00:00:00
president Trump was threatening personal and political retaliation because they tried to help Harris get elected do you
00:00:05
think you'll be penalized yes and Direct on you and direct me you're not planning on leaving the US are
00:00:11
you um Reed Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn and one of the world's most
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successful entrepreneurs playing pivotal roles in the success of influential companies including PayPal Airbnb
00:00:22
Facebook and open Ai and now he is a leading voice in AI helping people utilize this new technology to empower
00:00:29
themselves in their life and careers you were part of what they call the PayPal Mafia who went on to create Tesla
00:00:34
YouTube Reddit SpaceX LinkedIn and become multi-billionaires and so I've got so many questions let's do it what
00:00:41
are the key factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset one is you have to understand that you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid
00:00:47
failure when we started LinkedIn everyone said this won't work but just because you don't have a 100% chance of
00:00:52
succeeding doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it but there's also a set of skills that are rare that you can
00:00:57
actually teach to entrepreneurs makes you much more likely to be successful the first is and then how do you know
00:01:04
when to quit the job what's your view on work life balance and if you were advising anyone to build wealth in 2025
00:01:10
what would you say here's some simple tips one is Reed what is your take on AI it gives us super powers now there will
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be costs to it but like electricity it does electrocute people but it's essential for human society and is there
00:01:22
anything that the average person should be doing to capitalize on the opportunity that AI presents 100% this is what you do so
00:01:31
this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the
00:01:38
show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you
00:01:44
can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to
00:01:51
make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that
00:01:56
you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music]
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read as I read through your life it's remarkable in it's almost impossible
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that one individual could be involved in so many companies that have had such a big impact on
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society but at the same time someone would be able to seemingly see the future over and over and over and over
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again so because as I read through your life I thought this can't be one individual this can't be one lifetime it
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it begs the question to me what is in your view the causal factors that set
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you up for such a life well that's interesting I've never been asked that question before
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um probably it's a combination of the fact that my passion
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is who are we as human beings and where are we going so like that's from from a very young age like I've been like and I
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think I got it by reading science fiction right this kind of like what is the scope of humanity like you know Isaac asimov's foundation and you know
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this kind of stuff and then um I ended up growing up I was born in
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the Stanford hospital I ended up growing up in Silicon Valley and and so I got the exposure to technology can change
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the world and so focusing on thinking about you know kind of this intersection of humanity and technology and of course
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obviously science fiction has some play to that too although most the technology in science fiction is just fiction right
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just like we have wormholes and we do Intergalactic travel it's like as far as we know there is no such thing as
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wormholes for Intergalactic travel right I mean all current contemporary Theory
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of physics would suggest that there isn't I mean there may be wormholes but they're not for you know put your Star
00:03:51
Trek spaceship in it and go somewhere and then probably the other part of it is um I played a lot of board games when
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I was kid and so it gave me a very deep sense of strategy and so approaching life yeah exact wow this one here you
00:04:07
probably remember this yes I do remember that right in the names on the cover Borderlands what age were you when you
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started playing Rune Quest you were very young uh when I started playing Rune Quest
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probably 10 and what is the link between the life you lived in the board games you played
00:04:25
as a 10-year-old um well mostly as a function again like the role playing games is like strategy right so it's
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kind of um you know how do you uh kind of think about like uh like an adventure
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is both a narrative experience but it's also a strategic experience like you know how do you save the town from the
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from the you know the bandits you know that kind of thing and so um so it gave
00:04:52
me a deep sense of kind of like how do strategy and tactics and problem solving
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um and how do you do it as a group right because you know in fantasy role playing games it tends to be you know
00:05:04
especially when I was doing it as a kid a set of blos around the table uh I hear it's now a little bit more gender Balan
00:05:10
which is good and especially especially for the blos it's like oh we're not we're not just Geeks by ourselves here
00:05:16
right um and um and so and the way that I got to doing this is I was enough
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because this is kind of the focused you know kind of kid I was is what I um I'd
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heard that the chaosium had their offices were were down the street from a friend of minees and so I literally
00:05:36
walked in the door and started hanging out at their office and they're the maker of this game they're maker of this
00:05:41
game the chief editor I think wanted to get me out of the office so he said he
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handed me the pre the the in development draft of this and said here go look at
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this and so I took it home as an obsessive kid I I like redlined it I
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worked my way through it and I brought it back like he gave me a Friday and I brought it back on Monday so he failed
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on his get this kid out of the office mission right but he's he was then and I
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I I still remember this look of vague irritation when I handed him this
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because he's like ah this kid is handing me this thing oh [ __ ] I don't want to be a meany guy and then he started looking
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at it and went oh this is actually good work and it was like I want to use this work and I was a kid so I didn't
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understand he needed to pay me to use it I was that wasn't why I was just doing it because I wanted to show that I that
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I knew how to do this stuff and so he then wrote me a check um so it was my
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like my very first paycheck to to be able to to use the work in the
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publication um because you know this is how copyright that that means he then owns all the work that I did so he could
00:06:50
publish it and is your work still in here today yes uhuh so edits that you made to this game are still in here at
00:06:57
what age uh that was 12 wow that's incredible and how much did he pay you
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oh it's like $160 or something it's not bad for 12-year-old no no no my dad my
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dad was originally opposed to Fantasy role play games it was like uh what what are you doing like you know go like be
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on a path to a real life and then when I brought home the paycheck I like well maybe that works and what was your what were your
00:07:23
dreams at that age what did you think you were going to be when you were older sort of 12 13 14 years old frankly I had
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no idea other than the following entertaining thing which is since both my mother and father are lawyers when I
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was asked when I was 12 what I wanted to be when I grew up the answer was not a lawyer really yes well because
00:07:40
lawyers um look obviously bunch of are barister the side of the pond um lawyers
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are essentially modern Gladiators who are paid to be the Gladiator of whatever
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their paycheck is whether it's a client or whether it's you know being a full-time employee and so forth and it's
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quality work it's important for society but like I was like no no I want to create things I don't want to be a you
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know you know belt on my sword and you know go to verbal battle for you know whatever the you know contract or or
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litigation or any of those things and I was like no no no I I actually want to go build things and so I didn't know
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what I wanted to be when I grew up other than and maybe I still don't know right um but
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what I evolve to is I normally have about a two to three year plan that's iterating right and that's that's tends
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to be what I do and being born at Stanford hospital is pertinent as well I don't think people in the UK and around the world necessarily know the
00:08:38
significance of that yeah but can you explain why that's important Silicon Valley um is a it's a network of a
00:08:47
generative platform so like one of the things that that I have learned to think about is networks amplify productivity
00:08:53
that's not just as we get to you know why it is i f i conceptualized and founded LinkedIn but but it's think in
00:09:01
terms of networks it's one of the reasons why cities are such uh engines like basically if you really look at
00:09:07
economies it's city regions and U it's because the city region creates a network right it's a network of could be
00:09:15
suppliers and all the rest but also talent and capital and and and and knowledge and communication and and
00:09:21
strategic lenses onto the world and so Silicon Valley has been an like like
00:09:27
people go oh I'm a genius it's like no no I'm in Silicon Valley right and that really helps and so being born in
00:09:34
Stanford gave me this a set of different you know kind of perspectives one
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technology is a lens into the uh future another one is as an individual you can
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go create a technology or technology company that can be a lever that can move the world right and that an
00:09:53
individual you know from anywhere can kind of do that um and all of those
00:09:58
things were were part of the luck of being born in
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Stanford the luck yes well I don't choose you don't choose where you're born but a lot of people were born there
00:10:09
and they didn't go on to do the things that you did people like to tell stories of manifest destiny it's because I am
00:10:15
great it I would have been great anywhere that I was right and it's self-
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delusional I mean yes I think I'm smart yes I think I'm hardworking yes I think I'm strategic yes I think I have skills
00:10:28
that are rare in in in human condition but any great achievement also has luck
00:10:35
right and and I can point it in any companies I can point it at any individuals um and for example one of
00:10:42
the basic luck is like I had exposure and connection to Silicon Valley if I
00:10:48
didn't have that the technology Destiny or the technology achievements I've done
00:10:53
wouldn't have been able to do those or wouldn't have been able to do those the amazing way that I did them
00:10:59
so what would you say then because there's people that listen to the show all around the world um I we just
00:11:04
Spotify rap just came out and globally we have quite an extensive audience it's funny it's funny that it's so globally distributed but I think a factor of
00:11:11
being on YouTube and speaking English what would you say to people that are born in we've got an audience in Cape
00:11:16
Town in Indonesia in Australia New Zealand what would you say to people in those parts of the world can you still
00:11:22
be quot unquote massively successful yes but but you have to think so um and I
00:11:29
see you have a few of my books there um my very first book the startup review um
00:11:35
which um came from the commencement speech I gave at my high school the
00:11:40
Putney School in Vermont because I was like what do I say to a bunch of 17y olds right and I was like well be the
00:11:45
entrepreneur of your own life and what that means there's a chapter in there that says uh uh the bad advice you're usually
00:11:52
given is just follow your passion and the problem is the passion your passion might be very passionate but does do you
00:11:59
have a strategic Advantage there is that something you can do and so applying the rules of Entrepreneurship yes of course
00:12:06
you have to be passionate about what you're doing because if you're not passionate you can never be world class unless you're passionate about what
00:12:12
you're doing but that's not the only thing and so you look at okay what are Market realities what's the market what
00:12:18
does a competition look like and within those what can your aspirations be and there's a whole chapter on that in that book because that's by the way similar
00:12:25
to how you plot out if you're founding a company right if you're founding a company you have to think the same way
00:12:31
about this but think about it as an individual so if you're in Cape Town there are many great things you can do
00:12:38
now if you say what I'm going to do is create a search company to compete with Google ah don't do that I mean unless
00:12:44
you really have some real unique thing because remember you're competing with this intensely powerful not just the
00:12:51
company but the network of Silicon Valley which attracts amazing talent
00:12:56
from around the world Capital knowledge and they're all sharing it with each other at a very fast clock speed and so
00:13:03
wherever you are that doesn't work now you do think about okay what can the thing I do so for example um you know on
00:13:11
I love podcasts as you know I you know Master scale possible Etc and so I had
00:13:16
the Delight of of um of doing like interviews with Toby lutka right or
00:13:22
Daniel a and what you do is you look at part of their success Shopify you know
00:13:27
Spotify is is what how do I run my strategy from here like how is it that
00:13:34
I'm competitive and and can win a global field Marketplace that Silicon Valley
00:13:41
doesn't do and so for example one of the things that they're different in the cases because like for example in
00:13:46
Spotify that was hey I can get the record labels to give me a chance to
00:13:53
start doing the business by doing just Scandinavia prove it and then expand it
00:13:59
whereas those record labels the capital to do it in the US would never happen and hence you have Spotify and in
00:14:04
Shopify it's hey the silkon valley tends to go oh e-commerce is over its own by Amazon we're not going to do any of that
00:14:11
as a platform maybe you know this thing or that thing but we're not going to do it as a platform well but they're wrong
00:14:17
and I can do a long place and then once I get to this network effect of a whole bunch of you know small and medium
00:14:22
businesses doing their own you know kind of websites in e-commerce then I am the
00:14:28
plat for that so it's kind of a long under the radar strategy where you're not directly competing with Silicon
00:14:35
Valley companies and by the time the sellon value companies go oh there's a Manor opportunity you've got it so those
00:14:41
are plays that you can do if you're smart and strategic but you have to know
00:14:46
like uh Toby lutka um like is deeply
00:14:52
informed what what's going on in Silicon Valley like when he's charting a strategy he's aware of that he's got
00:14:59
connections he visits I mean I'm a friend of his right and um and that's
00:15:04
part of like if you're doing a global software play you have to be aware that your
00:15:10
competition is global there's an element of self-awareness required here yeah and
00:15:16
it's funny because when I was younger I certainly didn't have that self-awareness I thought that I could start a social network from my bedroom
00:15:22
without ever doing it before and I wasn't necessarily thinking about the geographical situation or Silicon Valley
00:15:27
um how important is self-awareness as an entrepreneur and how does one cultivate it to know what they what challenge is
00:15:33
actually befitting of their skills so I think um self-awareness is generally a
00:15:39
very good thing for all human beings um and um you still have to be irrationally
00:15:47
ambitious which is I think very important and so sometimes self-awareness and and just you know uh
00:15:55
immense ambition sometimes don't go together it's better when they do but that's fine what you do have to do is be
00:16:01
very aware of what your competitive space looks like right so just about
00:16:06
everybody who succeeds in substantive in a substantial way is good at being
00:16:13
competitive right and and you if you're blind to your competition H you're kind of hosed if
00:16:20
you're successful it's just because you're lucky right because uh and that's part of what I was referring to earlier
00:16:25
in luck if you if you start a business where you have the luck where competitors haven't haven't identified
00:16:32
it haven't gotten you get a long head start on it that's an instance of luck not all the successful companies are
00:16:37
that way but that's very that that can be very good and very useful on that um but you have to be very aware of what
00:16:44
the competitive landscape looks like now that's also true of individuals right um because it's like well who am I
00:16:49
competing against is a relevant question but it's uh you can be kind of
00:16:56
competitively blind as an individual and still be very successful because of the way it works but if you're
00:17:02
competitive blind leading a business leading a startup almost always that's hosed right
00:17:08
that's one of the reasons why like you know the all investors in Silicon Valley
00:17:14
always ask about your competition and if you say I don't have any competition you're like well if they disagree with
00:17:20
you they're not going to invest because they go you're competitively blind is there any such thing as an
00:17:26
entrepreneur in the sense of you know people always ask me they say can anyone be an entrepreneur and a founder and
00:17:32
there's so many different types of companies one can start these days that it's a quite tricky question to answer but do you think any because there's
00:17:38
going to be people listening to this now that are in they're managers in companies they're you know they're they're working in a law firm or
00:17:45
whatever and maybe they've got an idea I mean everyone's got an idea and they don't know if they're the type of person
00:17:51
that should pursue it or not is there a framework one can run through run through to decide that yeah I'll run through a framework to help the folks
00:17:58
the um the short answer is no not everyone should be an entrepreneur just like not everyone should try to be a
00:18:04
professional mus musician not everyone should try to be an athlete not everyone should be you have to look at what your
00:18:10
competitive advantages are and does your disposition skill sets path give
00:18:17
you a Competitive Edge in this case of being an entrepreneur right because any
00:18:23
game that's competitive right and Entrepreneurship is a highly competitive game that's that's part of the you know
00:18:29
it's as competitive is trying to become you know a uh a globally renowned actor
00:18:36
it's as competitive as trying to become the CEO of a major bank or anything else so it's it's a competitive
00:18:43
game so for an entrepreneur what you have to do is you have to say okay well
00:18:48
um I have to be uh able one of the classic ones to uh to take substantial
00:18:56
risks now it's not being risk blind Entre rurs are actually not risk blind or occasionally they are and
00:19:02
occasionally they're lucky and it works but almost all the successful ones realize that I'm that when you start a
00:19:10
company you're default debt right by default the company is out of business
00:19:16
right and so you're trying to get to a point where it's default alive versus
