“I think about it from a Buddhist perspective, which is that just being present and being in joy is success, and therefore it's available to anyone.” – James Currier

James Currier (@JamesCurrier) is General Partner of NFX, an early stage VC firm with a focus on startups with potential for network effects. Before founding NFX, James co-founded four successful companies: Tickle (acquired by Monster), Wonderhill (merged with Kabam), IronPearl (acquired by PayPal), and Jiff (merged with Castlight).

To hear James’ full interview, including how he invests in network effects businesses, click here.

Chapters

  • Bonding curves and seeing the big picture
  • ADD and health habits
  • Recommended books and resources
  • On success, failure and gratitude

James Currier's Favorite Books

Transcript

Daniel Scrivner:

James, thank you so much for coming on the show, it's wonderful to have you.

James Currier:

Oh, thanks for having me.

Daniel Scrivner:

So this should be a lot of fun. We try to keep these conversations 20 minutes. So they're a little bit faster paced and we'll ask you the same 10 questions that we ask every guest. Are you ready?

James Currier:

I'm ready.

Daniel Scrivner:

So the first question is what have you been excited or fascinated about recently?

James Currier:

Recently, I have been fascinated with the concept of bonding curves, which are the ways in which you draw nodes into any network. And a network could be your company, a network could be your family, a network could be a party of your throwing, a network could be a crypto currency that you're launching. And we don't typically think of bonding curves, but they're all around us, we just don't see them. And I've been studying them and I'm trying to formulate my own language and ideas about them. So I've been spending a lot of time on that.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. I'm eager for you to publish something on that because that idea is fascinating. We talked about it before. One of the questions we ask every guest that I'm really interested to hear your answer is what your superpowers and how do you harness those strengths?

James Currier:

Yeah. So I think my superpower is probably seeing the big picture. And I got that from my dad and I got that from my education. Studied a lot of Greek philosophy, studied a bunch of history, studied religions. And so I don't know why, but for some reason I pulled back a lot and I see the big picture now. Why is that a superpower? It's because that one superpower gives you a number of sub-superpowers, which is that you've become more authentic. Because you see the big picture, you're not so tied up in the moment, you can be more authentic and genuine. It lets you be more generous as a person. So it brings out generosity once you see the big picture. Like, eh, if I make $50,000 or $60,000, doesn't really matter. It's a lot of money. And so you can be more generous.

James Currier:

It allows you to be calm under pressure, I think, which is another superpower, because you're like, yeah, everyone's freaking out but in the long run or we've seen this movie before, we know how this plays out, it's going to be okay. And the last superpower, I think it gives you is it just improves my advice giving. Because I can pull back with the founders that I work with and talk with them about their lives and their goals and the big picture of why they're building their company, not just the immediacy of getting control of something.

Daniel Scrivner:

It also seems really applicable to investing. How do you think about that superpower in terms of being an investor and how that helps you or hurt you?

James Currier:

Well, it's true. The main thing about being a good investor, I find is picking the right sector. So if you choose to do clean tech in 2004, like [inaudible 00:43:40] Perkins, you can sync the firm because you chose the wrong sector. If you're David [inaudible 00:43:45] and you find yourself really fascinated with social networks in 2002, and you invest in that from 2002 to 2011, you kill it because that was the time to invest in that sector. And so seeing the big picture allows you to say, "Oh, we need to invest in tech bio. We need to invest in computational biology now for the next 10 years, or we need to invest in crypto for the next 10 years." And so picking the right sector is really helpful and the big picture helps you get there.

Daniel Scrivner:

On the flip side, what do you struggle with and how have you improved or worked around those things over time?

