Cameron Porter on incubations, industrial tech investing, and how to save European tech

I’m launching a podcast! My first episode was with my friend Cameron Porter.

If you don’t know Cameron, he’s one of the most interesting investors I’ve ever met. He started his career in the MLS (where he scored the most important goal in Montréal Impact’s history) and then spent time investing and incubating companies at AlleyCorp, one of the leading incubators in tech. He is now a cofounder of Steel Atlas, a venture capital firm that invests in software and hardware that modernizes the industrial economy.

We discussed when the startup incubator model works well and when it doesn’t, why Europe does innovate but can’t commercialize, why Cameron no longer does crypto investing, and where Cameron sees opportunity in robotics investing going forward. He also gives some hot takes about Ohio and France in our lightning round at the end.

I learned a lot from Cameron in this conversation. I also learned how many times I say “right” or “you know”, the need for a real microphone, and that podcasting is harder than it looks.

Some of Cameron’s key takeaways:

1. Great incubators are built around exceptional individuals, not playbooks. AlleyCorp and Sutter Hill work mostly due to their founders, not their models. That said, the incubator model does tend to work better for sectors with more limited ecosystems where you need to hire more risk-averse talent, like healthcare, and not sectors like consumer.

2. Smaller funds can have an edge against megafunds in early stage by being first. Small, focused funds win deals by getting to conviction quickly and writing the first term sheet. Research-driven investing helps Steel Atlas be that first check.

3. Saudi Arabia has a future as an industrial tech hub. Culturally—and financially—Saudi Arabia is set up to excel in industrial tech projects, but not traditional SaaS or consumer products.

4. Europe has innovation, but regulations hold back commercializing it. Commercializing big breakthroughs—like the Web or the touchscreen—requires 30‑plus nations to agree on IP, domicile, and equity splits, so most discoveries stall or emigrate. And because scaling from France to Germany involves nearly as much friction as leaping to the US, most companies choose to focus on the US.

5. Robotics will scale fastest in factories, not living rooms. Truly general humanoid robots remain data‑starved, so a “ChatGPT moment for robotics” is unlikely in the near term.

6. The three reasons to visit Ohio (Cameron’s home state): It has an incredible aviation history (the National Air Force Museum is there), its population represents the future of America, and it has some of the most interesting chili in the country (Skyline Chili), to which Cameron credits Ohioans’ tall stature.

7. Cameron’s cheeky suggestion to improve France: taller water glasses. The negative stereotypes might be due to dehydration.

Where to find Cameron Porter:

• X: https://x.com/cam39porter

• Steel Atlas: https://www.steelatlas.vc/

Timestamps:

00:00: Intro

01:42: Do incubators really work?

03:50: Where incubators shine (health-care) vs. flop (consumer)

10:57: Does thesis-driven investing work?

16:31: How small funds win

23:15: Saudi Arabia

27:21: TransMutex and nuclear energy

31:27: What’s held back European tech

36:43: AI and Robotics

43:59: Cameron’s crypto journey

51:11: Why visit Ohio

55:09: Why France needs taller water glasses

57:30: Why Greatness Can’t Be Planned

Transcript

Charles Rubenfeld (00:00)

Hello Cam.

Cameron Porter (00:01)

Hello, sir.

Charles Rubenfeld (00:03)

Thanks for hopping on. So this is the inaugural edition of the Charles Rubenfeld podcast, which is a part of the Charles Rubenfeld newsletter universe, which we'll rename with a better name at some point. But you're guest number one, thanks for coming on. I'll give you a quick introduction for the listeners.

Cam Porter is co-founder and general partner at Steel Atlas, an early stage venture capital fund investing in software and hardware technologies that touch the industrial economy.

Prior to Steel Atlas, Cameron was an investor at AlleyCorp, one of the world's leading incubators, and a professional athlete in MLS, major league soccer, for those who don't know. And Cam studied computer science at Princeton with a focus on non-deterministic algorithms and network theory. So that's your formal bio.

Cameron Porter (00:51)

Very formal.

Charles Rubenfeld (00:57)

But I'm going to give my informal bio. So the way I think about Cam is that he's one of the most interesting people I know. I think of him as one of the few people that really thinks for himself. And I consider him a real polymath because I've seen Cam go super deep on everything from crypto to nuclear energy to fitness SaaS. And he knows more about many topics than I think I know about any one topic. whenever I want to bounce ideas off of someone, I think of Cam. And most importantly, he's a great person as well.

So that's why I wanted to have you on as the first guest and thanks for coming on. I think it's gonna be a fun conversation.

Cameron Porter (01:31)

Well, that's a very, very kind introduction. And I can only hope I retain this advantage in knowing more things about many things for some period of time, but probably by the end of this podcast series, you'll vastly surpass me.

Do incubators really work?

Charles Rubenfeld (01:42)

We'll find out. Cool. So, as mentioned in your intro, you were at AllyCorp for some time. AllyCorp is one of the, foremost incubators based in New York City, but also, one of the most successful ones, I think, in the history of VC But overall I kind of look at incubators as something where the results are pretty mixed. It's hard to get real data on this, right? But you see a lot of incubators, especially in the last five years that have launched a ton of companies and most of the, let's say, generational companies that you think of in tech have not been founded by incubators. There are some obvious exceptions to that, Snowflake is one of them. But I'd love to hear your take on not just do incubators work, because I think it's clear that they sometimes work, but how to think about when incubators work, and I think we'll take it from there.

Cameron Porter (02:38)

I'll start with a perspective that is probably useless because it won't help any incubator that's out there, but rather is probably a prerequisite that defines the ones that have succeeded and probably also defines the ones that have not. And it's just very close to like the great man theory of history. It turns out that the great incubators are just run by like really exceptional people. And in so far as AlleyCorp has been such an outstanding success, it's because Kevin Ryan is such an exceptional entrepreneur and individual and leader.

And I think that it's in any ecosystem, it's easy to see someone succeeding at this level or to see multiple people in the case of the group, Sutter Hill that started Snowflake, maybe Atomic and other groups. But the truth is, is that these firms are all led by incredible individuals and arguably they could also be running specific companies doing specific things. In fact, many of them have and been quite successful.

And just fast following and their foot steps, just like fast following and other ones is not necessarily a recipe for success. and so that's probably like the less useful lesson, but I think the truth is it's not as simple as having the capital, being able to produce a pipeline of ideas, chasing down the ideas that works, finding an MBA student capable of running it. And then hoping that you hit venture while returns. I, it just doesn't work and there's a lot of reasons, but essentially you create a lot of incentives for mediocrity and the average incubator or studio model, and you need to get away from those as quickly as possible.

Where incubators shine (health-care) vs. flop (consumer)

And that means that there's certain areas where I think incubations can work really well, especially areas where a firm or institution can create structural advantages and other areas where it works really poorly, especially at least to me in consumer, which is what we found most difficult at AlleyCorp. And the areas where I think it works really well, enterprise SaaS, maybe that's one of them, or at least in certain areas.

