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John Lilly

John Lilly

Venture capitalist and former CEO of Mozilla

Jul 21, 2026

8:29
And also, can you tell the listeners what the definition of an alpha nerd is?
8:34
Yeah, I mean, alpha nerds, like, I think maybe Tim O'Reilly coined this term.
8:38
So Tim O'Reilly also coined the term Web 2.0.
8:41
He had a, a big publishing company that almost everybody bought their books to learn how to code, and he's, he's a good friend now.
8:47
He helped start Code for America, where I was on the board.
8:49
So Tim, Tim defined alpha nerds, like these are the, these are the people who are the most technical, who are exploring and looking around and trying new things out.
8:59
You know, in the '90s, they were like the guy at MIT who's like all cyber punked up and he'd have, have a, a camera mounted on his head and like a display, a big display on, in front of him, and like he'd be wearing a laptop around to like record all his information, and obviously that, that future didn't happen.

27 MINS LATER

36:22
But what, you know, from an investment perspective, what's, you know, what's the lens that you would be applying?
6:15
Yes,
6:15
exactly.
6:16
Yeah, which is fine.
6:18
I'm not self-conscious about it.
6:19
I mean, if I was self-conscious all the times I'm wrong, it would be a bad life.
6:22
But yeah, you told me about it.
6:24
I was like, well, I don't think that's going to work.

28 MINS LATER

34:16
So how do you think about this and, you know, who are some of the people that have been that kind of special relationship for you with folks that you're younger? And obviously I think like Dylan, but others.

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