Haseeb Qureshi is an entrepreneur and investor. As a teenager, Haseeb played poker professionally through the online poker bubble. His path from poker to software entrepreneurship has been explored in previous episodes.
In 2007, Haseeb and I met at an online poker table. As we battled each other for thousands of dollars, Haseeb and I realized we shared an affinity for obnoxious screen names, obnoxious online avatars, and the city of Austin, Texas. We were both living in the city, and met each other in the real world.
In our earliest days, Haseeb and I were not friends. It was a strange time–we were disembodied minds, drifting on the Internet, attached mostly to the fluctuating balances of our Full Tilt Poker and Pokerstars accounts. This was not a time for friendship–it was a time for ruthless, modern competition.
Haseeb grew tired of poker. He wrote a book about the game to memorialize his thoughts, then abandoned it. He studied philosophy and literature, searching for something new in the historical musings of humanity. He traveled Europe, working as a farmer to reconnect with the physical world. He discovered the Effective Altruism movement.
Finding no solace in his poker spoils, Haseeb gave away most of his money and started from scratch. As he rebuilt himself, he found software engineering and charted a path to San Francisco, where we reconnected.
In this episode, Haseeb joins me for a discussion of software, philosophy, poker, and the nature of bubbles. Indeed, Haseeb and I have now lived through four major bubbles: dot coms, poker, the 2008 financial crisis, and the crypto bubble. Throughout these bubbles, the mediums change but never does the message: human beings are deeply irrational, tribalistic, and emotional.