00:19:22
default dead then there's a whole bunch of different things that go into that game so one is um well can you go get
00:19:28
the capital um are you in in a market that allow you to get the capital um can
00:19:34
you move to a market that allows you to get the capital um how do you pitch the capital how does pitching Capital go and
00:19:40
then you get this this kind of flywheel going between you know Capital um Talent
00:19:47
uh business realization Capital Talent right and you're doing that and the business realization obviously includes
00:19:53
customers includes go to market includes building products and services Etc and by the way it's Dynam so you say well I
00:19:59
wouldn't worked at a large company and I learned a bunch of things like well yeah but you didn't learn how your default
00:20:05
dead you didn't learn how to launch a new product you didn't learn how to how do you start with a small product and
00:20:10
grow to a larger product right you didn't learn how do you set up a team from scratch and by the way a team from
00:20:17
scratch when the vast majority of human beings like more certainty in what their
00:20:22
week looks like right like I'm going to come work at a place because I can continue to work at a place and as long
00:20:28
long as I'm capable of what I'm doing I keep my job right in terms of what I'm
00:20:34
doing and so I understand the certainty so so entrepreneurs have to do all that sort of thing so in addition to kind of
00:20:40
risk taking you have to be good at bringing many resources from different
00:20:46
uh vectors into your vision and working with you so there's investors there's employees there's customers there's
00:20:53
advisors there's Partners you have to bring the right set of those people along with you in this iterative this
00:21:00
this kind of you know iterative Journey um you have to be able to grow yourself and learn because the game changes um
00:21:07
like one of the metaphors I use to to to train and and conceptualize young
00:21:13
entrepreneurs is kind and there's a bunch of different parallels between military strategy it's part of like the board games thing and and and business
00:21:20
strategy but it's like Marines take the beach army takes the country police governs the country three three very
00:21:26
crude broad generalizations about how you do it so you go what's your Marine strategy do you have because you must as
00:21:34
a C Series a you must have a good strategy how you get on the beach how you get you know initial product Market
00:21:39
fit how you're heading towards scale product Market fit okay you're there how do you win the country right the market
00:21:46
right what how do you get to scale product Market fit how is that going to work how are you going to play against competition different in these two how
00:21:52
do you get up to scale you have to learn this game is different than this game right and you're learning new things as
00:21:58
you're doing it so you have to have this kind of um what I refer to as being an infinite learner like you're learning
00:22:05
what the new game is because by the way no entrepreneur shows up at door one at day one going well I know how to do
00:22:11
marketing I know how to do sales I know how to do uh product development I know how to do engineering I know how to do engineering operations I know how like
00:22:18
no no no you have to bring all that in you to be learning what you need to learn in order to do that through that and and and and that's part of how you
00:22:26
you grow into that and then by the way once you you've established a business because the thing another thing that
00:22:32
brings in a lot of competition is people say oh that's a valuable business I'd like to possibly that and then you then
00:22:39
a new generation of heavy competitors come in so can you can you kind of keep
00:22:44
your position and grow your position in a market which is the police part right the police part yes exactly and so so
00:22:50
you have to you have to look and each of these three is different games and there's more games than that but it's a a way of kind of Simply understanding
00:22:56
that so uh always being learning being an infinite learner and changing your mindset and so frequently like for
00:23:03
example when I'm talking to an entrepreneur um especially the first few times is I
00:23:12
will push them on their Vision to see if their Learners now one they should have persistence and grit because like no
00:23:18
I've thought about this I've got a good plan this is how I'm going to go to market I understand what the competition looks like because if they go oh you're
00:23:24
right I should totally change that you're like okay you have to have some grit and precis but on the other hand if they're not
00:23:30
like going oh yeah no if we can counter that yeah we'd have to do something about that like if our competitor
00:23:35
started doing that and maybe we do this right so they also are learning they
00:23:40
have flexibility so you want that combination like one of the things about startups is uh you have to um bring kind
00:23:49
of this dual lensed focus of things that seemingly are a little contradictory so
00:23:54
like persistence flexibility another one is right now now long term right now you
00:24:01
have to do right now but if you don't have a long term of how you're building something that's insanely ambitious no
00:24:07
you're never going to get there if if if you shoot for the hillside you're never going to get to the moon you have to
00:24:12
shoot for the moon so you're shooting for the moon but it's me and my two friends in a garage right now it's
00:24:18
interesting because the middle bit yes does that matter it does but it's it's a
00:24:25
remember like the Marines Army police yeah Army when you're doing the Marines is the middle bit right okay right right so
00:24:34
so it does but it's not by the way and one of again mistakes and that's part of the reason why there's another chapter
00:24:39
in Starview is abz planning the mistakes is like you have a plan and then you have a plan B it's like no no no you
00:24:45
have a plan and then you have a lot of micr plan BS right so you're kind of like well if that doesn't work then
00:24:50
let's try this if that doesn't work then let's try this you know and and you're iterating through them and when you know
00:24:56
to do a major pivot because by the way many successful businesses also do major
00:25:02
pivots um PayPal started as encryption on cell phones right that's that's where
00:25:08
it started right so you do major pivots it's when you go
00:25:15
oh my current plan which I've iterated for my first plan is worse than my first
00:25:20
plan like the market circumstances its chance of succeeding those are now worse mhm
00:25:28
that's when you think about okay let's do a major pivot so with your analogy of evading the beach how do you know what
00:25:35
beach to invade like how do you know if you've got a good idea and how do you know what a good idea is because most people as I said listen to this they've
00:25:41
got a business idea yeah and they how do they know if it's good and part of the issue they often have is they've heard
00:25:48
anecdotally or they've seen that someone else is already doing it so they go oh gosh it's already been done yeah
00:25:55
there's call it two kinds of ideas is and frankly by the way you think you know there's over 8 billion people in
00:26:01
the world the fact that you think you're the one person who thought of this idea
00:26:08
you may not be doing math well right um so so thinking you're the one person
00:26:15
who's thought of the idea that's a mistake right the question is are you the person who can pull it together in
00:26:22
the momentum and and pull it together and it's still by the way that may be well
00:26:28
okay that gets down to 100 people okay well am I the one who's in motion right now am I the mo person who's willing to
00:26:34
take the risk quit my job and do it um and you never really get down to one
00:26:40
right so so startups are risky businesses like one of the things let's get back to entrepreneurs like I think
00:26:46
the greatest chance and even when I was starting LinkedIn after having started social land after having you know uh
00:26:52
co-founded PayPal as a board member even when I was starting LinkedIn what I
00:26:58
would tell the people like look we have about a maximum of 20 25% chance of being successful right just to be clear
00:27:06
right we're GNA try to grow that to 100% right but but we're a couple people in a
00:27:13
garage right now right like there's all kinds of things that can go wrong anyone
00:27:18
who's telling you it's 100% now they're lying to themselves or they're lying to you and and you know like I'm very
00:27:24
realist and ambitious in my strategy and so so you you should never think you're
00:27:29
starting something 100% now within the ideas you go there's roughly speaking
00:27:35
two kinds of ideas one kind of idea is people generally think that's a good
00:27:41
idea they think it's a good idea because you go to customers and customers say yeah I'd like that right they go to they
00:27:47
go oh well hey AI is going to create a whole bunch of new SAS businesses right oh yeah that makes sense and new new
00:27:53
technology trans transformation that or people in e-commerce they're going to want buy
00:27:58
this kind of stuff okay you know makes sense so there's a stack of things where they're pretty measurable as ideas like
00:28:04
you can measure them with customers you can you can you can do feedback and polling and other kinds of things now
00:28:12
the good news there's good news bad news on this category the good news is you can drisk is there a market for your
00:28:19
idea mostly not not entirely but mostly the bad news is so can a lot of other
00:28:24
people yeah right and so in this category there always tends to be competition and your competitive
00:28:31
strategy generally speaking needs to be why against like in this category you
00:28:36
should be expecting competition why am I going to win out sufficiently against this competition in a global
00:28:44
Arena I have invested in those businesses Greylock invests in a bunch of those businesses because we do we're
00:28:49
you know one of the best VCS in Enterprise on the planet you know blah blah blah then um the other kind of I
00:28:56
thing which is the one I tend to start and the one I tend to most invest in is
00:29:01
people think that you're uh that you're crazy when you're starting your business
00:29:08
and by the way that can be a by the way and frequently you are right yeah but but people think you're crazy which
00:29:14
means most people think you're crazy which means your competitive field is a lot less right so for example I'll give
00:29:22
LinkedIn um as an example and I'll give Airbnb as an example so l in um I go and
00:29:29
I say hey um individuals will join this network and bring in their and establish
00:29:34
a public identity and profile and bring in their Network and and use that even
00:29:40
as the vast majority of the billion people register for LinkedIn are you know basically work at companies right
00:29:45
they're not starting company like it's a great platform for entrepreneurs entrepreneurs get it right away but like I'm like well I'm working in a company
00:29:51
is am I going to seem disloyal to my company if I establish a profile here you know cuz back back when we started
00:29:58
it like no one's going to use that why well because like they're worried about uh will their company fire them or not
00:30:06
give them a bonus or something else because they have a LinkedIn profile because they're saying they're dis oil so it looks like they're shopping
00:30:11
because I mean for most people that use LinkedIn now you don't see it as I'm looking for another role exactly but
00:30:16
back then people do 2003 literally everyone said to me this won't work
00:30:23
because you're individual focused you need to be selling products to companies okay right right and so I was like no no
00:30:31
I think I'm right about the way the world can and should be right and um and
00:30:39
so uh I'm gonna take that risk and that's the contrarian risk I'm gonna take that risk and I'm gonna I'm gonna
00:30:45
play it forward and if I'm right I will create something that will transform the
00:30:51
industry that will be amazing for individuals amazing for companies Etc and we can go obviously whatever length
00:30:57
you want to go through the LinkedIn Journey we can do that now Airbnb is as an investor example so Airbnb was my
00:31:03
first investment at Greylock and so and I was at Greylock because David Z who was my partner who was the Greylock
00:31:09
partner who was my most valuable board member at LinkedIn convinced me that I should do Venture AT Greylock and I'm
00:31:15
very close to David and so I bring in Airbnb as an investment and David looks across the table from me and says look
00:31:23
every VC has to have a deal they're going to fail on Airbnb can be yours really yes because arbnb at the time had
00:31:32
so little volume in its transactions that the founders could have called everyone who used Airbnb that week if
00:31:39
what they did is dedicated making phone calls like you know five minutes of phone call you know through the through
00:31:44
the week that was how small it was and David's argument at the Greylock Round Table was look this is very strange
00:31:53
staying in other people's houses you know like the danger of something going
00:31:59
wrong um cities are going to hate it hotel lobbies are going to try to Outlaw
00:32:05
it within cities You Know da like this is just going to be a train wreck all over the
00:32:11
place and I was like no but I want to take the v he's like great like we hired you as a partner we think you're smart
00:32:17
go ahead right now to David's credit six months later the trend the transaction
00:32:22
volume in airbn is like this classic hockey stick it was years a very small and then it grew to being very big um so
00:32:31
the hockey stick hadn't started yet and David came to me and said okay because because like they always be learning is
00:32:37
also useful in Venture Capital he came and said okay you were totally right about Airbnb and I was I was totally
00:32:42
wrong what did you see that I didn't see like how did you know when I was sitting there blowing smoke at you saying this
00:32:50
is going to be a total failure you said nope I'm I want to do this I said well look you were right about all of the
00:32:56
risks about that could happen with Airbnb you absolutely right any of those
00:33:01
things could have made the business worth zero but this is the reason as investors we do a portfolio because yes
00:33:08
Airbnb could be zero but if it worked it was going to be huge right it was going
00:33:14
to transform an industry this is the kind of investment I like doing as an entrepreneur or as an investor and I
00:33:20
said look we had a plan for each of those risks we had a plan a we had plans B we're going to try to navigate it
00:33:26
isn't that we could guarantee the risk but the fact that everyone else saw those risks meant that we had years
00:33:32
of no competition that we could establish the network we could establish the marketplace and then once we're
00:33:38
there we are the marketplace for how that works and that's the kind of investment I like doing that's the same
00:33:44
thing with LinkedIn as I as I founded it same thing with you know kind of uh with
00:33:49
Airbnb as an investment and so that category of investment you cannot validate with the customers I was going
00:33:54
to say so if everybody thinks it's a good idea it's probably not a big idea yes it it's much more challenging to be
00:34:00
a big idea interesting really
00:34:05
interesting because it's funny because when people pitch to you they say I've asked everybody and everybody thinks it's great yes so that's probably an
00:34:13
indicated that it's probably not big or they bullshitting yes yes and I'm looking for both in my creation of ideas
00:34:20
and in my funding of ideas it's not dumb people who think it's a bad idea it's
00:34:26
smart people who think it's a bad idea you want smart people to yes because then you have something that's
00:34:32
contrarian because that's what contan contrarian isn't I don't understand technology at all and I think it's a terrible idea it's like well who cares
00:34:38
you don't understand anything right it's smart people who think it's a bad idea
00:34:43
right right and then you have a theory of the game that's a good one not perfect very risk can be very risky
00:34:51
about why they're wrong so I'll give you the LinkedIn example literally John Lily partner mind
00:34:57
gr I recruited him into Greylock later he was the CEO of Milla that I was on the board of super smart guy friend of
00:35:03
mine I sat down with him about LinkedIn because this is how I go when I'm
00:35:08
starting a company I go to all my smartest friends and I go here's what I'm doing what's wrong with it I don't
00:35:14
want to have the conversation of them going oh it's great useless doesn't help me right what's wrong with it why will
00:35:20
this go why will this fail and so I sat down with John we had breakfast at a at a breakfast place in Silicon Valley I
00:35:27
said da and he said okay you you know I'll I'm your friend you it's never going to work right and I said okay well
00:35:34
why do you think it's never going to work said well look you never grow the network like the first person who comes
00:35:39
in no one else in the network not valuable for me why should I invite someone in until you have like you know
00:35:45
I don't know 500,000 people a million people there's no value in the network so there's zero value so it's never going to grow you're never going to get
00:35:51
anywhere right and it was a very smart perspicacious thought that was probably
00:35:56
the key thing for starting LinkedIn was how do you get to millions of people in the network because that's the only
00:36:02
place where the value proposition kicks in right I knew that if you had a thousand people come
00:36:08
in 900 of those people would be exactly like John they' go huh I don't see
00:36:13
anyone else here in this network Etc but I knew that some of them somewhere between 10 and a hundred of them would
00:36:20
go oh I see what this could be and I kind of want to play with it so you know I'll invite Stephen I'll invite you know
00:36:27
I'll invite some people in and then as it very slowly starts going then all of
00:36:32
a sudden there's enough people in it's interesting it's curious and you could grow to being valuable so I knew that
00:36:38
that by persistence through those initial exploratory people people who are curious people who want to
00:36:44
experiment with it people who got the vision of it you know Etc ET but all of that I could grow to your initial
00:36:50
critical mass and then it would kick in the model of LinkedIn obviously I know
00:36:56
LinkedIn more today than I did back then in what 19 no so 2002 2003 200 2003 and
00:37:02
then really got 2003 is when we turned it on Wow and back then was it a social
00:37:09
network as it is now where there's a news feed and people talking to each other or was it more of a a public CV
00:37:18
was a public CV with a search capability and ability to communicate with people okay interesting so the network effects
00:37:25
were slightly less important than the modeling is today because a lot of people today using it not to search for
00:37:31
a job or a professional but to talk about themselves or to share their life Etc and we knew that we would get to
00:37:38
Growing Network fact like for example Again part of the you know Marines Army police is your network effects may very
00:37:45
much evolve you may start with no network effects that's fine yeah but you have a plan yes yeah yeah yeah so am I
00:37:52
right in thinking because around then there were social networks emerging that were very FOC focused on people
00:37:58
conversating with each other whereas LinkedIn by design it didn't really
00:38:04
really matter if anybody was chatting to you about what they ate for dinner that day so a new network could penetrate the
00:38:11
market that was less dependent on the like social networking component because if I go on there and make a profile and
00:38:17
put my CV up it doesn't really matter if I don't come back for four days exactly because I can get an email that will
00:38:23
bring me back in saying oh there's a job here but once my profile's up and ready yes I'm now giving value to the rest of
00:38:29
the network just by being there yes and that that's a virtue not a bug because it was part of how we solved the
00:38:35
critical mass problem yeah I I could never understand how LinkedIn did that but now it makes sense to me yes because
00:38:40
I always think God building a social network is just asking for like hell in your life yeah well I'm kind of a
00:38:46
specialist yeah right uh you know uh one of the First Investors in Facebook one
00:38:52
of the First Investors in frenster oh right I didn't realize you were invest in frenster as well yes you
00:38:58
were part of what they call the PayPal Mafia I know you use a different term Network it's it it's less it has less
00:39:04
Pizzazz but we weren't really a criminal group but Mafia is cool as well yes yes
00:39:09
people people love the term Mafia and through that time you worked with the likes of Elon you knew Peter the from
00:39:15
your days at University um I mean everybody asked this question
00:39:20
about PayPal and why it was so successful but also why so many of the alumni of PayPal
00:39:27
went on to become multi-billionaires I think seven people that that were part in that sort of part of that St sort of
00:39:34
early PayPal founding team went on to create Tesla YouTube Reddit SpaceX
00:39:39
LinkedIn was it Talent density was it was that what made the PayPal mafio well
00:39:44
it certainly was a component and so it's it's it's it's a couple of things so one
00:39:51
um that high density Talent of folks who are willing to take intensive risks
00:39:57
want to do contrarian things believe in what their contrarian thing is against Common Sense wisdom that's one part
00:40:05
another part is um when PayPal went public it was one of it was a it was a
00:40:12
technology winter it was one of two technology companies that went public that year wow right so all of a sudden
