YouSaid · the spoken record

Cyan Banister

lines on the record: 211
first: 2024-11-27
most recent: 2024-11-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Garrett Langley is the founder of Flock Security. And there's his mug picture of him and he's in the current YC batch at the time. And we at Founders Fun had been thinking about some of the biggest opportunities and one of the opportunities we were considering was somebody needs to come up with some sort of neighborhood camera or neighborhood association where people are all pitching in and agreeing to some rules around safety and some equipment and technology to enable that safety. And so I've started reading about Flock and I'm like, we didn't think about OCR and license plates. We thought about cameras. This is a much better solution. So I messaged our associate at the time, John Ludig, who I think is now partner, that I'd found this guy. And he's like, oh, you know, that's a company we're interested in. I said, what should I do? And he's like, just walk over there. See what happens. So I walked over and I decided to play the, I don't know, the magician card, if you will.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lot of interesting deals come out of hotels. So I was at a hotel and I had time to kill. And my background is in security. So I'm an engineer self-taught in my friends taught me and I started getting an infosec. So I noticed some things that other people don't notice about their opsec or their security. And I got on the Wi-Fi and noticed that all of these people were tethering their phones to the Wi-Fi using their real name. I see Travis K's iPhone and I look over in the corner and there's Travis Kalanik and I'm like, oh, there's Travis. And then I see K Pixel. And I'm like K. And then I look over and I see Keith Fraboy. And I see he has a pixel phone. And I'm like, oh, Keith Rabboy's pixel. Interesting. Keep in mind they're Mac addresses at the time were also in the clear. Like you could track where these guys were if you were very clever. But then I see this name Garrett Langley. And I miss a name I've never seen. So I go and Google search it.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People couldn't see past the black car, too. They thought that one of the objections I saw is everyone doesn't want or can afford a limo. And I said, well, of course not. But that's where it starts. Not everyone could ride in an airplane, but now everybody can. That's the way it works.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very easy to come up with the reason for no because a lot of things fail. But I heard all those excuses too. I'm glad that you are mentioning this because people have argued with me that Uber was the hottest thing around. And I said, no, it wasn't.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was like July 6th. I remember it was right after July 4th. And I was in Alaska when it was released. And even in Alaska, in Juneau, Alaska, people were running around looking for invisible creatures. So that's one of my favorite stories because it really took figuring out how all the connections work to get that meeting. And then it took a lot of grit and hustle to get him to let us in. And I do have a key card to Niantic, so I'm an honorary lifetime employee. And I can come and go as I please. I'm kind of like a weird spirit animal there.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm like, wait and see. I would argue that it was probably the closest we've come to world peace in our lifetime is the day that Pokemon Go came out.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The other thing is I couldn't get anyone else to it. Once I invested in this, I thought I got the deal of a lifetime Angelis had just started, and they were allowing syndications, and I wanted to syndicate this deal. And at the time, they were approving whether you could a syndicate a deal or not. So it wasn't just a free-for-all. I wanted to syndicate Niantic, and I was told, no, because the only other investors were Nintendo and Google. And they were like, well, we don't do corporate investors. And the other thing is nobody could see, everybody told me no one's going to walk around searching for invisible creatures. They're like, no one's going to play this game.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that he saw that Lucas and I were going to give really valuable input on the gamer experience. And if I was bringing in someone of Lucas' caliber who was, you know, I think employee number 13 or something at Facebook, he's a brilliant engineer. I think he thought maybe I'd bring in some more brilliant engineers. So he was looking at this like the long run.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You introduce me to him? Well, sure, why? And like, I just, I want to go talk to him. So I emailed him and he said, come by the office in San Francisco. I'd love to meet you. We're not looking for any investment, but thanks. And so I showed up with my best friend Lucas, who was also a player. And we sat at his doorstep and we waited. And we waited until we could get a meeting with him. And we went in and he told us flat out no at the beginning. But we sat there and showed him how Lucas was a level 16 player and how many hours we had put into this thing and how amazing it was because we had this insight, which is we'd heard that as an April Fool's joke, they'd put Pokemon on the map. And I had this realization that that was going to be the biggest game ever. And if I could just get a check in here at just the right time, it would be timed perfectly. By the time we left the office, he gave Lucas.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for support. So she didn't have anybody to help her set up her support system. And I knew how to set up Zendesk. So I went in and set it up for her. And I started noticing all of these weird messages coming in saying Ingress in the subject line. And so I walked over to her and I said, why is everybody sending you emails that say Ingress? And she says, well, we give out game codes on the bottle caps. Looked at her and I said, You're kidding me. Who over at Ingress did this deal with you? And she said, John Hanky, the guy who runs Ingress.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Course. So I invested in hint water and I was helping the founder set up her ticketing system. She didn't have a support.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, things like tombstones, where you can then take the text. And so we were going around taking pictures of everything and submitting it to this database that was then used to create Pokemon Go. Now, how I got involved, I thought I would invest in this company in a heartbeat if it was not part of Google. And one day I get a text message from a friend and he says they're spending Niantic out of Google. There's this whole weird thing called alphabet that's happening. And Niantic's becoming its own thing. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And I was like, if there's one moment, this is the only moment to strike where we can go put money into this thing. This is it. But I didn't know anybody at Google. I am not Google alumni. That's probably where my network is probably the least effective. And I just didn't know how to reach this guy. But I'd invested in a company called Hentwater. I don't know if you've ever had Hintwater, but they're...”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I picked up this game with my friends. We start going out every night playing Ingress, doing walkarounds, and we would run into what's really funny is people who knew you were playing Ingress on the other side would come up to you and there's some banter, you know, people would be like, oh, resistance, because we're blowing up each other's virtual things. And I started asking myself the question, why is Google doing this? Why is Google making this game? Are we doing all this work for Google for free? They were collecting what's called points of interest, which are not mappable by cars or by sometimes satellites.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, this one's a great one. So the same Chris Collins that met me and showed me a computer started playing the game called Ingress. And Ingress was this early game that came out of Google that overlaid on top of the real world map where you would team up with people and go to really weird remote locations so that you could cast invisible triangles over large swaths of land. I'm simplifying this because there's a storyline behind this, but you can imagine this. It's basically a gigantic game of green versus blue. And we were on Team Blue, which is called the Resistance, and then Team Green is called Enlightenment. And we played this game and we were hooked. And there were people that were so hooked. They were chartering helicopters to go to remote places.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right now. And he was like, How much? And I said 75K. And he said, fine, get us in, get us a meeting. So I got us a meeting and they ratcheted us back to 50, but we were the second, there were only two individuals that were able to put that much money in at the time. So it was pretty sizable for that round. And I really credit Roger because had he not flagged this for me, had I not paid attention to Travis and the hot tub, keep in mind Ryan's still the CEO. I just realized there was something about him, and there's no way he's going to just raise money for this company. He's becoming the CEO.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About three weeks after, maybe a month after this lobby thing, Jason Calkanis held this event called Open Angel Forum. And at the time, he was sharing his deal flow because it was very much a, you know, there were party rounds. People would get together, pull in money and a lot of things were done at the earliest stages just by angels. Now institutions are getting into this game. But in the beginning, it was just individuals. And I see traumas get up and pitch this Uber cab thing that my driver's been telling me about. And I took it as a sign from the universe or whatever, and I wrote to my husband and I said, we need to invest in UberCab.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Travis Kellenit was in the hot tub. And I observed him He had a very distinct demeanor that I had not seen in any founder. He had a lot of gravitas. Like if there was someone who was king of the hot tub that night, it was him. If he was managing the hot tub, it was him. You could just tell this is a person who's going to lead. And he declared in the hot tub that he was working at some company called Red Swoosh, but now he was on the bench, or he started a company called Red Swoosh and sold it. He was on the bench and looking for his next thing. You know, if you're an investor, A lot of what we do is it's kind of like reporters or hackers with zero day wares. You're looking for secrets. You know, we are on the hunt for secrets, for insights that nobody else knows about. Then I got invited to a dinner with him and I observed him some more. I observed how he talked to people at the dinner table, the opinions that he had. And I just thought this person's remarkable. I don't know what he's going to do, but I'm going to watch him.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More money, you want to be kind of locally centric now that after the pandemic that's less true. So I just kind of ignored the card. But the next ride, he brought it up again. The next ride he brought it up again. I started having a collection of Ryan Graves cards. But then I went to Hawaii to this. Event held by August Capital called the Lobby. And at the lobby, this conference is centered around the most important discussions happen by the pool or in a hot tub or in a lobby. And there's content, but it's an unconference. The content is every person there is capable of giving a speech. So I was at this event and everybody kind of retired to this very large hot tub. There's about 20 people in the hot tub.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The medallion system is incredibly unfair, and I started thinking about how you could disrupt taxis. And I didn't have a clear answer, actually. What happened was I... Was staying at a hotel in San Francisco at the time, and I asked for them to arrange a car for me to SFO. And so they arranged a livery car, and it was a guy named Roger. And when he picked me up, he told me, he said, you know, he got to know me and he ended up giving me several rides to the airport. But one day he picked me up and he handed me a card for a gentleman named Ryan Graves. And he said, I don't know anything about investing, but if I were an angel investor, I would put my money into this company. driving for them. And basically it's a black livery car on demand. You just text this phone number, you get a car. And I was like, well, how many drivers are there? And he goes, well, how many only what? Just me. And I was like, well, how's it work? And he said, well, they're paying me by the hour. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. And he hands me the card. And at the time, I only invested in companies that were in the Bay Area because it's the ecosystem that I understand. It was how I could actually help founders when they went to raise.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I started working minimum wage was $3.15 an hour, and I would have gladly cleaned your toilet bowl for 25 cents because 25 cents is half a bagel. Again, I think we need to allow homeless people and people who are in those lower financial or economic realms to make decisions for themselves because they actually, we know how. You know, we know where that 25 cents goes and how we're going to use it. We are very, very acutely aware of every cent in our lives. And there were so many jobs I wasn't allowed to have. Now, I did end up working at a record store where they did pay me under the table, but think about that. We shouldn't have to break laws. Like that person shouldn't have to do something illegal in order for me to make money.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I started thinking about how it was unfair, this system, just kind of like how I thought minimum wage was unfair. Because if you create a line, that means that only certain people can cross it and some people are privileged and some people aren't”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Them, we have to pick them up and pay for them. There's a guy that has the medallion, and this is the first time I learned about a medallion, which is a license that somebody owns that allows you to operate that car. And it got to the point where these medallions were worth millions of dollars in some cities. They were worth that much in New York. And in San Francisco, they were worth a lot in LA, they were worth a lot. And so what happens is your retirement plan is you rent out your medallion to someone who doesn't have a medallion and you just make money while you sleep. And that's pretty much the whole plan of taxi drivers everywhere at the time.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'll start with Uber. The Uber story is really fascinating because it starts with a thesis. So they all start with a thesis and then eventually... Just going to say maybe the universe just puts the people in front of me and I have to recognize they're right in front of me. You know, obviously you can walk the other way. You can be asleep to what's being presented. But I developed a thesis around the taxi medallion system. And I was fairly libertarian. I still am, and was thinking about how when I go out to get a taxi and it's a rainy day or it's busy outside, why wasn't I getting one? Every time I would get into a taxi, I would ask them, what is your day like? As soon as you get your car, what happens? And they were like, well, I'm already $200 in debt. And I've got to make $200 and I've got a, there's a clock ticking because I have to return the car at a certain time. And this is why they were driving around like bats out of hell. Everybody would complain about taxi drivers and how they drove is because they were racing a clock. They were already in debt. And then I asked them, I said, well, do you own this taxi? And they said, no, you know, we rent.