This Is Leverage

The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is this idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication
This is the new form of leverage
This is only invented in the last few hundred years
It got started with the printing press
It accelerated with broadcast media and now it's really blown up with the internet and with code
So now you can multiply your efforts without having to involve other humans and without needing money from other humans
This song is a form of leverage
This album is a form of leverage
Not long ago, I would have had to sit in a lecture hall and lecture each of you personally and I would have maybe reached a few hundred people and that would have been that
30 years ago, I would have to be lucky to get on TV which is somebody else's leverage
They would have distorted the message, they would've taken the economics out of it or charged me for it
It would have muddled the message and I would've been lucky to get that form of leverage
Today, thanks to the internet, I can buy a cheap microphone, hook it up to a laptop or an iPad and there you are, all listening

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This is leverage
This is leverage
This is leverage
There you are, all listening
This is leverage
This is leverage
This is leverage
There you are, all listening

This newest form of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made, all the new billionaires
The last generation, fortunes were made by capital
But the new generation fortunes are all made through code or media
Now, the beauty is when you combine all of these three and that's where tech startups really excel, where you take just the minimum but highest output labor that you can get, which are engineers and designers, product developers
And then you add in capital
You use that for marketing, advertising, scaling
And you add in lots of code and media and podcast and content to get it all out there
That is a magic combination, and that's why you see technology startups explode out of nowhere, use massive leverage and just get huge outsize returns

[Chorus]
This is leverage
This is leverage
This is leverage
There you are, all listening
This is leverage
This is leverage
This is leverage
There you are, all listening

The most interesting things about the new forms of leverage is they are permissionless
For labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow you
For capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to invest or turn into a product
But coding, writing books, recording podcasts, these kinds of things, these are permissionless
You don't need anyone's permission to do that

[Chorus]
This is leverage
This is leverage
This is leverage
There you are, all listening
This is leverage
This is leverage
This is leverage
There you are, all listening

This song (is leverage)
This album (is leverage)
This media (is leverage, there you are)
This song (is leverage)
This album (is leverage)
This (is leverage, there you are)
(This is leverage, there you are)
(This is leverage, there you are)