Brad Hargreaves
is currently building the real estate + tech newsletter and media company Thesis Driven.You might also know him from his days:
selling antique furniture on ebay,
building massive multiplayer games and then a game studio,
founding the coding school General Assembly,
founding the co-living company Common, or perhaps
as a drummer for the great 90’s band Third Eye Blind.1
Ploymath . . . infovore . . . generalist . . . writer . . . multiple successes and failures . . . obscure real estate interests . . . all around nice guy, husband and father . . .
Yup, checks all the Random Walk boxes. OK to proceed.
It’s a really good interview. and boy, are these are fun.2
Here’s the youtube link (with some timestamped chapters below, if you prefer to watch and subscribe that way, and I always recommend listening at 1.5X speed.
Brad Hargreaves has been founding companies since he was an undergrad at Yale. From Massive Multiplayer Gaming to a coding school to a co-living company and most recently a media company, there's no domain where Brad won't go.
Start: Becoming an entrepreneur from Alabama to the hardscrabble streets of Yale University
12:32: On generalists v. specialists
18:53: Learning from key failures in proptech
31:31: Founder superpowers and most underrated skills
42:50: The worst advice founders get
49:55: The future of VC
53:27: Proptech needs to die
58:34: A massive category of Real Estate that people don't think enough about
61:06: The most underrated place in the country, the hard task of City Building, and the absence of magic wands
77:38: The most contrarian thing
Random Walk is an idea company dedicated to the discovery of idea alpha. Find differentiated data, perspectives and people, and keep your information mix lively. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Fight the Great Idea Stagnation. Join Random Walk. Follow me on twitter. Follow me on substack:
This last one is not true. That’s a different Brad Hargreaves. Common mistake, though.
And if you like them, check out the interviews with Brian Gonick (CIO of Senvest), Sheel Mohnot (GP of BTV Ventures), Byrne Hobart (the Diff), and Blake Janover (CEO of Janover)
Random Walk at Night: School of Brad Hargreaves