The Joe Rogan Experience · 5 min · Jul 1, 2026

America makes it possible to fund another startup after failure

Aravind Srinivas · Co-founder & CEO, Perplexity AI

Aravind Srinivas says America’s risk-seeking culture lets founders raise for low-odds ideas and try again after failure.

In this episode

1:08:35 AI demand outpaced forecasts for compute, chips and power8 min
1:42:46 Local AI could give users more control over information7 min
2:21:03 Self-improving AI still faces messy real-world systems4 min
1:35:35America makes it possible to fund another startup after failure5 min
2:15:16 AI dividends won't replace the work of modernizing institutions5 min
1:20:33 Schools can teach students to ask questions AI cannot answer5 min
1:53:23 Engagement-based feeds bury controls that would end sessions3 min

“where else would you be able to go raise a few million dollars for an idea that has a 5% to 10% chance of working”

Aravind Srinivasat 1:38:25 · The Joe Rogan Experience

Takeaways

Investors may fund ideas with only a 5–10% chance of working.
Founders can raise again after a failed attempt.
Risk capital and social support reinforce one another.

About this segment

Aravind Srinivas says America’s risk-seeking culture lets founders raise for low-odds ideas and try again after failure. He credits the ecosystem, not just individual ambition, with producing new companies.

Aravind Srinivas

Aravind Srinivas is cofounder and CEO of Perplexity AI.

Held research roles at OpenAI and Google DeepMind before co-founding the AI search engine Perplexity in 2022.

Joe Rogan, Host · Host, The Joe Rogan Experience

From “Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas”, Jul 1, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1:35:39
What is it like? How is it discussed? Well, to me, I always thought America is the only country where you can come here and have an idea and people listen to you and encourage you to go pursue it. The risk-seeking culture is just incredible here. everybody everywhere else you kind of are like either explicitly or implicitly or forced to defer to authority okay like go and ask the permission of this person go and ask permission of that person or get their approval get their insight or sure you can get their you can consult everybody out there but if you have a thought that challenges what they believe in this country still encourages you to like go pursue it and um so yes like when i came here obviously you know Google was the number one company that everybody wanted to work in.
1:36:33
But it's also the same country where it allows you as a new person to start a new idea that challenges one of the biggest companies in this own country. And it actually wants it. People actually want new ideas. And then you can consistently see that there are always going to be more and more new ideas and new companies to be created here. and so that spirit of like questioning is is encouraged a lot here and and it happens in academic research I started off as an academic even there a lot of ideas when I had it and I would share it with people you know people actually give you very honest feedback about things but they don't stop you from working on anything and that's fantastic because that's That's very fresh.
1:37:26
It's very liberating. And that's not anywhere else. I would say it's not. It's not in India. It's a simplification to say it's not anywhere else. It's not as encouraged. It's not as encouraged. The incentive structures are not quite there. And the ability to be taken seriously for some crazy ideas is why America is still at the top. But it's crazy to me that if the American dream is so compelling and so many people come here for it, why doesn't the rest of the world sort of adopt those values?
1:37:59
It's hard. You know, like a lot of it is cultural. Like America was born, was made from like, you know, a piece of land essentially, right? and a lot of ideas that we built here, a lot of industries that we built here were all created here from nothing and that required you to go take bold risks. I think Jeff Bezos said this in some podcast that where else would you be able to go raise a few million dollars for an idea that has a 5% to 10% chance of working and then fail at it and still go and raise another few million dollars for your next idea nowhere else people are willing like people who get rich here actually want to encourage and be part of somebody else's crazy journey because it's hard to pursue all crazy bets yourself so it's an ecosystem and once something becomes an ecosystem there's
1:39:03
network effects so it's very hard to copy that elsewhere and so your value is measured in your curiosity and you're willing to work your willingness to work on whatever it is that is your pursuit and then eventually adjusting and learning and catching fire with one of them. Correct and you have to work hard like you know like I'm a big believer in intense hard work I think nothing great can be accomplished by being soft and so all this like recent push for you know having a lot of work-life balance this and that sure if you have work-life if you if that's what you want and i think there are certain jobs that would give you that but when you're trying to do something from scratch when you're trying to create something from nothing it's not meant to be easy right there are some sacrifices that have to be
1:39:52
made and you're signing up to be part of that experience that that that surreal joy you get from doing something that felt almost impossible to achieve. And you're not staying up late or waking up early because you're getting paid more. Maybe you might not get paid anything. Maybe this whole thing goes to nothing. But that experience you're getting of being part of something that feels very hard to achieve is what you're signing up for to be part of.