00:40:18
and then got bought by eBay so all of a sudden you had this talent group of people that had a bunch of money in
00:40:23
their pockets and the Network within and
00:40:29
that believed in the consumer internet so the network of Silicon Valley at that
00:40:35
point had thought the consumer internet was played they were going into clean tech and Enterprise so if you asked if
00:40:41
you try to Ping a venture capitalist but I have a new consumer idea they wouldn't even take a meeting with you they would
00:40:47
take a meeting if it was clean tech they' take a meeting if it was Enterprise software right now then you
00:40:53
get all the the the PayPal people coming out going hey I can f my own initial idea I've got this great idea YouTube
00:41:02
Right LinkedIn and I can fund it and I can get it going and then and this is
00:41:07
part of the web 20 movement this is a i i coined the term internet 20 and then Tim uh O'Reilly uh made the much better
00:41:15
term web to right and so the uh these folks going no no the
00:41:22
consumer internet is like that was just the first wave on the beach the tsunami
00:41:27
is still coming right and so we were all out investing and we were talking to each other because frankly we're like
00:41:34
well these these VCS don't get it like this is coming and then of course you started seeing you know YouTube and you
00:41:40
started seeing LinkedIn and you started seeing and it was like okay like we will
00:41:46
like these are important things that we're going to invest in and that that's that's part of the reason why the that's
00:41:52
the uh Because by the way remember you know a bad competition right that's one of the reasons why not
00:41:58
just Talent not just Capital but also competitive steering as part of the reason why the PayPal Network or PayPal
00:42:05
Mafia had such a massive uh Suite of success you know I often Hazard a guess
00:42:13
that what the like the the fundamental game of business is for a startup founder and I've hazarded a guess before
00:42:19
that it's recruiting the best group of people you possibly can binding them with a culture that gets the best out of them and setting them a vision that's
00:42:25
worthwhile but from reading your work there's a couple of things just from hearing you today sales is so like all
00:42:32
whatever your go to market is and it can be sales be to be Enterprise Etc but like for example in in social networks
00:42:38
it's usually a viral you know a viral marketing or viral growth plan so when I say sales I actually mean like selling
00:42:45
to oh yes employees 100% yes you must you said like Partners investors yes cuz
00:42:51
you have to come come on board my vision invest in my vision Because by the way a partner when you're startup is also
00:42:58
investing in Your Vision yeah an employee is investing your vision yeah right how' you be good at
00:43:04
that there's a limited set of skills that you can actually teach to entrepreneurs versus the entrepreneurs
00:43:10
just learning by doing one of them is pitching right one of them is understanding the how do I communicate
00:43:17
my vision in a way that other people cannot go that's really exciting I want
00:43:23
to join your vision with you and if I was a young entrepreneur telling you right I want to be better at pitching my
00:43:29
vision so I can get worldclass people to join me worldclass investors Partners is there any advice you could give me on
00:43:34
things I should and shouldn't do uh yeah absolutely and by the way there's we could spend the entire podcast only
00:43:41
doing this I mean there's there's a very deep well but here's some simple tips so one is the mistaken lesson that most
00:43:49
people learn is to try to do reality Distortion it's like no no no no no uh
00:43:54
silicon chips to make ice cream shakes it's the thing no one's thought of it it's really big right and people like
00:44:02
okay what you're convincing me is you're crazy right like you're literally like
00:44:07
please leave now yeah right so you have to realize that all pitches are dialogues right and you want to be
00:44:14
listening to smart people and you like generally speaking everyone you want to be recruiting you want to be recruiting
00:44:21
smart people you want the absolute best talent working with you you want the absolute best talent working in your company you want the absolute best so
00:44:27
you want people who are who are thoughtful and asking good questions like for
00:44:32
example I pitch insanely aspirational businesses but I don't pitch them saying
00:44:38
Oh LinkedIn is guaranteed to succeed there's no Universe in which LinkedIn won't be the Transformer of professional
00:44:45
work and careers what I do is say it can get here like we have a real chance at
00:44:51
this now we have to navigate these risks but if we navigate these risks we're going to be here mhm right and then
00:44:58
people say ah you're credible you have a huge Vision you're compelling I think
00:45:05
you can do this right and then they come on board with you so one of it is to
00:45:10
pitch the huge Vision but show that you're aware of the difficulties of getting there right now you don't have
00:45:17
to go through all of them you just have to go through enough of them or a big enough one that the person goes okay
00:45:24
great I get it you're seeing it right another part of it is to say this is
00:45:29
part of the reason why competition is important is like I understand what game I'm playing right here's my theory this
00:45:35
is what competition plays in this is why I think the market will favor me this is why I think technology Trends will favor
00:45:40
me this is why I think I have a very unique Edge and you know in blit scaling which I think is another book on your
00:45:46
thing uh most consumer internet plays are uh what we call Glen Gary Glenn Ross
00:45:53
markets which is first prize the Cadillac second prize steak knives and third prizes you're fired so you have to
00:45:59
be pitching why you're possibly first yeah right right because there's only going to be a couple of winners yes and
00:46:05
so like this is why we can win right and so um now there's also mechanics in
00:46:13
pitching which is you know how do you tell a story of it part of the thing I tell entrepreneurs is to even if the
00:46:19
person doesn't ask you the risk tell them what the risks are and how you're navigating them because it'll establish
00:46:26
trust right so like for example in in pitching Investments now this I didn't know until I started learning it in
00:46:33
terms of mechanic of pitching is and entrepreneurs tend to go oh when I need money is when I you know write up my
00:46:39
PowerPoint and I hit you know knock on the door like hey give me some money that's a foolish time to start the
00:46:45
conversation much better to start the conversation when you're not saying give me money so if you like as much as you
00:46:52
can in all of these things start the conversation well before you're getting to a
00:46:57
potential contract of any sort a partnership or or a investment or even
00:47:02
an employment contract like so for example always be recruiting doesn't mean oh I want to hire you right now
00:47:08
it's like okay find great talent this is one of the things I learned from social lent and brought into PayPal find great
00:47:13
talent and start talking to them right even if today you don't have the right
00:47:19
position to hire them right now obviously there's a whole bunch of great talent you could waste a whole bunch of
00:47:24
time you want to be talking to people that you know you either really would love them to join at some point not too
00:47:31
distant future or they know other people who would be like that because by the way part of when you um when you meet
00:47:38
great talent you realize how to like because because you're always you're always adding new great talent you're
00:47:44
like oh my God we need people like this how do we bring them in so for example
00:47:51
one of the things that I learned that was you know from social net that I brought to PayPal was at Social at I was
00:47:58
trying to hire people who had 10 plus years experience doing the thing that we were hiring them to do before because the classic kind of wisdom that you get
00:48:04
from Business Schools is make sure they have experience on their CV look they have to be able to do the
00:48:10
job right no question but if you said two years of experience and an insane
00:48:16
learning curve that's much better an insane learning curve by that you means someone that's rapidly learning self-
00:48:23
teing yes okay and learning on the job and going and figuring it out and so
00:48:28
when I went to PayPal and I was I when the company was founded I was on the board of directors I was like this is
00:48:35
what you're looking for not this okay right and so back to your like PayPal Mafia question that's because we hired
00:48:41
those kind of people right interesting there was a very limited set of people in the company who had had more than a
00:48:47
couple years experience working within payments within banking within you know
00:48:55
because it was the no know learning curve when you look at your portfolio of Investments and the entrepreneurs you
00:49:01
meet do you think young entrepreneurs realize how significant hiring is to their eventual outcome because they tend
00:49:07
to focus on like how good the product is or sometimes Capital but I just looking at my own portfolio I I often find
00:49:14
myself like feeling like an old man because I'm telling them that like spend more time hiring not just hiring your
00:49:19
friends because they're willing to come work here yes aoxy for a Founder if you're not spending a third of your time
00:49:25
hiring you're very much underd delivering this is the thing it's like look uh life is a
00:49:32
team sport companies are team sports right if you could just do it yourself you wouldn't hire anybody no you're
00:49:37
hiring people so like you say well I've got a really good let's you know use a European football analogy I've got a
00:49:43
really good Striker great well we don't need to worry about the halfbacks or defensive or you know
00:49:51
goalkeeper no no you have to hire all things and you go well I'm a really good halfback that's great you need the
00:49:57
others too I think when I was young when I was 18 19 years old I somewhere in my brain thought my outcomes were going to
00:50:03
be determined by how hard I worked and how good my ideas were and it wasn't until I accidentally hired someone
00:50:09
fantastic that I realized yes the absolute tremendous impact that an a player can have on everything yes and
00:50:15
that was just such a mental shift for me yeah literally I think Zuckerberg puts us in a very good way he wants to hire
00:50:22
people he would work for and why why is that because that's a
00:50:28
demonstration of high Talent okay yeah yeah when you're a young found you're somewhat insecure though you think oh
00:50:35
God why would that person want to come work here or I can't afford them or you want to hire the best people you can and
00:50:41
by the way if you can hire people better than you oh my God it makes you much more likely to be successful yeah yeah
00:50:47
it's my experience that young Founders don't really think about that because they're also insecure so they think I can't manage that person yeah well but
00:50:53
but your theory of management is look if you're if you can hire someone where your only management technique needs to
00:50:59
be let them loose that's that that's
00:51:04
best like just go right and is there any pra anything practical about hiring you know people
00:51:11
say like hire slow Fire fast or uh other sort of like cliche advice around hiring that matters like how important is it
00:51:18
that they're culturally aligned or so culture can matter um I would say look
00:51:24
in terms of and I hopefully it's not a cliche but hopefully a puristic principle um uh references are more
00:51:32
important than interviews right we get a lot of repetitive experience at being
00:51:38
compelling in an interview and if you can't and by the way some great people aren't compelling in interviews right
00:51:45
they're they're they're not really great at selling themselves but oh my God are they amazing in the field they're am like an engineer like an engineer might
00:51:51
be like you like okay but oh my God can they do great things mhm in which case
00:51:57
like like do whatever you can to hire that person so if you if you ask me you can only have references or only inter
00:52:04
interview 10 out of 10 times I'll take the I'll hire the person on the references you surely you're not talking
00:52:10
about the types of references where they give you the references no no course not no no and this is one of the features of LinkedIn like you want to find
00:52:16
references that will give you um uh good
00:52:21
perspective now even if you can't go find someone that you know or you have a
00:52:27
tie to or as what we refer to frequently as an off-balance reference sheet e not the one they give you to be a reference
00:52:34
so even if they say oh here's you know I'm reading here's my reference you know
00:52:40
Bob or Susan you call Bob or Susan and you say this is a standard question I will use
00:52:47
all the time but especially if I'm calling someone who's a given reference say look I believe every every person is
00:52:53
a combination of strengths and weaknesses and you don't give me a
00:52:58
weakness I will believe it's so bad that I should not hire this person right so if if you say there's no
00:53:07
weakness I'll just go okay I understand I shouldn't hire this person thank you very much right in that they will always
00:53:15
almost always give you something right and you can think because we are all combinations of
00:53:20
strengths and weaknesses like I'm one of the best people to have on your side for Creative strategic problem solving
00:53:27
like one of my employees once told me he's like I would never hire you to run a McDonald's I'm like I wouldn't hire me
00:53:32
to run a McDonald's either I'd be terrible at it right so that's
00:53:38
combinations of strengths and weaknesses right and so everyone has them there is no one who is all strengths I mean
00:53:44
people tell themselves that but that's self- delusion right and so so you have
00:53:50
that conversation with a reference and the reference will tell you something because because they're not used to saying it so they might say oh you know
00:53:57
he um uh you know Susan or Bob they're a perfectionist he like oh so they get
00:54:03
their work done slowly because they you know like you know like you you push them because they're trying to get the one that's actually like more oh they
00:54:10
spend too much time working you're like oh that means they're unintelligent about how they do the work yeah right so
00:54:17
you can push them into where they're like yeah like they can get a little disorganized when they're stressed okay
00:54:22
great right and then you could that giv you by the way because when you get that from reference one then when you're
00:54:28
calling reference two you say oh I heard that the person is disorganized like can
00:54:34
you tell me a little bit about that right yeah got some ammo and they can't then say Oh no I've never seen
00:54:41
that they'll probably give you a little bit more context yes on all these great people you've worked with specifically
00:54:47
you know you during that PayPal period of your life one of the things I was reflecting on is they're all
00:54:52
independently successful people but they're all very different people and that in and of itself is evidence
00:54:58
that there's not one version of success there's many different types of success presumably there's many different types
00:55:04
of entrepreneur leader yes give me a flavor of the different types of
00:55:09
entrepreneurs you've worked with and and and what you know because I I sat with Walter isacson and he talked to me about
00:55:15
Steve Jobs Elon Musk Etc and he was like Steve's really great at hiring people elon's not as good as at the people team
00:55:22
building part but he's better at this part yes so no entrepreneur wins at every
00:55:30
game generally speaking as an entrepreneur you should try to win to to play the games that you
00:55:36
have a massive Competitive Edge on same thing is true so some people for example um uh like take an Neil busri at
00:55:44
workday right he is thoughtful intentionally cultural building very
00:55:51
professional so it's a HR uh product for work his contrarian idea was going the
00:55:56
cloud and the people were going to do Cloud software um for the first I think
00:56:02
it was 500 people the workday hired he would always do a cultural interview at the end because to make sure that the
00:56:08
first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things so once you get through all the competence and all the rest of
00:56:13
the stuff he would make sure that was a fit and that's part of how you get cultural coherence that's like one
00:56:20
example right um another example um Elon is the um like I have a big idea and I
00:56:28
convince myself 100% that it's absolutely going to be the case like I am going to settle Mars we're going to
00:56:35
terraform Mars in our lifetimes which is no it's impossible no no human being on the
00:56:43
planet including Elon is going to do that within elon's Lifetime right but
00:56:50
I'm going to go all in I'm going to work really hard I'm going to be technologically sophisticated I'm going
00:56:55
to work work against the odds right in order to make that work that's a you
00:57:01
know an Neil very professional understands the workplace Mark Elon like
00:57:08
I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to and and his pitch though to my defense was I'm gonna send
00:57:15
a turtle to Mars and I'm like that's not a business and you're competing with national governments and like Russian
00:57:22
subsidized rocket programs and so forth this is not a good E I was wrong he was right right but there not a good Equity you
00:57:28
know kind of play he pitch at you as an investor yes yeah right at what point
00:57:33
was SpaceX at when he pitched it it was before he started it so it was an idea yes and I'm GNA send a turtle to Mars
00:57:40
and then it became I'm going to send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it to Mars because they'll grow I'll be the
00:57:46
first person will send life to Mars and you're like okay right what did you think genuinely when he said that to you
00:57:54
I thought he'd gone off his rocker really well yeah of course you would yeah like someone's my friends said that
00:58:00
to me I think I'd make a couple of calls just to check in you know what I mean like youon doing okay just told me about
00:58:05
this Turtle he want yes it's like that's not of business has your opinion of him changed
00:58:12
over time in terms of his potential and ability as an entrepreneur no no I've
00:58:19
always thought of him as one of the world great entrepreneurs um always yeah all all the way back to PayPal days
00:58:25
really yeah yeah yeah no look he has done repetitively amazing things now he
00:58:31
pitches everything with the same level of certainty right like you know I have
00:58:36
this idea for online banking I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities I have this idea for creating a pneumatic
00:58:42
tube for hyperloop tube all of them he has the same level of I am 1,000% right
00:58:49
that this is like guaranteed to be part of the future right and I you know and I
00:58:54
may be the unique person to make it happen right so you have to have some discernment but he's his you know on Bas
00:59:02
batting is pretty good for such major ideas but it's not it's not 100% yeah people kind of excuse
00:59:09
that though if of course if you get if you're if you get one that's big that's fine right yeah on the hiring side has
00:59:17
he been is he up there with the best or is he not a direct hirer of people like Steve Jobs was um he hires well um
00:59:27
matter of fact you can't be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well mhm um I think some people are better
00:59:36
hirers some people also have like are the kind of people that
00:59:43
people would work for forever um Elon uh tends to burn people out a lot
00:59:51
like there's lots of burnt out people in his wake and when you go and talk to those people what you hear is some
00:59:59
people say that was the best work experience ever and I never want to work for him again and other people say that was the worst work work experience ever
01:00:05
and I never want to work for him again so they're all I never want to work for him again right so you know as kind of a
01:00:12
a dynamic because he basically looks at them as disposable parts and you know go as hard as you can right and then
01:00:19
afterwards you're out don't care because he goes so hard yeah he goes hard but he
01:00:25
also thinks you're only relevance to me is your relevance your only relevance to me is can you help me with my mission
01:00:30
and after you're done after you can no longer help me with my mission you're not relevant to me
01:00:36
anymore what do you think of that approach that's not my Approach right L LinkedIn mirrors my Approach like
01:00:42
literally I am referenceable by every entrepreneur that I've ever worked with right as a board
01:00:48
member and as an investor right who you know even ones that I've like fired as
01:00:54
CEO and so forth those people people will say he was really good to work with on these things they may also have some
01:00:59
critical things there's no problem with that right but like like literally like when I'm pitching an entrepreneur I like
01:01:06
call anyone that I've worked with right because you I try to work
01:01:12
with people in a way that even when we're at a at a at a difficult moment
01:01:18
because I disagree with them intensely about how well they're doing or what they're doing or something else that I'm
01:01:23
doing it in a collaborative constructive way and so my goal is to work with people
01:01:31
like anyone I want to work with Brian chesy you know Mark Pinkus Etc I want to
01:01:38
be able to work with them for you know uh the rest of our
01:01:44
lives what's interesting is I think these strategies fundamentally come down to what you
01:01:50
think matters in life yeah the most because you could optimize even you could optimize more for um building more