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And me paying attention, if you will, if I had a part to play in this is paying attention when those moments arrive and seizing them.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'll show you So we found a place to do dial-up connection. And I remember hearing a modem for the first time, and he started showing me this thing called IRC and how I could meet friends from all over the world. And back then, there wasn't a search engine. So there was like linked sites that you had to go to and you had to like discover content. But I knew that no matter what it took, I had to be a part of that world. So he and all of his hacker friends basically started wooing me over to their side. They're like, you don't want to hang out with these crusty punk kids. You don't want this life. You want to learn about Unix and you want to do this stuff with us. You want to be a halfer chick. And so they basically encouraged me to be bigger, to think bigger, and to start reading and start studying. And they bought me books and they got me my first computer. Again, I credit people, magical moments where people just sort of step into my life at just the right moment.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we said the nature of your oppression is the aesthetic of our anger. I remember exactly what it says. And I stopped him and I said, hey, I made that. And he turned around and he sees this homeless chick. And he's like, yeah, prove it. And I said, well, you bought it at either Eastside Records or you bought it at one of these places that I would consign them at. And he said, you're right. That was where I got it. So he sat down with me and he explained that his mother ran a sign shop. But the most important thing that he did was He asked me to come and spend time with him on his computer. And I was like, computers are portable now. This is weird. I didn't know you could do that. And I blew them off for a while, but a month later or so I saw him at a coffee shop and he was on a laptop and it was my first time ever seeing a portable computer and it was like, I don't know, I was in heaven. And I came over to him and I said, well, what can we do with this? And he says, well, what can't you do with it? He's like, let's go get online.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Person who just did something really incredible for me. But when I was on the streets selling necklaces, I also took up a little hobby of spray painting clothing with stencils and I learned how to silkscreen. And that's when I met my first customer. His name's Chris Collins. And I had put my t-shirts and my patches that I was making of some DIY punk rock band, so I was really into these British punk rock bands at the time. And I see this guy walk by with a jumpsuit and he's wearing a patch from this band called Crash. I don't know if you're familiar with any of the old punk bands from the 70s.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he probably just read Dharma bums and was like, I'm heading out. So his situation was totally different. And he brought me home to meet his mother. He was, I mean, this is scandalous today, but he was 19. I was 15. And she was like, oh my gosh, what are you doing? This kid is, she's a kid. But she saw my situation and she saw what I was going through. And he saved me in so many ways. He was my protector. He was my bodyguard. Like you said, it could have ended up on drugs. I could have ended up dead. I could have ended up, I was in, you know, squat houses where people were shooting a heroin. But he kept me away from all of this stuff. And I'm not sure what possessed him to because at first I wasn't even his girlfriend. I was just his tag along, you know, buddy that hitchhiked with him and slept and squats with him. But eventually we became something and then he just looked after me. And another special.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But she looked at me and she said, You're going to look at me when I talk to you. You're going to stand up straight. You're going to wear respectable clothing. You're going to bathe. You're going to brush your teeth. You're going to do all the things that your other mother didn't do and didn't tell you to do. And she's my mother to this day. She always gets upset when I talk about mother because she's like, that's not me. That's not me. But she's the most amazing woman and I still am in touch with her and I just was really lucky to have found a boyfriend who had an amazing mother. And you might wonder why was he homeless? Some people are homeless because they romanticize it. You know, I was out there because I had to be there, but he was out there because he read Jack Kerouac or something.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because then somebody taught me how to make jewelry, hemp jewelry in particular, and gave me some hemp jewelry and some beads, taught me how to braid them and I made some really beautiful jewelry and I would go from table to table. I was one of those people that would annoy you during dinner or coffee when you're out on a date and guilt you into buying a necklace. And I would sell them. And eventually I made enough money to pay for rent. The other interesting thing that I want to bring up during this as well is I have two mothers. So when I speak about my mother, there's my mother who gave birth to me, but there's also this guy cuddles, the homeless guy's mother, who had basically adopted me. And eventually I moved in with her. When I arrived with her, I couldn't look you in the eye. I would always like look at my feet. I couldn't make eye contact. I would not be able to have this conversation that you and I are having, Tim. It just wouldn't have happened. I would shiver constantly. I was a mess.