Daniel Gross – Finding Undiscovered Talent

My guest today is Daniel Gross. Daniel is the founder of Pioneer, an extremely unique company which he describes as a “fully remote startup generator” that helps talented people around the world figure out if their idea has legs. You can learn more about it at pioneer.app. Our wide-ranging conversation covers the art of asking great questions, the use of predictive modeling and psychometrics to identify talent, and why psychometrics are probably overrated and not that scientific. We then dive into exciting new frontiers for tech investing ranging from GPT-3 to satellites. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you will too.   This episode of Invest like the Best is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus has built the most extensive primary information platform available for investors. With Tegus, you can learn everything you'd want to know about a company in an on-demand digital platform. Investors share their expert calls, allowing others to instantly access more than 10,000 calls on Square, Snowflake, or almost any company of interest. All you have to do is log in. Visit https://www.tegus.co/patrick to learn more.   This episode of Invest Like The Best is also sponsored by Assure. Assure is changing the way investors manage private transactions. With Assure, investors can eliminate nearly all the admin cost of private investment. On top of that, they handle all the backend, legal, taxes, accounting, and compliance. All of it, with a straightforward one-time fee. Learn more and try Assure for yourself at https://www.assure.co/patrick.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (3:15) – (First question) – His passion for Crank and Whiplash and why movies are great screeners for interviews (6:15) – Overview of Pioneer (7:56) – Defining talent (10:02) – The equivalent page rank when it comes to people (14:10) – Psychometrics and matter to him (18:13) – The importance of persistence (20:23) – The concept of insecure overachievers (22:48) – Fast twitch vs slow twitch capitalism (24:31) – Importance of memes as it relates to human behavior today (26:14) – The landscape of the type of businesses being formed (29:25) – Overview of GPT3 (33:33) - The Power of Ten Playbook (38:08) – Technologies going from a frontier to a utility (42:45) – Why something like a Starlink can’t be regulated (44:58) – Seed vs leech ratio in capital funding             (49:10) – Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (49:15) – Dissecting Patrick’s usual closing question and good questions for screening people (52:56) – What questions help him get to the bottom of (55:58) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag