The Brothers Who Live One Life — The Incredible Adventures of David and Daniil Liberman (#689)

“It’s not failure. It’s an attempt. 60 percent, 70 percent of those attempts are going to end up with zero, so just move on. Start the next one. You’ll be successful later.”

David Liberman and Daniil Liberman (@DaLiberman) are visionary entrepreneurs and investors with a close partnership spanning 16 years. They gained valuable experience at Snap, contributing to projects involving avatars, bitmoji, animation, and product operations. They are currently based in Los Angeles, where their primary focus is on building Product Science, a service dedicated to optimizing mobile apps.

Moreover, the Liberman brothers have established The Libermans Company, referred to as a People Company. Through their commitment to the Founders Pledge, they have allocated all future earnings and economic value for the next three decades to LibermansCo, including founder shares of Product Science and potential returns from future investments.

Please enjoy!

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Want to hear another episode with someone who runs their business with the symbiotic assistance of a sibling? Listen to my conversation with Patrick Collison (who started payment company Stripe with his brother John), in which we discussed great books, the importance of giving ideas time to fail, succeeding in an oversaturated market, driving organic traction, developing a mindset resilient to inevitable downswings, growing up free-range, equalizing happiness around the world, making quicker decisions, and much more.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with David and Daniil Liberman:

Libermans.co | Humanism.is | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn

• Is Selling Shares in Yourself the Way of the Future? | The New Yorker
• The Siblings Selling Shares in Their Future Shed Light on How We See Our past | Financial Times
• Humanism Would Let People Invest in Humans Like Companies | Fast Company
• Opinion: What if You Could Give Start-Up Money to People, Not Companies? | The New York Times
• Consequences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union | Norwich University Online
• When Bricks Were Rubles | Planet Money
• Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto | Bitcoin
• BitTorrent
• Why Transparency Wins by Daniil and David | YouTube
• Corruption in Russia | Wikipedia
• Anti-Corruption Foundation | Wikipedia
• Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic, Was Poisoned at Hotel, His Team Says | The New York Times
• Russian Dissident Alexei Navalny Has Been Sentenced to 19 More Years of Prison | Weekend Edition
• Ultima Online
• Make Anything You Can Imagine | Roblox
• Explore. Discover. Create. | Second Life
• Doom Legend John Romero — The Path to Prolific Innovation and Making 130+ Games, How to Find the Soul of the Work, Audacious Ambition, and Building in Monk Mode | The Tim Ferriss Show #681
• World of Warcraft
• What Does WAR’s Success or Failure Mean for the MMORPG Market? | Online Games Are a Niche Market
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Blasts Blockbuster Record | Business Chief North America
• Believe In Online | Sibilant Interactive (via Wayback Machine)
• Mult Lichnosti Playlist | YouTube
• Channel One Russia | Wikipedia
• Russia’s FSB Has Been Accused of Covering Up, Rather Than Solving, Crimes | The New York Times
• Is a California Noncompete Agreement Legal? | Labor Lawyer
• William Morris Endeavor (WME)
• The Simpsons Predictions: 30 Times the Fox Show Forecasted the Future | The Hollywood Reporter
• Here Comes a Special Boy: ‘Achewood’ Is Back, but TV Isn’t Ready | The Verge
• Crazytown | IMDb
• Everything You Need to Know About the Cyprus Bank Disaster | The Atlantic
• About Frank Money, Inc. | F6S
• A Woman on TikTok Says Boomers Are ‘So Confused’ as to Why Young Americans Don’t Share the Same Work Ethic or Goals — Here Are 3 Reasons Why Their Priorities Have Changed | Yahoo! Finance
• Finding “Unicorns:” Questions to Ask Before You Invest in a Startup | Tim Ferriss
• Will Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse Lead to a Financial Crisis? | Brookings
• Vipassana Meditation
• For Math Fans: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Number 42 | Scientific American
• The Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Boxset by Douglas Adams | Amazon
• What Is Hypermnesia? | Psychology Dictionary
• Walkway Plan to Link Tim and Helena’s Separate Homes | London Evening Standard
• Insight Partners
• Kylie Jenner ‘Sooo Over’ Snapchat – And Shares Tumble | BBC News
• A Refresher on A/B Testing | Harvard Business Review
• How the Liberman Siblings Saved Snapchat | Anecdotage
• How Snapchat Makes Mini Movies in Augmented Reality | The New York Times
• You Don’t Understand Compound Growth | Who Is Nnamdi?
• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) | Investopedia
• “Sports Do Not Build Character; They Reveal It” | Quote Investigator®
• Natural Computation and Its Limits: Efim Liberman at the Dawn of a New Science | Biosystems
• Neuron Quantum Computers and a Way to Unification of Science: A Compendium of Efim Liberman’s Scientific Work | Biosystems
• Morse Code | Wikipedia
• Hopes Fade for ‘Room Temperature Superconductor’ LK-99, but Quantum Zero-Resistance Research Continues | The Conversation
• Read > Understand ) Profit * | SpeakCoding | “An interactive course for non-technical professionals, entrepreneurs and those looking to start their transition to tech.”
• Free and interactive coding book (Simply need to log in to access for free.)
• The 2007–2008 Financial Crisis in Review | Investopedia
• What Is a Credit Default Swap and How Does It Work? | Investopedia
• The Risks Hidden in Public Pension Funds | The New York Times
• California Public Employees’ Retirement System ( CalPERS)
• Why Is College in America So Expensive? | The Atlantic
• It’s Not Enough to Get Paid for Not Working: These L.A. Police and Firefighters Figured Out How to Double It | Reason
• Visualizing US Wealth by Generation | Visual Capitalist
• How Finding a Home in America Became So Absurdly Expensive | The Guardian
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis | Amazon
• The Padres Owe Fernando Tatís Jr. $340 Million. He Owes an Investment Fund Millions From His Payday. | WSJ
• Investing in the Careers of Athletes | Big League Advantage
• Power Laws: How Nonlinear Relationships Amplify Results | Farnam Street Blog
• Slow Ventures
• A Former Facebook VP Thinks Investing in Humans Is the Future of VC | Vice
• 10 Benefits Showing Why Education Is Important to Our Society | Habitat for Humanity
• Is Free College a Good Idea? Increasingly, Evidence Says Yes | Brookings
• Mexican Soap Opera Has Russian Fans in a Lather: ‘The Rich Also Cry’ Tops the TV Charts and Turns Potato Farmers into Couch Potatoes. | Los Angeles Times
• The Center for Consciousness Studies | The University of Arizona
• What Is Sustainable Investing? | HBS Online
• How Environmentally Conscious Investing Became a Target of Conservatives | The New York Times