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. But I developed a really good eye for what people like to buy at the time. And this was in Tim Pierzona where there's college kids. And so college kids throughout the coolest stuff. The books were great too because you could get a really nice premium on books if you could find a good textbook or something like that. But my job was to make $2 a day. If I could make $2 a day, I could afford a bagel, cream cheese. If I was lucky in 99 cent whopper, and if I was extra lucky, I got a bowl of rice and some vegetables for my favorite Vietnamese joint over on Mill Avenue. And that was all that mattered during the day. And once you were done with that task, you just got to lay around swim in fountains, you know, walk around, take creamers from coffee shops. I mean, life was grand, but the seeds of self-reliance were planted then. And I honestly think the beginnings of my love for capitalism.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eat or couldn't have a place to sleep, and I was cold, and just you have to get very, very resourceful. I had to figure out something. So what I started doing was there's these donation centers where people don't eat clothes or they donate books or things like that. And I found a place that allowed homeless people to take three things every day. So you basically check in and you're allowed to take three items. And I would go in and find items that I could sell to Buffalo Exchange or I could take to a bookstore.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To exist in the first place. So I just thanked him and I was like, you know, I'm so glad that God spoke to you. Thank you so much. And that put me again on an interesting trajectory because when I experienced homelessness again after that, I decided I didn't want to rely on other people. I think the whole experience taught me how my life was just so dependent on spare changing and the kindness of others. I needed to come up with a way to provide for myself. And I didn't know how. I was underage. I couldn't work. You know, minimum wage and age requirements. I have a controversial view on them. I'm not saying that people should have child labor, but I am saying that it draws a line, and sometimes it's the difference between life and death for a lot of people. And for me, I almost died many times because I couldn't.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Developing hypothermia. So I was on the side of the road and I started to fall asleep, and I was getting really warm. It's not a good sign. I was getting really warm and very sleepy and happy. And if you're in a very cold place where it's below freezing and you start to feel those things, that is like a very dangerous warning sign. And he stopped at just the right time when I thought I was going to lose consciousness. And it was just gone. It was over for me. And he pulled me along with cuddles into the RV and they put blankets around me. They did whatever they knew how to do because they didn't understand what to do when someone has hypothermia. and gave me hot chocolate and just the next thing I know I wake up and Flagstaff. This guy took me all the way home and he just told me that it was God that told him and at the time I didn't believe in God. I had no reason to believe in God and my attitude towards God if there was one was how could a God do this to me and do this to other people and allow these atrocities.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And eventually, when the sun rose, we went out to the highway and we stuck our thumbs out and nobody would stop. But this RV apparently had gone, I didn't notice it, but had gone by several times. And he stopped and he opened the door and he said, I'm going to save her, but I guess you're along with the package. But God told me to save her.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we had to walk from one side to the other and cross a river. But crossing a river as a homeless person is actually not that easy because a lot of the roadways don't have sidewalks. So we were contemplating some seriously dangerous things. We were thinking about looking around for flotation devices, like how are we going to get across this river, you know? And eventually we didn't have a map. We just walked and walked and walked until there was a pedestrian way, which we finally found. And the reason why this is weird is that it was so cold. So we were desperate to find heat to find some place where we could sleep for the evening and having no luck. Eventually, we did make it to the other side of the river, to the side where we would need to get a car heading towards Flagstaff. And we hold up in a Denny's and we did that for quite some time, but eventually during a shift change, they were just like, you got to get out of here. And we went and slept in a dumpster outside of a gas station.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if they still do that or if they're still around. I don't want to get them in trouble. But that's how they made their income. And we lived in this little teeny tiny trailer in the dead of winter. At some point, I got homesick. I couldn't take it anymore. I was just like, I need to go back to Arizona. I need to be familiar territory. This is a very strange place to be and there was constantly different people showing up. Sometimes the police would come and raid the place because there were people giving illegal tattoos. It was just nonstop stuff. I wanted to be away from it. So I talked my boyfriend into hitchhiking back to Arizona. And I almost died on that return trip. A lot of times you're very lucky if you hitch a ride where someone takes you the full way. Usually you get like these little partial ways and you have to stand on the, you know, somewhere and then someone takes you another segment and another segment. Well, we got dropped off on one side.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once you're homeless, you can never be unhomeless. It's really strange. Every time I walk around at a conference or anything, I see all the waste. I see if I were a homeless person, I could come and I could have this, no matter where I'm at. It's really interesting. But before I got this house, there was a time where I was homeless and hitchhiking. And my boyfriend at the time, who was one of these crusty punk kids, he goes by the name Cuddles. They all had these funny names. He and I decided we were going to hitchhike to New York. We got it in our heads from at the time Phoenix. I was in Phoenix. We set out leaving from a coffee shop in Tim, Arizona and ending up in Jim as Springs, New Mexico. We never made it to New York. Instead, we ended up in a hippie commune where they basically had us bury pipe to, you know, justify our stay there. And then at the time, they had psilocybin spore.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, I was one of those kids. And I fell into that group in Flagstaff. There was a group of wanderers who came in and took me under their wing and started teaching me the way of the streets because before this I was thrust onto the streets and I was on my own and I did my best. You know, I would stay under people's beds. I would sleep in playgrounds. I would find any place I could stay. But once I met some people who are a little more professional and had a little more time under their belt at homelessness, I started to learn that there's a whole world out there of really interesting ways to get by. For example, you know, there's coffee houses that have creamer and creamer is relatively free. And it has fat and calories in it. And they have sugar and honey. And if you get those things and you put them in a cup, you can have a pretty nutritious meal. So there's things like that.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if you've ever seen those crusty punk kids that hang out on Hayton Ashbury, or you see them in every city that has any kind of population and they're usually sitting around a record store on the ground with a dog.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here, she had no problem. She said, Come in. She gave me a corner on the floor. I didn't have a mattress. She said, I recommend you get a pillow, but here's a blanket. And that became my home. I think you're going to see over and over. I didn't see it then. I see it now looking back at all of these precious moments where a person does something extraordinary at just the right time. And that's what Pam did. And I had my first home. And that was in Flagstaff. It was next to the train tracks, so it was a very strange home. It rumbled a lot. And we got into a lot of shenanigans with the train because we were young and dumb, but it was a great home.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the strangest thing. But I walked out of that courtroom. I saw my mom again twice after that. But I didn't see my mom leave a night. She never looked at me. She just exited out some other door and that was the end of my mother. And suddenly I'm a quote-unquote independent person, not quite an adult. I go out and sit on the curb and I remember looking up at the sky and I said, oh Sky, what do I do? What now? Because they gave me 24 hours to find a place to live. They said, if you don't find a place to live, you know, you're going into an unfortunate circumstance. And so I went through my mental map of how many friends did I have that were adults. And this one woman named Pam just came in crystal clear and I said, I'm going to walk to Pam's. I'm going to ask her if I can stay there. And that's going to give me some time. And so I walked over there, knocked on the door. Pam, can I stay?”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the gavel just came down, and he said, by the power invested in him and all that stuff, and basically said that I was now awarded the state of Arizona. And what that means in Arizona, it is not emancipation. It's you get assigned a probation officer and you're treated like a criminal. If you want to live on your own, which is very, very difficult to do if you can imagine at 15, there's not a lot of people that will hire you. Not people will rent to you you can't sign a contract either. They basically said you have 24 hours to find a place to live, otherwise you end up in a group home. And the rules of living on your own are you have to be in at 9 o'clock. There's a curfew. You're not allowed to have boys over. You're not allowed to have marijuana. You have to work and you have to go to school. And then the strangest one of all was you had to have a gallon of milk in your fridge at all times because they would show up and that was like sign of adulting is if you can buy a gallon of milk and keep it fresh in your fridge before the expiration.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, it's hard to explain, but it changes, it like dilates. But he looked at me and he said, Cyan, do you want to live in a cardboard box for the rest of your life? And he held up some book, which I assume is a book of the law. I had no idea what he was holding up. And I said, no, I do not want to live in a cardboard box. And he was like, is there anything in this book that tells you that you are above the law? And I said, no, Your Honor, I'm not above the law. And then he looked at my mother and he said, do you want this child anymore? And she said, no, I do not.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like cosplay as far as I'm concerned. But they basically told me, like, when the judge comes in, You are to stand, you are to say your honor, you are to say yes, your honor, no, your honor, and you are to sit. And that's it. You know, just behave yourself. We got the rest. And I'm like, okay, but I don't understand what's going on. And then my mother came into the right of the courtroom, and I'm on the left. And I look at her and she never looks at me. And the judge came in. It all happened again. This stuff happens so fast and time just.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and Flagstaff. He did something he'd never done before, and he took me to Dairy Clean. And he let me get whatever I wanted. And I was like, well, this is weird. And then he took me to the courthouse. And then he paraded me into the courthouse and he let me sit where the judge sits. I was like, this is very strange. And he said, would you like some spaghetti? And he brought me spaghetti. And I'm like, everybody's being so nice to me. And then this woman came in and she introduced herself and she told me she was my public defender. And I was confused about a lot of this terminology because I didn't understand what I needed to be defended from, like what did I do to the public? I remember thinking like, I don't know what this means. None of this.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have these kids and they're really useful for pre-education for free childcare, for free housing. And so we lived in student housing. And if you don't have a kid, you can't live in student housing. You can't have a nice house. You have to live in a dorm room. So when she came back, she got me back. And that's when the cycle of kicking me out started all over again. And eventually I got picked up by a police officer named Officer Pratt. That's actually something I would love to find through this podcast if I can find Officer Pratt. Officer Pratt probably did one of the most single important things in my life in helping me. He picked me up and brought me to the courthouse because he arrested me several times.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I will never forget coming into that home and seeing that man who was opening his home to me and really questioning my life choices and moral decisions at that moment really taught me a really valuable lesson I never stole again. And this family took me in and they tried to actually get custody of me. They tried to go to the court systems and become my forever home, but my mother got back and she has this racket that she runs where”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She said no. But the next thing that happened I did not expect, which is I came home from school and discovered a $20 bill on the countertop with a note that said, good luck. And her stuff gone. And so the landlord showed up and basically said, you can't stay here. And so I went out on the street. And the most miraculous thing happened. A lot of my life as a series of miraculous things where people have stepped in at just the right moment to help me. And there was a woman who is my friend Becky from band class. It was her mother who saw me sitting on the street corner crying and she pulled her car over and she said, what's going on? And I just started mumbling to her about what was going on. And she just said, get in. And she took me home. I had no idea that Becky's dad was the general manager of Walmart. I had a nasty shoplifting habit as a young teenager. And that Walmart I hit up a few times.”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Police getting called me getting picked up by the police ending up in jail sometimes. It's a horrible system for kids, by the way, if we want to get into that topic. Into foster care and into group homes. But eventually... They had enough of this. So she left me for a summer and basically she decided to go take a position at Lawrence Livermore, a summer job or a summer research position. And she wanted me to come with her, but I had to go to summer school and I had to stay in school if I was going to graduate because home life was really, really bad. And so I told her about my desire to stay home and”
2024-11-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #780: Cyan Banister — From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT