7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
Yeah, I would say we're sorry to blow your cover, but it's sounding like that's pretty well blown as no longer the best kept secret in Silicon Valley.

**Hamilton Helmer** (0:07)
I was going to say that the fact that it's the best kept secret says something about my acuity as a good marketer.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:33)
Welcome to this special episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund PSL Ventures.

**David Rosenthal** (0:47)
And I'm David Rosenthal, and I'm an angel investor based in San Francisco.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:52)
And we are your hosts. David and I had a realization. We talk about seven powers on every single episode.

**David Rosenthal** (1:00)
Literally every single episode.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:03)
And in March of 2020, we actually interviewed Hamilton Helmer to talk about the framework. But we estimate that only about 2% ever actually heard that since it was an LP episode at the time. So today, to celebrate the LP feed going public, we are releasing the remastered version of that interview. It's a little like getting in a time machine since that was the last recording we did before the pandemic hit. But every single lesson holds up. And it is a treat to hear about the seven powers framework in Hamilton's own voice and to hear his story behind the book.

**David Rosenthal** (1:37)
When we recorded this, well, hey, you're totally right. Like all of Hamilton's work, it's just timeless. But you were going to fly down and we were going to do it at the Strategy Capital Office, Hamilton's fund that he manages in Los Altos. And I drove down and was there. And then last minute, you said, hey, this COVID thing, I'm a little worried about it.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:56)
I don't feel comfortable getting on a plane right now.

**David Rosenthal** (1:59)
And so you were on Zoom.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:00)
Yeah, I've never met Hamilton in person and you have twice, three times.

**David Rosenthal** (2:05)
At least more than that, I think.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:07)
Yeah, we should do something with him in the early next year.

**David Rosenthal** (2:11)
I, maybe another reason to get this out to everybody now, to get prepared for more coming in the new year.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:18)
For sure. Listeners, if you like this episode and you want more, we also released a book club that we did with Hamilton from September 2020 as a follow up. And just like every other previous LP episode, those are now free and accessible in any podcast player just by searching Acquired LP Show. This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.

**David Rosenthal** (2:40)
So Crusoe, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads. NVIDIA is one of their major partners and literally Crusoe's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s. And because Crusoe's cloud is purpose built for AI and run on wasted, stranded or clean energy, they can provide significantly better performance per dollar than traditional cloud providers.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:05)
Yes, we talked about that on our ACQ2 episode with Crusoe CEO Chase Lockmiller.

**David Rosenthal** (3:11)
The other element that makes Crusoe special is the environmental angle. Crusoe, of course, locates their data centers at stranded energy sites. So think oil flares, wind farms that can't use all the energy they generate, etc. And uses that power that would otherwise be wasted to run your AI workloads instead.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:29)
Yep, obviously it's a huge benefit for the environment and for customers on costs since Crusoe doesn't rely on the energy grid. Energy is the second largest cost of running AI after, of course, the price you pay NVIDIA for the chips. And these lower energy costs get passed on to customers.

**David Rosenthal** (3:45)
It's super cool that they can put their data centers out there in these remote locations where quote-unquote energy happens, as opposed to the other hyperscalers such as AWS and Google and Azure, who need to build their data centers close to major traffic hubs where the internet happens because they are doing everything in their clouds.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:01)
Yep. If you, your company, or your portfolio companies would like to use the lower cost and more performant infrastructure for your AI workloads, go to crusocloud.com/acquired. That's C-R-U-S-O-E, cloud.com/acquired, or click the link in the show notes. All right, listeners, now on to the interview with Hamilton Helmer.

**David Rosenthal** (4:22)
Before and in addition to Rating 7 Powers, you're an active strategy consultant and a public equities investor at Strategy Capital, which is a firm you founded. Before that, you earned your PhD in economics at Yale, and after that, you worked for Bill bain at bain & Company, correct?