SPEAKER_00: season five of angel is brought to you by assure is the leading provider of special purpose vehicles and fund administration with over 5 000 completed transactions and 2.5 billion dollars under administration angel listeners can get 20 off their first spv at assure.co slash angel linkedin jobs a business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters post your first job for free at linkedin.com slash angel and odoo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business your first app is free forever and right now odoo is offering one thousand dollars off your first implementation pack at odoo.com slash twist that's odoo.com slash twist hey everybody welcome back to

SPEAKER_01: angel the podcast i do alongside of this week in startups and we thought for our fifth season we

SPEAKER_02: would talk to what i call super angels people who have invested in dozens and dozens of startups had massive exits and who really understand the business and today we have just a titan in our industry somebody who you know has built companies invested in companies and even does a really great podcast that all of you listen to master of scale you probably know him best from his time at apple or fujitsu or social net i kid those were his jobs that led up to the incredible linkedin and co-founding linkedin in i think 2003 hasn't been on the pod for about seven or eight years i think the last time you officially came on the pod was what 20 2014 or something yeah and we did it at linkedin i remember it was fun did it linkedin in the conference room and you've become a podcaster but you also did a lot of angel investing and now how do you spend your time now you're still on the board of microsoft

SPEAKER_07: i am uh and so you know it's a combination of you know kind of boards um most of which are for graylock

SPEAKER_09: um you know kind of things like aurora and convoy and coda and other nauto and other kinds of things

SPEAKER_10: um uh you know uh microsoft um the uh we just announced today that i'll be joining the joby board

SPEAKER_11: if that if that deal oh yeah joby the uh vertical takeoff and land and my friend sky dayton is involved exactly right and you're spacking oh are you spacking it yes it just got i was going to ask

SPEAKER_02: you about the spacks and i just saw in my group chat with my poker buddies that joby was going out

SPEAKER_01: explain to people what joby is and the bet you're making there yep so joby um you know it's like uh

SPEAKER_18: you know people uh people like peter thiel have made the claim that you know wait you know we've

SPEAKER_09: had tech stagnation because we were promised flying cars and we got 140 characters and actually in fact it's the flying car it's the it's the you know it's the it's the electric vtol uh you know car that um is very far along in its uh certification process it's you know flown over a thousand test flights um and has been worked on for 10 years and you know the whole idea is to open it up to everybody to to make it part of you know what you could do is commute or going to the airport or you know obviously an urgency going to a medical appointment and um it's uh you know sky dayton

SPEAKER_20: has been a backer for years you probably know how many more years i've actually got a no sky through

SPEAKER_22: this and we just pretty great pretty great yeah stealthy executive like no he doesn't like people

SPEAKER_02: to know what he's doing he keeps his head down he i think he hasn't been on the pod since the first 10 episodes when we used to play poker in la he used to come on the pod so for joby i guess the question i have for you is which will happen first will we take a uh joby vtol uh from you know um san carlos airport in the peninsula or wherever to napa or will we or to sfo whatever or will we take a self-driving car with no steering wheel which will occur first for the average

SPEAKER_09: citizen uh for the average citizen i think it'll be joeby why well um so look i think look i've also heavily invested in autonomous vehicles um i led the investments in aurora and uh neuro and naudo uh for graylock um so like i'm a huge believer in this this is not a disbelief in autonomous vehicles

SPEAKER_29: but among the things that you you suggested is that the cars will be manufactured without a steering wheel yes that was my made it very easy yes because um i actually think that before we get to the real cars that are steering wheel i think we'll have the autonomous vehicles that are out there that also have a steering wheel um among other things it's a fallback right so it's kind of a question of

SPEAKER_09: you know like all right does it work oh shit it's not working okay i can drive it right uh etc and so uh so when you start getting to that scale manufacturer without a without a um steering wheel i think by that time you know there will be you know uh joeby and eva evtol flights you know in lots and lots of places and part of actually the thing that people don't realize they think oh evtol that'll be like helicopters aren't those for the really rich high-end folks and the thing is is once you begin just like uber transformed transportation and you know uh joeby bought uh uber elevate actually in fact it's got the lines of uber for this uh once you once you do that you start using a lot and a simple way to think about it is like for example you're down in la think about just

SPEAKER_07: going to the airport especially during commutes right yeah look it'll just be a constant flight

SPEAKER_09: cycle and it will help alleviate you take on all the risk of of of of the highways and and going at you know one mile an hour and all the red and you get there and so and then and that'll be available it'll be it'll be at such a price it'll be like an uber like price which yeah you know will be

SPEAKER_37: available to most citizens it's amazing how this technology has advanced very quietly but people

SPEAKER_22: have been flying in these in china there's a company um that i was tracking i forgot the name of it but

SPEAKER_01: they've been putting humans up in these has joby been putting humans in them yet and under what

SPEAKER_22: circumstances and for how long ehang was the company i think in yes in uh china yep i'm familiar

SPEAKER_09: the hang so joby as uh has had uh oh it's like over a thousand test flights it's a piloted vehicle so you have the pilots but also for example uh my partner michael thompson as part of our due diligence went and gotten one and flew around in it in order to see uh when i talked to my friends they're all like sign me up i want to be on the next flight you're like okay i i'm happy to do that i you've got to figure out what the what the what the what the what the what the what you know how we make it work uh especially in these odd pandemic times but they've taken up a number of people so they you know they have safety protocols and all the rest and you know part of you know how like there's safety noise and cost and all of those things joeby is better on safety you have the modern software uh you know kind of uh multiple rotors uh on on on sound actually in fact if you go and listen to the launch thing we have the uh joe ben bevert who is the uh visionary and the ceo the founder of this talking while joeby is taking off behind him wow you can hear how quiet it is and

SPEAKER_44: then obviously uh cost which is you know kind of like well no actually in fact as you begin to run these things as a service actually brings the cost way down yeah and they're battery powered so

SPEAKER_02: they're not polluting and i i think the concept with these is wherever the station is they land and the battery pack comes out to get charged and a new battery pack comes in is that the one of the secrets to this quick you know turnarounds in in terms of them going from an airport to

SPEAKER_49: wherever downtown la exactly multiple secrets but yes that seems to be i remember yeah when travis

SPEAKER_02: at uber was talking about them he was really high on them no pun intended um when do you think um these will be operating and people will be able to take them for a ride because it does seem

SPEAKER_01: like over water uh because it's regulation and in a in a bay city like sydney or you know uh the bay area you could fly over the water and there's no noise issue nobody's gonna get hurt if it does need to land these things could have pontoons or whatever that i'm assuming they could safely land in water and the test flights for joeby i think were over water if i if i i've seen some videos so when do you think if we had to pick a random year in the united states we would see one of these from joeby or another

SPEAKER_55: company allowing consumers to do test flights like at the grand canyon or over lake tahoe so i have

