Former a16z VC Balaji Srinivasan obtained a private island for his new longevity 'technocapitalist' school

by with No Comment Tech

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Depending on your thoughts on the intersection of crypto and Silicon Valley’s libertarians, this is either a dream idea or an odd one: Former a16z investor Balaji Srinivasan has booked out an island near Singapore to create his own “Network School.” This is where he’ll run programs on crypto, longevity and what it takes to establish “a technocapitalist college town,” as he put it in his post announcing the initiative. 

It’s the most meaningful milestone yet for Srinivasan’s dream of creating “network states,” which he defines as an internet community that secures a physical location and “gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states,” he wrote. 

The concept has enraptured the libertarian subsection of Silicon Valley; Srinivasan earned praise from Marc Andreessen and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and has inspired fellow crypto enthusiasts to start their own “network states.” In addition to his years at a16z, which ended in 2018, Srinivasan is also known for his year as Coinbase’s CTO after Coinbase bought his crypto startup Earn.com in 2018. And he’s a board member of the crypto nonprofit advocacy and lobbying organization Coin Center, which champions for policies like anonymity for crypto holders from the IRS.

Srinivasan says his 90-day school will start in late September and will feature lectures on topics like digital nomadism while offering meals designed by longevity-obsessive Bryan Johnson, the entrepreneur who made headlines last year for spending millions on “de-aging” himself. The program, Srinivasan emphasized, is best suited for those who “understand that Bitcoin succeeds the Federal Reserve,” and “that AI can deliver better opinions than any Delaware magistrate” and “that democracy can be rejuvenated with cryptography.” 

Srinivasan, who published a book on network states in 2022, isn’t the only one making a play for internet-group sovereign nations. Last spring, Buterin created his own Srinivasan-inspired “network state” called Zuzalu in Montenegro. Guests included the musician Grimes and Patri Friedman, the entrepreneur who got millions from Peter Thiel to start a sea-bound society. For two months, attendees donned continuous glucose monitors, took daily cold plunges in the Adriatic Sea and attended lectures on everything from sex work to zero-knowledge cryptography. 

Although Srinivasan hasn’t divulged his plans for establishing a permanent presence on the island, the goal of network states is often to secure some recognition from local governments — whether that’s in the form of full sovereignty or a special economic zone. Zuzalu organizers met with Montenegro officials to discuss “creating a similar long-term home for pro-longevity devotees,” according to the MIT Technology Review; another network state, Prospera, backed by Friedman, successfully lobbied Honduras for an economic zone that offers companies low taxes and startup-friendly regulations. 

Srinivasan is currently taking applications for his new network school, although he cautions that those with a fondness for the current world order need not apply. “The more respect you have for legacy institutions, and the more respect they have for you, the less suitable you’ll be as an applicant,” he wrote.

Lighthouse on cliff at the edge of an island.

With $175M in new funding, Island is putting the browser at the center of enterprise security

by with No Comment Tech

Lighthouse on cliff at the edge of an island.

Image Credits: Surovtseva / Getty Images

Island, the enterprise browser company, may be the most valuable startup that you have never heard of. The company, which is putting the browser at the center of security, announced a $175 million Series D investment on Tuesday at a whopping $3 billion valuation. Island has now raised a total of $487 million.

That’s a ton of money, and it makes us wonder: What is the company doing to warrant this kind of investment at this level of value? Doug Leone, a partner at Sequoia who invested in Island going back to the A round, says that he was attracted to the company’s founding team and unique value proposition.

“The two founders, one of whom was a technical founder out of Israel — Dan Amiga — and one who was a very senior security executive out of the U.S. — Mike Fey — had a vision that if you could produce a browser based on Chromium that looks like a standard browser to the consumer employee in a corporation, but was secure, it would stop bad guys from doing a whole bunch of things,” Leone told TechCrunch.

He says that the end result is that you can lower the overall cost of security by replacing things like a VPN, data loss prevention and mobile device management, all of which can be done right in the browser instead of purchasing separate tools. That could in turn lower the overall cost of securing a network.

Island is defining a category with an enterprise browser, while allowing employees to work in a familiar environment and keeping them more secure, says Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“They are using the security angle to change human computing interactions,” he said. “Think of the browser as your screen into a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ game, and based on all the data being captured, it can deliver contextually relevant content, actions and insight, but it does it while delivering on enterprise class security of the data, process and identity.”

Fey acknowledges that if he showed up at a company with a proprietary browser, and they have 20,000 apps — which would be possible in a Fortune 100 company — then they would have to test all those apps against that browser. But the fact that Island is based on the Chromium standard means that IT can trust the browser without having to put everything through a lengthy testing process. “The browser world standardized on Chromium. This idea couldn’t have come to fruition before that,” Fey said.

In spite of the value proposition and the standardized approach, Fey says it still takes some explaining to get executives to understand that by paying for a security-focused browser, they can actually save money in the long run. “You have to explain where the ROI [return on investment] comes from. What am I getting? Where’s it coming from? And the ROI has to be very understandable and very believable and large,” he said.

How large? Consider that he says one company saved $300 million a year shutting down racks in a data center because they didn’t require nearly the same level of resources anymore to run the same applications.

Browsers are interesting again

Fey says it’s not about replacing these tools, so much as the fact that taking advantage of a standardized browser just makes it so much easier to execute on things like web filtering or even virtual desktops. It sounds simple, but the company has 280 employees, of which 100 are engineers. He says a lot of engineering work went into making this happen.

While he wouldn’t discuss specific revenue numbers, the company has around 200 customers and has been growing steadily over the past couple of years. Leone referred to it as exponential growth.

Fey thinks that Island can be a substantial public company eventually. “We’re getting into decent ARR at this point, meaningful ARR, and our margins are good,” he said. “So you know what we think is we will make a strong IPO candidate someday, but not next year. Someday.”