we just put 20 million dollars into a fleet of autonomous drones that circumnavigate the oceans. We’re measuring all of the climate change, we’re mapping it all out, we’re going to release it open-source.

After that we’re gonna be able to build the next generation of technology that actually slows down climate change. Gets us completely off petroleum and carbon reliance. And so, I’m probably, I need to have 90 billion dollars as well. And my 90 vs their 90, I’m gonna beat ‘em. I know I’m gonna beat ‘em.

And what’s going to happen is, they’re not going to be around for the next 50 or 60 years, and they’re gonna give it to their kids, and their kids will not have any grit or resilience, and so it’ll be me vs their kids, and of course I’m going to beat them.

So now it’s a race. It’s a race of the people who believe that there’s a better way to reallocate all of these things, to get as many people to the starting line as possible. And there’s a bunch of us that actually lived this out. You know, what Zuck and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are doing, it’s incredible. You know? It’s incredible what Elon Musk does. It’s incredible. All of these people have basically said it’s just a count, it’s a number, it doesn’t matter. What matters is can I do more and the more I get, the more I feel responsible to do. That’s like an amazing thing that there are people like that in the world.

And so I get energy from them, and I want to be like them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D82_ppT2iic (26:05)

Posted in: Money

Editor's Note

These are Chamath Palihapitiya's words. They are probably some of the best thoughts on VC, business, and life, but were scattered around the Internet. They live now in this archive.