SPEAKER_07: seen joeby test flights over land already uh and um you know i'd hope uh you know i think the company is planning 2024 there's obviously ffa faa certification and one of the things that people don't realize is that actually in fact there's lots of places where there's helipads where the helipads don't operate because the noise is prohibited um and so when you bring the safety and noise so for example i think there's some kind of regulation i haven't tracked this down but there's some kind of thing like if you build skyscrapers in la they have to have a helipad on top of them yeah and so that means you guys have helipads all over la uh everywhere yeah yes and so what that means is actually in fact there'll be a bunch of places where these things could

SPEAKER_09: could land and take off um as part of it given that they have safety and noise

SPEAKER_22: so long way of saying two or three years you might be able to take one of these yes exactly

SPEAKER_01: that's just astounding because it does seem to me with self-driving you're correct you know if uh if you drive a tesla today and you're going from the peninsula up to the city 80 of your ride 90 is

SPEAKER_60: perfect but on the surface streets you know people jumping out in front of cars all the randomness that occurs in san francisco you don't want to have it on autopilot in the city yes still going to be

SPEAKER_09: seven eight nine ten years for that to work you think or inclement weather conditions right i mean you should be attentive to when you're using you know current you know driver assists um because you

SPEAKER_10: know the stakes are high not just for you but for other people yeah and this means the idea that a

SPEAKER_22: driver would be removed from an uber or a lyft is a long ways off because you're going to need somebody to be able to take over so it's it's a 10 year plus vision right i think yes it's pretty amazing

SPEAKER_02: now explain to me is this were you doing the spack with pinkis too yes so you and mark did this partners yeah and you guys have been collaborate mark and i've been friends forever you guys have been collaborating since the social networking days yep people don't know but you did social was it social net

SPEAKER_72: or social.net i can't remember socialnet.com wow so to just think about how far we've come in branding yes yes socialnet.com no dash yes it's a dating site you started with a dating site in 97 98 is that

SPEAKER_07: right it was primarily a dating site although i did have the idea of it being a platform for also not

SPEAKER_09: you know finding romantic partners but also like roommates uh and and activity partners like tennis and golf and other kinds of things and then i had this thing it was part of it called working network which is part of what gave me the idea for linkedin because when i went okay this isn't working i had a bunch of bad ideas uh what would i do and part of what i've come to realize in in in designing

SPEAKER_07: entrepreneur steps is you want to do things that are contrarian but right i said which of these services was the most broken didn't work but most critical and it was the working network it was the

SPEAKER_76: working part of socialnet i was like okay so that's what i'm going to focus on with linkedin

SPEAKER_78: if you're an accredited investor you need to understand what a special purpose vehicle is this is how i have made my career what is a special purpose vehicle well it's an investment vehicle that allows up to 250 investors to invest up to 10 million dollars into one entity on a cap table of a startup nice and clean not 250 names but one name if you're an angel investor with a bunch of rich trends you could start your own syndicate powered through spvs here at launch we could not be more pleased with our partnership with the team at ashore they power my syndicate which is the largest one in the world over 6 000 active members the syndicate.com is the back end that i rely on to get all of these syndicates done ashore is the leading provider of spv special purpose vehicles and fund administration people running venture firms with over 2.5 billion in aua if you're wondering what that is assets under administration not management that's what i do and over 5 000 completed transactions amazing they've developed an innovative software called glass board it basically automates everything it makes it really easy breezy for you to make sure everybody gets their documents from the entity formation all the way hopefully pleased to the ipo not only do investors like it founders love it they love it because it just keeps their cap table clean that's the number one thing for a founder they manage the entire process over the life of the investment and you are going to get 20 off your first spv what a great deal ashore.co slash angel that's ashore.co slash angel to get

SPEAKER_02: 20 off your first spv during this time people don't remember let's say the early 2000s 2003 to 2007

SPEAKER_01: you actually maybe through paypal i guess knew sean parker and am i correct that you're the one who introduced zuckerberg to peter teo for that famous investment tell us that story of the first time you met zuckerberg and introducing him to peter teo so and actually and sean has a has a bit of a role

SPEAKER_09: in this because um sean and i had met um uh in the uh very early days of linkedin because he was doing plaxo um and so we got introduced and we talked about our visions what we're doing and and sean's obviously crazy smart and was like oh that's interesting and then when um sean uh left plaxo and i had helped him on various things he called me and said oh there's this awesome thing called uh facebook or the facebook i think it was at the time and and um and and you should really think about it definitely i was like oh i've already tracked that i'd be super interested but it's in boston he's like no they're here i was like oh well i should beat them and and so uh as we talked about it and then i had gotten a lot of grief from investing in friendster with kind of a have your your your cake and eat it too because people didn't really understand how separate social and professional was at the time so i said well look i should do this it's important in having integrity

SPEAKER_87: not just to have it to seem to have it is actually an important thing as well as having it right and

SPEAKER_09: so it's like i'll introduce this to peter and then peter and i can both invest in this uh and that way we can we cannot have this oh you're having your cake and eating it too by investing in facebook and so um so i arranged uh the meeting uh with uh zuck and sean parker and peter and matt kohler and

SPEAKER_29: myself that was working for me at the time uh and that meeting was at um uh at his offices at the b

SPEAKER_91: of a tower in san francisco wow uh and that turned out to be like perhaps one of the greatest investments

SPEAKER_93: in the history of angel investing and early stage investing yes it was um uh spectacular yeah i mean

SPEAKER_22: it would be a 10 000 x if you held on to it 20 000 x yeah maybe even more maybe even more if you held

SPEAKER_53: it today right because we're talking about an 800 billion dollar company yes and at the time it was

SPEAKER_29: that first round was five or ten million or something yep wow yeah i think i think i i think my

SPEAKER_98: investment turned out to be a 10 000x i'm about to spit out my bunderberg it's like i thought i didn't give up my 5 000x on uber 10 000x hey look hey look this is the kind of high class problems

SPEAKER_44: if anyone's got a 10x or a 20x investment that's uh you know that's great yeah it's it's very weird

SPEAKER_02: to to think about the scale at which these companies have grown to because 20 years ago uh when we were building them and you and i before we were you know investors were kind of building stuff you really didn't expect it to get that big because at that time the footprint of users was desktop users there were no mobile users there were desktop users on varying degrees of broadband and people

SPEAKER_01: didn't think that these things could get past 10 million users 20 million users today we're looking at a footprint of two or three billion do you think that we're going to see this same um level of growth in internet companies or do you think we're sort of hitting uh a ceiling in terms of the number of users you know everybody's got a smartphone everybody's got a broadband connection we're at

SPEAKER_53: three billion i think facebook has three billion people on the platform across the various

SPEAKER_08: uh things now so do you think that there's still an opportunity here is it more of an opportunity

SPEAKER_09: uh well i think there's definitely opportunities and opportunities to grow to x billion now obviously you're beginning to approach the population of the planet the population of planet while it grows doesn't grow in that kind of compounding fashion um and so i think it'll it'll be other other vectors um you know engagement value other kinds of things that will be part of how you continue to seek strong growth but also of course one of the things that we we have going on in the world is various forms of tech nationalism um and so that will be another you know thing because you know the only you only get a um a you know three billion folks on on the facebook ecosystem you know because of global uh right and if and if global becomes more challenged uh than that that which i really think it should be but if global becomes more challenged then that all those those results also become more difficult which i think

SPEAKER_02: brings us to china uh and i'm curious because do you talk about your politics much publicly because i know that you've done a lot of donations and you're pretty active do you like to talk about it publicly or do you try to keep your head down i'm totally comfortable and i actually in the last couple years

SPEAKER_07: i actually have started speaking out pretty publicly because i actually thought it was important for

SPEAKER_09: business leaders to realize there are themes they should speak out on um that that that i completely respect and honor the desire to say look the business the business is is business and so don't create divisions like you know for example don't talk religion x versus religion y or politics x versus politics y and all of that makes sense for you know inclusivity in the workforce inclusivity and customers inclusivity and shareholders partners all the rest but there's times when you go well actually in fact business is about um you know integrity and rule of law and anti-corruption and civility and other kinds of things that are actually all pro-business topics and not they shouldn't be red versus blue they should be you know just no no the business of america is business and this is the kind of why and that they should speak up in those cases because that is not only um good for business but it's also uh an obligation because business leaders especially in america but generally in the world are also leaders and how do you play a leader in society so i've been i've been i've been vocal on the topics including of course um if i actually haven't sent you a copy of my my trumped up cards game uh dropping your address and i'll send it to you but making a knockoff of cards against humanity

SPEAKER_44: specifically mocking trump uh you know as part of being very vocal and trump really was i think a stress

SPEAKER_02: test right it's sort of like he was this trolley problem for business like what do you do with this unique individual you know to be generous who is acting in a way that is completely irrational unpredictable dangerous and then what do you do if you're trying to be inclusive like let's say zuck at facebook or you're i remember travis said uber was on one of his boards or even you know somebody who's incredibly progressive like tim cook who is fighting for the right fights he every time there was a business meeting he's standing sitting next to trump now what do you think the right way to deal with that is to just disengage or to try engage them and what do you i mean how do

SPEAKER_01: you rate zuckerberg's performance in this which he seemed to be and i don't know if he's right wing or not

SPEAKER_116: obviously peter is but i think is principled and a lot of people say that he's defending the free speech because it's the economic basis of facebook i actually don't agree with that critique um i do

SPEAKER_09: think that i have uh points which he and i've talked about where i kind of have a different interpretation of freedom of speech and i think freedom of speech is important i've defended it myself in america it was my very first television uh performance ever was firing line in 1996 talking about the government's ability to regulate speech on the internet um and um and so the uh and so you look i i i i think that the uh i think it's important to speak up and i think the question is when you speak up like and sometimes that speak up it's like i'm speaking up uh in opposition to trump right and and the fact that you're going to take that as partisan is your problem not my problem right uh and and the reason it's your problem is because as long as i'm speaking up very like i'm speaking up saying oh all republicans bad then you're like okay well that sounds partisan um but if you're speaking up saying look um uh we had a uh a an election that was run with high integrity by literally every third party

SPEAKER_07: watcher it was done with a president who was in full command a senate that was republican uh and it was done at high integrity somebody who is then decrying those things is actually attacking our democracy is attacking the rule of law is attacking stability and surprise you get people who are going who go to the capitol storm the white house with nooses do violence kill police officers because they say hey i'm following what my president told me to do yeah and the capitol building yeah the capitol building yeah and and surprise and and like like words matter this is not just partisan like oh well it's just you

SPEAKER_09: know that's politics as usual it's like no you guys have blood on your hands and you have and and and and and and and and that by the way business leaders which i think a lot of them very very thoughtfully stood up early and said look this is a good election you know we should we should we should the business of america is to move on and build our business and and have civility and have rule of law and have

SPEAKER_07: that and that's super important and business leaders can do that without saying i'm not saying anything about red versus blue irrelevant to me it did seem like that was the breaking point and then

SPEAKER_01: all of a sudden i think that gives a very easy off ramp for hey listen if trump is actually inciting

SPEAKER_60: things that result in people dying and the capitol during the certification process of our democracy being you know infiltrated taken over etc like and people were literally shot and killed i mean this is this is deadly serious like literally deadly and and so you know you have no choice but to speak up in that regard and i think that was an easy way to take them off the platforms i think everybody agreed that

SPEAKER_02: that de-platforming was justified but now uh facebook is going to put this to a test with their oversight board for the first time i don't know if you knew about that i'm assuming you do yes and twitter is now going to also have to make a decision what do you think the right decision is and then we'll get off trump because it's you know i'm tired of talking about it but i'm interested in your opinion on this which is should they reinstate him after being in the penalty box for 90 days or is it just too risky to put someone like that on the platform if you were the ceo of twitter or facebook let me phrase it that way would you feel comfortable putting trump back on the platform knowing that if he says you know

SPEAKER_130: you got to fight like hell it could result in more people dying so i would only put someone like trump

SPEAKER_131: back on the platform if i believe that i could have a deal with them that they would keep that they

SPEAKER_09: would now abide by for example our anti-incitement to violence rules right um and if we had confidence that he would do that um then um then you know then i would consider it seriously because it's kind of like hey look you know penalty box and then back in and then off on the other hand i think that when you look at trump as a specific individual he basically doesn't keep deals right um you know like you know literally everybody who knows anything about trump knows that he never pays his final bill um and so you know like he always stiffs the small businesses that work for him and you know all the rest of the stuff and so uh you know he doesn't keep his deals so then that then since you

SPEAKER_136: know he doesn't keep his deals then i wouldn't put him back on the platform yeah it seems like a pretty

SPEAKER_78: easy decision the new year is here and that marks a fresh start for your small business it's a fresh start for us at launch as we're hiring a bunch of new team members a video editor a customer support person producer and more community manager we need people well do you know where we're finding all these great candidates i think you do linkedin jobs of course whether you're shifting your business hours around or you're hiring more remote employees like i am one thing that remains unchanged in this new world is the importance of having the right people on your team you got to get the right people on the bus then you decide where you're going to drive the bus right when your business is ready to make that next hire go ahead and check out linkedin jobs where they can match your role with qualified candidates so that you can find the right person quickly and to lend a helping hand you get your

SPEAKER_97: first job free i am not kidding if you go to linkedin.com angel linkedin.com angel they will let you post your first job for free you've got nothing to lose of course terms and conditions apply because they're giving it to you for free post a job with targeted screening questions i love those

SPEAKER_78: like if we were asking hey what's your favorite podcast or who are your favorite guests on this week in startups that filters out the people who are serious and maybe the people who aren't as

SPEAKER_97: serious and over 722 million members worldwide it's so easy it's so elegant and it's so effective you want to save time and you want to save money and you want to get the right person you do that all by going to linkedin.com angel thanks again for supporting season five of angel and speaking of

SPEAKER_60: linkedin let's get back to reid hoffman he knows a thing or two about linkedin i know that you missed stripe that's your anti-portfolio yes but you hit airbnb yes so tell me those two stories as an

SPEAKER_01: investor uh and i believe this is you know when you're a vc at graylock yes tell me yeah both of them tell me about meeting the company and saying yes to one and saying no to the other and why you

SPEAKER_146: made those decisions they won't have wonderful colorful narratives which one do you want to hear

