LIMITLESS: This Is Far Bigger Than The Internet Boom | Shaun Maguire

If America can stay at the cutting edge of space, get to the cutting edge of silicon photonics, if Tesla and then others can basically get to the cutting edge of humanoid robotics, which is something that like I strongly believe is,

why fundamentally cheap space travel will unlock so many things that will actually turn into quality of life improvements for the average person who's left on planet Earth.

you know, people have this mental model that space is very

Picture a guy who treats the frontier like his backyard. That's Sean Maguire. And he was gracious enough to join us on the show today to discuss energy breakthroughs, factory floors humming with humanoid robots, brain machine computers, and space exploration. In fact, Sean's even invested in a company who shoots satellites into outer space to beam light rays back at Earth and turn night into day. This is it's crazy stuff. And he walks us through exactly which of these sci fi visions are already sneakily here today, which will upend entire industries in months, and which have the opportunity to reshape entire civilizations over the next couple of years. Some of the timelines even left me speechless.

And that is what the Limitless Podcast is all about. So, Bankless Nation, welcome to Limitless, where we explore the frontier technologies that are poised to reshape our world. I'm David Hoffman and joined by my co-host Josh Cale, and our very first guest is Sequoia Capital Frontier Tech investor Sean McGuire. Now, if you are hearing this on the Bankless feed, don't worry, bankless isn't going anywhere. And if you found us on the Limitless feed, congrats, you're ahead of the curve. Limitless is a brand new podcast out of Bankless, focusing on frontier technologies and getting ahead of a rapidly accelerating future. Bankless will return to focusing on crypto and Marcus with Ryan and me at the helm. And Limitless is where Josh, Jaws, and I, and also sometimes Ryan, will chase the future. How AI and other frontier technologies are going to impact our lives and what we need to know and do about it.

If you're familiar with the bankless cadence, you'll find yourself right at home with Limitless. On Monday, we're going to do deep dive interviews with founders and investors that are building the future. And then on Thursdays, we have the weekly AI roll-up, our fast-moving recap of the week's biggest AI headlines. Now, I'm pretty biased here, but I think the AI roll-up is truly the most accessible, informative, and engaging AI news show out there. So if all of this sounds like your jam, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube. There's a link in the show notes to go find Limitless. And if you don't mind, we would definitely appreciate a quick five-star review and also sharing it with your friends to help more curious minds stay ahead of the curve. Your support, of course, powers everything we do. And so thank you for coming on the ride with us as we push into brand new frontiers. Now, with that, let's get right into the debut episode on the Limitless Podcast with Sean Maguire from Sequoia Capital. Bakeless Nation, today on the podcast, we have Sean McGuire. He's a partner at Sequoia Capital. Sean's got one of the more interesting backgrounds that I've ever seen. Starting out working as a physicist, uh, working on quantum gravity, then spent time working at DARPA, where he was deployed to Afghanistan, then shifted gears into startups and investing. He co founded a cybersecurity company called Expanse, which was later acquired by Palo Alto Networks. And then he's also been an early backer of companies like Visa, Watershed, SpaceX. At Sequoia, he's focusing on early stage investments, especially in hard and frontier technologies, which is why we wanted to bring him on the show today. Sean, welcome to Bankless.

what's up, guys? Thrilled to be here.

First of all, did not start with quantum gravity, started probably with an F in algebra two. So I've had a a lot of failures before the successes. And unfortunately, I was on early background Visa, I think you meant Vise. And I

Ah, it's excuse.

And just all all good.

Visa would have been pretty legendary, and hopefully Vise becomes even bigger.

Yeah, I guess I guess Visa is just the wrong generation. It's a little bit a little bit earlier than all of us here. So maybe maybe with that, since I need a little bit more help kind of understanding your background, just expand on your perch a little bit for listeners who just might need more context about what your deal is, who you are, and especially as we get into more modern times with all of the crazy technologies that we have today, just explaining a little bit of your context and what interests you and where how your arc has been, I think would be pretty helpful.

I'm thrilled to be here. I've been a big fan of the pod for a long time.

So I'll try to keep this pretty brief, but I would say

kind of my

childhood

was characterized by just like not listening to what I was told to do instead of.

Paying attention in school or like even going to class a lot of the time. I just stayed home or would do, or would even in school would focus on my own learning.

And I've I've basically been obsessed with computers, the internet,

like then physics,

then math.

Basically my entire life. Like computers really started at the age of seven.

And so I kind of sacrificed

not learning English very well for learning a lot about computers at a young age.

And, you know, I took it pretty seriously. I was really into building computers, really into

Like honestly,

understanding like how computers are made, understanding silicon at a pretty

young age, and

understanding a lot of industries. I've just kind of been

driven by curiosity my whole life. I was really obsessed with the chemical industry as a kid. I'm happy to talk about the chemical industry today. To me, it's honestly one of the most fascinating industry in industries in the world. It's five trillion a year in sales. No one knows anything about it. It's bigger than oil and gas, it's where everything comes from.

But it's just like I'm I'm giving that as an example. That's I have a hundred anecdotes like that. It's just kind of being really interested in

different things and spending time going pretty deep

at a young age. And,

you know, now as an investor,

I get to kind of

invest in those things. Invest in things, basically, I get to invest in things that were childhood passions. And so I can make chemicals instance. I'm an investor in a chemicals marketplace called Node, K N O W D E. And almost every investment I've made at Sequoia can be traced to some deep childhood obsession. Like with SpaceX, I was completely obsessed with space from a very young age. Like I started off at the age of nine being obsessed with the solar system, but then

Like starting to learn about rockets and

you know, like

taking that all the way to having a failed space launch company in my early 20s.

But

kind of I think that's what people need to understand about me is that the investments I make now, like it's not

coming from two years of thinking about something, it's coming from you know 20 to 30 years.

I think that that background is really helpful because the reason why we want to get you on today is just really just to talk about all the frontier technologies that really seem to be maturing seemingly all at once. People often joke that the world uh has not been the same ever since Harambe was killed in 2016. But I think I want to actually take that a little bit more seriously and fast forward to the world has not been the same ever since ChatGPT 3.5 came out in 2022. Because now, just a few years later, Elon is catching rockets flying out of the air. We have actual robots walking among us. I just saw a video today of a robot boxing league coming out of China. So that's pretty crazy. Driverless cars are actually in production, driving people around. And then now, also, of course, we have people talking about actual AGI coming in in two years or less. So it just feels like this current moment of time seems especially unique and seems like you've been thinking about a lot of these things as they have been maturing. From your vantage point as an investor in Sequoia, how does this just period of history feel for you right now?

Well articulated.

I mean, uh, this period feels insanely exciting. I feel I I truly feel

like unbelievably privileged and lucky to be an investor in this time.

I have been very passionate about the history of venture capital,

you know, for

honestly for over 20 years. And

I think that if you look in VC, there were

kind of like

depends how you define it, but like two to four really great periods before today. And I think we're, you know, and some examples were the early computing era.

It depends how broad your interests are, but you know, early internet era,

then like the dot-com era.

I would say, in my in my opinion, like the early mobile era was incredible with giant companies being created very quickly.

And now we're in this kind of new era where you have both AI and research of hardware happening simultaneously.

And so I I truly feel incredibly lucky to be an investor right now.

And I think that like to build on that,

I think the AI stuff is more obvious to the public. Like it's

talked about all the time. Like you're, you know,