James Currier:

I've got ADD. I didn't know it. I didn't know it until I had some and kids and I started noticing their behavior. But I've added a website blocker to my laptop so that I don't go to YouTube all the time and I don't go to ESPN or whatever, because otherwise I'll just dilly dally my day away and be distracted. And the other thing I do is I bring people into my life who don't have a ADD. So my wife, my business partners, the guy I founded four companies with for 14 years, his name is Stan Chudnovsky. He runs Messenger over Facebook now. He doesn't have ADD. And so he helped me to stay focused and I've got a partner at NFX right now named Pete Flint who founded and ran Trulia, took a public and sold it for $3.5 billion. He's very focused and so having him in my life helps me stay focused.

Daniel Scrivner:

On the habit side, what habits have you experimented with that have had a positive impact on your life and performance?

James Currier:

I read a lot of non-fiction and essays on the internet. I prefer long form. I don't drink alcohol except for champagne, because I don't want to look back and say I didn't celebrate well.

Daniel Scrivner:

I like that exception.

James Currier:

I married someone I'm really in love with and I took care to find her and went through an extensive process of looking for her found her and that feeds me every day. And I don't watch news. I only consume tech news, and that allows me to focus on the future and on the positives of what we're building and how humanity is going to progress rather than looking at the days current malaise.

Daniel Scrivner:

I love that answer. On the health side, what is your approach to diet, exercise and sleep and how have those things evolved over time?

James Currier:

I try not to eat sugar, although I eat too much chocolate. I don't eat a ton of carbs. I do eat raw things, raw eggs, raw meat, raw vegetables, and I exercise, but not too much. I might exercise twice a week, three times a week. I bought a $300 gym from Walmart and delivered it to my house and I can do all the exercises I need in my garage. I've got $150 stationary bicycle that I bought from Big 5 that I've had now for five years. It just takes a nine volt battery, works every time. And then I go hiking a lot. And that's about it. I don't obsess about it, but I don't ignore it. I try to find that middle ground.

Daniel Scrivner:

That's interesting. And I love that it seems like you've biased for simplicity. Just making sure you can do it by having everything there. On the idea side, what books or podcasts have had a striking impact on the way you think?

James Currier:

Yeah. I tend to read books, like I said, non-fiction. So Joseph Campbell, Hero of a Thousand Faces talk about a big picture book about the hero's journey and how your life evolves. It's driven by your biology. I love books like Niall Ferguson's, The square and the Tower. Talking about networks versus hierarchies or recently I picked up Graph Theory and Complex Networks, which I think is really fun. A guy named Van Steen did that. Books like Scale by Geoffrey West. I think everyone should read that. And then of things like a High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil, these are good references.

Daniel Scrivner:

It's a classic book. I'm going to add in one question. So we're technically going to ask you 11 questions, but this question I have to ask, which is one resource that you have on your site that is incredible is an article called Your Life on Network Effects. Can you talk about what is in that article and why you think it's been so interesting and well received by people that have read it?

James Currier:

Yeah. So I've been studying network effects now for 16 years and that has allowed... Through the lens of startups and building large companies and that has allowed me to basically think network in an evolving group of discussions with people in their 20s, I'm now just into my 50s. They were amazed, their eyes got incredibly wide when I started talking with them about the implications of thinking network, about who they date and who they marry, what jobs they take, what cities they live in, what cars they drive, all that sort of thing. They couldn't believe the clarity it was giving them to think network.

James Currier:

And I realized that we had walked into a new world of how to perceive the world and so that I wrote this article called Your Life on Network Effects and it's been one of our more popular blog posts. And it lays out how you should think about your life through the lens of how network affects you. So an example would be choosing a school that has a lot of people in it versus choosing a school that has the right professor for this thing you want to study. And choosing a school based on who the alumni are going to be, because that's going to affect you for the next 60 years. And so my son, my youngest son having read the article chose to go to the public school with 500 kids in his class versus going to the country club private school with only 80 kids class. I think he's been really happy with the decision.

Daniel Scrivner:

It seems like it's one of the principles there that most often the best answer is to default to the best network. Is that in all areas of your life?

James Currier:

Yes, yes.