SPEAKER_147: first let's go with the pain first so that we can have the palate cleanser of the success after so

SPEAKER_09: it's not lingering yeah so i get this email um from paul graham who we all respect massively and yeah writing and leadership and yc and all the rest of stuff saying hey there's these two um young you know irish uh brother entrepreneurs who are doing this thing that's going to reinvent banking and you should meet them given paypal and so forth and i said okay look i totally respect paul sure i'll meet with them and i met that was when i met them the first time and they said hey we got this uh we got this real we're we're starting a tech up so we're building a payment service where it's kind of just the tech uh make it super easy to use super easy to integrate none of the classic hackney tech that comes from banks uh we've already got a whole bunch of yc people using it um we'd love it if you would put some money in um and do it and i said oh i'd love to put money in and they said okay and here's the terms and i went oh that's not those aren't this is that classic those aren't the terms that i invested right right um and i was like well that's that's a high price and a low percentage that you're expecting me to to come on this journey and work with you on and look you guys seem really great and spectacular and i'm just going to get to know you so look let's be friends and i'll help out as i can

David Friedberg: and so forth but you know nah um so you passed on valuation which was probably what 15 or 20 million

SPEAKER_02: coming yeah you know so so at the time to just give people an idea the benchmark at that time coming out of yc 678 would be the typical valuation they were looking for three times it

SPEAKER_44: yes three times and also not like three times it give me five million at 20 it was give me 750k right so

SPEAKER_09: so the percentage is like tiny and so you're like okay and and like i i like to like i like to be an active helper um and so i like to have the like to have enough of of a skin in the game in order to be like like hey you call me at at at at 7 p.m and say i gotta talk to you today and i call you before the end of the day right you know like that kind of thing and being helpful and um uh and it was just like ah that's that that's that should the economics aren't right now of course if you had known that that stripe was going to become the giant who was going to become it was like all the

SPEAKER_18: economics are just fine um but that was that was um you know that is the that is the challenge of

SPEAKER_01: angel investing is um especially even at that time i don't think we actually thought that these companies could easily become worth a hundred billion dollars that we're seeing now many i mean airbnb stripe uber uh you know doordash is worth i think 40 or 50 billion like we actually didn't think they could become worth what they're worth today or they could grow as fast so we had a fundamental misunderstanding of valuation at that time do you think

SPEAKER_07: yes also by the way part of it is understanding that just like um there's all these things where

SPEAKER_09: we don't we we kind of take current as too steady state uh like frequently tam's are understated because the tam grows uh we take the connectivity of the whole populace not anticipating mobile and a bunch of other things you know as for earlier conversation when we were talking about international right international a bunch of other stuff and so we just don't and by the evaluations follow those things and that's part of the reason why among other things with these tech companies you see them continuing to compound revenue and and customers and and engagement at

SPEAKER_07: these massive scales because actually in fact it follows this just massive connectivity and massive availability so that you can reach customers with your products and services and it's part of what

SPEAKER_09: what happens and so i think that was you know part of it but you know because you try to be a

SPEAKER_07: professional investor you said well i invested x and there's going to be y more capital and dilution and exits will look like y and so i have to be in this kind of price range and this kind of ownership in order to make it happen and then you don't realize that other coefficient is really is is over the

SPEAKER_76: 10-year horizon or 15-year horizon that you do in the success cases of angel investing right um any of the success the big success cases the the goal post is getting taller right yeah it's

SPEAKER_22: it's super fascinating because we had a moment in time where people said the percentage ownership is

SPEAKER_01: what matters and it was i think largely driven correct me if i'm wrong because i don't have like

SPEAKER_53: major lps the largest lp i have is a 10 million dollar lp in my fund i don't have any of the big big ones

SPEAKER_22: um when you those lps i think became obsessed with ownership because they had seen sequoia

SPEAKER_60: or you know or kleiner before them hit these big hits and have 20 ownership 15 ownership at the ipo but that actually is bad advice because the lps maybe have a different driver is that right how did that advice become so cemented that the ownership percentage are so important it was much

SPEAKER_09: earlier and actually i don't think it was the lps the lps just tend to be the return on capital make multiples on your capital um what happened is uh it goes back to the very earliest stages of venture which is to say okay in order to be worth it given the risk coefficient the things that go to zero etc and what the exits look like what percentages do we need to own at the exits right for for the rest of the portfolio because this portfolio would go to zero and then you'd begin doing financial modeling of that and when you look at the like in the 1970s or 80s the average ipo prices you know what acquisitions look like and other kinds of things he said well these kinds of things look like the range of exits and so in those exits we need to own 20 to 30 percent to have the economics to make the fund a great fund uh given the other things being holes and that that's the analysis the lbs are just like deliver us good you know multiples on capital do it however you're going to

SPEAKER_22: do it what is so if you were to look at your your pass and then we'll go on to the big win but if you

SPEAKER_01: were to look at the pass 750 at 220 million would have given you roughly an ownership of four percent if you got diluted 50 percent you'd be at or you got diluted if you got cut in half that would be two percent and it's worth a hundred billion now so it'd be two billion off of a million dollar investment roughly so it would have been over 2000x cash on cash exactly and that fund that you were investing

SPEAKER_97: at the time was 150 million dollar fund 200 million dollar fund no it was um i think uh we um part of

Chamath Palihapitiya: greylock 13 was the very first fund uh was the airbnb fund as well um there was uh we moved to a billion dollar fund uh because we wanted to range of all things but by the way that also means lots and lots of investment so even if you made a 750k investment there and you get two billion dollars back that's still that's a that's a 2x on the fund that's still like great funds are are are are are you know 10x and so forth that's actually in fact and you know if you think about tax of a 1

SPEAKER_175: billion dollar fund that means you're making nine billion dollars above the billion investment wow so

SPEAKER_46: the lesson you learned from that is what how do you take that forward when you're true because you

SPEAKER_02: have new partners at graylock you now you know are not the you know 30 year old kid 35 year old young adult trying to figure this out you're now training a bunch of 25 to 35 year olds i take it what what do you teach them from your mistake on that one when you do your post-mortem on it well so it's hard to

SPEAKER_09: have known ex-ante because that's the lesson you don't take what you do say is hey if you've got like what i would have probably done now is said look i can't join the board for you know i don't know if they would have wanted me to or not i have a great relationship with them today um but like i'd love to invest and help um and why don't why don't we do we'll do the investment and i'll help out some but i won't i won't join the board for this and see if we can get to a deal there because having some places now part of his adventure you say well that'll that will block you from doing square or block you from doing you know kind of competitive investments you have to pay attention to that um uh because that's one of the things i'm sure the callers would have asked for in that um in that investment that's one of the things you have to weigh um also to look at um sometimes when you say look at while it's still generally speaking for the exits uh good to target to kind of 20 plus ownership because you know it's the small number that go to this astro yeah the you know the the the the the high orbit and you know break escape velocity um but the uh but so you still do it but on on selected cases you say look there's actually in fact a real chance at this uh then that's fine and and um you know that's that's that that that's something that you should that you should ask yourself that question and make an active decision about whether or not sometimes doing that small percentage is important here because you could still get a venture result