At AlleyCorp, the place that we had the most success was in healthcare. I think there's very specific reasons for it is that it's a limited ecosystem. So there's a limited set of buyers. There's a limited set of payers. There's a very important role for government. As an institution, you can know the important people in all these roles. And that means that you can track changes and start companies against changes in the ecosystem quite quickly and be in front of the herd. You also are dealing with an ecosystem where generally speaking, you need to hire senior talent.

That senior talent may be preferential to cash over equity. And that means that you as an incubator who are cash heavy and equity poor have a real advantage in attracting the talent that's like best structured to win in that space. Whereas in consumer or somewhere else, it's probably better to catch lightning in a bottle to have a CEO who's a tastemaker, who's probably younger. These are people who are probably willing to take lower cash compensation. They're willing to go all in with equity. They don't have expensive lifestyles.

You also don't have structural ways, I think, as a firm to figure out what's good and what's bad. And so I think on the spectrum of like, what's interesting to be an incubator, you should look at the areas where there's concentration in terms of information flows, where you can sit at the forefront of that, where taste isn't so much of a factor and where having cash on hand is an advantage. And I think those are things where AlleyCorp saw structural advantages over time and probably will continue to do so.

Charles Rubenfeld (05:53)

Very interesting. I think I'd love to dig in on the CEO and talent side, Because I think traditionally, as you mentioned in startups, many people want to found their own thing, right? if you're joining an incubator, you're going to be getting less equity. It tends to attract a different profile. And so it sounds like what you're saying is, well, there's actually a lot of industries where those incentives are aligned because the people that you need are actually, let's say more experienced, Or come from a different background as opposed to the traditional founder. So how do you think about that sweet spot of when that kind of trade off makes sense, because I think the stigma is you're only going to attract the people that don't have it in them to found their own thing, So we'd love to hear more about that.

Cameron Porter (06:38)

Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately when you're building a company, you can't compromise on talent. And in so far as you're compromising on talent, you've probably dropped the ball from, from day one. And this is probably the failure mode for most incubators. think the number one thing besides that we can, we can get to the economics in a second and why in certain areas it might make sense. It goes back to the original answer is that certain people who run certain incubators are incredibly compelling individuals. Not only because their brand, their experience and stuff brings value, but also because they are quite good at.

recruiting and retaining talent. In fact, that's arguably like why they had been so successful in probably whatever their previous career was at the companies they built and now what they're doing at the incubator in terms of recruiting CEOs. And I don't think that should be dismissed as that. I think these individuals are very good at convincing you that the modicum of equity that you might have in a company is exceptionally more likely to be of whatever you consider quote unquote, well, I guess like F you money.

Right? Like there's like, there's some, there's some threshold where like, if I can convince you that 10 % equity will be worth a hundred million dollars, and that's below, above the threshold that you think is like, I've made it in life number and it really doesn't matter. Like, I think this is the true, like kind of asymptotic nature of like the value of equity in a company is that, you know, past a certain point, whether you expect your stock to be worth 50, a hundred, 150, 200 million. There's some point where, well, you know, if that's like the outcome, I feel comfortable doing it.

At AlleyCorp, Kevin in particular was very good at laying out a path where people could see that occurring in the businesses we were starting. And therefore we would be willing to take lower equity positions than were traditionally expected. And a lot of those people that we recruited almost had the inverse of the traditional founder profile that people would expect for an incubator. I think when people think incubator, they think, well, you find an MBA student, you find someone who has business acumen, and they're gonna go out and kind of start this company. They'll take lower compensation, both on carry and equity in that lease room, for the incubator to succeed.

And I think that's just like, if you start with that framing, you're not going to attract the right talent to build great businesses. I think the more appropriate lens is that there's certain talent in the ecosystem that has like real carrying costs to it. You can imagine a senior executive at a healthcare or in a health network who's getting paid a bunch of money. They have a family, kids, a house and a mortgage, all this stuff. And for them, the risk profile starting the company is quite high simply because they need cash on hand in order to cover their lifestyle at whatever stage in their career they're at.

And those people can be very attractive for starting a business. They may have very specific skills that relate to the areas they're selling into. They may lack others that an incubator is quite good at filling, namely like, do they have a network? Can they meet the right people? If you get them in front of them, obviously you need people that can communicate well, that can sell well, that can embody a vision. But oftentimes there's just things that they lack that you have and you can plug them into very quickly. Maybe they don't have technical recruiting ability, right?

Cameron Porter (09:33)

One of my like very first experiences at AlleyCorp, we were still sitting at a MongoDB and Kevin invited like a bunch of the like founders from the New York ecosystem at the time to MongoDB. We were sitting there and he's talking about technical recruiting. And he said, he started out the conversation. He said, I want, and these were all CEOs. He said, I want you all to raise your hand on who hired an above average CTO. And guess what percentage of the CEOs raised their hand? 100%.

A hundred percent of the CEOs raise their hand that they hired an above average CTO. He then asks like, how many of you are like technical, like you've coded or you have some ability or experience in this and maybe like 25 % raise their hand. He's like, okay. So basically what you're telling me is you're a bunch of guys who have never played basketball before. And you're going to pick out the next NBA player. And you're telling me that you're not just falling for like the easiest proxy, which maybe it was height or whatever it is, whatever the equivalent for an engineer is. And that's like probably one of the biggest failure modes that incubators can really solve for is that.

You can know what good talent looks like to make sure you put the right puzzle pieces around people on executive teams. And I think that's another thing that if you're trying to recruit in the right way and you're not making compromises early on, you as an incubator can be very valuable and structure executive teams that otherwise wouldn't come together. And so that's, I think, really some of the areas that you can play an outside role. And maybe the final one that I think leads to success is that you can often arm your CEOs with distribution.

Like you have a portfolio of companies, maybe you have a portfolio of existing incubations. They have customers. Maybe you can cross sell them. I mean, this is something we definitely leaned into at Alleycorp.

Charles Rubenfeld (11:00)

Another key thesis, of the incubator model is that you could kind of research your way into a startup idea, You kind of go deep on an area and you could kind of figure out what the good ideas are. And I think this is maybe a controversial notion, Keith Rabois I think, has the best line about this that he says he basically never does thesis-driven investing, let's say once every five years, and he says when he does it, then he starts the company, like Opendoor, but that his vision of investing is that a founder actually comes to you and brings up an idea that he's never heard of before, never really thought about, but the founder knows so much about it and makes a compelling case. And that's kind of the only way he says he's found a lot of success in this kind of thing.

What do think about that idea? Like, can you research your way into good ideas? if so, like, how do you find that balance between things that you can research your way into versus maybe ideas that can only be discovered out in the wild by some founder doing it themselves for a couple of years or something like that.

Cameron Porter (12:11)

Yeah, I guess I'll start with just like the broader frame of that, is some level of research is necessary. Like we can't actually argue about that. No research is valuable. Like, let me just make it, I'll take it to the extremes. Cause that's often the easiest way is that like, imagine you didn't speak English and I put an English book in front of you and it was the best English book of all time. There's nothing you can do to access whatever is insightful in the English book. If you don't speak the language.

Cameron Porter (12:37)

And the truth is, is that I think you need some level of understanding of a certain domain in order to be able to even understand what good looks like. And Keith, I think is an incredibly talented and intelligent investor. And he's someone who's probably incredibly well-read and he knows a lot of people. And I think he probably has a surprising amount of context and a surprising number of domains that often align quite well with what he invests in. And he probably has a deep understanding of how businesses work. And those understandings of business models apply to almost every sector.