01:01:57
companies or something at the expense of something else and it's a trade-off of something else like you could go harder
01:02:02
yes but there's a trade-off happening here and we often because elon's done these crazy things like the cars and the
01:02:08
neural links and there tunnels and the now the AI and the X and the spaceships and stuff we go oh my God that's so
01:02:14
amazing and I do that as well as an entreprene one person can do that much but we almost never talk about the trade-off yes yep you're 100% right and
01:02:22
we and and it's so this goes back to the point about self-awareness it's like you it's so tempting for the like the brain
01:02:29
to go oh my God I want that that's what I want because you're not seeing the tradeoff you're not seeing the darkness
01:02:34
that is 100% correct and look I respect it I understand the burn people out like
01:02:41
treat them as disposable assets that when they burn out you just jettison them and you can be very elon's not the
01:02:47
only entrepreneur who is very successful doing that right but for example on the
01:02:52
other side um like if you go to uh Mark Zuckerberg and you talk to the people
01:02:59
who worked for him they're like that was great that was the best working experience of my life of course I work with him again
01:03:06
interesting because there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming Rising through the ranks at the moment that have kind of been raised on the Elon
01:03:13
philosophy of do [ __ ] tons of things do them intently do them with uh less of a
01:03:18
regard for the I guess the human consequence do them with less of a regard for work life balance yeah well
01:03:25
you have have the nature of this thing because it's it's you know you're by Nature dead
01:03:31
as a startup work life balance is not the startup game right so like I like
01:03:39
what when like when we started LinkedIn we started with people who had families so we said sure go home have dinner with your family then after your dinner with
01:03:46
your family open up your laptop and get back into the shared work experience and keep working if you say that today
01:03:51
though you're toxic the people who think it's toxic don't understand the the startup game
01:03:58
and they're just wrong right that the game is intense and by the way if you don't do that then
01:04:05
eventually you're out of a job I mean the people that say it's toxic are often those that have never
01:04:11
had to do it yes and and look that's fine it's not that everyone has to work at startups working at startups is a
01:04:17
voluntary choice but that's the game for a startup and so that's how we try to balance in
01:04:23
the early days of LinkedIn we try to balance how to to be human because we like a third of the company had kids
01:04:29
right and so you're like okay like we all have to work this way so we can't say oh you third you sure you guys can
01:04:36
go home and you're out of the office and then and then then call in or whatever no like we'll all go for dinner and then
01:04:43
we'll all plan on getting back to work after dinner so you get time with your
01:04:49
family you get to have dinner with your kids it's the right human thing right but we're working hard and Saturday
01:04:55
morning we're working is there a way to build a startup in your opinion where you have work life balance
01:05:04
and I Define work life balance maybe as being able to see your friends often spend time with your family often
01:05:11
um only in two circumstances one it's a small startup it's both comp it's both
01:05:17
an absence of competition that's the general one is it's so small no one's really competing with you that's fine
01:05:23
okay right right my screen b a village yeah it's fine right on number two you
01:05:30
have some such intense competitive mode that people can't compete with you like
01:05:36
say for example you have some like the only thing that matters in this business is contracts with these
01:05:41
three companies and you have those three contracts okay fine but absent that
01:05:48
that's reason because the the startups that you're if you're in a valuable space the startups that you're competing with right like we had to make the
01:05:55
deliberate decision like startups we're competing with aren't going home for dinner right they're serving dinner at
01:06:00
the office that's what we did PayPal we sered dinner at the office at PayPal right right and that was a deliberate
01:06:07
thing we were one of the first companies that started not only serving lunch but serving dinner right and then other
01:06:13
because this The Learning Network you get with SL Valley other companies start looking oh yeah we're going to serve dinner too so people don't go home yeah
01:06:19
don't go home keep working right to some people this does it sounds somewhat toxic right sounds like oh God but
01:06:26
that's not what life's about this is like capitalism this is people just wanting to make loads of money well
01:06:32
choose what your life's about that's fine there's nothing that says you have to do that and and what gives you the
01:06:37
right to tell other people that they can't do that I mean like what are you patronizing like people choose their own
01:06:43
lives right so and and people can choose that now you have to understand the game
01:06:49
it's like well I'd like to be a worldclass Olympic Athlete but I really only want to swim two hours a day well
01:06:55
that's nice right not gonna happen right you have to understand the
01:07:01
game you're playing if if you're playing an Olympics game like someone who's trying to compete in the Olympics and
01:07:07
swimming they're swimming seven days a week 12 hours a day right so that that choose the game
01:07:15
and you say well that's toxic fine not for you I think the important thing which I see some companies doing well is
01:07:21
just to be honest about that when you're on boarding people and don't shy away exactly no that's like in early days of
01:07:28
LinkedIn when we were talking to people we'd say by the way this is how we work right we work six and a half days a week
01:07:35
right we um do get people home for dinner but everyone including Reed is
01:07:43
expected you know you know you know online working after
01:07:49
dinner and do you pay people more for that than the average rate or so they get paid in equity and this is one of
01:07:54
the things again um is you know the the first I don't know some hundreds of
01:08:02
people at LinkedIn all don't need to work anymore because their Equity is
01:08:07
enough that if they choose not to work anymore that's totally fine which is a a
01:08:12
trade-off that was clearly worth making yes you stepped back as CEO after four
01:08:18
years when you're at LinkedIn right yes why did you do that so um I had
01:08:27
um awareness of strengths and weaknesses like I know how to do the CEO job right
01:08:33
um uh and I think it kind of uh 150 people or less I'm as good as
01:08:41
anyone else right like that that that scale of Co job um is a scale that I
01:08:48
that operates within my strengths and weaknesses um when you start getting to
01:08:54
call it 500 people thousand people part of the CEO job ends up becoming like how
01:08:59
do you govern the community of the company now it's not the only thing but like okay like you know what the kinds
01:09:06
of things that Jeff weiner that I learned from him on was all right well you start thinking of recruiting not as
01:09:13
you going out and individually recruiting people or helping your hiring manager recruiting people but you think about recruiting as a general strategy
01:09:19
for the company and how does that General strategy work and how do you have like for example you get to this point in the scale company where you
01:09:26
start having onboarding days so like for example new employees start at one of the onboarding days and they start as a
01:09:33
group together right so it's kind of like okay we're going through kind of how it works and we're integrating
01:09:39
people into the different group like like you know the sales people the engineers they all start and they're going into different groups we like
01:09:44
we're approaching it as as the engine of the company and the things that I you only world class but the things you're
01:09:50
passionate about the things I'm passionate about like the technology strategy the product strategy um the um
01:09:57
the kind of the big idea for what you're doing there and I love working with
01:10:02
super high-powered talent and one of the things that I had kind of learned is well that's the reason I like working
01:10:08
with Founders that's the reason I like working with CEOs because the some degree it's like okay you're the talent
01:10:13
I'm working with on this company right in order to do that and so I was like
01:10:19
yeah I like doing more of being a board member working with c
01:10:26
more than I like being the CEO once you get past you know 150 people so that's
01:10:31
what I should be doing and what I need to do is I need to get linked in to a point where it's already you know it's
01:10:40
it's already kind of hit breakout velocity right and so you can recruit
01:10:45
now a worldclass CEO that you can work with right and that's what that's what I
01:10:51
should do and you know I like for example the entire time time that Jeff
01:10:56
weer was the CEO of Linkin my primary office was immediately next door to
01:11:01
his interesting so you stay close but you yeah yeah again this is another
01:11:06
point of self-awareness which a lot of Founders don't have but the great Founders that I've met and interviewed whether it's I don't know Brian chesky
01:11:13
or whether it was some Founders from the UK like Bennett Jim shark and Julian from hu one of the things that really
01:11:19
Define them was they did a low ego move to move out of that CEO role which is
01:11:25
typically associated with like the glitz and the Glam because they knew that their skill set was in branding or
01:11:30
marketing or something else or just vision for the the future of the company a lot of CEOs don't do that because the
01:11:35
COO title comes with a certain yeah I understand esteem um and yes everybody myself included does have a big ego
01:11:44
right but my ego is you you have to attach the right way my ego is attached to LinkedIn
01:11:49
succeeding right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a big difference yes
01:11:55
LinkedIn went public in 2011 with a 4.3 billion valuation and then Microsoft later paid 26 billion to buy LinkedIn at
01:12:03
the time it was reported you owned about 11% of the company which made you a multi-billionaire
01:12:10
how does life change when one becomes a multi-billionaire so it's funny I try to never like like
01:12:18
one of the funny things I never repost things that call me billionaire and so forth because I try to not have that
01:12:23
identity I am aware that it's an accurate descriptor yeah right um but it's not like the way I think of myself
01:12:29
I don't think of myself as Reed Hoffman billionaire I think of myself as Reed Hoffman technologist Reed Hoffman public
01:12:36
intellectual Reed Hoffman uh creative you know strategist Reed Hoffman Etc so
01:12:41
I try to um change my life as in those directions not in the the wealth
01:12:48
Direction now of course you know I travel around in a private plane you know I own houses in several different
01:12:56
areas of the world you know that kind of stuff yeah right um but uh I try to live
01:13:02
a life within those you know high wealth things as much of a as an upper middle
01:13:09
class person as I can so for example before I came here to do the interview I
01:13:14
I got here a little early so I went to the nearby Starbucks had a cup of coffee pull up my laptop was working on it
01:13:21
interesting you know because because that's the way that I want to live right uh and I want Human Relationships that
01:13:27
are like that I think human relationships are really important I feel lucky to have um relationships with
01:13:34
some people who are these really really amazing people but by the way there's amazing people who are like World
01:13:39
celebrities and there's amazing people who the world doesn't know about I just like I just like going through life with
01:13:46
amazing people and that's part of what I mean by that you've always been associated with the left side of
01:13:52
politics your parents were very uh left leaning to to to say the least I heard
01:13:57
that you got pepper sprayed when you were a kid because because I was I was a kid on my uh father's shoulder at a
01:14:04
demonstration against against the Vietnam War okay so that's it's in your DNA yes the thing about being on the
01:14:11
left is it's typically the left that have a opinion of billionaires that they're evil yes I'm aware of that but
01:14:18
not just billionair I've I've been called Evil by a number of people on the left really yes of course look I they
01:14:24
are wrong that that is a necessary correlation right um but I you look I I
01:14:31
try to understand people I understand their perspective I disagree with it but I understand it it's I mean you you're one
01:14:38
of the few people that's still a billionaire and on the left it seems no I'm not I actually in the valley
01:14:44
especially in the selection cycle uh well it's the public facing people that we see on the podcast and stuff and look
01:14:51
so part of the reason why I think less people were public about about it this
01:14:57
cycle was because uh you know president Trump was
01:15:03
threatening you know personal and political retaliation and so you had to have a
01:15:08
certain degree of courage to stand up right and so en courage in the public
01:15:13
area not just courage in taking risks and so forth but in the public arena for doing that and so I literally had
01:15:21
conversations with billionaires who were like oh look I really applaud what you're doing and I think what you're doing exact right thing and that's for you not for me right I mean trying to
01:15:29
get people into it and so um so I was aware and because they kind of did the simple Mini Max and they said well if if
01:15:36
Harris is elected I won't get penalized for not having supported and if Trump is
01:15:42
elected I will get penalized so I'm just gonna stand out of it and do you think
01:15:47
you'll be penalized uh I think that uh I think that there's a greater than 50%
01:15:53
chance that there will be um uh repercussions uh from a misdirection and
01:15:59
Corruption of the institutions of State uh to uh respond to my having tried to
01:16:08
help Harris get elected you must spend time at night thinking about what that might be because if I would yeah well
01:16:15
look it's a range and look I hope that it's only in the soft end of the range like IRS audits or phone calls like you
01:16:23
know Trump made saying you know deny Bezos that that DOD contract because you
01:16:31
know he owns the Washington Post and I don't like him you know that kind of stuff I hope it's in that Arena right
01:16:37
could get much worse but I don't really want to speculate on it because I don't want to give anybody any
01:16:43
ideas right but like I think it's like I think I would safely win a bet that
01:16:49
there will be political repercussions that are that are essentially undemocratic
01:16:55
American um and Direct on you and direct to me yes um I I think I'd safely win
01:17:01
that bet um I'm hoping it's in the what I'm terming the soft Arena you're not
01:17:06
planning on leaving the US are you no no no oh my resident's outside of Seattle and you know we have a constitution you
01:17:12
know that kind of thing because Mark cubin was the same right Mark cubin was very public and vocal he's a billionaire he was very Pro KL Harris very anti
01:17:20
Trump through the cycle he took a lot of flack as well yes I mean I follow everybody on Twitter so I watch it play out and it was kind of like he was stood
01:17:26
in no man's land just taking shots from everywhere and you were kind of in the same category yes exactly would have
01:17:33
been much easier for you to just shut the [ __ ] up or fall in line or something exct well but that's the problem you
01:17:38
can't allow that form of Neo fascism right is precisely when you feel fear I have huge respect for Mark Cuban when
01:17:45
you feel fear stand up because that fear that you're feeling that's you're feeling as a powerful wealthy
01:17:52
person right and if you're not not going to stand up who is right can you see any
01:17:58
redeeming qualities in Trump I know you're Pro K Harris oh yeah well I think
01:18:04
he's going to bring a wrecking ball and some of the places a wrecking ball are useful like so for example if you say
01:18:09
hey on regulation you want a new regulation replace to that kind of refactoring is a good thing um hey we
01:18:15
going to need a bunch of energy in the future and we're going to need good clean energy I understand everyone doesn't like nuclear I don't care we're
01:18:21
going to do nuclear like I can see a number of things that could come out that'd be very positive and I want those
01:18:27
things to happen and a matter of fact you know part of being an American you know I'm going to try to make the next four years as great for America as I can
01:18:34
right my precise complaint with some of the people I'm in political opposition for
01:18:39
is don't ever try to break the country try to always be building the country it
01:18:44
doesn't matter if the person you agree with is in power or not be working towards a good Collective future and so
01:18:50
I'll be doing all all of that and I I'm hopeful for some of that from this Administration do you think think it's a good time for
01:18:56
entrepreneurs to be building companies with Trump coming into Power um fundamentally I think it's
01:19:03
always a good time as entrepreneurs to be building companies so one is like you have a good idea the time's now go do it
01:19:10
yeah Capital markets harder fine actually if you can get Capital you get competitive differentiation from the
01:19:16
people who couldn't I mean it's like so you have to it's always like trying to figure out how to turn the negatives into positives in terms of what you're
01:19:22
doing now I think Trump will be broadly um very good for entrepreneurship because I think he's going to reduce a
01:19:27
lot of Regulation some of that regulation will have very negative consequences on the society which you know as a society person I'll be
01:19:34
concerned about like climate like you know you get the new EPA person coming in Environmental Protection Agency you
01:19:41
ask him what the job is and he says we need to drill more oil wells right
01:19:47
you're like that's not the EPA that might be the Commerce Secretary or something else the energy secretary
01:19:54
that's not the EPA so there will be a reduction of Regulation because we do have climate change we're living in it
01:20:00
and it's going to get worse so those will be places where there'll be real damage from the Wrecking Ball but for
01:20:05
entrepreneurs building new businesses like for example I've invested in a number of fusion and fision businesses
01:20:11
because nuclear because that's the clean energy that we're going to need to you
01:20:16
know just to bring more PE more of the billions of people into the middle class and and to and to try to remove carbon
01:20:23
from the environment on so forth so and I've known the regulatory stuff is is ferociously bad for that well actually
01:20:29
in fact I have hoped that that they are going to they're going to reset the that thing and so all of a sudden that
01:20:35
entrepreneurship turns out to be in retrospect wise U but I think they're going to reduce regulation across the
01:20:41
board for all entrepreneurs right so I think ENT like that's helpful on
01:20:46
entrepreneurship now they're going to be probably much more closed at the border and immigration is an important part of
01:20:52
Entrepreneurship you want to you want to be able to to get the best talent from anywhere in the world it's one of the
01:20:58
advantages that's helped buil the US that I think is going to be more uneven anyway so it's like Goods goods and bads
01:21:05
one of the things that is very different I think in this Administration with the people he's appointed is there seems to
01:21:10
be quite a few entrepreneurs being appointed to fairly important High roles well by entrepreneurs you mean zero
01:21:16
experience ever doing the thing they were doing before potentially I was referring
01:21:22
particularly to um Elon Musk David saaks doing I think he's doing Ai and Technology I think there's another guy
01:21:29
who's looks like he's built a business before yeah so uh David Elon obviously super smart very accomplished you work
01:21:35
with both at PayPal right yes yeah right um and now David knows crypto very well
01:21:40
so he's the AI and crypto are and the pcast person he knows crypto very well he hasn't yet done anything in AI like
01:21:47
he hasn't been mentioned as an investor or a like when I talk to all the a entrepreneurs you know as a desired
01:21:54
person for them to work with and so so you know he's very smart so I presume he knows something but you know AI I think
01:21:59
yet TBD what he knows and what he tweets about is anti-woke AI is the most
01:22:04
important thing you're like that is not that is not even even the top 100 of the issues around how to you know promote
01:22:10
and build and navigate AI um but he's very good at crypto he done a bunch of good stuff there so that'll be and Elon
01:22:16
obviously understands AI quite well on this point of speech as well obviously
01:22:22
there's quite a big shift in speech that's happened in the last last I'd say two years really from Elon buying twitters where I I saw a drastic shift
01:22:30
in globally yes and what we think is okay and not okay what's your thoughts on the the change in spee speech good
01:22:37
bad positive negative um so I you know gave a couple days ago here in London
01:22:42
the sir Isaiah Berlin speech and one of the lines that I used in the speech was um there there's competing freedoms you
01:22:48
could say there's the freedom of speech to say whatever I want to say and then there's a freedom to try to offer
01:22:55
something in civil discourse where I'm not going to get harassed by a whole
01:23:00
bunch of antagonists right um and obviously
