In Episode 4, my guest is Adeo Ressi, a legendary figure in the Silicon Valley tech industry and startup world. He is the co-founder and Chairman of the Founder Institute, an early-stage startup accelerator. He is also the founder and CEO of VC Lab, an accelerator for Venture Capital Firms.

He’s a good friend of Elon Musk's - they shared a house at University together and is incredibly well connected with Silicon Valley VC's, Investors, Entrepreneurs and other influential figures in the startup world.

In this episode, we start by talking about the upsides and downsides of public profile. We then talk about Adeo's early experiences and concerns about the world, including the Cold War and the power of centralized media. He explains how this led him to develop his first internet based business.

We get into his mission to transform the world of venture capital and startup investment, starting with his efforts to address the imbalance of power between investors and entrepreneurs. This led him to create The Funded, a site where entrepreneurs could rate venture capital investors. This helped to stamp out unethical practices in the Venture Capital industry.

His involvement with The Funded led to a realisation that many entrepreneurs needed help to develop venture-fundable businesses. He attacked this problem by creating the Founder Institute, a pre-seed startup accelerator. We discuss the challenges faced by startups and the venture capital industry and touch on the importance of technology and innovation in creating positive change and solving global problems.

The conversation then turns to how the friendship between Adeo and Elon Musk developed, their early entrepreneurial ventures, their shared vision for human colonization of Mars and how Adeo and Elon's collaboration led to the creation of SpaceX.

We then move to the sense of urgency that Adeo has in taking action to solve the world's problems - best summed up by the following excerpt from our conversation "We have to literally like burn the ships, burn the bridges, right? Salt the earth. We need to just take action. If the world's on fire, drop what you're doing and run and put it out".

We close by talking about how we can all make a difference by replacing our current practices with more sustainable alternatives.

Key Topics

00:00 Introduction to Adeo Ressi

08:03 The Power of Entrepreneurship and the Internet

29:01 The Creation of The Funded

37:02 The Power of Technology and Innovation in Creating Positive Change

52:45 The Friendship and Shared Vision of Evan Maindonald and Elon Musk

01:03:53 Urgency of Taking Action to Address Environmental Issues