And all these things mean that he has an incredible amount of context that allows him to be a very effective investor in many places. That being said, like, I think there is a difference between having the ability to recognize or intuit that something's a good idea or feels right and getting to the point where you have something that you are going to start a company behind or build as a studio. And I think that goes back to kind of what you needed to do at AlleyCorp or what we did at AlleyCorp that worked well and what didn't.

I think it's very hard to start from square zero where you say, look, like we're just going to get in a room as a team and come up with 12 ideas that we think are interesting. This highly inorganic process just doesn't work. it's not the way in which an incubator operates. think the way an effective incubator operates is much closer to what a founder is doing. You're just trying to do a lot of like founder journeys in parallel. And what I mean by that is that you spend your time and I mean,

I learned most of this from Kevin, like Kevin would have in Apple notes, a little note where he's just day in and day out tracking problems that he hears about not only within his own experience in the world, but from the founders and CEOs, executives, so on and so forth that he interacts with. And in so far as there's something that piques his interest, he's then spending more time iterating, trying to find that, trying to see if it's reflected in other people's experience. And in so far as that process continues, then at some point it makes the point of saying, okay, like I actually think there's an opportunity to put resources behind it. And what does putting resources behind it mean?

It means that you structure the idea in a way that it can be packaged and pitched to someone else in the form of a literal pitch, i.e. to investors or someone you're trying to recruit. Or I think what's often more effective and where we would spend time is as a sales pitch where we've identified the persona or people we're trying to sell into. We pitched the company like it's real and you get feedback. And ideally the feedback you get, you don't get, which is the most common kind of feedback is, this is incredibly interesting. People love being asked for their opinion on things and being sold things. And you would get told things are interesting day in and day out.

And that's actually the worst reaction. You'd rather have someone tell you like, no, this is stupid for this reason, because then you can adjust it and improve that reason or say, yes, this is incredible. Like, can I actually buy it? And you're like, no, it doesn't exist yet. Um, and so at AlleyCorp, the way we thought about it was kind of going down these iterative paths of these, many founder journeys. And our goal was not to get to the point where we had the perfect idea that we thought would last forever, but rather we were pointed in enough of the right direction that we recruit the best person for carrying out the last 20 % of the journey, which actually takes 80 % of the time.

And that was kind of the whole point is that ultimately the quality of the idea was measured by your ability to attract the right talent. Ultimately that 's always what it comes back to. Kevin would always say talent is kind of the oil of our industry and the ideas quality is measured by the talent that you can recruit to run it. And then that CEO that you attract the people that they can hire. And the earliest signal we had on whether we should keep or kill an idea was whether or not that talent came together quickly and cohesively. So I think there is a real way to research yourself into an interesting opportunity, but it's not just like sitting on your laptop.

It's just going out into the world and trying to interact with people who have real experience, hear what they're saying, and then kind of reflect and package those things in a way that you get real feedback on it. And I think that is like a real process, but I don't think it gets you all the way there.

How small funds win

Charles Rubenfeld (16:12)

Makes sense. So now you're at Steel Atlas and I think you're getting the taste of venture at, let's say a smaller scale. You're a co-founder of the firm, smaller fund. And one of the themes lately in VC is that a lot of the capital is going to much larger firms, the Andreessen's of the world.

Cameron Porter (16:30)

Who was that? I've never heard of them.

Charles Rubenfeld (16:38)

Yeah, right. So I'd love to hear about both your experiencenow at a smaller fund, winning deals, investing, but also how you're thinking about the next couple of years. Do you think it's sustainable that more and more capital is going to these larger firms? How do you think about emerging managers for the next couple of years? Obviously, you guys are going to do incredible, but maybe as an asset class, how you're thinking about it too.

Cameron Porter (16:54)

Mm-hmm. There's always outliers.

I'll start, I'll start with how you can win as like a smaller fund or an emerging fund or however you want to put it. And then we can go into maybe like, what are the dynamics in the market that are playing out and how will the ecosystem shape up between these multi-stage mega funds and whatever you want to call these, these smaller funds. So in terms of winning, and I think the reason I wanted to start there is that I think it kind of starts with having a perspective, which goes back to.

Cameron Porter (17:29)

Maybe the question you were just asking as to why having a focus, having a thesis, whatever you want to call it is a valuable thing is that yes, there are times where a founder can quickly convey an idea and you want to act on it you want to move quickly. But a lot of the times, good ideas take, take time. Funds go through diligence processes. They're not, not do, they're not just wasting their time when, when a fund does this work. and oftentimes the best way a fund can win a deal is by simply being the first to get to conviction and commit to the founder.

Turns out that really matters is that as soon as a16z, Lightspeed, Founders Fund commits to the deal and you decide to commit after with that information, it's essentially a meaningless commit. you're like, you're just a follower, no matter what, how much commission you would have had in the first place. But if you come to that deal in the first place and you're willing and able to move fast, you can win deals that maybe otherwise when they've fully explored the market, you wouldn't be able to because of these large multi-stage firms playing in the space. And so I think that a lot of the advantage of being a small fund is your ability to move quickly.

the ability to be a small partnership that makes decisions, the ability to have context in certain areas that you're maybe more expert in than others, and the ability to have a network that's much more focused on the domains you're interested in investing in. And all of these things let you access opportunities that others might not be seeing as quickly. It allows you to make decisions on those opportunities faster. And ultimately, like, venture is a people game, and it allows you to convey to the person on the other side, a founder, why you might be a useful person to them to spend time with.

And I think the other thing that shouldn't be underestimated is just founders are choosing to work with people, not firms, a lot of times at the early stages. So in so far as you're an interesting and personable individual, I think that goes a lot farther than people might expect on the outside looking in. I think it was like a Columbia Business School survey where they were asking founders to rank their most important factors in selecting an investor and had investors do the same. But there was a large mismatch just in terms of the ranking overall. And the biggest one was just that founders ranked

the person as like the highest factor on that list. And so I think there's something very true to that. And that doesn't go away. It doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to win as a small fund because you're a better person, but it means that the playing field may be more level than you expect. in terms of the like ecosystem as a whole, I actually think this divergent is, is good and actually a natural process that'll fix one of the biggest problems in venture today, which you hear about is liquidity, right? You have companies staying private longer. You have LPs asking, when are they going to get their money?

Cameron Porter (19:55)

And the real issue is that if you're investing at a very early stage and you have a company that's staying private for 14 years, it's been a really difficult situation. But I actually think that the division where we have many smaller funds, maybe primarily focusing on like pre-seed seed to like early A and then multi-stage funds that maybe touch on that, but really deploying most of their capital later on, you have a natural dynamic that I think will evolve where early stage funds are really providing the taste making.

They're having certain perspectives, specific views, they're building early position, ownership positions that are quite large early on. And then you have these multi-stage funds that are structured and actually like designed where they need to get to basically 30% ownership in a comp, in a winter in order for it to be a meaningful exit for their fund and where they're deploying most of their dollars at the later stages. And what that means is that there's an opportunity now where early stage funds that are not focused on this like large follow-on strategy can be a seller to these multi-stage funds as they get to the later Series C, D, E, so on and so forth.