01:23:05
they're both good virtues and what you want is the right blend right from them
01:23:11
I think that a lot of folks like for example what's happening on you know Twitter and and X right is um just
01:23:20
virulent right it's just toxic it's terrible like when I tweet anything
01:23:26
including hey you know um I think the following thing is great
01:23:31
entrepreneurship I get a oh you evil liberal you know I hope you you know kind of uh fail terribly and you know
01:23:39
blah blah blah blah okay I was tweeting about this great entrepreneurship thing
01:23:44
right and that's the kind of theme in you know Twitter
01:23:50
x.com um I prefer what you kind of thing you see on Linkin is like look you can say critical things but you try to say
01:23:56
critical things within the theme of oh well that entrepreneurial thing I actually don't think it's going to be as
01:24:01
good as you think and this is why what's the difference in the in the design of the platform that results in two different types of behavior there uh
01:24:08
well uh uh Twitter is anonymous it allows a lot of bots um it
01:24:15
encourages um like it says freedom of speech like if if you're tweeting a rape
01:24:20
threat that's fine it's freedom of speech you're allowed to do whatever you want right uh uh LinkedIn is you're tied
01:24:27
to a named profile that's tied to your identity uh if you're reported for
01:24:33
saying something that's frankly uncivil doesn't even have to be as bad as a rape threat right it's just unil like you're
01:24:39
you're you're cautioned right it's removed and you're saying hey by the way that's not for for the platform and if
01:24:44
you keep doing that we remove your ability to post right so on the Twitter example what Elon said is that if it's
01:24:52
legal then it's fine but is there an upside to having an environment where people can anonymously
01:24:59
say what they want within the constraint of the law um look I think there
01:25:06
are it's important to allow one of the things I think that online platforms give us the difference between freedom
01:25:11
of speech and freedom of reach like I think it's okay for people to say such
01:25:16
thing as vaccines are evil plots to put chips in people and they give us
01:25:22
autism it's 100% wrong right and every credible
01:25:30
medical Authority goes vaccines are good and so you go okay a thousand people get
01:25:35
vaccinated or call it you know a 100,00 people get vaccinated and 50 of them
01:25:41
have adverse conditions to the vaccine right that happens out of 100,000 right
01:25:48
but a thousand people or 10,000 people might have died otherwise right
01:25:54
that your lottery for everyone being vaccinated is a very good Lottery everyone should do it right uh Because
01:26:03
by the way you were more likely to have died in the lottery than have an adverse condition that doesn't mean there aren't
01:26:09
people who have adverse conditions so all quality medical professionals medical researchers agree I am allowed
01:26:17
legally on x.com to say vaccines are evil plots right to control
01:26:24
the American people to sell drugs and make drug companies profitable and blah blah and I can say all that and you see
01:26:30
all that ramping on Twitter rampant you know in talk radio and you know and all
01:26:36
the things you can say that that's a problem right I'm okay with people
01:26:42
saying it what I'm not okay with is promoting it and having it have broad reach so on this point of the vaccine so
01:26:48
just to clarify my position I think vaccines are a wonderful invention that have saved a lot of people's lives so
01:26:53
that's my position but I want to I want to interrogate a little bit with the with the vaccine roll out in particular
01:26:59
there's a lot of things that we didn't know at the time right the lab leap thing I had Boris Johnson sat here and
01:27:05
he said oh yeah we think it's a lab Lab leak if if if I had said that on this podcast a couple of years ago I would
01:27:12
have been kicked off YouTube uhuh yes and so having a forum where you can even entertain ideas that are contrarian yes
01:27:20
I also think is important and I exist in the the sort of dichotomy of like speech
01:27:25
is important but at the same time you know yeah look I am um I was on
01:27:33
the support people being able to say lab leak yeah category Because by the way I
01:27:39
do think freedom of speech is a good thing and part of the reason I have freedom of speech is sometimes you have a contrarian idea that should have freedom of reach yeah but there should
01:27:46
be and look how do we make decisions as a society of what expertise like how
01:27:52
what truth is as we convene groups of experts MH like in a science we have a
01:27:58
group of scientists review a paper before it's published we have scientists able to reproduce things in a jury we
01:28:06
have 12 people who listen to the case and make a decision so we use groups of
01:28:11
people as experts and different kinds of expertise for different kinds of things to make a judgment and we should also
01:28:17
bring in expertise right right now that doesn't mean that even when all the experts say that's completely wrong you
01:28:23
should say you can't post it like I loved what Twitter did pre Elon which is
01:28:29
they said hey you can post vaccines or this evil plot by the government to control you but we're going to put a
01:28:35
little box around it that says oh and by the way experts disagree here's where you can go get the facts so you can say
01:28:42
it right but we'll also put in in selective cases expert opinion and I
01:28:47
think that's like for example a balance of how to do freedom of speech and freedom of reach because I do think look
01:28:53
I should be a to say the World is Flat I should be able to go on and say the world is flat and by the way LinkedIn
01:28:59
wouldn't take that post off because it's like well it's civil I'm just saying the world flat I'm out of my mind right but
01:29:07
I'm being civil so the LinkedIn principles are not you must say something that's scientific truly true
01:29:13
it's you must say something that's civil I also think people shouldn't be
01:29:18
deplatformed or canceled because of their speech even if you disagree with it providing it's in the constraint like
01:29:24
constrains of the law I sat with a well by the way I generally think agree on the constrains of the law but I also
01:29:30
agree on I also think importantly civil and civil means well like no threat of
01:29:36
violence okay yeah I agree with that you shouldn't be threatening anybody with violence yes um I sat with a I'm GNA say
01:29:43
astrologist I don't even know if that's the right word it's not astrology was it who's BR what's cosmetologist and he
01:29:48
told me the story of Galileo discovering that the world was round and Galileo basically being threatened by everybody
01:29:55
um because it threatened the I think the Catholic institution at the time and then well because the preach the
01:30:00
preaching of the church was as was that yeah and so that's a cautionary tale although it's a long time ago in there
01:30:07
are always going to be strong forces that are heavily incentivized around some kind of ideology yes and that I
01:30:12
mean that does happen today yes 100% And and these forces are powerful forces um
01:30:18
so allowing dissent even if it's coming from someone who is not credible yes
01:30:23
100% by way strongly in defense of that yeah right I just think that and like so
01:30:29
you know I don't mind um people criticizing me I don't
01:30:35
mind them criticizing my arguments I don't mind them criticizing my choices
01:30:40
of who I'm going to support politically right what I'm going to do philanthropically I strongly prefer that
01:30:48
those cred those those criticisms be backed with uh some knowledge and intelligence
01:30:54
and some argu good argument point of view and I really want it to be a civil
01:31:01
discourse it's interesting because the human brain when we think about it from an evolutionary standpoint wasn't designed to deal with a thousand people
01:31:07
tweeting at you that you're you're an [ __ ] and as a podcaster as someone who's in the public high yourself who is
01:31:13
a podcaster but also a famous entrepreneur you have to deal with that like you you have to deal with that in a
01:31:19
way that's just we weren't designed to yeah and I struggle with it I struggle with when I first came into the public
01:31:24
spot like when I started doing Dragon's Den Shar tank in the US um opening my
01:31:30
phone and being exposed to just a barrage of like noise on the brain yes
01:31:36
now whose responsibility is that is it my responsibility to like delete the app or is it the platform's responsibility
01:31:43
to moderate people expressing their innate human jealous whatever it is you
01:31:50
know so so the classic thing that humans make in reasoning is they go A or B right okay and you answer is both okay
01:31:57
right so there's responsibility on both sides like it's like oh no it's a responsibility of the individuals like
01:32:03
well like are you kind of saying I have zero responsibility there's zero I can do to be positively contributory here of
01:32:10
course you can right so for example like it's totally possible to say I have a
01:32:16
freedom of speech Network and if you were engaging in threats like for
01:32:22
example your Trump and you're tweeting that Mark Millie should be executed when
01:32:28
he is the joint chief of staff's General that's a threat of violence that should
01:32:35
be removed right you know so it's totally doable to say violence has no
01:32:43
place on this platform or threats of violence now violence is illegal threats of violence is not right one of the
01:32:50
theories I had many years ago and I I don't actually think this theory was based on anything other than I read it and it sounded good so I used to say it
01:32:56
was that over the next 10 years and I used to say this about six seven years ago on stage social network working
01:33:02
would become more and more siloed into these smaller interest based networks I
01:33:08
was thinking the other day in the taxi I was like oh my God that's actually happening now you're having like blue sky and threads and you've got your
01:33:13
Instagrams and your rumbles and we've got more and more social networks that are more like centered around different
01:33:19
pockets of people what is your theory of social networking over the next decade two decades I'm always open as an
01:33:26
investor to interesting ideas yeah right here we are in a business podcast so I'm always looking at stuff um look I think
01:33:34
uh they will grow to be an increasingly just as they've grown massively in the last 20 years they will continue to grow
01:33:40
to be an important part of life I think there will be different social networks that fit different parts of our Lives um
01:33:46
that's part of the reason like for example like back when I started LinkedIn it was also thought to be oh no no no one's ever going to do a business
01:33:52
Network it's only going to be social networks right it was only going to be at the time it was like Friendster then
01:33:58
it was Myspace then it was Facebook like look there's only going to be that there's never going to be those and then people say well there's only going to
01:34:04
ever be one social network and you're like well actually in fact we do have like Twitter we do have snap and we do
01:34:11
have right there's there is multiple ones and I think there will be more um
01:34:17
so I think they're going to have more social networks and they're going to fit into different people's lives they're going to have different Community
01:34:23
cultures um for them and so and I think not only will they get multimodal but they'll use
01:34:29
AI in different ways and so and part of that invention like one of the things I tend to think people say well what ideas
01:34:36
are you looking at as an investor and I'm like look I'm looking for that great idea that I haven't thought of that
01:34:41
someone out there amongst the millions of entrepreneurs has got that great thing and can possibly make it work
01:34:48
that's what I'm looking for so when I look to future of social networks now to give a little bit more of a specific
01:34:53
answer like I tend to think social networks need to both have individuals as customers and societies as customers
01:34:59
so you need to think about like that balance of you need to think about both in how you're designing them right so
01:35:05
it's and that doesn't mean no freedom of speech and you know autocratic because I actually think more or less she should
01:35:11
allow people to post whatever they want as long as it's civil right and if you want to choose to have an anonymous
01:35:17
social network that's fine like there's a definite rule for especially when you get to places where the government is
01:35:23
oppressed you know go to in Iran or or or Russia or something else he like well anonymity
01:35:29
is important for saving your life right but on the other hand you should also be thinking about like okay what do this
01:35:35
means as society and part of what we want in media networks is we want to be collectively learning so if I'm posting
01:35:41
that you know vaccines are an evil plot for corporations to try to kill our children you're like well you're trying
01:35:48
to persuade people to do something that's bad for them and bad for society so we should respond in some way we may
01:35:55
still allow you to post but we may put a little box around it saying you know here's what experts you know here's what
01:36:02
all of the doctors at all the elite hospitals you know survey says
01:36:07
99.999% of them you know there's only one out of all the doctors that lead hospitals who don't think like these
01:36:13
vaccines are a good idea and do you think social networks have been a net positive for society I think broadly
01:36:20
look it doesn't mean that they're that they don't have some challenges mhm like people
01:36:25
criticize Facebook for example um but actually in fact a billion people get on
01:36:30
it every day they share their experiences pictures lives with loved ones friends Etc all of that's very very
01:36:37
positive um I think Twitter unfortunately is taking a turn for the worst I think if you go you know where's
01:36:43
the largest site which has the most untruths on it I think it's Twitter right um but you know that doesn't mean
01:36:51
it can't also be improved and fixed over time what's worked well in your business this year where did you need more help we
01:36:57
should all be asking ourselves these types of questions as we close out the year Q4 is a time for reflecting but
01:37:03
it's also a time to look ahead and start planning could your team increase productivity and set more ambitious
01:37:09
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01:38:45
there's so many different takes that I've heard on AI I've spoken to Mustafa Solomon I've spoken to lots of different I you know Mustafa because you invested
01:38:50
in his company yeah we co-founded inflection ah he co-founded inflection which then sold to Microsoft well it's
01:38:56
it did a commercial deal with him it's still going as a company oh okay all right cuz my stuff moved over yeah he moved over because he wanted to do a
01:39:02
consumer agent and inflection is doing B2B uh software sales now what is your
01:39:08
take on AI and how should we be thinking about it how should Dave and Jenny the average person with you know working in
01:39:14
a company or building a small startup think about AI so I think AI is in a look so I last year I published a book
01:39:21
called impromptu which is the first book on AI co-written with AI right yeah to
01:39:27
show as well as tell that AI is not just artificial intelligence it's amplification intelligence it gives us
01:39:34
superpowers right as part of that I'm publishing a book in January called super agency which is our human agency
01:39:41
even with this agentic technology can and will be magnified we will get these
01:39:47
superpowers and super agency is the time where um when a lot of people get access
01:39:53
to a new general purpose technology um the transformation of society that comes
01:39:59
and it's like printing press or electricity or cars or mobile phones
01:40:05
it's it's this amazing uh uh transformation of all of
01:40:11
our Lives because not only do I get the superpower by having AI the fact that
01:40:16
you have a superpower with AI also increase my agency so for example you're a doctor who now has access to AI your
01:40:23
ability to help tend to lots of people's heals now just get Amplified and it's
01:40:29
the same thing like when a car was created a doctor could now do have a broader range of places they could visit
01:40:35
to go help that part of his cars have that super agencies not just I can drive places now because the doctor can drive
01:40:43
places that also increases her his agency and also my
01:40:48
agency through super agency and that book's coming out in January there's a little around AI as well there's fear
01:40:55
all the time with new technologies is any of that Gloom warranted yes but with an asterisk which
01:41:00
is every time a new general purpose technology comes out the discourse when the printing press came out the
01:41:06
discourse was very similar to the current discourse on AI it's going to destroy Society um it's going to destroy
01:41:13
human learning and knowledge you know it's going to disable the current people who are the who are the the custodians
01:41:20
of knowledge which mostly priests you know in Society from from from being able to control the flow of information
01:41:27
we're going to have all this misinformation etc etc now by the way you don't have a scientific revolution without the printing press right so um
01:41:35
now so there's always this fear but and you say is the fear completely unwarranted well look human societies
01:41:42
are bad at new general purpose Technologies right so um with the
01:41:47
printing press we had nearly a century of religious War because of it so the
01:41:53
transitions are very difficult because we as human beings are difficult at new general purpose Technologies and so the
01:41:59
transition look the transition is going to have pain there's going to be challenges and reordering and so disruption because of it no question
01:42:06
what I'm hoping and part of the reason I write these books is say look let's manage this transition better than we've
01:42:12
managed the previous transitions right let's I have one 100% confidence that
01:42:18
the other side this will be enormously amazing super agency what I wanted to do
01:42:24
is manage the transition as best we can now people say well shouldn't you manage the transition by being really slow and
01:42:30
being really regulated well the challenge is is that these new technologies are developed competitively
01:42:36
across the entire Globe different countries different Industries different
01:42:42
companies Etc and we don't set the clock like there's no one group that sets the
01:42:48
clock and if you don't like go with it like take the industrial Evolution which
01:42:53
also had a bunch of things why did Europe basically set the the the the
01:42:59
drum beat for the globe for centuries the answer is Europe embraced the Industrial Revolution robustly and early
01:43:07
right the um you know it's part of what you know made uh the British Empire
01:43:13
right and so that clock is set by
01:43:18
different human beings all running at it and by the way they have different theories of the good they have different theories of how technology should be in
01:43:25
society they have different theories of what the risks are Technologies like you know when these people published this
01:43:30
pause letter that was like that's a mistake like other people aren't going to PA like it's a simple thing you look at the people who care about Humanity if
01:43:37
they all pause and the people don't care about Humanity don't pause your letter if you if you achieve your success will
01:43:46
cause a bad impact on Humanity so you have to be developing it you have to be
01:43:51
going with the CL that's set by the world right when I think about AI in
01:43:57
simple terms the the way that I've I've been thinking about it and this is not a Perfect Analogy or whatever but it's
01:44:02
just a simple way to think about it is if there was one Steven Bartlet here that has an IQ of 100 and there was another one sat next to me that had the
01:44:09
IQ of a thousand what would this Steve do and what would that Steve do that's a good question is that an apt analogy is that
01:44:16
somewhat well it depends this is part of the thing is we human beings are very bad at imagining future technology mhm
01:44:23
so I can tell you stories about where we have created AIS with IQ of a
01:44:29
thousand I can tell you stories where we've created AIS with IQs of uh 200 of
01:44:37
150 and I can also tell you stories of AIS where we' created that are kind of the equivalent because today we have
01:44:42
this is a form of like idiot seant like today's AI are super intelligent I'll
01:44:48
give you an example so if I go to a human being I try to look human say
01:44:53
explain to me mixture of experts creation of AI with an AI what does that mean uh it's a
01:45:00
it's a technique by which modern AIS are created that have um different kind of
01:45:07
expertise roles in the combination like chat gbt is created this way that create
01:45:12
their output it's a it's a particular technical definition for the way of
01:45:17
creating a a worldclass AI model then I say okay compare a mixture of experts uh
01:45:25
so it's only thousands of people who understand how to do that I say okay compare that to uh modern economic Game
01:45:34
Theory well there's probably some humans that can do that too we're probably now down to like 50 to 100 right then I say
01:45:41
okay compare those two to Modern oceanography right okay now we're at
01:45:47
zero human beings there's no human beings who can do this but I can go to gbd4 and I can run this gbd4 because
01:45:54
it's ingested a mill a trillion words of knowledge can write the comparisons
01:46:01
between these three things because it knows all three because it knows all three that's a superpower that no human being has we have ai superpower today
01:46:10
right but of course no one's alarmed about that because like oh that's a great amplification intelligence that really helps me I think there's a very
