Chase Koch grew up receiving Sunday philosophy lessons from his father Charles and, by his own account, spent most of them half asleep while his sister supplied the answers. The principles didn't land until he lived them: throwing tennis matches as a bored teenager, getting shipped off to shovel manure at a feed yard twelve hours later, then spending five years battling Brazilian bureaucracy to build a fertilizer terminal that should have taken one. Today he runs Koch Disruptive Technologies, co-chairs the foundation Stand Together, plays lead guitar in a band named for the law of entropy, and has a new book with his father on principle-driven leadership.

Chase and Tyler discuss if any of his father's lessons never stuck, the guilt-trip letter his grandfather wrote three months after Charles was born, why Chase started throwing tennis matches, what Rafa's grit taught him about stoicism, who he admired most from the 1992 Dream Team, whether the Spurs should jettison De'Aaron Fox, the David Gilmour solo that hooked him at eleven, what drew him to jam bands, how he built a boom-box business out of his parents' garage, why his father interviewed Snoop on a Zoom call during Covid, why his band is named for the second law of thermodynamics, what it's like working with MrBeast, how Koch Industries has evolved, what he learned from Marc Andreessen, the philosophy behind hiring the "farm team," why he is teaching himself to code with Claude at his fourteen-year-old's urging, where he's traveling next, and much more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded June 16th, 2026.

Other ways to connect

Follow us on X and Instagram
Follow Tyler on X
Sign up for our newsletter
Join our Discord
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:56 - Familial Influences

00:08:25 - Tennis and Basketball

00:15:00 - The Music Industry

00:28:36 - MrBeast

00:31:24 - The Evolution of Koch Industries

00:35:54 - The Midwest

00:44:37 - AI

00:49:01 - Politics

00:53:35 - Outro

Chase Koch on Principles, Music, and Overcoming Entropy

Conversations with Tyler

Chase Koch on Principles, Music, and Overcoming Entropy