Oh, So, Welcome to the Internet History Podcast. I'm your host, Brian McCullough.

So for the second of my San Francisco trip episodes, the good people at Social Capital were

kind enough to host me for an interview with Chamath Polyhapetia.

Most of you know Chamath as one of the more prominent and progressive venture

capitalists working today, but before he formed Social Capital, Chamath was an early employee

at a startup we've already covered,

Wienamp, was the head of AOL's Instant Messenger product when that really meant something.

And of course, he was an early employee at Facebook where eventually he was in charge of user

growth.

On today's episode we get into all of this with the fascinating Chamath Polyhapetia.

Chymoth Polyhapetia, thanks for coming on the Internet History Podcast.

Thanks for including me.

So I think your story is somewhat well known that you grew up you were born in Sri Lanka,

moved to Canada age six I think it was.

You were essentially a refugee from Civil War, so you grew up in poverty generally. But other people that I've

spoken to that are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants,

there's a common theme which is that the parents never want the kids to do

anything risky. They always want them to be doctors, lawyers, something safe.

Were your parents that way?

Yeah. I think it's, you know, it's basically like this psychology that sets in when you make a lot of sacrifices.

So if you're on a path and then for whatever set of circumstances you take yourself off that path, all you can think of is like how does someone or something in my life validate those choices?

And for a lot of parents, frankly, the most important validation

...