Tyler and Daniel Gross Talk Talent

**Tyler Cowen** (0:03)
Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit conversationswithtyler.com.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. What we have for you today is an actual conversation.
I'm here with Daniel Gross, who is an angel investor, venture capitalist. He entered the startup world at a very young age. He ended up working for Apple. He founded a search engine called Q. He was, I think, the youngest ever partner at Y Combinator. He now is the founder and CEO of Pioneer, a venture capital firm. But most importantly for me, he is my very good friend and also co-author of our new and forthcoming book called Talent, How to Identify Energizers, Creatives and Winners Around the World. Daniel, welcome.

**Daniel Gross** (1:08)
Thank you so much for having me, Tyler.

**Tyler Cowen** (1:11)
Let's start with a simple question. Talk us through what is a good interview question. Pick one and tell us why it's good.

**Daniel Gross** (1:18)
You know, we're going to get to that in a minute, but I actually had a question on my mind for you.

**Tyler Cowen** (1:23)
Sure.

**Daniel Gross** (1:23)
As I sit here and I'm holding a can of Diet Coke in my hand that I'm going to crack open, I was wondering, you know, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Lawrence Summers, Warren Buffett, John Carmack, all of these people drink Diet Coke. What do you think is going on with that?

**Tyler Cowen** (1:39)
I think they have habits of nervous energy and more energy than they know what to do with. And there's no series of challenges you can present to them that exhaust all of their kind of nervous intellectual mental energy.
So it has to go somewhere. Some of them might twitch. Some of them just keep on working basically forever. But also drinking Diet Coke is a something you can do. You feel it's not that bad for you. It probably is really bad for you.
The quantities just get racked up. I've seen this in many high achievers. What's your hypothesis?

**Daniel Gross** (2:09)
Yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. Of course, you know, I mean, many people in America drink Diet Coke. You know, I don't exactly know what we're selecting for, but that would be boring to just leave it there.
I did wonder if this amazing molecule we discovered called caffeine is really good, and maybe these very high achievers are just slightly caffeinated all day long. There's also something very, you know, neurotic about getting too worried about, you know, is aspartame good for you, bad for you, regular Coke, cherry Coke, just drink it and move on. So there's a kind of sturdiness there.
Maybe, in fact, it is really bad for you, and the people who manage to be very productive while consuming it, you know, are spectacularly good. It's like dead lifting on Jupiter, you know, there's extra gravity. Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. I kind of do wonder how much of what we assume when we think about talent, you know, how much of it is innate versus just, you know, environmental.

**Tyler Cowen** (3:00)
I wonder if there isn't something super short time horizon about a lot of very successful people, that the task right before them has to seem so important that they'll shove aside everything else in the world to maintain their level of energy and as a kind of collateral damage, maybe some long term planning gets shoved aside as well. It just seems so imperative to win this victory now.

**Daniel Gross** (3:22)
There is something definitely I'm struck by when I meet a lot of the very productive people I've met in my life. They seem to have extreme focus, but also extreme ease of focus, meaning it's not even difficult for them to zone everything out and just focus on the thing that's happening now. And you might ask them even like, how do you do that and is that a special skill that you have and what type of drug are you taking? And they look at you with a dazed and confused face.
So anyway, you asked me what is a good interview question.

**Tyler Cowen** (3:48)
But maybe you gave us one, right? So say you gave the Diet Coke question to someone who came to you with the startup. What would count as a bad answer?
And why? Why would it be bad?

**Daniel Gross** (3:58)
I think in interviews in general, a very simple thing to look for. I'm still, by the way, I should mention a preemptive huge asterisk that I'll only say once on this podcast, which is, I may say, different hypotheses that I have, but they are opinions of a student, not of a master. So I'm still learning.