SPEAKER_181: right as someone who's invested in over 250 startups and advised many more i want to talk to you about a serious pain point that we see all the time and that's reducing your burn you need to conserve your capital you need your money to go far so that you get time for product market fit how much money are you spending right now on various software products and how much time does it take to integrate all of them let me take a guess way too much is the answer and because of that odoo is here to help odoo is a suite of business apps that run your company on one platform if you're currently using a frankenstack of individual software solutions that aren't talking to each other then you're wasting time energy and money odoo streamlines your workflow by bringing all that information together your workday can be more productive because odoo's integrations eliminate repetitive tasks and data entry plus if you only need two or three apps to optimize your workflow that's all you need to pay for odoo won't stick you with the bill for apps you don't use your first app is free forever and right now odoo is offering a one thousand dollar credit on your first implementation pack that's no joke

SPEAKER_22: a thousand dollars right now all you have to do is go to odoo.com twist that's odoo.com slash twist to get that thousand dollar credit that's really interesting too when you think about if you make this bet now you can't make these other bets because in silicon valley

SPEAKER_02: it's incredibly poor taste at least for a venture firm maybe not for angels as much but certainly for a venture firm that's on the board you you can make one bet per category so if you do uber you can't do lift if you do lift you can't do uber and correct me if i'm wrong founders are aware of this

SPEAKER_09: and it matters to them yep um what i would say is it it it it behooves investors and founders to have the upfront conversation right and and i think it's reasonable to say if you haven't had the upfront conversation then the founders are reasonable to say look there is some competitive space around me that you're not going to invest in because you're going to be all in on supporting me right uh and that's especially true for venture firms you know like graylock where we have you know engineering recruiting and customers and other services that we use to amplify the success of of companies um that you that you say look you want those resources us we want those resources like you're gonna hire the best engineers for us etc and so that's reasonable now if you i i find and i and i recommend everyone do this both founders and investors to have an explicit conversation about what

SPEAKER_07: counts as competitive you know where it's okay to do it you know that kind of thing and so and and by the way when you do that sometimes you can end up with with great results so like for example take

SPEAKER_09: autonomous vehicles so um i invested uh for graylock and aurora and i'm on the board and then neuro came along and neuro is another of the superstar teams out of waymo and so i called chris germson and

SPEAKER_07: i said look like a really like the neural guys seem really great you know i'd love for graylock to be able to invest in them you know is this okay and he's like oh they're really awesome i'd love to be able to invest in them and i said okay so what's what's the deal or can we and he said well look i'd be uncomfortable for me if you were on the board too um you know there but graylock can invest and as long as you guys you know you and and you know john lily is on the board for us now uh as long

SPEAKER_09: as you guys you know do a good job of not spreading you know uh you know confidential intel from one to

SPEAKER_07: the other which you know we're good at because you know the thing that'd be great we'd be delighted and then when i went to neuro and explained the same thing and said hey you know i can help you i can't help you with anything that i know from aurora but like you asked me to come to a board meeting or talk to your team or you know tell you about what i see going on with oems and other kinds of things i can help with all that stuff and they said great let's do this and so so uh graylock has the

SPEAKER_09: the virtue of being in both aurora and neuro and i'm not surprisingly you know neuro has a big grand

SPEAKER_07: vision but is doing this the specific vehicle that not what aurora is doing and you know aurora is

David Friedberg: doing something else and so they're like hey this is all this is great this works well really well nor

SPEAKER_02: neuro is for people who don't know they're doing this like weird looking almost like a minivan that

SPEAKER_49: will drive up with your groceries or your packages you take your groceries out and so it's not for

SPEAKER_166: passengers and it's a design yeah not for passengers which means it's kind of ultra safe and designed around maximum human safety earliest to road and by the way the the module of the car is a platform so

SPEAKER_170: you get your groceries but by the way it could also be the hot pizza oh yeah now we're talking yeah

SPEAKER_02: exactly get burritos uh okay so let's go on to the win you meet airbnb again uh let me tell you the whole

SPEAKER_202: story the whole story is fun and this is you know goods being angels i learned a bunch of lessons

SPEAKER_29: with airbnb unfortunately not to have been uh an investor and and and along the ride with a

SPEAKER_09: spectacular team doing an amazing transformation in the world but the very first person who pitched airbnb to me um who i will who i will not name because i don't want to you know this is a negative

SPEAKER_29: thing pitched airbnb as couch surfing but they said oh it's it's a great thing because you can rent people's couches and i went oh that's a terrible idea i'm not a terrible idea yeah and so and so

SPEAKER_44: literally when other people came to me say hey the airbnb people want to meet you they know that you have this deep expertise in marketplaces and that you yourself did design at apple and you know they think it's right now i don't want to know i don't want to meet them wow and and um and so and and lesson number one don't allow the negative reference from a third party who may be desperately

SPEAKER_29: miss framing the thing yes to cloud your judgment i literally should have gone i heard you and i got

SPEAKER_09: it there in the neutral vault right you know as opposed to the update right so then um you know a couple close friends of mine called me and said hey these are these are super great founders you should meet them and i said okay you know i'll go meet them and i brought them in on a sunday this is when graylock's offices were actually in san mateo and they sit down and two minutes into the pitching

SPEAKER_76: because it's kind of like the it's ebay but for space on this whole range and it goes of course you can include a couch but include a room an apartment a castle the whole thing and i went right

SPEAKER_09: i'm gonna make you an offer to invest let's spend the rest of this time working together so you get a sense of me let's bring bring your challenges out put it down on on the table um now here's where the story continues to get interesting this is sunday they came in on monday they pitched the partnership

SPEAKER_44: on monday and by the way this is such a quick turnaround i didn't have a chance to do what what dc's normally do in this process which is they condition their partnership they write a memo they talk about the the risks that are mitigated the upsides always so this was cold this was like the partnership like hey by the way there's gonna be a company in here pitching tomorrow that i really

SPEAKER_205: want to do and i'll tell you about it when they show up right yeah and so they showed up they

SPEAKER_09: did you know brian and and joe and nate did a great uh presentation but obviously back then everything was tiny it was very small it's like wait someone's gonna rent a room or apartment from

SPEAKER_44: someone they don't know and what's gonna happen and oh my god is that really gonna work and neighborhoods and cities can allow that and you know blah blah blah blah and so um and so here's

SPEAKER_07: where the story got some fun color to it because david z who is a storied investor right you know

SPEAKER_09: linkedin facebook pandora now roblox um that uh just got yum yes exactly you know just massive returns for for graylock lbs and and my most valued board member at linkedin is the reason i'm at graylock is david david looks at me and says look that's never going to work but you know every vc has to have a deal they're going to fail on so go ahead and do airbnb as your learn as your learning deal

SPEAKER_99: wow since david's so smart i'm sitting there going oh right my very first now you get nervous

SPEAKER_44: like is this right i was like wow look yeah i i got conviction i really need to do this you know maybe it'll be the one i'm going to learn on but you know like i really like brian and joe and nate their

