Investing Like A Mystic: How Cyan Banister Finds Outliers (Co-Founder of Long Journey Ventures)

Speaker A: You've been one of the best investors, I would say, of the past 15, 20 years. Your track record is truly astonishing. You know, SpaceX, Uber, Pokémon Go. Speaker B: But what I'm doing is taking in all the sensory input around me and watching everyone's behaviors. The companies that have had the largest returns in my portfolio came from the most unusual places. Uber came from thinking about the taxi medallion system. I didn't come up with the idea of Uber, but I knew there was a problem. I knew there was a racket and there was a bottleneck, which was only a certain number of drivers can exist.

Because it's throttled. And that's a problem. Whenever you notice humans' obsession, pay attention. You know, Pokémon Go, that happened because I noticed my friends playing this game called Ingress and they were obsessed with it. And I thought to myself immediately, this is my one and only chance to invest in something I think is going to change the world. Eventually you'll be able to vibe products like physical objects, like vibe manufacturing is going to be a thing. Million-dollar idea you've been sitting on for years, you can now take it on Shark Tank.

And I think we're going to have so many newly minted millionaires across the world. Might not be venture-scalable companies, but they're going to be life-changing for those families and create wealth that has been unprecedented in those communities. Speaker C: Cyan Bannister has written that she is never playing the game that she appears to be playing. At 15, that meant sitting on the curb reading Kurt Vonnegut, to capture an older crush's attention. Today, it's an apt description of how she's built one of the most successful investing track records of her generation, with early checks into Uber, SpaceX, DeepMind, Niantic, Postmates, and Andrew Hill, to name just a few.