01:46:17
good chance that what happens is is that what we're creating with all of every
01:46:23
current e AI technique that's under development is these amazing savants
01:46:28
that are these great co-pilots right and that's what we're creating not Terminator robots not super
01:46:35
intelligences there's a possibility of that and I can address the existential risk questions around the possibility of
01:46:41
that because people think about that poorly but um but the I think the
01:46:47
likelihood is that we're going to be having these kind of co-pilots that give us these
01:46:54
informational GPS's these cognitive superpowers that make us as human beings
01:46:59
a lot better B Act is are G to yes that too
01:47:04
yes that's the bigger worry so you say one worry is transition and another worry is whenever you're you're creating
01:47:10
this new technology you want to say I want to empower all these people who are building Better Lives for themselves in
01:47:16
society and I want to not Empower criminals terrorists Rogue States and
01:47:21
also you think I also need weapons that are sufficiently uh Advanced attacking my my
01:47:29
enemies and everybody globally is thinking that yes China might be thinking about the the west and the West
01:47:34
are thinking about China Russia are thinking about this person this person the Middle East are probably thinking about a couple of people yes so with
01:47:40
with all developing weapons or defense systems they're going to probably make those robots you talked about the
01:47:46
Terminator robot that can go to the battlefield yes and that's super smart they're going to probably make some cyber weapons as well yes so those
01:47:53
things end up existing and then they're in the wrong hands the mistake happens so you want to build them in the right hands first that's all I mean look there
01:48:00
will be cost to it there's never look electricity essential for Human Society
01:48:06
it does electrocute people right it does two things in the wrong hands too right
01:48:14
is this technology different though because there's been comparisons to the printing press electricity but is this
01:48:19
no no it's new but by the way each technology the printing press was different when it was created
01:48:26
electricity was different when it was created cars were different when they were created is this the most profound
01:48:33
well in terms of impact it C it might be right that's that's that's possibility
01:48:38
um I think there is I always think in probability distributions I think there's a good probability of it but to
01:48:45
some degree like it doesn't matter if it is or isn't the most it is a Prof found new
01:48:54
technology it's as important at least as these other ones that's the only thing that matters whether it definitely is or
01:49:01
not doesn't really matter and look what is different it's the fact it's a gentic
01:49:06
technology which means it it's creating agents that can operate on their own right we already have that by the
01:49:13
way like the agent you can be running an agent with a connection to the internet on your computer and it can go buy stuff
01:49:19
for you right you can do that today it's doable you have agent just a question of what
01:49:24
the shape is right so it's agentic it's cognitive like like it's very strange
01:49:30
that we have a technology now that we can talk to in various ways and so you have people mistaken going oh it must be
01:49:37
conscious because they asked if who was conscious and it said it was conscious and I was like no but by the way before
01:49:43
this technology existed that was a good test does by the way there are conscious things that can't there's there's mute
01:49:49
people and the fact that they can't tell you their conscious so conscious not perfectly they tell you they're conscious but you tell me your conscious
01:49:56
that was a pretty good test before now it's a little bit more complicated because I don't think any of the current
01:50:03
AIS are conscious and we can go in depth of reason of Neuroscience and other kinds of things about why that is it's
01:50:08
not a just a human species parist view um and figur out under what circumstance
01:50:16
it would be conscious is a very interesting question that we need to we need to figure out because it won't be that it has gray matter it'll be
01:50:22
something else or you know maybe we'll figure this out so so that's new the cognitive
01:50:28
superpowers are new the fact that the speed of deployment is going to be unusual because now we have the mobile
01:50:35
phone internet so I create a new agent and tomorrow a billion people can use
01:50:41
it right that's new right so so all of these things are new and by the way new
01:50:48
is anxiety producing and new is difficult to navigate and new can make transition's very difficult right but by
01:50:56
the way the fact that we're facing a new challenge is not itself a new
01:51:01
challenge right for the average person out there that's I know they might be working in a hospital or might be a
01:51:08
lawyer or or a doctor whatever just someone with a a job that's heard this term Ai and they're saying chat GPT is
01:51:15
there anything that they should be doing on an individual level to make sure that they can capitalize on the opportunity that AI
01:51:21
presents the basic answer is absolutely yes and that's part of the reason why
01:51:27
like like I do my podcast possible I do super agency I do impromptu because the
01:51:34
strong advice I give everyone and literally I was sitting with the governors of the bank of England yesterday and my advice to them among
01:51:40
other things was personally go use AI right don't just use it to make a Sonet
01:51:46
for your kids's birthday that's great don't just use it for a recipe for what
01:51:51
happens to be refrigerator that's great for something that matters to you that part of your expertise and soth start
01:51:58
using it and by the way you'll find that uh some of the things are still not
01:52:03
useful for it all like when I sat down to ask gbd4 how would Reed Hoffman make
01:52:09
money investing in AI it gave me an answer that was the smart business
01:52:16
school Professor answer who didn't understand Venture Capital it was like well study which areas have the largest
01:52:21
total addressable Market it then look at what the possibilities for competitive disruption are then you know market
01:52:27
research test that it's like it's no way like go find a great entrepreneur with a great idea right you know and and it's
01:52:34
best when the idea is something you haven't thought of and few other people have thought of too right is a way of
01:52:40
doing so it got it completely wrong from how I how Reed Hoffman how I invest in Ai and what I do very successfully now
01:52:47
you say well then it's useless for Venture Capital it's like no no cuz I kept experimenting with it and I said
01:52:52
okay I fed in a uh an entrepreneurs plan and I said how would I do due diligence
01:52:58
on this plan and it came back with a pretty good list was like yeah yeah one that was I was absolutely planning on doing that two I was absolutely three
01:53:05
yeah I could see why you'd think I was doing it that's not important oh four I would have gotten to it would would have gotten to it like four days down the
01:53:11
road of doing the work and now I know it now so it's useful there so it is today
01:53:17
useful to everybody you can use it for
01:53:22
things that you care about today so go start playing with it and I love Ethan
01:53:28
mik's line which is the worst AI you're ever going to use in your life is the AI
01:53:33
you're using today so one of the reasons to start using it is to start getting familiar with it because like it is a
01:53:39
stunning tool and I'll give one since you're talking about Everyday People I'll give one kind of tip that I give
01:53:47
everybody at the beginning it's part of the reason I wrote impromptu Etc which is um what what is ai ai is great at
01:53:54
adopting a role that you tell it to adopt right so here's a very simple one
01:53:59
you have an argument for something you can paste it into an AI um and you can
01:54:05
say uh counter this argument take the role of critic argue against me and you
01:54:11
can see it it will immediately give you an you know a a a capable argument
01:54:17
against your position that is very helpful it's helpful for cognitive development it's helpful for learning it's for our understanding you know what
01:54:23
are the strengths and weaknesses but by the way you can also say take my side give me another argument for the thing
01:54:30
I'm arguing for like make that argument but that's just the beginning you can also say like for example if I go okay
01:54:37
I'm making this argument for uh um how general purpose
01:54:43
technologies always have initial strong fear by people and how they're described
01:54:49
as the end of society the end of humanity Etc it's happened a number of different times um how would a historian of
01:54:57
Technology analyze my argument how would they criticize my argument and then you get it so you can get to like it's
01:55:05
literally it's only your own creativity and your own inspiration of who what
01:55:10
role should I be talking to and once you start realizing that you can start using AI very powerfully for whatever you're
01:55:17
trying to do should entrepreneurs be thinking about building companies in the field of AI at the moment you know as a
01:55:24
entrepreneur who's like roughly 30 years old I look back and go gosh I wish I was of entrepreneurial age when the.com boom
01:55:31
came around because everyone became billionaires and and is is that is this that moment in time yes so short answer
01:55:38
is yes okay so what so I'm an entrepreneur I'm I'm 30 OD years old um I've got disposable income I'm
01:55:45
financially free m i' I'd love to take part in the next Revolution yeah should
01:55:51
I be fing out to San Francisco and build building an AI joining an AI start about
01:55:57
there yes why so so one of the things is Silicon
01:56:02
Valley so Silicon Valley has built itself up of multiple the reason it's called Silicon Valley is because it
01:56:09
started with silicon right it's now software Valley Silicon Valley almost never invested in Silicon anymore
01:56:15
silicon being the chips yes Bing the chips yes um so now really it's much more software Valley it's like we invest
01:56:21
billions and billions of dollar every year into new software companies right so we went from Silicon through
01:56:30
you know networking equipment like Cisco through like just stacks of different
01:56:36
things getting to where we are now ai is the new one by the way we did the thing with internet we did it with mobile
01:56:42
phones we did it with web 2 now it's AI right and so you know the
01:56:49
principal thing is when you get this new like uh new general uh purpose
01:56:56
technology uh it opens up massive amounts of entrepreneurial space because
01:57:01
one is's all the new things that can be built that were never possible before Airbnb couldn't be done before the
01:57:07
internet there's just no way right so it opens up these things that weren't possible before um and so like the
01:57:14
internet's a good proxy to the to the wave we have now with AI then it also by
01:57:20
the way uh makes a mass massive transformative force on all existing businesses so you say well I had a
01:57:26
business of of selling you know kind of um of e-commerce and doing you know mail
01:57:34
order cataloges well now there's e-commerce right so it it it transforms
01:57:41
all of these businesses and so by the way for example the internet is part of what makes the cloud Revolution so now
01:57:47
it's like well actually in fact it's not software on your desktop it's not software on your your phone it's in the
01:57:52
cloud and of course it bounces back and forth a little bit then you have well no actually in fact you've got this really
01:57:58
great app on your phone and soth but these kinds of things AI is the next one that affects all of them so you have
01:58:07
Green Field you have potentially revolutionized any particular place where there's a product or service
01:58:12
especially that intelligence could be added to it right there's a possibility
01:58:17
of a great startup idea there so so yes now
01:58:23
should you go try to build your own Frontier Model which is a 10 billion doll computer it's a hard thing that's a
01:58:29
hard amount of capital for startups no no no try to figure out like degrees you use Frontier models from you know open
01:58:36
AI or Microsoft or Google or you know others as ways of doing this but you still May build your own model right um
01:58:42
that a lots of lots of startup companies are building their own models I invested in this customer service company called
01:58:49
Sierra that Brett Taylor is doing and their thing is we're not building our own models we're just deploying other models so we have best of readed for
01:58:57
what models are available to us you could do that as an AI startup there's a whole range and part of what I love
01:59:03
about entrepreneurship and invention is like I have a whole set of theories about what kinds of things will be
01:59:09
really big and some of my theories will be right and I will also discover some other people who have amazing theories
01:59:15
that's one of the things I really I and we at Greylock love to invest in
01:59:20
interesting oh what's the best way for someone to go and learn about AI right now because like going to University
01:59:25
feels like it would be start using it start building it if you want to if you can if you're technical uh download an
01:59:33
open source model uh llama mraw other start playing with it what if you not
01:59:39
technical well then well generally speaking like you can't do a technology it's very hard to do a technology
01:59:45
startup without a technology co-founder so then go find a technology co-founder so for someone like me who's built my my
01:59:52
career in building teams marketing social media content media those kinds of things who is really interested in AI
01:59:59
should I go and do you think I should go learn AI now and start trying to be a technical person or too slow okay yeah
02:00:06
too slow no no speed matters speed matters and startups but by the way uh
02:00:13
like gen because we tend to so much lionize what is usually the man versus
02:00:18
the person most of these people are men um the individual startups succeed because
02:00:25
their initial team that's part of the hiring point we were talking about earlier and so generally speaking if you ask me would I rather invest in an
02:00:32
individual uh founder or two to three co-founders I'd rather invest in two to three co-founders right so going and
02:00:39
finding a co-founder is a great thing because by the way your your throw weight your capability weight is so much
02:00:46
better when you do that and so you know um uh Mark Zuckerberg had Dustin
02:00:52
muskovitz Adam D'Angelo right you know Chris Hughes that's a really important part of how
02:01:00
things get created you invested in open aai almost a decade ago yes before everybody was talking about it what did
02:01:08
you see in that company so Sam Alman Greg Brockman Ilia
02:01:14
suser um amazing um and uh they had a focused
02:01:21
bold vision which is yes Google has invented the Baseline of the attention based
02:01:28
Transformer but they don't realize that it's just scale like apply scale to this
02:01:34
we are going to bet the entire company everything we're doing on scale on it and we're gonna be very focused on doing
02:01:40
it that's that's great but people had said the we AI for
02:01:46
a long time and it had never manifested in it and I had passed on a lot of AI Investments but the thing that people
02:01:51
need to understand about AI is it's a transformation to scale Computing Learning Systems so as opposed to we
02:01:57
program it like we program the AI we program a scale Computing Learning
02:02:03
System so it learns right and that only becomes available once you have scale compute so
02:02:11
you need the Internet you need the cloud you need massive data centers and you
02:02:17
need access to massive amounts of data which you get from the internet and other things and then you need a scale
02:02:23
team to build it on that point of people how important
02:02:28
if you're trying to be successful as a young entrepreneur is networking uh almost always critical
02:02:34
because you need that initial team now you don't need networking of I should spend 12 hours a day seven days a week
02:02:42
going to every party that I can possibly go of and shaking people's hand and giving my them my business card that's not particularly
02:02:48
useful what you need to be is just like you have a strategy for your business you need to have a
02:02:54
strategy for how you're building your network around your business and your network around you like who are the
02:02:59
people that I should be talking to who are the people that I should be learning from who are the people I should be
02:03:04
trying to bring into my network that the project that I'm creating and how do I meet those people there's so many
02:03:11
obvious things that people talk about when they're describing what makes an entrepreneur successful they say hard work they say have a big Vision but is
02:03:17
there anything that's really underappreciated like when I say this I'm talking about
02:03:24
being a nice person or being etiquette or politeness or manners are there any
02:03:30
things like that that you think make a big difference but people don't appreciate well I don't think politeness
02:03:35
and etiquette are s are really particularly good competitive advantages I'm not saying the one should be rude
02:03:42
but like an emphasis like if an entrepreneur is like I'm reading my etiquette manual it's like don't spend your time like sure be nice be I think
02:03:50
building a network like entrepreneurship is a team sport it is not an individual
02:03:55
sport it's a team sport so you need to be building your team right but you've seen entrepreneurs be successful that
02:04:01
were bad at that right uh not ultimately at scale oh interesting right because it is a team
02:04:08
sport right like you know it requires High Talent people around you doing it
02:04:13
now for example you can get enough initial success going and capital that
02:04:19
even though you're bad with your team people people will come on board because they'll go oh I believe this is going to
02:04:24
go somewhere and I can make a bunch of money doing it I'll come do it and so like for example a classic Trope within
02:04:31
Silicon Valley which is broadly correct and that's part of the reason you have the tropes is I want missionary not mercenary cultures right because the
02:04:38
missionaries I believe we're going to change the world we're going to do it this way and by the way mostly of the big successful companies most of them
02:04:45
are missionary cultures they say oh they're all missionary cultur no no no there's mercenary cultures that have gotten big tooo I'm how do you define
02:04:52
mercenary in this all I care about is making money like all like the only thing that matters is I'm selling
02:04:58
something I'm gonna make money that's all that matters do you sometimes think the mission's [ __ ] though just like
02:05:04
[ __ ] to get people to feel something there are there are [ __ ] missions that that are like the I'm just telling
02:05:11
a story I don't really care right I'm telling a story that's incorrect right there are like like like um the Silicon
02:05:19
Valley TV show uh on HBO kind of you know um uh you know
02:05:24
satiredaily
02:05:51
because that's what people want to do people want to be in things that changing the world so you have to say like I'm LinkedIn this is how I'm going
02:05:58
to change the world I'm open AI this is how I'm going to change the world I'm married baby be this is how I'm going to
02:06:03
change the world because humans are emotional story animals exactly so yes
02:06:09
you need it but of course it's much better if it happens to be that you actually are trying to do that you are
02:06:17
actually in fact you have a good plan for how you might succeed in doing that because you know a fiz like a I know
02:06:23
fizzy drinks company yeah conglomerate even they try and end they like value
02:06:30
proposition with we're going to change the world yes exactly and you know it's [ __ ] it's a public company they got shareholders who want to return Yes but
02:06:37
even they I guess have to do it on the mindset front what is the mindset the
02:06:42
factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset what are the key things that you look for when you're investing in one
02:06:48
insanely great ambition right I'm I'm shooting for the moon and you know sometimes literally but most often like
02:06:56
like if I'm successful I will transform the industry
02:07:01
okay an awareness of like a good plan for how you might do
02:07:08
that right an awareness that that entrepreneurship is a team sport not an individual Sport and I have a plan for
02:07:14
how I'm bringing in like all of different elements Capital Talent Etc um
02:07:21
like for example one of the ways that I interview Executives is um I say who are the three to five
02:07:29
they five I love it but minimum three worldclass people who worked for you before and I'm going to call them and
02:07:37
ask them what it's like working for you right because and by the way if I if it
02:07:42
really matters I will then reference check those three people on are they actually world class mhm right because
02:07:49
only hire people who are going to hire worldclass people who who who play it now similarly like who are the world
02:07:55
class people who think you're world class as an entrepreneur and like this is one of the things that actually
02:08:00
entrepreneur first that we actually in fact Learned was it isn't necessarily
02:08:05
who everybody thinks it's who some worldclass people think that this person world class because they're edgy yeah so
02:08:13
you look for that it isn't that you look for people that everybody loves them everybody says oh I'd love to have a drink with that person no no no like
02:08:20
having someone say uh that person's hard driving they're difficult that can be a
02:08:25
very strong positive I've invested a number of entrepreneurs that way what about resilience well resilience also
02:08:30
very important almost every startup goes through what I call a valley the shadow moment which is like why did we think
02:08:36
this was a good idea oh my God we're like when when I started social net one
02:08:42
of my connections from Apple dropped me who had started doing startups two years before dropped me a
02:08:50
um uh a on line email that said welcome to where 15 minutes is the difference
02:08:56
between exultation and Terror I'm Gonna Change the World oh [ __ ] I'm gonna
02:09:01
die right so resilience is super important because it is a dog fight um
02:09:08
and multiple times PayPal LinkedIn
02:09:13
Airbnb oh God we're going to die this is going to be worth zero Can you spot resilience in
02:09:19
someone um you can have a high probability guess based on well it's
02:09:26
kind of like so you push them on things and see what they've done have they taken risk how do they respond to risk
02:09:31
are they trying to persuade themselves that the thing that they're doing is zero risk no no no I'm guaranteed to
02:09:38
succeed no one is does it m does it help if they've been through some difficult things in their life oh yeah because
02:09:45
then if they've gone through the difficult things and they've been resilient in there that's likely not
02:09:51
100% that gives a good probability they'll be resilient in the traumatize people well it depends on how they
02:09:57
respond to the trauma right what did you learn from it like how did you respond to it like because generally speaking
02:10:03
you need to be able to convert negatives into positives right on the entrepreneurial Journey so it's like
02:10:08
look that was that was really bad and I learned from it if you were advising a young person on how to build wealth in
02:10:16
2025 huh and when I say young I mean 18 years old yeah what would you and you
02:10:21
had to to plan out the road map of their life can you walk me through how you'd be thinking about those seasons of life
02:10:26
like 18 to 30 30 onwards Etc so part of the reason I wrote startup
02:10:33
review was that the advice that universities frequently give is you know Follow Your Passion first do the things
02:10:39
that you're really passion about oh you want to go volunteer in Bhutan do it now
02:10:44
is tends to be and it's terrible advice right they that that actually is the the wrong end for the advice the right thing
02:10:51
and it doesn't mean don't follow your passion but the right thing is to start with how do I get to a place where I
02:10:58
have establish myself and have like the ability to like economically the
02:11:05
platform and maneuver could be enough wealth to be you know uh to no longer need a salary that was my own personal
02:11:11
goal um but it also could be the I'm well known and have a network of contacts of people who would want to
02:11:16
hire me and so forth and now I'm going to go spend a year volunteering in Bhutan because I really want to do that
02:11:22
right so the answer is go be vigorous about the thing that matters for your entire life early and take the big risks
02:11:30
outly yeah take the big risk early right now you might say I want to be a doctor it's not particularly risky it's fine
02:11:36
but then go to medical school establish yourself as as as as a medical professional and so before you do that
02:11:43
so whatever thing that is the thing that you think gives you the platform for resilience in your later life go esta
02:11:51
Lish that now and by the way that's part of the thing of like wealthy but Wealthy by the way could be measured in I have a
02:11:56
bank balance right or on stock Equity portfolio but wealthy can also be the I
02:12:02
have a great network of people who want to work with me who want to hire me who value my talents right so this whole
02:12:09
range uh for things but go establish that first and that can be take big RIS
02:12:16
if you if by the way some people say I want to take as few big risks as possible possible in my whole life
02:12:22
because that's who I am fine but go establish yourself first now if you're
02:12:27
going to be entrepreneur you want to be an entrepreneur then like for example like okay maybe you shouldn't start a
02:12:33
business at 18 but maybe you should go join a startup right start learning it start
02:12:38
building the network and it's roughly build the network is the broad thing and by the way build the skills and you know
02:12:47
get like frequently doing a startup is very difficult economically usually you start with no salary Etc like having
02:12:54
some reserves is a good thing to have I read a book and in the first chapter I was trying to figure out what this
02:12:59
platform is for young people and the way that I kind of described it is these five buckets the first one being
02:13:04
knowledge and then when knowledge is applied it becomes a skill and the good thing about these first two buckets is they're the only two that no one can
02:13:10
ever really um empty of what you put in there yes the next one I posited was me
02:13:16
trying to remember my own book was um your I'm gonna say Network y then your
02:13:21
resources and your reputation now anyone can take these last three like life can happen you can get five you can lose
02:13:26
your friends whatever um Well network is hard to lose if youve really authentically built
02:13:34
it right it can be lost there it can be but it's very hard it's kind of like a
02:13:40
nuclear bomb kind of thing I mean it's like like you may like one particular person on you may have a real difference
02:13:47
of opinion um you know you may move and then fired get fired and a lot of your
02:13:53
network is but by the way even if you've gotten fired if you've got a couple people at that company that you had good
02:13:59
relationship with they may still be part of your network so am I right in thinking that the Knowledge and Skills part is really
02:14:05
the critical thing to uh prioritize when you yeah well sof this is part of what we did in SAR view soft assets are very
02:14:13
important people under prioritize them they tend to say oh I should take the job that offers me a 5% higher salary
02:14:19
and the answer is almost always that's not the criteria that you should be looking at even 30% higher SI salary is
02:14:26
not the criteria you should be looking at you should be looking at where are my soft assets where's my knowledge where's my skills where's my network
02:14:34
interesting because the soft assets are what compound generally to the much larger like the fact that you took a job
02:14:41
with a 30% higher salary is not necessarily the predictor that you're going to get the job with a 300% higher
02:14:47
salary it's the soft assets that are likely to get to the 300% economic
02:14:52
outcome so shortterm versus longterm So Soft assets are longevity yes and the and the hard assets I guess are short
02:14:59
term yes immediate is there a different game you play when you hit your 30s do you think well you have to evolve it so
02:15:06
for example you can when you're in your 20s you can say well I'm gonna I'm gonna
02:15:11
take more risk like the economics take the the the jobs that have zero salary or lower salary because I'm going to
02:15:17
live in the house with five of my friends you know we're to have beans and toast for dinner you know d d d da as
02:15:24
ways of doing it CU I can take those risks now and then when you're 30 it's like well maybe I'm planning on having a life partner and being in an apartment
02:15:31
or a house with them and soth so so it changes as you go through and then you have kids yes did you have kids no um
02:15:40
because I'm I'm in that region now where I'm thinking about having kids and I'm just I'm wondering how dis disruptive it's going to be it's another startup
02:15:47
like it's fine you can do startups and have it but it's a complete startup which do you think low is your chance of
02:15:53
being successful at a startup because doing two startups is more difficult than doing one probably a little yeah
02:15:59
but maybe worth it on balance okay yeah what is happiness to you because you've
02:16:05
got the money you've got the success you've got the reputation you've got the the CV what is happiness for me is going
02:16:12
through life with people I love and building great things but like by the way if I failed at everything I built
02:16:19
and I was still going through life with people people I loved great why is that so
02:16:26
important because I think part of the meaning of life is how you contribute to the to the people around you it it's
02:16:33
like again I sorry I keep referring the startup of you but it was my first book Is advice the young people right it's
02:16:39
the I and the Wii like like like do things for yourself do things for the for for me do things for we right and I
02:16:48
I learn from people I get Delight from people um I feel meaningful as I
02:16:54
contribute to people's lives and obviously you know there's people immediately around me there's people in
02:16:59
the whole world I mean like you know LinkedIn billion people have signed up for it like like there's there is there
02:17:05
is um like that's part of what I think is essential in the in the meaning of
02:17:11
life and for me especially how did you have happiness wrong when you were
02:17:18
younger if in any way um I probably
02:17:26
thought like it was important to be top of your class not that it was important to just
02:17:32
do well but it's important to be top right and what I've come to realize is you know there 8 billion people right
02:17:39
nobody is the best at everything right some people delude
02:17:45
themselves that they are but but nobody is you could be the best at something
02:17:50
and by the the way being the best at something that's good thing but by the way to really be obsessive about the being the be the absolute best at that
02:17:58
thing well maybe you're actually uh being you're you're less
02:18:05
investing in other things it's a little bit like your earlier question about managing like you say you'll be I I'm an
02:18:11
Oracle and I'll tell you you'll be four times as economically successful if you're a [ __ ] to the people you work
02:18:18
with n no uh not okay for
02:18:23
me and love how does love come into all of this you're you're in you have a
02:18:28
long-term life partner yes yeah uh in Seattle what role has that played in in
02:18:34
your happiness and your professional success for me all the people around me are people I learn from and that
02:18:40
includes Michelle like I learn all kinds of things from Michelle Michelle are actually both in some ways very similar
02:18:46
people deep belief in ethics deep belief in The Importance of Being a good person
02:18:51
and in some ways very different she like I'm Mr scale she's anti- scale right she
02:18:57
she she thinks she's fine with my doing the scale things but like she wants to go connect with local people in the
02:19:04
community right like she's like look I'm volunteering in the senior center will you come volunteer with me no no no I don't do that I'm happy to give money to
02:19:10
the senior center but that's not what I do but that that's that's her life and I learn from that because by the way life
02:19:15
is both life is both here and here so so
02:19:20
it's it's one of the balance of different people she she is intensely going in she's taking this kind of call
02:19:26
it Quaker Buddhist approach to creating art right and and that's just amazing
02:19:33
like I love being on that Journey with her right um and that's her journey
02:19:38
right um but I learned from it and those are the kinds of things that are that are um you know part of what I think the
02:19:46
meaning of life is is how we learn from each other when if two entrepreneurs come to you and they the exact same
02:19:51
thing but one of them is in a long-term marriage what is the difference between
02:19:57
those two entrepreneurs in terms of how they'll show up in business in your view interesting I've never been asked
02:20:02
that question uh it depends um I do
02:20:08
think like one of the things that I treat as a very relevant fact is how someone treats the people around them
02:20:14
okay so it's somewhat evidenced that there yes yes so like if a person is
02:20:20
good to the people around them then that's a person I am more likely to much more much much more likely to want to go
02:20:27
through because like a startup is like 10 years like I have passed on investments that I've literally referred
02:20:34
to and I won't name them because it's uncivil but I've literally passed on investments that I thought this is going
02:20:40
to make a ton of money and I've told my partners at Greylock hey look this entrepreneur and this business this is
02:20:47
going to make a lot of money if any of you want to do it great and I will support you but I don't want to invest
02:20:52
because I don't want to spend the 10 years with this entrepreneur right because it's just you know Life's Too Short right uh and I was
02:21:00
right those businesses made a ton of money right but it was yeah no no thanks
02:21:07
not worth a headache yes when I was reading Blitz scaling and I was watching the videos that you did you've done
02:21:12
several talks on it I've seen pretty much all of them over the years um one of the questions I had as an investor
02:21:17
myself is my early stage companies that aren't in cons the consumer Internet space they're selling I don't know they
02:21:23
might be selling a a drink in a supermarket or something should should they all be pursu pursuing this idea of
02:21:30
blit Blitz scaling where you go lightning fast to building a mass massively valuable
02:21:35
company not necessarily okay uh Blitz scaling is a strategic response to
02:21:41
Global competition okay right and so now there are certain industries where
02:21:47
Global competition is the norm not the exception You're Building an Internet Property right MH right or mostly like
02:21:55
much software not all software but most like many software companies in which case and by the way if you can get away
02:22:01
with not Blitz scaling it's much better because Blitz scaling is spending resources
02:22:07
inefficiently to get to Market size ahead of your competition right so like
02:22:12
a classic example is like you know uh Uber would interview somebody offer them a
02:22:19
job and then say who are the three best people at your company that that that you worked with and send job offers to
02:22:27
those three people without even interview them them right because that's Blitz scaling right that's I'm going
02:22:34
super super fast and uh and that that was a blitz scaling technique I learned from Uber I
02:22:41
was like oh yep put that one in the tool chest for when you need to do that right
02:22:46
because outpacing the competition when you're in Glen Gary Glenn Ross markets
02:22:52
which is first prize Cadillac second prize steak knives third prize you're fired it's the
02:22:58
game right and it's one of the things like when you know you and I were chatting a little bit before we started the podcast like one of the places that
02:23:05
things that places like you know London and the UK and Europe need to learn is when the competition is global it's not
02:23:10
the people down the street it's the fiercest competitors around the world and Silicon Valley has Fierce
02:23:16
competitors China has Fierce compe you have to have a theory of how you're playing that game against those the
02:23:22
fiercest competitors in the world and so um Blitz scaling is in part like this is
02:23:28
stuff I've learned from Silicon Valley and from the stuff I've done in China to say like when you're in a global
02:23:36
competitive business and you're trying to establish it and you have competitors who are doing this this is some of the
02:23:42
techniques that you need to do if AI is going to be so transformative when you think about a country like the UK where
02:23:50
you know we don't have the blitz scaling advantages as entrepreneurs and Founders that you guys have in Silicon
02:23:56
Valley if you were the prime minister of the UK what would you do to give us a shot
02:24:02
at getting some of the value that's going to acrw because of this air opportunity so I think there's two things one is you need to enable some of
02:24:09
your company's ability to Blitz scale as much as you can right okay so because if
02:24:16
if if a company if company one is not Blitz scaling and is competing against Company 2 that is Blitz scaling company
02:24:24
one's going to lose I don't think we've got any AI companies that are blit scaling in company one is going to lose
02:24:30
right company two might lose too right but company one is guaranteed to lose and Company two is not guaranteed to
02:24:37
lose right so if you're competing against companies that are Blitz scaling
02:24:42
you must also be Blitz scaling it's part of the the reason I wrote the book it's part of the reason I give talks it's
02:24:47
part of the reason I help uh Sher kou standup the scale the scaling Institute
02:24:53
here in London you know etc etc now you say we can't we're not going to be able
02:24:59
to well then choose areas where the competitors are not blit scaling I've
02:25:04
got a example I want to give you I invest in a matcha company they make matcha like the you know green tea and
02:25:12
they've they've grown very very quickly they call perfect T hash ad I'm an investor Etc new investor in the company I think um and I was wondering they've G
02:25:20
so quickly so they've gone from I don't know zero to they'll probably do maybe 30 million pounds next year and they've
02:25:26
done it in a could be measured in months really and I wondered I was like match is this
02:25:32
trend that's coming into Shore everyone's drinking match now every coffee shop you go to has
02:25:37
matcha should they be Blitz scaling to capture the opportunity globally so it
02:25:43
depends on two things one most centrally comp competition do they need to be
02:25:49
outpacing their compet ition could argue yes yeah but if yes
02:25:54
then and especially if their competitors are Blitz scaling then absolutely yes if the commits are not Blitz scaling it's
02:26:01
all will Blitz scaling enable us to outpace them because by the way it does involve moving so fast you're taking
02:26:08
risks and hiring and capital raise and expenditures you're doing marketing that you would like you're uber you're you're
02:26:14
launching in 20 cities at the same time it's whoa you know Etc because that does add risks right
02:26:23
but you're saying those risks that it adds are less of a risk than not spit
02:26:28
scaling that's kind of the tradeoff so competition is a central reason for
02:26:34
doing it and by the way most of the compan most of the times where you can raise Capital bit scaling is because if
02:26:39
you if it's a Glen Gary Glenn Ross Market where first prizes Cadillac second priz steak knives well then
02:26:46
generally speaking investors are willing to invest at premium prices give a lot of capital
02:26:53
etc etc because they'll go we agree that you're going to get a great Market position if you Blitz
02:26:59
scale and by the way part of the problem is investors are not always right but if some investors are willing to do it then
02:27:05
and they're going to do it in your competitors then you absolutely have to do it if your competitor is going to do
02:27:10
it so competition is the first thing the second thing is do you need to get to
02:27:15
critical mass scale so like your payments industry and this is one of the things I learned to PayPal which is
02:27:21
basically payments businesses are dead unless they have at least a billion you know dollars of you know transactional
02:27:29
volume through them per year and that was back in 2002 what I was looking I'm sure it's higher now right maybe it's 10
02:27:35
billion whatever but it's like if you don't get to that scale you're dead you're irrelevant right so getting to
02:27:41
that scale and getting through the highly unprofitable getting the scale as fast as possible really matters and so
02:27:46
that's one of the places where you say well we're none of our competitors are doing it but we should still do it because getting that critical mass and
02:27:52
scale really matters um and so that's another time and and so that would be I don't think that's probably the the
02:27:59
matcha company right that that's probably like doesn't need so but those are the the lessons you look at but it's
02:28:04
not Blitz scaling for its own sake that's one of the mistakes that people
02:28:09
make when they go Blitz scaling oh we're doing it two Blitz scales no no you Blitz scale as a set of strategic
02:28:15
techniques in response to a market and response to competition mhm and in the case of
02:28:20
matcher there is a role of brand being the mo a little bit yes and so that may
02:28:26
be irrelevant that may be the relevant thing of why it's a glen gar in the I haven't looked at the market at all but
02:28:32
a glen gar Gad Ross Market a first prize Cadillac second prize steak guys maybe that's because of brand establishment
02:28:37
which case you have to be number one and on that point that I asked earlier about if you're the prime minister of the UK
02:28:43
you'd start enabling some of our companies in the UK to like have more Capital give them access to Capital do
02:28:49
you think one of my fears is that AI is such a big opportunity it's going to revolutionize
02:28:54
everything and it's basically going to be owned by America and China it's one of my fears it's like fears of someone
02:29:00
that lives in the UK that we're gonna your economy is gonna in the US is gonna have such a huge upswing in productivity
02:29:08
so good news for you is I happen to know that t ding street is paying attention to this issue because I had meetings
02:29:13
with him this week on that there's things that they will be announcing which I can't pre-announce okay right
02:29:19
but they know this is important and they're working on it okay and they're Consulting you know
02:29:26
people good yeah yeah that's what gives me hope yes okay what's the most important thing we haven't talked about
02:29:32
for entrepreneurs that we should have talked about I'll give two
02:29:38
um the first is and they're related the first is look
02:29:45
just because you don't have a 100% chance of succeeding doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it right so like when I