SPEAKER_07: vision is great and i really think the world would be so much better off if this works now to david's credit six months later the numbers that we really think airbnb is this kind of classic hockey stick which is years of very slow numbers growth six months later numbers hadn't changed very much david came to me and said you were totally right i was totally wrong what did you see that i didn't say how do i update because this is one of the things that's that's great about venture partnerships is you're learning and you're sharing your learnings together so you're updating your calculus about you know what kinds of things work and don't work and how to do it and how to build companies and which investments to make and what's going on in the world and technologies and and government regulation i said look you were totally right uh there could be a really bad event on the airbnb platform that could quell it there could be you know banning from city governments that don't understand it don't understand it could be really valuable to citizens you know that all of the

SPEAKER_09: risks that you try it out were totally and it's so strange initially uh like like it's like what is that i you know it's a not a it's only a small group are really passionate about it and it has to grow

SPEAKER_07: into a feeling of normalcy the thing that i believed that you didn't as i said this is part of being contrarian and right that if you that if that like smart people would go nfw like you yeah and if it

SPEAKER_09: turns out to be right then it's huge that it's right it's it's society changing right this is the key

SPEAKER_02: isn't it really yes when you if everybody if there was consensus it should already exist in the world and it's probably not going to change the world all that much because it's such an obvious idea and there is an arc i think in hearing you talk of where something goes from being everybody doesn't believe it's going to happen to everybody thinks it's completely obvious and anybody can duplicate

SPEAKER_60: it like oh well uber is an interesting thing that's a nice app i can make that app or airbnb's nice so it's a nice website i can make that website but chris saka himself passed on airbnb because he thought well something bad's going to happen yes and this is very instructive isn't it because something bad always happens in every company robin hood which we were we were lucky enough to be angel investors in had a rough couple weeks uber had a rough couple years airbnb had some there

SPEAKER_99: was some meth party that occurred yes a criminal stole a credit card rented an airbnb place and just trashed it right i don't really know math party whatever whatever reason it was a math party i remember yeah

SPEAKER_219: it was a memorable tech crunch headline it was like we've been waiting for this headline we've had this

SPEAKER_09: in the drafts folder and by the way that's part of where you see uh founders because when it's a little bit like there's this uh expression that we use a lot of this non-profit for uh for entrepreneurs that i'm on the board of called endeavor that's global entrepreneurs it's like uh when the times get tough the tough get going and that was exactly what you saw with the airbnb founders because they went okay and literally they said everybody for the next six weeks we're working on trust and safety whatever

SPEAKER_44: your job is figure out the trust and safety analog and that's what we're working on next six months we are turning into this we are solving this problem we are going to be great for our community because that's what really matters and we're going to be there for them and that was like yep that's those are

SPEAKER_22: the kinds of founders you back in a way it's people think that these are like these incredible

SPEAKER_02: founders who are visionary and they just come out of the you know the eggshell perfect and it no it's it's these moments where entrepreneurship is forged in fire and pain and suffering and pressure and and you think you're going to quit right whether it's airbnb uh 10 years ago when this

SPEAKER_01: happened or game you know um or april 2020 well i mean let's talk about that

SPEAKER_09: you are you still on the board of airbnb or no part of uh part of the the fact that because by the way uh maybe one of the things i learned from the stripe stuff was today hey accept a lower percentage and so the deal that i struck with brian is hey look i'll invest for a lower percentage but i'll be a board observer and then when you go public i'll drop off the board because i you know you know and it's like great um and so um and and um and so anyway so i'm i'm not on the board but that was actually part of

SPEAKER_07: again uh changing up the model some right right yeah there's all these heuristics that we were told

SPEAKER_02: were critical and you know we're we're not operating in a static environment as investors it's dynamic it changes just like mobile changed everything global changes everything um and then how governments respond i mean the overwhelming consensus for uber and airbnb was these are too dangerous to operate in the real world why would you not just make software why operate in the real world and now a lot of the great investments are rocket ship companies yes you were you at paypal when elon was

Chamath Palihapitiya: there oh yeah no uh elon and i are our pals um yeah yes absolutely i think i was the second person he pitched spacex to and there's a funny story there let's go that i don't think is is a failure of investment given how elon pitched it to me but there was a fool in the room and it wasn't elon it was me and so so elon said that we sit down at the left bank in menlo park uh i think we were having i think it was lunch might have been breakfast um because i remember roughly the table we were at and um and and we were talking and he said oh i got this great new idea uh i'm gonna be the first i'm gonna send life to mars i was like setting life to mark the original idea was kind of debating between a turtle and a gelatinous uh cube with plants in it that you could kind of grow something in and i was like elon that's not a business and what's more the the rocket business you're competing against these like uh subsidized you know russians russians who hire you know whether we're lockheed and etc hire ex air force colonels to lock down the pipe chain and all the rest and and like you know like this is just brutal uh as a space to to get into you know and and like look i i get it that you have these you know great ideas and these things out there but reusable rockets and cost of it and importance of getting the space and you know you're like you're you're a visionary and you're driven and no anyone could make it happen to you but you know that doesn't affect me as a as a commercial investment aha

SPEAKER_54: yeah he was originally also thinking about putting a biosphere in the atmosphere

SPEAKER_02: to back up when he told me about it was back up the biosphere let's put this in uh space the airbnb investment uh you i'm assuming you put a couple million bucks into that it becomes worth a hundred

SPEAKER_01: billion that means you you return five ten billion to lps something in that range yeah more on the more

SPEAKER_84: on the on the smaller side of that but yeah that's the range that's gotta be the greatest feeling

SPEAKER_01: for you as an investor your first time up at bat you hit a grand slam that basically goes like two states over i mean it's has that ever even ever happened in venture capital before that somebody the first time up at bat hit a hundred billion dollar company oh it's probably not the

SPEAKER_116: first time about although you know i had done facebook as an angel and so forth it wasn't like you

SPEAKER_09: know my first rodeo and look look it does feel great but part of the thing about about these things is that part of what you're doing and investing in a portfolio is you're playing for a portfolio for luck you know making sure luck like trying to allow luck to break your way like you know like could i have told you for sure it was gonna be that of course not right every now it would have been crazy

SPEAKER_07: right to do that there's all these places where it could things could break on the way and you know one of the things that we unfortunately make is the decision uh actually you know this because you're an expert poker player is this whole like resulting thing which is you're a genius if the results good and you're an idiot if the results bad actually in fact it's a process of how you do it and

SPEAKER_09: you have to allow that serendipity of what and you're the poker player but what's in the flow and what you know what's dealt and everything else yeah as part of this and so you so sure it feels great that

SPEAKER_07: was the the first thing but but part of um like when i talk about investing i say look if you're not making both type one and type two errors um you're probably not investing intelligently right

SPEAKER_29: explain type one and type two yeah no false positives false negatives right you know like oh i i i i

SPEAKER_44: invent like the portfolio i invested in that and it didn't work and i invested in that i did i passed

SPEAKER_07: on that and it did work right and if you're not making both investments you're probably not you're not making both errors you're probably not investing smart now what you want to do is enough of the

