regulatory frameworks

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Todays show:

Alef’s Jim Dukhovny joins Jason to discuss different approaches to flying car tech (1:16), Alef’s vehicle design (9:17), commercial aspects (22:39), and more!

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Alef’s Jim Dukhovny joins Jason

(1:16) Alef’s mission and the different approaches to VTOL and flying car technologies

(8:25) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at http://www.vanta.com/twist

(9:17) Alef’s approach to vehicle design and use of existing technologies in a new format

(12:10) Technical details of Alef’s vehicle design, including propulsion systems and structural innovations

(14:27) Challenges of designing flying vehicles that function both as cars and aircraft

(21:11) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups

(22:39) Commercial aspects, including pricing, customer pre-orders, and manufacturing plans

(26:13) Regulatory and certification challenges and the potential timeline for bringing the product to market

(32:46) Zendesk - Get six months free at http://www.zendesk.com/twist

(34:16) Ballistic parachute systems in drones, planes, and Alef’s vehicles

(38:53) The long-term vision for autonomous flying cars

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Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtzuL3WSiGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gzdo107SmE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBCUQlF3MMU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxaFFuN1vpc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT4buS7avd4

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Follow Jim:

X: https://twitter.com/AlefAeronautics

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimdukhovny

Check out Alef: https://alef.aero

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Follow Jason:

X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

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Thank you to our partners:

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Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

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Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

A reading of Palantir CEO Alex Karp's recent essay for the New York Times and discussing the military applications of artificial intelligence. Links: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-artificial-intelligence.html https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/u-s-china-competition-and-military-ai ABOUT THE AI BREAKDOWN The AI Breakdown helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI.  Subscribe to The AI Breakdown newsletter: https://theaibreakdown.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to The AI Breakdown on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIBreakdown Join the community: bit.ly/aibreakdown Learn more: http://breakdown.network/

My guest today is Sebastian Kanovich, CEO of payments company dLocal. Sebastian founded dLocal in 2016 to bridge the infrastructure gap between payments in developed and emerging markets. Since then, the initially bootstrapped start-up has enabled global merchants like Uber, Spotify, and Google to service billions of emerging market users. And in doing so, dLocal has created $10bn of equity market value, having IPOd last year. Our discussion covers dLocal’s playbook for facilitating payments in emerging countries, what Sebastian has learned about great API building, and how he challenges himself to improve personally. Please enjoy my conversation with Sebastian Kanovich.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is brought to you by Pilot. Pilot handles your startup’s finance, accounting, and tax prep needs, so you can focus on what matters most—building your business. Join over 1,000 startups that rely on Pilot to help them scale. Founder’s Field Guide listeners get 20% off their first six months. Get in touch with Pilot at https://pilot.com/founders.    -----   Founder's Field Guide is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Founder's Field Guide, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:02:13] - [First question] - His take on global payments, what is interesting about this system today, and dLocal’s role within it [00:04:06] - Approaching a country that could benefit from low-friction payments and the playbook for helping them improve their system [00:06:10] - Differences between being an API business versus a protocol one [00:07:13] - What companies handle these systems outside of emerging markets and why they haven’t entered the emerging market space [00:08:59] - A specific example of the steps involved in getting a country integrated into global payments for an app or service provider [00:11:22] - Whether or not they interact with consumers [00:12:09] - The trading and foreign exchange component of global transactions [00:13:16] - Country specific product teams and consolidating their process [00:14:52] - What he would look for in early-stage payment companies to invest in [00:16:23] - Defining excellent when it comes to working with regulators and regulatory environments [00:17:53] - Their role in digital globalization and trends that might arise in the future [00:19:52] - Ways that low-friction payments have helped accelerate regional innovation [00:21:31] - The unit economics and costs of a single payment  [00:24:05] - What the source of cost is to process a payment or transaction [00:25:10] - Variables in currencies that make them desirable to work with [00:26:38] - Lessons learned from distribution and customer acquisition of their service [00:29:23] - Advice he would give to developers building API products [00:31:16] - An example of wanting to build a function into an API that was never built [00:32:40] - How they’ve been able to move and scale so fast [00:34:23] - Ways their business could most improve [00:35:14] - The operating system he uses to run the company [00:36:38] - Ways he’s most improved or gotten better as a CEO over the years [00:37:58] - Why deep humility is such an integral part of his character  [00:38:30] - The biggest mistake they’ve ever made as a business and what they learned  [00:39:20] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

My guest today is Arianna Simpson, who has spent her career in an around the world of technology working at startups, Facebook, and now in venture capital as an investor focused on the world of cryptocurrencies. I met Arianna when I hosted a panel at a big investing conference in New York City and she was one of the panelists. On the panel, I found her style to be very straightforward and compelling. It is clear that she loves to learn and that the best manifestation of her style of learning is investing in technology. In our conversation we discuss broad trends in crypto that we haven’t spent much time on before: decentralized versus centralized exchanges, privacy coins, and evaluating a found or early team. We build a framework for learning about this new asset class, discuss the importance of travel, and the value of pushing oneself outside of comfort zones. Hash Power is presented by Fidelity Investments Please enjoy our conversation For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 2:12 – (First question) – How to teach someone else to build an investing philosophy around crypto 4:00 – The major risk factors to investing in crypto 6:28 – best practices for mitigating risk 7:39 – What factors to think about when it comes to whether a token will lose all value or not 8:39 -  Taking a pulse of the investment community on crypto 11:36 – How she heard about and became interested in crypto currencies 12:34 – Are people really using crypto currency as a hedge against rampant inflation 13:52 – Investing thesis in the space 14:07 – Arianna’s systems for learning about cryptocurrencies and staying up to date on them 15:19 – Arianna’s take on the issue of increasing transactional through put 16:49 – Layer 1 solutions and making it all scalable on a blockchain 17:56 – her take on the fat protocol thesis 20:32 – Defining utility vs security tokens 21:54 – evaluating different coins 21:02 – Why cross currency swaps are important and how they work 26:17 – What are the chances of a scenario where there’s just one token and everything is built off of that one 28:02 -  Comparing centralized and decentralized exchanges 29:47 – How the traditional investing world is going to regulate transaction involving cryptocurrencies and view security around those transactions 31:54– Impact this will have on capital formation 33:44 – Evaluating teams behind crypto companies 35:48 – The importance of gut when evaluating people 38:47 – How Arianna’s global upbringing impacts her thinking on the technology 39:51 – What countries or regions have had the largest impact on Arianna’s investing philosophy 42:41 – Doing things you’re not qualified for 43:59 – Gender imbalance in crypto and what can be done to shift that 45:28 – Most recent thing that has gotten Arianna excited in the crypto space 46:15 – Explaining Zero X 47:33 – How her views on reading have evolved 48:54 - Kindest thing anyone has done for Arianna Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag