Balaji Srinivasan
American entrepreneur and investor (born 1980)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Balaji S. Srinivasan (born May 24, 1980)[2] is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of Counsyl, the former chief technology officer (CTO) of Coinbase, and former general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.[3]
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- Former CTO of Coinbase
- Former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Balaji Srinivasan | |
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| Born | May 24, 1980 Long Island, New York,[1] U.S. |
| Education | Stanford University (BS, MS, MS, PhD) |
| Known for |
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| Spouse |
Boonsri Dickinson (m. 2015) |
Biography
Srinivasan is the son of physician parents who immigrated from Tamil Nadu, India. Srinivasan grew up on Long Island, in Plainview, New York.[4] He received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a MS in chemical engineering, also from Stanford.[5] He taught courses in statistics and bioinformatics at Stanford and an online Stanford course called Startup Engineering.[6][7][8] In 2014, Startup Engineering was ranked by Business Insider as the 6th "Most Popular Free Online Course For Professionals."[9] The course introduced the concept of the "idea maze," which has been widely cited in technology circles such as by Chris Dixon and the firm Andreessen Horowitz.[10][11] His Google Scholar profile lists over 5,000 citations for publications on diagnostics, microbial genomics, and population genetics in Genome Research, Nature Biotechnology, and the New England Journal of Medicine.[12]
In 2007, he co-founded genetic testing company Counsyl, which provided tests to prospective parents to screen for over 100 Mendelian diseases.[2][3][13][14] In 2010, Counsyl received the Wall Street Journal Innovation Award for Medicine, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 10 World Changing Ideas.[15][16] In 2013, MIT added Srinivasan to its MIT TR35 list for his work on clinical genomics.[17] Counsyl was acquired by Myriad Genetics for $375 million in 2018.[18][19]
In 2013, he joined the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a general partner.[20][21] While at the firm, he made early investments in OpenGov,[22][23] Omada Health,[24][25] and Benchling.[26][27]
In 2013, Srinivasan co-founded 21e6, which later became 21 Inc,[28] a Bitcoin mining startup raising over $120 million from investors.[29][non-primary source needed] The company later became Earn.com, which allowed senders to pay users in cryptocurrency to reply to emails.[2][30] In April 2018, Earn.com was acquired by Coinbase for $120 million.[31][32][33] After Coinbase purchased Earn.com, it became Coinbase Earn and Srinivasan became Coinbase's first CTO.[2][34][35] While at Coinbase, Srinivasan oversaw the addition of new tokens, including Zcash and stablecoins.[36][37] In a 2018 interview, Coinbase COO Emilie Choi stated, "we can very confidently say...that the Earn acquisition more than paid for itself multifold in the course of this year."[38] He left the company in 2019.[39] Coinbase's 2021 SEC filings reported that Coinbase Earn's revenue was $7.7 million in 2020 and $63.1 million in 2021.[40]
In April 2014, he co-founded Teleport, a job search engine. Teleport was acquired by Topia in 2017.[41][42] In September 2024, Srinivasan started The Network School, a school for people interested in developing "network nations" and "decentralized countries." Located in Forest City, Johor, Malaysia, the school had an initial enrollment of 150. Students are required to have an admiration of “Western values,” to believe Bitcoin is the successor to the US Federal Reserve, and to trust AI over human courts and judges.[43]
The Network State
In 2013, in a talk at Y Combinator's Startup School titled "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" and in a Wired article called "Software Is Reorganizing the World",[44] Srinivasan urged the technology industry to digitally exit the United States and move abroad. The talk was received positively by Reason,[45] Wired,[46] and Bloomberg News;[47] it was criticized by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.[48][49] After TechCrunch mentioned the speech in an article exploring links between Silicon Valley tech leaders and the far-right Dark Enlightenment movement,[50] Srinivasan wrote in an email to Dark Enlightenment leader Curtis Yarvin, "If things get hot, it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out with hostile reporting sent to *their* advertisers/friends/contacts."[51][52]
In 2022, in a self-published book titled The Network State: How To Start a New Country, Srinivasan elaborated on his ideas about online nationality and the need to break away from geographical governments. The book describes the concept of a "network state" in which digital communities crowd-fund resources to build autonomous cities and states.[53][54] The ideas in the book were inspired by the work of the economist Albert O. Hirschman, who sees two basic paths to reform, one called voice (remake the system from within) and another called exit (leave and build something new).[55]
In an April 2024 article for The New Republic, Gil Duran warned against dismissing the Network State as an unpopular fringe theory.[56] His article drew from Srinivasan's September 2023 podcast interview in which he called for tech-friendly people to seize political power and take control of cities. Srinivasan said his plan would exclude Democrats from areas the techies control. He suggested bribing the police (with banquets and jobs for their relatives) to prevent them from enforcing laws disadvantageous to technology companies.[56][57] Duran argued that Srinivasan's ideas reveal an "appetite for autocracy".[56]
In October 2024, Praxis, a company that attempts to build such a network state with backing from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, the Winklevoss twins and others, had received $525 million in milestone-based financing.[58] Praxis original plan to develop its "city" in the Mediterranean failed and since then the company favors Greenland as a site.[59]
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, among other publicists, has criticized the Network State concept, describing it as a form of modern colonialism resembling the Dutch East India Company.[60][61][62] Other critics say that a network state is nothing more than a "libertarian utopia with minimal corporate regulation"[63] for those "economically and eugenically select few"[64] who want to live in a place without "regulatory oversight or financial checks"[65] that explicitly prioritizes capital over democracy and human rights.[64]
Public profile
MIT Technology Review named Srinivasan on its list of "Innovators Under 35" in 2013.[13] In 2018, Fortune ranked him 26th on its "The Ledger 40 Under 40" list.[2]
In 2017, the Trump Administration considered appointing Srinivasan as FDA Commissioner.[66][67][68][69][70][71] While being considered for the appointment, Srinivasan deleted all of his tweets, including tweets critical of the FDA.[72] In one such deleted tweet, Srinivasan wrote, "For every thalidomide, many dead from slowed approvals."[73] In July 2020, Srinivasan drew attention after criticizing Taylor Lorenz's reporting alleged misbehavior of Away's CEO on Twitter. On the Twitter thread, he suggested Lorenz and activists like her are "sociopaths". Lorenz defended herself and characterized Srinivasan's previous actions as harassment on Clubhouse and other platforms.[74][75][76][77]
In April 2021, Srinivasan donated $50,000 in cryptocurrency to aid in Indian COVID-19 relief during a resurgence of the virus in the country. On Twitter, he pledged to donate another $50 for every time his post was retweeted, up to $100,000.[78] On March 17, 2023, Srinivasan bet James Medlock, a left-leaning economics influencer, that one bitcoin (then worth less than $30,000) would be worth $1 million in 90 days. Srinivasan made the bet after Medlock tweeted, "I'll bet anyone $1 million dollars that the US does not enter hyperinflation."[79] Srinivasan conceded the bet early and paid an additional US$500,000 to Bitcoin core developers.[80] Forbes remarked shortly after the bet was made that Srinivasan owns "a considerable amount of bitcoin" and his $1 million bet on Bitcoin "might be a mere marketing ploy or even a pump-and-dump scheme".[81] Ninety days after Srinivasan made his bet, the price of a bitcoin was down roughly 3 percent from its March 17 price.[82]