# Cyan Banister looks for outlier founders to spot new themes

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/cyan-banister-looks-for-outlier-founders-to-spot-new-themes/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Cyan Banister](https://realalpha.app/people/cyan-banister/) · Co-founder & general partner, Long Journey Ventures · Backed early bets on Uber, Postmates, SpaceX and Flock Security; previously partnered at Founders Fund.
- Host: [Aditya Agarwal](https://realalpha.app/people/aditya-agarwal/) · General partner, South Park Commons · One of Facebook's first engineers, he helped build its first search engine; later CTO of Dropbox.
- Show: Minus One
- Episode: [AGI, Sci-Fi, & Storytelling | Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu, Cyan Banister, & Joscha Bach](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/), May 21, 2025
- Moment: 57:16 to 1:00:49 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/cyan-banister-looks-for-outlier-founders-to-spot-new-themes/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3436

## Quote

> “you get **a hundred of the same stories** and then there's this one person that shows up with a story that's so bizarre.”
> — [Cyan Banister](https://realalpha.app/people/cyan-banister/) at [57:58](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3478) · Minus One

## Takeaways

1. She looks for founders who see the world differently.
2. She calls outlier founders bellwethers.
3. She sees emerging interest in AI, spirituality, religion, and self-discovery.

## About this segment

Cyan Banister says she hears many similar pitches before an unusual founder presents a different view. She calls such people bellwethers and is watching AI’s intersections with spirituality.

From “AGI, Sci-Fi, & Storytelling | Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu, Cyan Banister, & Joscha Bach”, May 21, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/)

## Transcript

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

[57:19](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3439) So, I guess, just to look forward again, you know, like, Sian, I heard you say in an interview that, you know, you think AI is a different kind of technological revolution because, and, Yosha, you mentioned it before, too, no one really knows how to game this out. You know, the exponential curves are converging really fast, and the time frames are changing, and it really makes gaming out sequencing of events really hard.

[57:42](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3462) As someone who aims to predict the future for a living, how does that affect something concrete like your investment thesis? Well, you know, I always rely on entrepreneurs who are also world builders and dreamers to come and kind of inform, you know, how we're going to think about investing. And I'm looking for outliers. Like a lot of the times people don't realize when you're an investor, you get a hundred of the same stories and then there's this one person that shows up with a story that's so bizarre.

[58:07](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3487) And you're like, wow, you see the world different. And so I'm looking for those people. We call them bellwethers. And, you know, I think that what's interesting me right now is spirit tech going back to consciousness. I'm starting to see a rise in people thinking about how is this going to impact spirituality, religion, you know, how can I become more, dare I say, enlightened by using these sorts of technologies to discover myself further?

[58:38](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3518) I think understanding our own consciousness is far more important right now than understanding whether or not AI is going to become conscious. And when it does become conscious, and I'm just going to say when, because I actually think it's when, not if, that's a downright miracle if you think about it. It's like an immaculate conception. You know, basically it's the second coming of Christ. And I don't think we understand how important that is.

[59:03](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3543) it's really interesting like how we take things for granted until all these things that we thought were impossible like video conferencing zoom was a miracle uh 10 15 years ago and so by the time we have this consciousness if we get it um well when we get it uh we'll probably just be like well okay yeah whatever well yeah i was about to say like we're going to become very frustrated with it very quickly like yeah we'll be very frustrated with very quickly you're on mute just like to your the super intelligence it's like no I'm talking to 8,000 other people right now you know yeah exactly so I mean I'm again I'm always looking for entrepreneurs to plant that seed for me and to help me build that world and then I daydream myself I read science fiction a lot of interestingly this crowd is self-selecting because you all came to see

[59:55](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=3595) science fiction authors but when I go to other AI events I ask people how many people in here have Thank you. Diamond Age, well, usually it's one hand. And to me, that's kind of scary that we're building the future. Sorry, Neil. That scares me, though, because, you know, that was a book that came out, was it 95? Yeah, 95. Put that in context. You know, and I think a lot of what I invested in and how I built my future was based off some of the visions that Neil had. And so I think that we need to start thinking again thank you for continuing to write both of you but about the futures that we could inhabit and to build these and dreaming of these futures um because that's what i want to invest in is some of these dreams that you come up with and i really wish people would read more science fiction to inform what you're building there's also a point one which