And we're already seeing liquidity and secondary markets pick up. We've seen phases where secondary funds have ballooned. We're also seeing private companies create more structure around offering secondaries, whether that's SpaceX, which I think is most emblematic of this, or Databricks or Stripe. And suffice to say, I think the nature of markets is this is going to extend to more of the ecosystem. And more of those sales will come from smaller funds selling to larger funds that need to build and hold a position prior to IPO.

Cameron Porter (21:21)

And that gives smaller funds ideally liquidity within this 10 year time horizon of the standard venture fund. And it gives these larger funds the ownership positions they need to justify the however many billions of dollars they've raised. I think the real question it asks is like what happens in the middle? And I would say that's a good question.

Charles Rubenfeld (21:38)

I guess the challenge also is a lot of these funds with much larger AUMs are also going even more early stage too in the last couple of years. there's, I guess that risk as well, right? Which is that they also crowd out, some of the earlier stages as well. But I think to your point, you still have an advantage as a smaller fund, more on the people side as it's earlier.

Cameron Porter (21:59)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, look, like there's, there's real signaling challenges and honestly, like incentives matter. I think one of the easiest incentives that we talk about with founders is if you're a relatively small proportion of a big funds book or something like that, you're actually not much of a priority until you earn that. It doesn't mean you can't earn it, but it also means that if you don't earn it, you're not going to get the support that you might need in these early days.

I think as a small fund operating in this space, think that especially without follow-on, you create very aligned incentives. After you've deployed your capital into the company and you're sitting on the board, your incentive profile looks much closer to the founder's incentive profile than it does to a venture fund. And insofar as they want balance between you and other large multi-stage funds as they come to enter the cap table, you can serve as someone that's more or less on their side. And I think that's actually incredibly valuable in fast growing companies.

Saudi Arabia

Charles Rubenfeld (22:59)

I want to talk about two different regions that I think you have a lot of interesting things to say about. So the first is Saudi Arabia and the second is Europe. So starting with Saudi Arabia, I think you've spent some time there and you've also gotten to know the ecosystem pretty well. I don't know much about it except what I read in the paper.

So I'd love to hear what the average person in tech that doesn't know it well, doesn't really understand about Saudi Arabia today, but also what the conventional wisdom where it's correct. Maybe so things that surprised you and maybe things that actually didn't surprise you that much.

Cameron Porter (23:38)

Yeah. I think, let's see, where should we start? I think that it will start with the average American. I mean, we can, we can go to tech because it's a narrower view. I think the average American would be surprised how much they would enjoy living in Saudi Arabia. Like that's probably, that's probably number one, at least, at least, I mean, the areas I have exposure to, which is like primarily Jeddah and Riyadh, they're going to look more like your favorite American cities than other places, right?

Charles Rubenfeld (23:54)

Ha

Cameron Porter (24:05)

And I think that people would be surprised by family life, like the community that you have. I think a lot of the values that we espouse in America that we want to care about, God, family, and love for our country are things that you'd probably find in very surprisingly high quantities in Saudi Arabia. And I think that's something that would probably catch people off guard when they went there and met and spent time with people there.

Now, I think on the flip side, I think there's things that we broadly get right. Right. Like I think that Saudi has come a long way and a lot of our views are based off of policies that were in place prior to the reforms put in place by MBS. And I think that during the during those those times, especially as it related to kind of women and work and all and all this stuff, there's a lot of views that were just correct. And it's I think it's very hard for us to update our views at the pace at which things are changing there.

I think that I don't know if I'll get these numbers exactly right, but if you look at like adult female employment numbers globally and use that as a proxy or some proxy for women's rights, I think Saudi like recently exceeded the world's largest democracy, which was India. And I think it's on track to continue to push past them. And I think it's interesting to see the rate at which this changed, but the views that we have about Saudi Arabia as like a backwards country, quote unquote. I think stem from things that were very real in the past and maybe less so today.

Charles Rubenfeld (25:39)

Makes sense. And maybe on the tech side, I think there's this emerging tech ecosystem, there's a lot of high profile deals, both for Saudi investment in America, but also, American investment in Saudi companies. So in 10 years, is this going to be a big tech hub? Is this going to be, a bigger tech hub than places in Europe or, how are you thinking about the next 10 years there?

Cameron Porter (26:02)

Yeah. I think that where I see opportunity is in the areas that we invest in. So namely things that touch the industrial economy in part, because that's where culturally Saudi has a lot of experience and it's been quite effective. They're very good at deploying capital around these large projects, especially industrial projects. They're very good at operating those things productively. That being said, think, I think one of the things that a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem requires is a large level of like heterogeneity of thought, a large ability to explore a culture that wants to support and lift up individuals.

And I think that's a uniquely American culture. think that's why, one of the reasons why America is so good at this. And I'd say a lot of those characteristics are not necessarily what describes the Saudi ecosystem broadly. And so I think that there's, there's, there's going to be a lot of areas where Saudi can succeed. And I think a lot of that opportunity is actually working with foreign companies and giving them access to the skill, this talent, the infrastructure that is getting built up versus saying that we're going to jump into starting the next stripe out of Saudi Arabia.

I'd be much more skeptical of that than the industrial side of things. And I think the investing ecosystem is starting to recognize that. I think that one of the things that made me very optimistic is groups like the Saudi Industrial Development Fund. That has been one of the largest Saudi loan groups for building infrastructure, now getting into the equity side of things and trying to do so in a way where it's incentivizing companies to come and access the programs in Saudi.

And I think those have been more difficult to get up and running in areas where you're dealing with kind of what traditional SaaS and consumer SaaS. Just because I just, I don't see the same cultural background that makes Silicon Valley so good at this. And this is not unique to Saudi. This is something that's a global challenge in replicating kind of this like very open, free flowing nature that happens in the Valley.

TransMutex and nuclear energy

Charles Rubenfeld (27:48)

Speaking of the global challenge of trying to replicate US tech, I think you've also had unique exposure to Europe. you're on the board of Transmutex, which I think would be great for you to kind of give us a walkthrough of that company because it's fascinating. But they're based in Geneva and I think you've had more exposure to European tech as a result.

What would you kind of apply the same analysis that you're doing on Saudi to Europe? So what you've learned, being really close to a European tech company, maybe on the nuclear energy side in particular, what you've learned. But yeah, we'd love to hear kind of how you're thinking about the future of European Tech

Cameron Porter (28:30)

Yeah. So we have decent exposure to European tech out of our first fund. We have a company based in London and then one in Geneva, TransMutex. We've been working with TransMutex the longest. It was one of our first investments out of the fund where we, we co-led the series A with Union Square Ventures. What makes TransMutex interesting is that they are basically solving three of the core problems with nuclear energy that have held back its adoption globally.

And those three problems are, where do we get the fuel? Namely, enriched uranium. To highlight the nature of that problem, we buy a large part of our enriched uranium here in the US from Russia. It's the only place where we didn't have sanctions on Russia during the war. So you can see the potential implications there. And most countries would like a sovereign control of their fuel supply, whatever that fuel may be. So finding a path to do that is very important, and TransMutex does that.