SHOW NOTES

Editor’s Note: Timestamps will be added shortly.

• Childhood.
• The influence of scientist parents on curious kids.
• The perils of pursuing anti-corruption innovation in post-Soviet Russia.
• Building a business with cables and crossbows.
• Lessons learned by bankrupting a gaming studio.
• Moscow-style investment recovery.
• A lucky break in the darkness of debt.
• Streamlining production through decentralization, parallelization, and a DJ connection.
• When playing the fools is the smart move.
• Coming to America.
• Building momentum with animation in Los Angeles.
• Divorce lawyer power dynamics.
• Another unforeseen financial hurdle.
• To Silicon Valley and nonprofit transparency.
• How are David and Daniil able to pivot between different ideas so quickly?
• The formation, advantages, and drawbacks of the Liberman hive mind.
• Separation pros and cons.
• How does external romance fit into this arrangement?
• The Dalai Lama, Jerry Murdock, and Snap.
• Reversing Snapchat’s 2018 decline by adapting to data and fixing real problems.
• Applying principles of compound growth to life.
• How working with family has helped with logistics.
• The value of interdisciplinary synthesis.
• How the Libermans might teach people to code.
• A data-driven look at our current financial crisis.
• What’s the Liberman solution?
• Incentivizing adoption of such a solution.
• A real-world test.
• Who/what makes for a good investment in this model?
• Do we reduce or elevate the potential for success by minimizing suffering?
• How to invest in people (and why you should).
• Parting thoughts.

MORE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“The struggle will come. It doesn’t matter if you have millions of dollars, you will always be struggling because you strive to achieve more.”

“If someone just claims something and you cannot really prove it for yourself with data, probably something is missing and you need to dig deeper.”

“Previous generations got a lot from society … almost-free college education. New generations are being hammered with student debt. They don’t really feel that society gives them much, but they still donate the same portion.”

“We will all win. The market will win, society will win. Humanity will win from the fact that we will use this power law for wider groups of people to invest in them, provide them capital, and provide them a chance to get a higher education to try to start a business.”

“It’s not failure. It’s an attempt. 60 percent, 70 percent of those attempts are going to end up with zero, so just move on. Start the next one. You’ll be successful later.”

“Competition is always a struggle, and there will always be competition.”

PEOPLE MENTIONED

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