Balaji Srinivasan

Balaji S. Srinivasan (born May 24, 1980) is an American entrepreneur and investor. He was the co-founder of Counsyl, the former chief technology officer (CTO) of Coinbase, and former general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Biography

He is the son of physician parents who immigrated from Tamil Nadu, India. Srinivasan grew up on Long Island, in Plainview, New York. He received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a MS in Chemical Engineering, also from Stanford. In 2007, he co-founded genetic testing company Counsyl, which provided tests to prospective parents to screen for Mendelian diseases. Counsyl was acquired by Myriad Genetics for $375 million in 2018. In 2013, he joined the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a general partner.

In 2013, Srinivasan co-founded 21e6, which later became 21 Inc, a Bitcoin mining startup raising over $120 million from investors. The company failed as a bitcoin mining business and pivoted to become Earn.com, which allowed senders to pay users in cryptocurrency to reply to emails. Earn.com was acquired by digital currency exchange company Coinbase in April 2018. After Coinbase purchased Earn.com, it became Coinbase Earn and Srinivasan became Coinbase's first CTO. He left the company in 2019. Coinbase shut down Coinbase Earn in December 2019.

In April 2014, he co-founded Teleport, a job search engine. Teleport was acquired by Topia in 2017. 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.

''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", Srinivasan urged the technology industry to digitally exit the United States and move abroad. The talk was received positively by ''Reason'', ''Wired'', and Bloomberg News; it was criticized by ''The New York Times'' and ''The Wall Street Journal''. After TechCrunch mentioned the speech in an article exploring links between Silicon Valley tech leaders and the far-right Dark Enlightenment movement, 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."

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. 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).

In an April 2024 article for ''The New Republic'', Gil Duran warned against dismissing the Network State as an unpopular fringe theory. 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. Duran argued that Srinivasan's ideas reveal an "appetite for autocracy".

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, among other publicists, has criticized the Network State concept, describing it as a form of modern colonialism resembling Dutch East India Company.

Public profile

''MIT Technology Review'' named Srinivasan on its list of "Innovators Under 35" in 2013. In 2018, ''Fortune'' ranked him 26th on its "The Ledger 40 Under 40" list.

In 2017, the Trump Administration considered appointing Srinivasan as FDA Commissioner. While being considered for the appointment, Srinivasan deleted all of his tweets, including tweets critical of the FDA. In one such deleted tweet, Srinivasan wrote, "For every thalidomide, many dead from slowed approvals." 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.

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. 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." Srinivasan conceded the bet early and paid an additional to bitcoin core developers. ''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". Ninety days after Srinivasan made his bet, the price of a Bitcoin was down roughly 3 percent from its March 17 price.

Personal life

Srinivasan married journalist Boonsri Dickinson in 2015. In 2020, the couple moved to Singapore.https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/profile/in/boonsri

References

External links

Balaji Srinivasan on Twitter

The Network State book online

{{DEFAULTSORT:Srinivasan, Balaji
American chief technology officers
Angel investors
American venture capitalists
People associated with Bitcoin
Living people
American people of Indian descent
People from Plainview, New York
1980 births