Number two is that as much as people may not want to talk about it, nuclear reactors do produce high level radioactive waste. One of the main components of that and the reason they do with the current uranium fuel cycle is because nuclear reactors in the U.S. were designed as part of the Manhattan Project and we were looking for a very specific output from them, namely plutonium 239 to make bombs. As soon as you stop making bombs, plutonium 239 goes from one of the most valuable military industrial complex assets to a very costly thing to deal with.

And we built a bunch of reactors that produce a very costly thing to deal with. So transmutex enables a new fuel cycle around thorium. This solves fuel sourcing. But when you use thorium, you don't produce these levels of high level radioactive waste. So it's much more sustainable. And then finally, the last piece is that that fuel cycle is non-proliferant. One of the biggest issues globally today is that the US cannot use nuclear energy as a policy tool in the same way countries like Russia and China do because we're concerned with proliferation.

We can imagine a world where we want nuclear in every country in Africa. We want people to have air conditioning. We want people to have access to LLMs. I think when I look at the numbers for like Grok's chips, essentially every time you query a Grok chip, it's the equivalent of like turning on an AC unit for yourself. So if you imagine like we're going to give a billion people, 2 billion people, 3 billion people access to the models and they're going to be running and doing things in the background for you all the time, think of how many AC units that is turning on.

And you start to really see the need for nuclear. But if we don't have a way to get nuclear to different places in a non-proliferant way, I think it's a huge, huge issue because countries like Russia are willing to do that. They're willing to not only give you nuclear reactors, but they're willing to finance it. So now you're both in debt and your energy is controlled by Russia. And maybe that country can build a nuclear weapon. These are all bad things. And the nuclear fuel cycle that TransMutex enables eliminates these issues.

So for all those reasons, I'm incredibly bullish on this company. And the company is incredibly interesting because it's really like, a spin out from CERN, which is the Center for Nuclear Research in Europe. through that relationship, we've gotten a lot of insight into where is all the European technology. Now, CERN is a fascinating place. CERN was started after World War II as a solution to brain drain. So during World War II, scientists were moving from Europe for very good reason to the US, and Europe saw this as an issue. And so they wanted to create a project in order to attract those scientists back. And that was CERN.

What’s held back European tech

Cameron Porter (31:54)

And a lot of cool stuff has come out of this aggregation of scientists where they have roughly a billion dollars per year to spend on advancing particle physics in particular. Just to name like a couple that I think people sometimes associate to other places, but are really centered in CERN is like, number one, Tim Berners-Lee and the internet was really first developed, at least the protocol at CERN. And a lot of that was because of the amount of data that comes out of these particle collisions. And that's still been a reason why they're at the forefront of data processing, especially at the edge.

Number two is they actually developed the first touchscreen. Now they didn't commercialize this thing. They didn't commercialize anything related to the internet. And I can make a whole list of things that they didn't commercialize. And the reason is like as European, as you would expect, at least from Americans perspective in that there's a number of countries, like over 30 countries that contribute to the budget. And now let's say we have this great idea to make, you know, like touchscreen cell phones or something crazy. I don't know. And we're like, great. Like let's spin this out.

Cameron Porter (32:53)

Well, the challenge is now we have to make a decision. Do we start a UK company? Do we start a French company? Do we start a German company? Well, I don't know. One of these countries is going to benefit. They all contributed roughly an equal amount, maybe different amounts in different years. And then we have to figure out how to allocate the IP. Is it just go to CERN and contribute back to the budget? The amount of allocations change per year, or does it go to each individual country? That's a very complicated question too.

And the best solution that you can come up with is actually we just should avoid this problem altogether. Science for science sake, no commercialization. So what actually happens is a lot of these great ideas end up going elsewhere. And I think this is kind of the going elsewhere is the problem with European tech.

And let me lay it out in another way that isn't so tied to a specific research institution, is that now let's imagine a situation where you're a French company, right? You're doing great. And you're growing, you're growing, and you've kind of tapped out the French market, and now you need to pick the next country to go to. If the EU was really this great unified economic zone, it should be so easy for you to go and operate in Germany or the UK or wherever it is. And that would be great. And cause then we'd have more EU tech companies and we'd have people investing in them. The problem is that it's not as unified as you think. TransMutex has subsidiaries and multiple countries, many of these like tech companies do. And so when you face the decision of, I like go from France to Germany or the U S it's basically equally as hard.

And so the natural incentive is to go to the US because it's a bigger market, has more capital markets because the friction is roughly equivalent. And then once you go to the US and it's bigger than France, you essentially become a US company. So the US is constantly pulling all of the best companies because of both our capital markets, but also just these natural frictions into America. And so they never like end up growing up in Europe. And so I think if the EU is to be like very successful, you need like a very liquid market where it's much easier to go operate in a bunch of countries than picking the US as your default.

Cameron Porter (34:45)

And I think that's probably one of the, if you want to argue for like a strong Europe or a stronger EU, I think this is one of the things that need to be solved. But overall, what I'm seeing is that what's happening between the US and the tariff policy more globally is that it's been a real kick in the butt for countries. And these people are having real conversations. Like I've been a part of them because of the companies we work with. And I think that we're going to see countries trying to pick winners in critical industries.

I mean, this was one of the core theses of our fund is that when we started it, a couple of years ago was that de-globalization was happening because people were recognizing that there were real risks and that as like different crises and volatilities emerged, people would want to localize certain industries. And that's not unique to the U.S. As much as the U.S. often likes to believe we're a special flower, every other country also thinks in very similar ways and wants to secure critical industries. And so we're likely to see like successful nuclear companies in a variety of places, even if the technology is not absolutely better than it is than an American company.

Cameron Porter (35:44)

So anyway, so I think now is a very interesting time to be working in the European ecosystem. I think I am optimistic that there are going to be new and successful companies that come out of there. I think there's a lot of the European population that is now ready to back them, not only for economic reasons, but for strategic reasons as well. So it's very interesting times. Maybe the last point I'd add is that Germany has actually started a group called Sprint to specifically invest in innovative technologies. It's basically the equivalent of like DARPA, but with a broader mandate.

And I think that you're going to see more countries doing the same thing. And I think this is going to mean that more technologies are going to stay there for longer. And hopefully more talent in Europe is going to be actually pushed to build things.

AI and Robotics

Charles Rubenfeld (36:29)

I hope so. Speaking of these more hardware and robotics type industries, there have been lots of funding rounds for humanoid robotic companies. Tesla is obviously one of bigger ones here, but you also have Figure and have a ton of companies trying to tackle this. How should we think about the success here? Because at the end of the day, LLMs today can do things that PhD level students or better can do with o3, but most humanoid robots still struggle to do basic tasks that a four-year-old can do.

So how are you thinking about the future of robotics? Are we going to see a really rapid scale up in the next couple of years as AI is able to just, in a generalized form, do these things? Or is it going to be a pretty slow roll? Or where are the opportunities here?

Cameron Porter (37:18)

Yeah. So I'll start with, I'll start with the deployment of robotics and then get to human rights. think that the deployment of robotics is going to speed up. And the reason is basically tied to LLMs in that a lot of the challenges, whether you consider like a CNC machine, a robot or a robotic arm or robot, whatever you draw this line, one of the gating factors on making these systems work and work effectively is actually programming them. You have a specific part you designed it in CAD and you need to convert it to G code to use for your CNC machine.

Now the rate limiting step there is often not even access to or using the CNC machine. It's taking what you've designed and putting it into a tool path format that actually works. And I think that a lot of those difficulties are being solved very quickly right now. And insofar as those bottlenecks are addressed, we're going to see a wider deployment of robots. It's going to be means that more people can adopt the more advanced CNC machine. means that more people are going to be able to adopt the robotic arm.

And therefore we're going to see continued deployment of these systems at, I think, a larger scale than we've seen before. And there’s companies like VM Robotics, which Alleycorp is very involved in. In fact, Alleycorp had a dedicated robotics fund that's now morphed into a broader deep tech tone for a long time because this was like the default view there was that this is happening. On the humanoid side of things though, I think it's a more difficult proposition, at least for me. I think you're right to say that it's likely data limited in terms of what makes these things effective. And I guess I personally have philosophical views around this in that.

Like at least for me is that operating a robot or operating in the world requires, I think, access to the world. And you really need to understand it. And it requires a lot of data. When we look at what LLMs had access to, it was a treasure trove of a derivation of the real world without the thought process that produced the derivation. And I think it's very hard to go from the derivation back down to the base. And maybe there's ways, and obviously Nvidia is working on simulations to help us do that.

But my belief is that the world is messier than you think. It seems that at every level, you have some version of this problem where if you're just at the beginning of figuring out like you're a doctor or you're one of the first doctors ever, right? You look at the body, like, you two eyes. Okay, they're symmetric. They're two hands. Okay, we probably have two hearts. it turns out we have one heart and it's on the left side. And it's like every time you think you kind of have the pattern down, reality gets a little bit messy.

Cameron Porter (39:41)

And I think reality works like that in more ways than we think, probably more ways than we even are conscious of when we're interacting with the world, but yet we somehow intuitively deal with. And so I think we have a long way to go for building up the resolution of data required for a general purpose humanoid or not robot to go out there and operate with a high level of reliability required for the tasks that I think we imagine them being useful for. And the tasks that are very narrow are likely, like will favor very narrow applications. And that's why industrial solutions will continue to see robotics adoption that is way faster.

I think that, you know, I think it's still though leaves open the opportunity for like a chat GPT style moment in some regards, or at least like a waking up, mostly because I think we haven't seen the final form factor for AI hardware, right? I think a lot of people thought, I mean, we can look at the history. It's like internet leads to like the home computer. We have cloud leads to mobile and the iPhone. And then the question is like, what is the, what is the paradigm shift in terms of hardware with AI?

Cameron Porter (40:41)

I think people thought like maybe humane was that they were the early shot or the other things, but those didn't really catch on. had a brief moment in the sun, but there should be a hardware form factor that is AI native. And maybe humanoid robotics could be that. I don't think we've seen it yet or that's clear, but also it could be something else entirely. I think Ben Thompson talks a lot about kind of this arc is that we think often in terms of applying the new technology to the old paradigm, and maybe this is part of his bear case for Apple is that this is what they're trying to lock us into.

But at some point, someone's going to be willing to invest in whatever the appropriate application of AI is. It could be glasses, goggles, or it could be humanoid robotics. think we don't know, but someone will make a lot of money in that moment. It'll be viral because I think it'll be revelatory, not because everyone will get access to it right away, which is one of the big things that made ChatGPT so special is that we could both tell our grandma to log on to ChatGPT tonight, and they could have the same experience. And obviously, you're not getting that with humanoids or VR glasses or whatever it may be.

Charles Rubenfeld (41:38)

My quick follow up there is do you have a strong view on what form factor wins out in the next 10, 20 years for how, well, for how we interact with AI, maybe more on the individual side. So you mentioned glasses, you know.

Cameron Porter (41:48)

I will tell you, I, if I look at how I use AI today, which, which is interesting, I would say in the work setting, it's more of a structural tool. It structures and creates constraint. It organizes my inbox. It ensures that it checks my work. does a variety of things. It parses PDFs.

The way I use it personally is that when I read in the morning, I now do so with headphones on and I have chat GPT open. And it's basically like a reading plus conversation where you know, maybe like Kant like references some other Austrian philosopher that, you know, in the past I would never have been like, who is this guy? And now I just say like, who's this guy and what was his important contributions and what made him interesting.

Charles Rubenfeld (42:34)

And you start every morning reading Kant, of course.

Cameron Porter

Of course, I mean, every morning it starts with Kant. We make sure to cover, you know, the rationalist, the idealists and yeah, the empiricists.

Charles Rubenfeld

Then you get to Hume later by 11am.

Cameron Porter

And then now with chat GPT, you can get it all done in a day. As long as, and then it leaves, mean, by Friday, like God knows what you've covered at this point.

Charles Rubenfeld

Exactly. Your mornings look a little different than mine, maybe.

Cameron Porter (42:51)

The point is that the friction of those interactions and the fact that you can now like go and access these things, at least for me, like that's what conversation enables. Like now I use, the other thing I use a ton is whisper flow. The amount of voice interactions that I have where I'm like, I talk the text in and it comes out in the format I want, or I engage and their level of engagement I have with these systems has gone up.

Cameron Porter (43:21)

And so I'd be much more biased to believe that it's some form of ambient compute or it's some form of like AR glasses seem much more viable to me where they're revealing the information that I want in a structured way based on not only just what I'm saying, but also the environment in general. Like maybe it knows that I'm looking at the book and it knows don't show me like facts on everything, but if something's a sufficiently obscure reference, just like pull it up in advance.

And I think, I think those things seem like intuitively to me what, would be magical versus like who just doing things like that. I don't need signs to tell me what the streets are in New York. Like, right? Like that. It's not that interesting. Right. But there's like, I think this type of like fluid information, things that you traditionally wouldn't have had access to is very intriguing to me. And at least the form factor that I'm currently gravity gravitating towards.

Charles Rubenfeld (44:07)

So might be a while till you have the Neuralink chip in your head that's doing this for you.

Cameron Porter (44:12)

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I want to do that.

Charles Rubenfeld (44:16)

You want to be second to doing that, right? Is the answer.

Cameron Porter (44:19)

Yeah, I want to be second by a few years. Yeah.

Cameron’s crypto journey

Charles Rubenfeld (44:33)

So, want to dig into crypto as well. So, you spent actually quite a lot of time on crypto and you're quite bullish on it. And then I think you kind of had a bit of a change of heart in terms of, you know, where you want to spend your time. And now obviously, Steel Atlas, right, is not really crypto-focused at all. So tell me about that. I don't know if change of heart is the right word. You I think you've mentioned that you're still bullish crypto just in a different way. But, you know, maybe what got you excited about crypto and making you think it's the next big investment theme? And then like why you're not doing crypto fund now, right? Why you've found these other ideas more interesting and more exciting.

Cameron Porter (45:02)

Yeah. So I'll start with what my gateway drug was, in crypto, and then we can get to how it played out and how my views, have evolved and where I am today. So I got into crypto, it would have been like 20, 2015 through 2016 and really that like 2016 period was kind of.

Charles Rubenfeld (45:06)

Yeah. You're supposed to say the price you bought Bitcoin at. That's the humble brag.

Cameron Porter (45:32)

Well, I'll mention the ICO that I almost did. That was totally worthless. Yeah. But it was, it was called ad coin. but basically what happened was I was playing, I was playing pro soccer at the time. I needless to say, if you're a pro athlete, have relatively more free time. You don't have more freedom. You can't go wherever you want, but for at least half your day, you can do whatever you want. and one of my very close friends from Princeton had gotten hired by a boutique investment bank that was going to help a group do an ICO on Ethereum. And they did not know what Ethereum was and whether it was a reasonable thing to be doing and having studied computer science, my friend reached out and said, what do you think of this?

I had at that point not gotten exposure to it. And I was like, wow, this is a fascinating protocol. We had learned about Bitcoin and other forms of like, of cryptographic methods, like at Princeton. And so it was, I was like very fascinated. I was like, oh, this is cool. Like maybe I'd love to like participate in this with you. And so I put some capital into Ethereum at this point in time, and I was going to put some portion of that to go into the ICO.

Between when I put the money into Ethereum and when the ICO was supposed to occur, I don't know what the exact number is, but Ethereum went up some number of Xs

Charles Rubenfeld (46:39)

Too much.

Cameron Porter

Too much. At which point I became an Ethereum maxi because that's what capital does to you. a larger portion of the Montreal and sporting KC teams are crypto holders because of this period of time than probably the average pro soccer team. But anyway, so that was a gateway drug and I spent a lot of time like over the years I was playing deeply engaged in the ecosystem because I think this is like one of the beauties of crypto is that you, anyone can access it, anyone can participate. And it provided a very interesting forum for being engaged in technology at a time where there was really no real venue for me elsewhere.

Now the beginnings, this is the beginnings of my learnings in terms of what I've ultimately concluded about crypto and why I've not continued investing in the way I did in the past is that. The vast majority of the things that I spent time researching, putting time into, we know we're interesting for a period of time, but almost always did not have any lasting effect. And almost all the good ideas got incorporated as EIPs or into protocols directly in some form. And so it, it almost felt like I was racing this uphill battle where you're constantly trying to be at the front of this learning curve, which is a very fast moving learning curve. You're chasing protocols.

And then the best ideas get directly back incorporated, or at least the value doesn't. And this goes, I think the fat protocol thesis that USB put out definitely had a lot of influence on me. Just got collapsed right down back to Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, pick whatever the protocol is. And for me, that felt like a lot of wasted energy is that if you're going to spend your time working hard to support an ecosystem, if all of the value is accruing back to the thing, which is the easiest to hold, why am I not holding that thing?

Cameron Porter (48:25)

And maybe I'm just like, maybe I'm a bad crypto investor and other people make money on these very durable things over long periods of time. But I think it's hard to point to a like on-chain protocol or project or whatever it is, where it's a 10-year thing or beyond. And I think that's something that's a little bit challenging and potentially disappointing at this point. Like there's a reason Coinbase is a winner. It's because it's basically getting you structural exposure to the underlying protocols, right? It's not because it gives you exposure to all these individual products or it does it periods of time. And so for me, I think as I thought about where I wanted to spend my time, number one, I came to this realization that I was doing a lot of chasing for things that I didn't think were going to be durable, even though I think there's incredibly important problems that can be solved by decentralized protocols, right?

I really believe there are solutions and identity. I really hope that companies like Ritual are going to figure out how to integrate AI and blockchain in a meaningful way and give us more optionality there. And I think all these things are incredibly important, but at least for me, it was not the most satisfying place to invest. And I kept on coming away with the feeling that I would have been a better investor had I done less, not more. And what I found in the areas that I'm investing in now is that when I do more, I actually feel like I'm a better investor and I'm making a meaningful contribution.

For example, like in nuclear, I really do feel like we've been able through the work we've done and the research we've done, been able to take positions that are different and that those positions potentially will have a very real impact on the world in a way that I think is meaningful and that I care about. And that was less clear, at least with the projects I was chasing and trying to invest in in crypto. So yeah.

Charles Rubenfeld (50:09)

Yeah. I mean, to give you some credit here, if you just say your conclusion, from 2021, 2022 was basically hold Bitcoin and like the rest is maybe not as interesting or maybe not as worthwhile, That looks like a pretty good trade. mean, Bitcoin's done well.

Cameron Porter (50:27)

Yeah. Well, yeah, suffice to say, though, I was sufficiently financially punished to learn the lesson, right?

Charles Rubenfeld (50:32)

Sure, sure. But at least my outside take is maybe some coins have gone up quite a bit. I'm sure some people have gotten rich on meme coins, but if you take a more macro view, crypto is still underperforming the last three, 40 years on actual outcomes. Stablecoins have done well, but outside of Bitcoin, it seems like that's been the trade, is just stay in Bitcoin.

Cameron Porter (51:01)

Yeah. I mean, that's, I would say just to give my other forward view is that even two years ago, I would have been way long. I probably would have been closer to an Ethereum Maxi than anything else. And I would say I've in this continued direction gone farther and farther towards Bitcoin Maxi. And that's, that was probably, I think that's probably the evolution. I think I could have told you in 2017 that I was chasing a lot of different things. And probably if I was just like a good, prudent investor, I should have just bought the Ethereum and held it and not done all the other stuff. But I think I would have been less likely to say there was a world where I thought all of my exposure to crypto should be big.

Why visit Ohio

Charles Rubenfeld (51:42)

Well, hindsight's 20-20 on this stuff anyway. So I want to do kind of a quick fun lightning round if you're up for it. So you were born in Ohio and you grew up there. I don't think I've been to Ohio. Actually, I think I've been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is in Cleveland, maybe.

Cameron Porter (51:46)

Yeah, well, I haven't been to Cleveland or the Rock and Roll. So we've covered most of Ohio together. Together we can put together an interesting perspective.

Charles Rubenfeld (52:12)

Okay, okay. Okay, there we go. Should I go to Ohio? What am I missing? And yeah.

Cameron Porter (52:17)

I can think of three compelling reasons to go to Ohio. Number one

Charles Rubenfeld (52:24)

Rock and roll Hall of Fame.

Cameron Porter (52:17)

Yeah, well, yeah, I guess I have still one reason remaining. I guess maybe four, but number one is you have family there. I think people from Ohio are great. And if you have family in Ohio, you should go visit them. Family is important. Number two though, is if you like airplanes. I think the most underrated thing in Ohio is, well, it goes in conjunction with the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is one of the nation's largest and where they do a lot of R and D and maybe have some aliens, who knows, depending on who you talk to.

But we also have the world's largest like Air Force Museum. And if you want to see the largest collection of like Air Force planes, Apollo program planes, missile silos, everything, then you got to go to Ohio. And that's because Ohio is, despite what North Carolina might want to say, the home of the Wright brothers. And so I think it's

Charles Rubenfeld (53:11)

So is there a connection here to your investing today? Is that the origin story that we can tell?