SPEAKER_09: right you know uh true positives right that's the really key thing the other thing that people don't understand about this business frequently is they go oh well you know you invested 10 million dollars in that and do you regret losing it you're like you never regret the 10 million you regret the 10 million you didn't put into stripe or into twitter i miss twitter evan's like uh yeah if you want to

SPEAKER_245: angel invest in ttr i could yeah exactly like those are the messages sms i was like you you're i remember

SPEAKER_02: him showing it to me over breakfast with biz and i'm like he's like now type in what you had for breakfast and now biz has had you know tofu scramble and then you have webis for chairs and i was like

SPEAKER_72: you just cost me five cents like i get 200 of these sms in one like this is so dumb why isn't this a website like you're going backwards in your career evan you went from a blog post to now the headline of a blog post if this succeeds it's going to be a cacophony of idiocracy i was right but i was wrong exactly we're both right and wrong it's like one of the humble most humbling professions because

SPEAKER_01: yeah you're you miss things and then you hit things and you don't know until what year five six seven of an investment how you did frequently yep so when you're training young investors what is the process

SPEAKER_60: that you think is the winning process here as we sit here in 2021 um for being a world-class investor

SPEAKER_131: so so there's actually multiple smart ways of playing the game and it depends on exactly which

SPEAKER_09: game you're in so for example graylock has like uh amongst the strongest enterprise practice of any of the other venture firms i mean i literally put our enterprise team pound for pound up and pro and and and services like finding customers and and heads of sales and other kinds of things against any other venture firm in the world and and that by the way is highly disciplined right it's it's it's price on entry matters percentage still matters um you know kind of uh you know what is the way because you can actually map out like this amount of capital you can do diligence on do the customers

SPEAKER_07: like you call them and find out well will they buy it will it work how do you amplify it all the rest of the stuff and that's one style investing and by the way it's not only um you know enterprise it also is like e-commerce is more this way there's a stack of these things and by the way you can make a

SPEAKER_09: great vendor fund just in these kinds of investing because you you you lose money rarely right and you have a predictable high outcome now the kind of interesting i tend to do and it tends to be the you

SPEAKER_76: know this is my side on the on the graylock side is the well if it works airbnb it's going to be huge and if it doesn't work it's probably zero and it's probably not going to work so just so we all agree

SPEAKER_09: going in right so i'm going to have a portfolio of these things and so right that's of course part of the reason why i like you know the autonomous vehicles you know is me uh crypto is both me and josh mcfarland so i did zappo and josh mcfarland did coinbase um and so you know it's it you know you get some spread out it's not just me doing the well who knows you know kind of uh investing and so um and so and on those it's a it's a funny parallel which is your most successful investment is probably worth most that more is worth more than everything else combined your next most uh successful investment is worth more than everything else combined yep and so you're you're you're really

SPEAKER_29: playing for the grand slams uh and then how those come together and then and then making that possible and that's that's that's the that contrarian but right uh and how do you tune that

SPEAKER_09: and then that's both art and science but there's a lot of art to it is part of how you know i do it and and you know uh some other partners agree a lot too yeah i feel like that you and i are simpatico in

SPEAKER_01: that which is when you're looking at a company like this there's so many things that can go wrong that i just write those things down and i'm just i rip up that piece of paper i throw it away i'm

SPEAKER_60: like who cares who cares if like you know like yeah sure somebody could stop it in vegas they could stop uber because they don't want it there but that's not the only city in the united states like we don't need to win vegas in year one we vegas can be the last city to fall right like you don't have to uh you just need to get some things right for these things to just change the world

SPEAKER_02: when you look at something like clubhouse it has like some great traction i don't know if you had a chance to or if you were in the running for that i know bill gurley and uh andreason were like the

SPEAKER_53: two going hardcore on it in the final stages mike deboe at graylock was actually there as well and so

SPEAKER_20: i did some events on it i had one of the early test accounts you know doing it and so forth you guys

SPEAKER_49: were around the rim it bounces off the rim 100 million dollar round 10 or more 10 million dollar

SPEAKER_02: investment the founders are taking a little bit of money off the table it's not the standard investment in fact it's reminds me of your description of what happened with stripe right like this is non-standard non-standard terms weird moment like that there's only 2 000 vcs on the beta and it goes

David Friedberg: for 100 million did you want to make that bet in 100 million uh we actually i think um were uh one of

SPEAKER_44: the first term sheets in a lot higher but when the first term sheets in because part of our being uh fast and and and all the rest of the stuff and and you know the partnership was like wow you know it's very early and and it's very it's kind of uh it's a very high valuation but you know mike had deep conviction and we were supportive and we we looked at it and and said look this could be one of the interesting social platforms and you know just actually i don't know how much your your your your

SPEAKER_09: listeners know this but you know graylock has a big history of doing you know social platforms because yeah you know not only obviously linkedin and facebook but also like current portfolio is is discord and nextdoor and and roblox and so yeah but we have yeah we have a lot of a lot of of kind of uh of capabilities and kind of juice in this uh in this area and so we looked at and said okay let's take the bat and you know i i don't know exactly which mechanics i know we have still have a great relationship with the founder um but the uh but you know we we were we were in the running now you look

SPEAKER_02: at the second bet a couple of months later 100 billion out of billion now does that give you pause that we're in a bubble or that this is a little bit crazy or does this make total sense to you since getting escape velocity as we talked about before is so hard that you know hey they break five million users in six months or whatever it is having been there for facebook and having a front row seat for next door and other you know and obviously having created linkedin itself you've seen this before

SPEAKER_09: yeah crazy bat or crazy brilliant um well this is the kind of like we're at the resulting questions the question is percentage so it's it has above zero percent chance clearly with attraction of being one of those things and and um and i think that the the bull theory of it is it's got that magic right people are joining it it's hitting the curve it's part of a portfolio you should take the bet price doesn't you know matter other than the fact that the you know go on the bet even though it

SPEAKER_07: seems like a crazy price uh for or to do it and that would be the bull case uh bear case would be look most of these really successful social platforms tend to be more asynchronous than

SPEAKER_09: synchronous um in terms of how they platform apps and and and will clubhouse get there i'm sure they have plans to um and so you know you can have and that's where you got to go to is the price right on it and i think um you know classically people are going to judge it by the results but i don't think

SPEAKER_02: it was a dumb bet to make i don't think it's a dumb bet either i'll be totally honest i think it's so rare that a paradigm shift happens and we've witnessed them that you have to make the bet whether it's you know images when instagram video with snapchat and now this you just have no choice but to make the bet because owning whatever they own now 20 of it i guess they got 10 million and then 100 so they they're pushing 20 of it if it becomes worth 10 20 30 billion dollars it's a no-brainer bet have you i'm assuming you went into quarantine in early march like the rest of us yes have you and

SPEAKER_49: now we're getting on close to a year now um but vaccines are coming and it's obviously we're in the end game now i think everybody would agree um and if you're looking this as a historical document uh

SPEAKER_53: we've been doing like we've had days of over two million shots and israel is kind of on the other side

