What's Real And What's Fake In Tech - EP 56 Peter Barrett

**Peter Barrett** (0:00)
I think we're on a period of incredibly rapid change, and there are exciting times ahead, but there is reason for caution.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:26)
Our guest today is indeed Peter Barrett. This is a special episode for me, at least, in that Peter is a general partner at Playground Global, which is a venture capital firm that was investing in hard tech before it was cool and has been kind enough to let Core Memory come to life inside of its confines. And so I don't want to get too emotional and sappy, but I will say a very, very heartfelt and deep thank you to everyone at Playground who's let us set up the studio in here.

**Peter Barrett** (1:02)
Of course. Delighted to have you here.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:04)
As usual, you guys are chasing and supportive of people doing interesting things in the deep tech world. So it was a great home for us. So very happy. I'm going to do a quick background on you. And then I just wanted to describe what is outside our doors to people a little bit. But so Peter and I have known each other for a long time. Although this podcast, we've never had like a proper get to know you conversation. We're always nerding out on things. And so this is a nice excuse for me to dive into a couple of stories about you that I've always been curious about. But as people will find out from your accent, you're Australian, you're born in Sydney, or at least grew up in Sydney, got to Silicon Valley relatively early by way of your coding expertise, became a Internet multimedia guru of sorts, doing Web TV, doing early video codecs for the Mac, and then becoming a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, and then doing some startups along the way, which we're going to talk about, and then becoming an investor.

**Peter Barrett** (2:10)
Yes, all of that's true.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:12)
Okay, and so people know. Peter is interested in many things. It goes deep on them. You do not have a deep formal education. I think you dropped out of college quite early.

**Peter Barrett** (2:24)
Amateur enthusiast. Yeah. Like one year at the University and do a lot of reading.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:29)
But can talk physics or gene editing with the best of them. And so, okay, that's the intro. We're going to go all kinds of interesting directions today, I think. Why don't we, I don't want to do a Playground ad, but this is a very unique building. We're in hallowed ground in some ways. This used to be a Fry's. It was the Fry's in Palo Alto. For people who don't know about Fry's, go Google it. It was the best electronic store imaginable. I'm sure Steve Jobs was walking around these hallways at some point, buying bits and pieces alongside Was. So yeah, but you guys took this building over and you describe what is outside our doors to people.

**Peter Barrett** (3:10)
Sure. So in a building that before it was Fry's was a cannery, when Silicon Valley made apricots instead of apples going back to the 20s. But Playground is an unusual deep tech venture firm. So we have a building here in Palo Alto with about 380 people in it, across about 35 companies, some of which are portfolio companies, some of which are companies that have interesting adjacencies.
But within these walls, there are scientists and engineers who are creating absolutely novel results in their domains. And then we have a venture firm full of nerds, right? That all the GPs here at Playground are engineers. We've all built technologies. We understand the mechanism of the things we invest in. And we've got a team of scientists and engineers, PhDs in bioengineering, nuclear engineering, AI, material science. And they work with our portfolio companies to develop technologies that almost certainly won't work, but will be consequential if they do. And as an engineer, it is a very fun day at work.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:18)
Yeah. Yeah. And you guys have, you've got full on massive hardware lab with CNC machines and laser cutters. There's an optics lab, an electronics lab and the startups can hop in there and prototype and do things.

**Peter Barrett** (4:35)
We've got lots of different ways to collaborate with the portfolio on their technology. And so working side by side with them on building fixtures for quantum computers or using lasers to do novel things. I guarantee that this venture firm had more liquid helium in it than any other venture firm. And there are some stains on the floors from PsiQuantum's early days when they were here from three people through to about 90 people.