Daniel Scrivner:

Which is really interesting.

James Currier:

That's it. And if you look at my cohort in Silicon valley, who I moved here in the '90s, all of us have basically earned more money than we need, regardless of our IQ, regardless of our talents. Just the fact that we were in this network, just the outcome was inevitable. Really interesting to watch.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. Is really clarifying and interesting to just... Yeah, how many things it might seem mysterious can be explained by the power of the network behind it. On the tool side, what tools do you use to manage your work task in time? I mean, you talked about that browser extension that blocks. Are there other examples?

James Currier:

Yeah. I mean, I've got the standard Apple Suite. I use the basic stuff. I don't use anything too fancy, again because of the network. If you use superhuman, then there's all sorts of tools and integrations that you can't do with the rest of your company. In terms of my company, helping to use my Gmail address book and my pace of emails and whatnot and helping me out to manage my workflow. So again, the network effect of those tools is such that I find myself doing some pretty standard things from a technical perspective.

Daniel Scrivner:

I love the answer and that through line of network effects in showing up in all places in your life. We're going to ask you now the final three questions, and these are some of my favorite questions to ask. I'm really excited to hear your answer. The first one is around success. And the question is just, what is your definition of success or how would you define and think about that for yourself?

James Currier:

I think about it from a Buddhist perspective, which is just being present and being in joy is success and therefore it's available to anyone. I would never want to define success as something that's not available to someone who was born disabled or was born in a tough family, which was not their choice. So that's really my definition of success.

James Currier:

And I then think beyond that, it's to be able to fully express whatever gifts you were given, whatever they are, whatever level they are. And we all have different gifts at the beginning, genetics play a large role. I have four children, four boys that are all within three years of each other. So I've been able to watch this experiment. And their genetics were there when they were little. And anybody who doesn't believe genetics plays the major role in how we turn out doesn't have a little bunch of kids and doesn't watch them grow up. And we all get something different at the beginning and success is fully expressing whatever you were given.

Daniel Scrivner:

That's a beautiful answer. My favorite answer today. On the flip side, what is one of your favorite failures and what we're trying to get out there is something that didn't work for whatever reason, but that taught you something valuable, propelled you in an interesting or better direction.

James Currier:

I think the biggest failure that might be instructive for people is I started a healthcare software company called Jiff and we raised $68 million and we only sold it for $150 million. And I consider that a failure because between 2011 and 2018 when this all took place, the opportunity cost of not doing something else was just massive. And getting into healthcare was the biggest mistake in my career. I had had a good career up until that point, not in healthcare. I wanted to use technology to make a difference, to try to cure the biggest economic ill of our nation, the United States, by bringing software to it. And I think that was a good with impulse, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's a thorny place to try to build something and make an impact. The ecosystem doesn't want you to make an impact and will fight you every step of the way. And I learned to be very skeptical when dealing with healthcare businesses and that has propelled me into a better direction back toward payments and real estate and marketplaces and games and other things that are what we call more fast moving water.

Daniel Scrivner:

It's fascinating, especially thinking about your answer of just the best thing you can do is just to choose the right industry. So it seems like that's an encounter example of that. And then the last question is super simple. Just what are you most grateful for in this phase of your life?

James Currier:

I think my dad. My dad is 80 now and I see all the things he did in my foundation that is now playing out. I left home at 13 to go off to a boarding school, but on scholarship, almost a 100% scholarship. My dad was a carpenter and my mom was a music teacher and we lived on a dirt road in New Hampshire and we did not grow up wealthy by any stretch. His education of me, his teaching of Greek mythology and philosophy to me, his exposure to me of European languages and the bigger wider world and character and honesty and things that are not super popular in today influencer world were things that he gave me and those have been the most important things that I have learned and that's the things I am most grateful to still have today.

Daniel Scrivner:

It's a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much. This has been an incredible conversation.

James Currier:

Thank you.