SPEAKER_01: of it and this miracle vaccine is truly a miracle and probably undersold have you met with any founders in person or are you doing all your investing over zoom uh or do you do like a walk and talk with them because the whole business prior to this was about that sunday where you took out the

SPEAKER_147: book and said let's let's jam let's jam on a sunday in san mateo yes so i i have been completely bio

SPEAKER_09: bubbled um me too i so i have done well there is a stealth investment that i joined i'm on the poor on the board of uh that we made um i think early this year um we're closing it in december um i have

SPEAKER_44: yet to meet the founders in person uh right um and they have yet to meet me uh we have many a great zoom conversation um and um and so yes with that that's what you're doing investing and then the other

SPEAKER_09: thing i would say is uh look i have strong hope of getting back to uh you know kind of the you know uh being in person in all kinds of ways i think there's lots of virtues to it um one thing is

SPEAKER_41: i despite the fact and by the way i think it's a miracle pro-globalization of how the vaccines used

SPEAKER_07: to be done in years now being done in months uh we're even probably figuring out how to do the safety protocols with 100 the same safety but quicker uh for future kinds of issues now that being said

SPEAKER_09: given unevenness of vaccine manufacturer unevenness of distribution um that contributing on a global basis to variants of covid and having different variants running around and no and some of these variants the vaccines we find against some of the vaccines uh the variants the vaccines will be less

SPEAKER_44: signed against and all the rest you know i just want to kind of caution everyone to think a little bit too much like oh my god it's just a couple of months and then we're good and you're like no no we're gonna be in turbulence for a while and and and plan on that uh because and so personally i

SPEAKER_09: think i'll be like i will be a late adopter to emerging from the bio bubbles because i can work

SPEAKER_44: uh perfectly safe for both myself and and and contributing the rest of the world in this kind of you know in the in this virtual simulation reality we literally are now in a simulation zoom room

SPEAKER_02: all right we're wrapping up here just um what does it mean for the future of san francisco where people have fled young people don't want to come to san francisco anymore uh in large part they don't see the need and then getting a cfo or you know somebody who's like been at big companies for 20 30 years to move their family to san francisco or the bay area is really hard right and they're just like they don't see the point of coming here and they want to work from utah or miami or austin or la they don't people don't want to be here anymore it's kind of broken what happens to san francisco in the wider

SPEAKER_53: bay area and do you think you need to be here because like you like you said you're doing everything over zoom what is the future of silicon valley well i think you know look when you have a

SPEAKER_09: brand and a position and a um you know kind of uh like like people know who i am i run this podcast and yeah i've done these investments i don't like i think i could do this you know through zoom totally 100 yeah we're ongoing but like part of the definition is the is the young turks the

SPEAKER_29: you know the the women and the men who are coming with hunger you know in their hearts in their bellies and so forth and and and and and and every available advantage for doing it and that will be like they'll be less like sanguine about is it through zoom or is it a person it's like every

SPEAKER_09: available edge and so i am a very strong believer that silicon valley broadly itself will um will bounce back will be super strong i think san francisco has some ongoing problems between the kind of the city and the people the government kind of not really liking the fact they have a tech industry

SPEAKER_292: there which i think is kind of a little not sane it's like every city is fighting to court the tech

SPEAKER_293: industry except the one that already has it and they're trying to drive everybody out it's so

SPEAKER_292: weird exactly it's a level of dysfunction nobody could ever anticipate so there's a difference

SPEAKER_07: between san francisco and silicon valley i think silicon valley will be back to the races now my hope

SPEAKER_29: is that with some of this diaspora we will see many more growing great tech centers i mean yes uh la and boulder and denver and seattle and you know and you know new york and all that will all

SPEAKER_09: benefit from that and so we'll as opposed to silicon valley literally taking all the oxygen there'll not be multiple areas and by the way i think that will ultimately be better for silicon valley i think

SPEAKER_07: that that region competition will also be uh i think a strong benefit so i'm hopeful that the answer is

SPEAKER_02: really both okay as we wrap you uh have done better than you could have ever anticipated i assume yes we're both now over 50 if you can believe it yes i don't know if you're starting to feel old or tired but you seem more enthusiastic when i met than when i met you 20 years ago yeah what do you think that you know you got this last you know whatever we got hopefully we got 20 30 good years left reed yes you you you want to just keep going this way you're going to run for president what

SPEAKER_09: do you think definitely not running for president why not you'd be great look i try to support the people who who who who jump on the public service grenade uh and and and you know i i am more of a technology and a company builder and so forth so i you know try to support those folks who go into this this melee like a friend of mine was thinking about running for uh president i said look you you will go from celebrated ceo to suspected criminal in you know one announcement uh from this sort of stuff

SPEAKER_33: and so like you want to do that and and what did zuckerberg say that wasn't and so um uh and so you

SPEAKER_44: know for me it's like how do we build the future and i'm trying to help like for example all this

SPEAKER_07: craziness around the tech lash no no technology is how we build the future there may be challenges of technology there may be things that are broken that we need to fix and the way we fix it is through

SPEAKER_99: technology yes have you not been paying attention yeah so like look it's don't stop it's not the answer is no no don't do x do y like why more than x like do let's do it this way like optimization

SPEAKER_07: tweak it yes and and maybe even strong improvements but it's not stop it's do this instead right like how do we do this because it's so easy to be a critic it's like well be a politician and don't lie you know it's like well okay politicians have to assemble a coalition so they are sometimes going to fudge the truth in various ways and that's unfortunate and the good politicians really hate doing it but you can't say like stop right yeah no no no do it this way so for example like say okay say where you disagree but like articulate the positiveness and try to get people on board you know that kind of thing and so anyway the same kind of thing around the tech lash stuff and so you know for me you know part of what i see is i see uh the way i describe myself is i'm a tech optimist not a tech utopian just because you build the technology doesn't mean that there's necessarily a good result but you can shape the technology to amazingly positive outcomes it's one of the reasons

SPEAKER_44: i while i admire black mirror i find it painful to watch because you're like well i know how to fix that

David Friedberg: like i know how to make i know i know how to make that happen right just get rid of the follower account just don't put that when that person yeah puts all those likes don't don't put that at the top of the feed yes that's a fixable problem we can solve that yes and so uh and so uh and so you

SPEAKER_44: know that's the reason why i still have the fire in my belly and the hope for the future all right well

SPEAKER_49: there we have it folks uh podcaster investor entrepreneur but most importantly tech optimist hey

SPEAKER_02: let's do it again next year not seven years from now can we do that absolutely can we put it on the calendar now absolutely loved having some time together cannot wait to see you in person again

SPEAKER_49: in the after times as opposed to the before times uh reid hoffman if you're building a company gosh graylock is a great firm and it goes beyond reid just i've got to know many of your uh different team members and what what an amazing uh crew you got over there you've really developed some talent that's why i wanted to ask you about all those talent development questions you've done great and if you want to read uh about reid hoffman reid hoffman.org and if you want to hear his last appearance in

SPEAKER_01: november of 2014 episode 490 and masters of scale just a great podcast really well done all right

SPEAKER_94: i'll see you soon brother jason always an honor and a pleasure