Cameron Porter (53:16)

Yeah, I mean, the origin story is that I mean, I have much more on the history of Dayton Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, which is where I'm from, is really one of like the hearts of like industrial innovation. Like if you if you if you see the Sloan Kettering and Kettering family stuff here, like that's an Ohio family. And there was a group of people in Ohio that invested a lot of not only airplanes, but a lot of the early technology around automobiles until the flood in 1913. Ohio, Dayton, Ohio was a very vibrant thing. It could have been I think people people would be remiss not to believe that it could have been the Silicon Valley of the Midwest, if not for the Great Flood.

But, you know, history is history. So, there's that. There's the airplanes. NRC, mean, arguably the first mass scale computing device that was distributed ever was the cash register, and that was developed by the National Cash Register Company or something. I don't know. NRC, whatever they stand for, which is still in Ohio. anyway, so number two would be the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

I think number three, is that Ohio is a great place to go to. It's the seventh largest state. It's like truly the center of the country. the cities are blue. The outskirts are red. The people interact a lot. You have a lot of immigration. And I think it actually is like a real swing state and a real sampling of where America stands. I think it's, also telling like in this last election that Ohio was read for so long and wasn't considered a swing state. And yet actually that was like the clearest indication of where the country was.

And so I think that if you're interested in what Americans quote unquote believe, then Ohio is a great place to visit. And the final thing I actually throw out, so I've beyond line three, is that if you want to taste the weirdest chili in your life, come to Ohio. So look up Skyline Chili. It has Greek origins. So it's a Greek spice chili that has a spaghetti base. I think it has chocolate and cinnamon in the chili and then a literal mountain of cheddar cheese.

Cameron Porter (55:13)

Like a plate like this big of cheddar cheese. And that's what Ohioans eat. And that's why we're so tall. It's because we all grew up on Skyline chili.

Why France needs taller water glasses

Charles Rubenfeld (55:21)

Skylight Chili, okay. So you grew up in Ohio, but now you are married to a French woman and you spend a lot of time in France. Before this, you were telling me a bit about ideas for improving France or something along those lines. So why don't you tell everyone your thoughts on France and some cheeky ideas for improving France.

Cameron Porter (55:44)

I thought number one is that I really like France. So before I share my idea and all the implications that go with it is I really do love the place. But that being said, if you were to stereotype Paris, a lot of people would say, you know, they're kind of negative, they're kind of critical. Like they're not the most welcoming bunch, although they did quite well at the Olympics. People said that it was a nice place to be.

And I actually think that the solution to this is quite simple, is that if you really wanted France, to the best and happiest country to visit. All you have to do is fix the water glasses. The whole problem with France is the fact that there is no water glass that's taller than three inches high. And you cannot drink enough water if you tried.

Charles Rubenfeld (56:25)

So you're thinking they're dehydrated all day.

Cameron Porter

I literally think they're dehydrated. They compensate by smoking cigarettes and it's just a perpetual cycle. And so the critique, the looks, this is all a function of dehydration. And so a simple solution is just mandate glasses that are at least five inches tall, keep them filled with water, don't force people to drink Evian once a day or whatever it is, and you make France a much happier place.

Charles Rubenfeld (56:49)

Okay, well, now that we gave a suggestion on how France can get better, what can New York City learn from Paris? What can we learn from the French?

Cameron Porter (56:59)

Hmm. What could New York city learn from the French? Number, number one is that like street level seating really matters. I think when you have street level seating that goes into the sidewalks, it both slows the sidewalks down and it makes the whole city human scale. I think that it's very disappointing that New York is in the process of getting rid of the biggest benefit from COVID, which was restaurants having seats on the street. I think that that makes cities interesting to explore. And Paris is like arguably.

I mean, I would say like one of the best, if not the best city in the world, because you can meander everywhere and everyone is walking the streets, being in the streets and they benefit from the architecture. But New York still has a lot of that and we need to move away from our favoritism for cars because they're pretty useless here in the city. Electric Citi bikes are great. I think France has a better deployment of these public bikes. So I think if New York leaned more into that, we continue to be an even greater city, which New York already is. Like I do like New York quite a lot. I've been here almost eight years.

Why Greatness Can’t Be Planned

Charles Rubenfeld (58:00)

We've talked about the book, Why Greatness Can't Be Planned before. I think it's had a pretty big impact on how you think about the world. So maybe first explain what the book is and what its message is, but also how it's impacted your journey in your career, your life, and all the ways.

Cameron Porter (58:04)

Yeah. So Why Greatness Can't Be Planned is a book that was written by two computer scientists out of the University of Florida when they were studying AI in the dark ages of AI before we know what we knew now. But I think they came up with some really interesting conclusions. And the main one is like the title of the book. It's like Why Greatness Can't Be Planned, sub of text, the myth of the objective. And what they do in the book is they lay out a number of tests they did in terms of how could you develop AI systems that were robust and did interesting things?

And it turned out the best way to do that was a search for novelty. And the most interesting, or think illuminating, kind of experiment they did is they had a pixelated image. So you'd call it like 64 pixels or pick a number. And then they would have a system that would generate permutations from that pixelation. And you'd get to pick one of them. And then you could do it over and over and over again.

And then they did this test where they had people, one group of people where they'd say, your job is to produce a flower, your job is to produce a car. And then they had people rank like how beautiful or interesting the image was. And then they had another group of people where their only goal was to produce something novel. What ended up happening is that the people that set out to produce flowers never produce flowers. People set out to cars, never produce cars. They always produce something kind of meh.

And then the people that just sent out to produce what they felt was interesting ended up producing things that looked like aliens, flowers, and cars, and they got ranked very highly. And I think this is really illuminating about life is that I think there's a lot in life you can't control, but you can control your sense of intuition and draw. We're all unique people, and we have a taste for things. And I think insofar as we can cultivate that taste and allow us to guide us into areas that others might not want to be in, and we do that over and over and over again, it's really our only way to end up in situations that I think have the chance for greatness.

Because I think it's great, like the idea that you can have a specific objective and achieve greatness is almost antithetical to it. Because if there is a specific heuristic for getting somewhere great, it's tried and true. You know the path to good and people walk it until it doesn't suffice to be great. And I think the beauty of life is that you get this opportunity to just go walk out into the unknown and you should just do this over and over and over again.

And I think eventually you'll find yourself somewhere incredibly interesting. Maybe others will call it great. Maybe they won't, but I think that's where you will feel the most satisfaction. And that's probably been true. I mean, that has been true for me. So we'll see. My life's an experiment. We'll see where we end up. but it's been good so far.

Charles Rubenfeld (1:00:54)

I think that's a great place to end. So, where can everyone find you?

Cameron Porter (1:01:01)

Let's see. think @cam39porter is my handle on most platforms, including Twitter. It's a nice homage to when I made my Twitter account after I school.

Charles Rubenfeld (1:01:10)

We need to get you to tweet more.

Cameron Porter (1:01:12)

Yes. Yes. You know, I think whisper flow will help with that is now the friction is sufficiently low. So I'll take that as an injunctive for my takeaway from this episode is to share a little.

Charles Rubenfeld (1:01:16)

Okay. There you go. Thanks again for coming on. It was a great convo and we'll talk soon.