02:29:53
said earlier when we were talking about like look when I started LinkedIn I thought we had a most 20 25% chance of
02:29:58
being successful that's fine right so and a matter of fact what
02:30:05
you should be doing is aligning the fact that there's risks on what you're doing with the reason why you'll have less
02:30:11
competition while you have a higher Runway before the com competition
02:30:17
intensifies because part of it is if you have a theory like we talked about this in LinkedIn about why other people see
02:30:23
that there is like they think there's a 0% chance you succeed and you think there's a 20 25% chance you succeed
02:30:31
that's precisely that risk window is your opportunity right so think of risk not
02:30:38
as terrifying think of risk as potential opportunity right that's one and we've
02:30:44
talked about threads of it but thinking of it as opportunity right because you see something other people don't see you
02:30:50
see the risks but you have an idea for why that risk is something that you may
02:30:57
be able to win on and they won't right so with LinkedIn that was hey I have an idea about how the network will grow
02:31:03
even though it's not valuable until there's a million people in network right that's where that risk
02:31:09
becomes an opportunity right so the second one also around risk
02:31:15
is um have a plan B have plans B understand
02:31:22
that you have an idea in your risk you're playing it and if it's not working out how do you pivot don't think
02:31:28
oh the whole thing is going all in and I'm just gonna be roadkill if it doesn't work no no that's the whole point of the
02:31:34
reason I have this framework of abz planning which is in the startup view which is by the way startup view is advice they give
02:31:40
entrepreneurs shrunk to advice to individuals right every single chapter
02:31:46
applies to entrepreneurs in their companies right like the abz planning is don't just have a plan a where like well
02:31:53
if it doesn't work I'm dead you're like well that's a bad strategy like sometimes you'll do it sometimes it's
02:31:58
the only thing I have I love this plan a it's the only thing I have and the only way to do it is to go all in and doesn't
02:32:03
work I'm dead okay it's very scary right um when I do
02:32:10
entrepreneurship I have plans B I have a plan Z right I I I have thought through
02:32:16
not every because you can't think through everything but maneuverability and how to measure am I on track or not
02:32:22
am I am I increasing my probability of success or not am I increasing my ability to get to the moon or not and
02:32:29
and be doing risk management smart risks take smart risks that's the thing right how do you
02:32:36
know when to quit and I'm saying this in a Prof professional context as well as an entrepreneurship context so when I
02:32:42
get around to advising companies I've invested in or friends that now is time
02:32:47
to quit or now is time to sell you try to sell of course but sometimes if you can't sell that means quit right is your
02:32:57
new plans your new plans a are much worse than your previous plans a your new plan a is much worse because you
02:33:03
pivoted yeah right and your new plan a is a much worse plan in your plan a that's when you get to your plan Z it's
02:33:09
like plan Z is I quit right okay so you've you've tried
02:33:15
something else that's also messed up like okay and in a professional context when how do you know to quit when to
02:33:20
quit the job um well it could be you have a much better plan a right like like okay this
02:33:27
plan a that's okay and then by the way this is part of the difference that I tell people between should I found a company or should I join one it's like
02:33:34
look one of the problems you have as a Founder you can't really quit you're you're you're with the business right
02:33:39
it's very dishonorable to quit before you know the business gets to whatever
02:33:45
it's its design is now sometimes you're fired fine but you're you know as a
02:33:51
Founder you're like people have come and enjoyed this because of me being here and doing this and I'm here until the
02:33:57
business gets to a point where it's it's a massive growing concern now once the company's public you can go do something
02:34:03
or once the company's sold you can go do something or once the company is like profitable and really strong you can go do something but you're there until then
02:34:10
as a Founder as an employee you're signing up for what I'm the alliance I call a tour of beauty which is I am I've
02:34:17
I'm signed up to make a big difference in in the company but I'm not here till
02:34:22
the end and so as your employee you can go look have I delivered against my Tour of Duty great and at that point a better
02:34:29
opportunity comes along so you know uh Matt Kohler who you know now lives here in London as a you know partner at
02:34:36
Benchmark like I recruited him out of Mackenzie in a LinkedIn three years in he comes to me and says hey I've been
02:34:42
offered this this opportunity at Facebook I'm like look Matt I love working with you you're a close friend
02:34:47
of mine etc etc you should take that job at Facebook that is the right Next Step
02:34:52
for you right and because we're close and so forth I think he probably wouldn't have taken the job if I hadn't said but like LinkedIn resembles my
02:34:59
brain I want people doing their best work their best opportunities and Facebook gave them a great opportunity
02:35:05
what's really interesting about the LinkedIn story I've got the deck in front of me here from August 20 2004
02:35:12
yes that's our Greylock series B deck and what's pretty remarkable and by
02:35:18
the way Matt ker how create that deck oh did he yes I mean it's a it's a pretty good
02:35:24
deck for a series series B especially back then it's very simple i' to say simple as good very very simple yes one
02:35:32
of the things that really struck out to me is on this page here which is the sort of opening I guess vision mission statement whatever you want to call it
02:35:38
is it's find and contact the people you need through the people you already trust and what's quite remarkable
02:35:43
although this was written 20 years ago this is still very much what LinkedIn is about yes and usually when I see these
02:35:49
decks they started as I don't know hot or not and now it's like Facebook and Instagram whereas this is still so close
02:35:56
to what the vision was yeah well it's also my third company I had social net I
02:36:01
had PayPal PayPal pivoted a lot right and so I had a good sense of both how to
02:36:06
be longterm and short-term when I started LinkedIn and what is the key to being long-term in this regard well you
02:36:13
know what is the you're going to transform the industry oh and what do you mean by key as in like
02:36:20
if you're trying to build a long-term company from the outset yeah what are you thinking about well you're thinking
02:36:25
about like if I'm successful at landing on the beach at expanding into the market how is it that I'm going to be a
02:36:33
industry transforming company like what's the thing that changes millions of customers lives you know um uh or if
02:36:43
it's an Enterprise company you know whatever like lots of companies within multiple Industries how am I an
02:36:49
essential part of how they change the way they live they work they do
02:36:55
business and what do you think of LinkedIn today because people use it in such a surprising way I mean people are
02:37:00
building their personal brands on it it's like a social network yeah I knew that was all going to be from from before this deck I knew that was
02:37:06
possible I have a probability now what what thing surprised me people build
02:37:11
dating services on top of it really yes well I'm in a relationship may you
02:37:16
haven't seen it but yeah but they're like well some people want to be dating people who have professional like my
02:37:22
dating set is I want people who have good CVS okay I don't want LinkedIn to
02:37:27
ever build that business fine if you're gonna go build that business right no problem right I mean
02:37:34
and like for example like one of the ear like this was I think uh a few months after we raised
02:37:41
money from Greylock um on this deck um one of the surprising uses is like I
02:37:48
never had envisioned this use case still looking for a job an engineer wanted to move to Denver from Silicon Valley and
02:37:58
so it's like didn't know what companies to look at so this engineer went to LinkedIn and searched for profiles like
02:38:06
his then looked at what companies those people worked at then decided which companies to go look for jobs at it was
02:38:13
brilliant like it's a very good way of saying hey I'm look I'm interested in going and working here
02:38:20
what kinds of companies that are interesting employ people like me are you still interested in building
02:38:26
companies in terms of like being a CEO and founder again well so I co-founded
02:38:32
inflection so I'm definitely doing the co-founding thing right um and you know
02:38:39
I I anticipate that will happen again um but will I be the CEO it's not
02:38:45
impossible um but it's kind of like because I have these amazing people like Mustafa suan who the COO that I can be
02:38:52
the co-founder with that's
02:38:57
great yeah I think that's the season of life I'm in yeah I don't want to be a CEO anymore which is unfortunate because I named the podcast I have a CEO when I
02:39:04
was one but I just think there's an element of self-awareness which I think has really it's and for me the older
02:39:10
I've gotten the more I'm orientating everything towards being happy yeah and for me it's it's hard to be a CEO and as
02:39:17
happy as I and free as I want to be so then then then you need to build the network and skills by which you're
02:39:23
working with other people who are the CEOs that's basically what I do now so the companies that I've described the
02:39:29
software business the media company we have here there's people that are designed and built and much better CEOs
02:39:34
than me what do you do you care about Legacy only because I care about impact
02:39:40
um so I don't like I I care that I I've actually made a big difference to the
02:39:45
ongoing story of humanity um but I don't that I mean look it's nice I like I
02:39:51
certainly don't mind that people go oh Reed Hoffman did these amazing things it feels good but I care much more about
02:39:57
the substance like did I do really good things that was I a very positive impact
02:40:03
now I'm I'm not I'm not indicating I have no ego you know the the
02:40:09
appreciation for having done that that feels good but I don't do it for the appreciation I do it for the
02:40:15
thing so do you make decisions based on Legacy at all only a by
02:40:23
impact did you did you decide not to have children uh we did um and it was a
02:40:29
joint decision of course and I think it was partially that we realiz we're um
02:40:35
you know we're God Parents to a number of children we actually there's three kids here in London that that we're God Parents to right and uh you know there's
02:40:44
all kinds of Delights in being a God parent which is you know you show up and spend an evening and get to participate
02:40:49
and and the kids lives and then you know when it's like oh time to change the
02:40:54
diaper and it are there any unchecked boxes in your
02:41:00
life I'm sure there are um any major ones yeah
02:41:06
um if you'd ask me um what book um I was
02:41:11
going to first write when I was an undergraduate was book on friendship I still want to write that book I I've been taking notes for 30 years on
02:41:18
friendship on friendship yep um what would that book be about friendship but
02:41:23
specifically what part of why why everything look there's so few books on
02:41:29
friendship you go into to a bookstore and you say where is your uh your
02:41:35
section on relationships and they every bookstore will go oh over here right relationship with capar romantic
02:41:42
relationship say okay where's your section on friendship no section on friendship Do
02:41:48
you have a a book on friendship the answer is maybe we have one your assistant we spoke to your
02:41:56
assistant ahead of this conversation today and she said that friendship and connection is a major part of your focus
02:42:01
at the moment yes always but it it always has been now now you're doing intense things with startups part of the
02:42:08
reason I actually think you should work with friends you should hire friends this is kind of a little bit you know
02:42:13
counter common wisdom is because you want to be spending your time with friends and that does ADD difficulties
02:42:20
right but you want to spend your time with your friends that's really good are
02:42:26
you still friends with Peter the yes you have a lot of disagreements in terms of politics but intense disagreements on
02:42:31
politics but you still are able to be friends but we also met um with you know
02:42:38
as undergraduates you know in a like like I knew he was extremely right and
02:42:43
he knew I was left you know I've become much more
02:42:50
uh business oriented than I was as undergraduates and he's become much more libertarian
02:42:56
but you know disagreements is a good thing can be a good thing we have a
02:43:02
closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for oh and the question
02:43:07
that's been left for you is a very interesting one okay what are the two things you want
02:43:13
your life partner to know about you that they do not know or do not understand
02:43:20
about you yet that's an interesting thing it's an interesting if someone has an answer to
02:43:27
that question it suggests that they're not being a particularly good life partner I think I have been and will
02:43:35
continue to be a good life partner so I actually don't have an answer to that question what's her name Michelle yes
02:43:41
has does she misunderstand you in anyway [Music]
02:43:47
um I don't know if it's a misunderstanding because we put a lot of energy into understanding each other I
02:43:53
mean like for example we've seen marriage counselors together and not because we're going we're like fighting
02:43:58
about something it's because helping having a third party help you understand the other person well is like actually
02:44:05
in fact a very good thing find someone who's really good and do that right I do that with my partner yeah it's it's it's
02:44:11
great you should do it you shouldn't be because we're arguing it should be because we are putting lots of energy
02:44:19
into understanding each other I still think there's things about my partner that she doesn't understand about me or
02:44:25
misunderstands about me and I misunderstand about her yeah of course and by the way I can point out things
02:44:31
that I have learned about her like for example like the local community is what
02:44:38
really matters to her right I didn't really understand that 10 years ago now I understand that right um I'm sure she
02:44:46
has those kind of similar things about me but like the moment it occurs to me that there's something she doesn't understand
02:44:52
about me it comes up at a dinner you know not too many weeks in
02:44:58
the future because that's part of how we come to our dinners right we come to our dinners is if one of us is on you know I
02:45:06
had this thought we want to have those dinners Founders you're investing in
02:45:12
that are in a stable solid relationship before they start the startup yeah and then they go on this crazy
02:45:19
intense Journey do you ever give them advice on relationships and how to manage that because I have so many Founders come to me and they're like I
02:45:25
think she's going to break up with me or he's going to break up with me because I'm just I'm absent in my head in person
02:45:32
you try to have a really good relationship you try to be as like like
02:45:37
I think you should in friendship and in relationships you should try to identify
02:45:43
the things in yourself that the other person may find challenging and you should bring them up in advance
02:45:49
M right that is a very good way to build deep quality friendships and
02:45:55
relationships so for example in startups Michelle knew that about me so when we
02:46:01
had planned our wedding and we we were doing a small you know um thing with you
02:46:06
know just basically Justice to the peace and so forth we planned our wedding and
02:46:12
it was very early days of LinkedIn and I came back home and I said we really need
02:46:17
to delay it right we delayed it a couple weeks right was like we really need to delay I'm
02:46:23
doing this thing at LinkedIn right now we really need to have it I I don't have time for that and Michelle didn't go ah
02:46:29
she went okay let's make it work because I'd been clear with her about what the startup Journey was like right I had
02:46:36
experience with it before and now sometimes like we didn't know it before but like look I'm really committed to this and it's really important to me
02:46:42
that I do that well that should be kind of life partner things did you let her
02:46:47
down a l uh I hope not in terms of making a plan making a dat we had we had
02:46:54
multiple plans that got blown up right and what about the dealing with the
02:47:00
stress when you come home something I've always struggled with is if work is stressful when I come home I can be absent and then you have to transition
02:47:06
into this mode of partner but my head is still thinking oh my God cash flow this or whatever well occasionally that's one
02:47:11
of the things that Michelle go like you know I think you're not being fully
02:47:16
present right like that's one of the one of the kind of as it were key words between us is I think you're not being
02:47:22
fully present and that's the stop thinking about whatever else you're doing and focus okay and I'm yes we've had that
02:47:30
conversation more times than I can probably remember and count and is it easy just do uh you learn to really yes
02:47:38
you learn to because as you as you like you have the okay what is that mean take
02:47:44
those other things push them off the table Focus or by the way occasionally you go you're right I'm really sorry I'm
02:47:53
just so distracted by this right now would you mind if like like I'm fully present tomorrow because a lot of
02:48:00
Founders would Gaslight their partner there and say you don't understand you don't get it I'm doing this for you this is for us look you hate my work well if
02:48:09
you're having that conversation if the person doesn't look the two people need
02:48:14
to believe in each other and what they're doing if the person doesn't believe in you and what you're doing
02:48:19
right you have a long-term problem yeah and I guess the communication is the very heart of that
02:48:25
right yes Reed we are all very excited for your next book which you said it's coming out in January January yeah end
02:48:32
of January it's a book called Super agency what could possibly go right with our AI future co-written with Greg bet
02:48:39
Bato Bato what could possibly go right with our AI future yes an optimistic take
02:48:45
about AI uh yes why should someone in who should read that book so anyone
02:48:55
who uh believes as I do the only way that you can possibly get to an
02:49:00
optimistic future is envisioning what some of the things are and head towards it that you don't get to an optimistic
02:49:06
future by trying to avoid failure by trying to avoid pessimism anyone who says okay it's important for me to
02:49:13
understand that perspective about AI they should read super agency we we have a book blurb from yval Harari which
02:49:22
says this is a brilliant positive vision of the future I disagree with some of its main arguments and everyone should
02:49:29
read it that's refreshing yes I'll link it below for anyone that wants to pre-order
02:49:35
it um but I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your books which are iconic because they've shaped the
02:49:40
thinking of Founders across the world and if even if you're not a Founder the startup of view is for everybody regardless of what you're doing it helps
02:49:46
you navigate both building a business but also just your cre generally and also masters of scale which is an iconic
02:49:52
podcast that many of us listen to here where you sit down with some of the greatest founders of all time and
02:49:57
understand how they've scaled and built their companies it's a podcast that I Know Jack is a massive fan of and one of the first podcasts they ever got
02:50:03
listening to as well highly recommend that I also have the book there and I'll link all of this stuff below Reed thank
02:50:09
you it's a pleasure I look forward to the next one thank you so much it's been such an honor and I so so wonderful speaking to someone
02:50:16
that has such diverse um contrarian at times opinions but is
02:50:21
willing to stand by them irrespective of whether they are um believed or um
02:50:28
accepted or politically correct with the dominant narrative at the moment yeah
02:50:33
and that comes from having such a wealth of experience but being fundamentally well intentioned I think so thank you
02:50:39
Reed for the time I really appreciate it it's an honor to get to meet you thank you and thanks for creating LinkedIn I [ __ ] LinkedIn I think they sponsored
02:50:44
this podcast so oh awesome I I didn't even know that oh really yeah they do yeah so thank you so much appreciate
02:50:53
it isn't this cool every single conversation I have here on the Diary of a CEO at the very end of it you'll know
02:50:59
I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO and what we've done
02:51:06
is we've turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at
02:51:13
home so you've got every guest we've ever had their question and on the back
02:51:18
of it if you scan that QR codee you get to watch the person who answered that
02:51:24
question we're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that
02:51:30
answered the question the brand new version two updated conversation cards
02:51:35
are out right now at Theon conversation cards.com they've sold out twice instantaneously so if you are interested
02:51:41
in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards I really really recommend acting quickly
02:51:48
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