$46B of hard truths from Ben Horowitz: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear (a16z co-founder)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/a121aeb7f51e584d

The worst thing that you do as a leader is you hesitate on the next decision. The thing that causes you to hesitate is both
Decisions are
Habit.
Probably one of my bigger ones on that was we went public with two million dollars in trailing twelve months revenue at eighteen months old. That's obviously a bad idea. But the truth of it was the alternative was going bankrupt. And that's the worst site. It's very difficult and painful to be a CO, to be a founder.
In spite of that, so many people want to start companies the psychological muscle you have to build to be a great leader is to be able to look in the abyss and go, Okay, that way's slightly better. We're gonna go that way.
If everybody agrees with the decision, then you didn't add any value, because they would have done that without you. So the only value you ever add is when you make a decision that most people don't like. You are famous for writing one of the most popular pieces of literature for product managers. What I was trying to get out in good product manager, bad product manager, was the job is
Fundamentally
Leadership job, and it's a tricky leadership job because
Nobody is actually reporting to you. There's always this kind of sense that the PM is not the mini CO. How dare you call yourself that. I actually think that's exactly what the PM is. It doesn't matter if you write a good spec or you have a good interview or you do this or do that. What matters is that the product works.

Today my guest is Ben Horowitz. Ben is the Z in A sixteen Z, the world's largest venture capital firm with over forty six billion dollars in committed capital.
They're investors in open AI, Cursor, Andrew, Databricks, Figma.
Basically every generational tech company
He's also the author of two New York Times bestselling books. The Hard Thing About Hard Things and What You Do Is Who You Are. Ben is endlessly fascinating. He started a rap group when he was younger. He started his career as a product manager and wrote the now famous Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager piece.
In our wide ranging conversation, we cover a ton of ground, and Ben shares stories and insights that he's never sharing else.
A huge thank you to Shaka Senghor.
Ali Goatsey and Adam Newman for suggesting topics for this conversation.
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Ben, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
All right. Thank you, Lenny.
Excited to be here.
I'm even more excited to have you here.
I wanna start with a question that a close friend of yours suggested I ask you, uh Shaka Singhor.
So Shah uh he's like we could do an hour just on how interesting this guy is and the things he's very on Jim Rogan then he's very
So we're not gonna do that. Just to give a glimpse, he uh he was in prison for nineteen years, he was in solitary for seven years, he
Uh Led
Uh huge prison gang. You wrote
You wrote uh about him in your book.
uh as a great exemplar of great culture in the prison gang that he ran. Uh so interesting.
But uh
Something that he learned from you that he told me I need to ask you about is about success.
And how to be successful and how it's not what people
Think.
And
He said that you learned this lesson from a pilot.
What is that story? What is that lesson?
Well it's kind of uh I I mean I I'd say it's a long life lesson, but the
The pilot story is um
I actually
You know, I asked people like
silly question sometimes when I meet them and so I you know I met
This gentleman who was a pilot in
You know, it was right around the time.
Uh
J F K Junior crashed his airplane.
Uh and and ultimately died.
And I asked him, I was like, you know, like what happened because there's always
You know the story in the press, and I know this from them writing about me or anything is
It's always
What's the best narrative, not what's true.
So you can never kind of actually find out what happened.
You just find the like the best story version.
Of what happened.
Uh
And the you know, the story in the press was all about oh, he wasn't
trained on instruments.
instrumentation was flying that night and I said, No, is that right? And the pilot said, Well
І серели іслай, а план краши а сер.
Of
Bad decisions.
And n none of the decisions by themselves is that bad, but when you add them up it's bad. So the first decision
Was
He needed to get wherever he was going.
And that was the priority.
And in flying
That can't ever be the priority.
Uh you know, because there are conditions, there are things that happen. And then the second one was
Well, like his timing of when the sun would go down was wrong.
So he thought he'd be flying in some light and he wasn't. And then
You know, once he got up there
It was you know when the plane was uh
You know, going down.
Kind of.
Making it go up.
Uh was a bad decision'cause he was upside down. And like, you know, so it's then I can't remember all the things, but
This guy had like seventeen steps.
You know, seventeen bad decisions in a row.
Yeah.
The big thing for me that
that I felt was really true is
It's you know, one decision leads to another. Uh
And so
You know, if you can
break you know psychologically
You can take the sunk cost.
Um
Then that
Gets you out of a lot of bad paths.
And then
You know, a little good decision may be difficult.
But you have to believe it's gonna lead to the next one.
And you know, a lot of successes about that. You know, it's a
It's a small thing a small
thing that's hard to do that doesn't seem to have a high impact.
Um
But it leads to the next
Small, hard to do thing, and then eventually
Uh you get an outcome. So so that was kind of the concept, but
So the lesson there is just success is just a bunch of little things. It's not this like, well I got here in a big thing and then. If somebody were to write a story about me, they would be like then Ben did this really smart thing and
Blah blah blah. Yeah, no happy ending.
But
Yeah, it really wasn't like that. I don't think it's like that for you or anybody.
Um and it you know, I spent a lot of time.
With Shark are on
You know, how'cause it'cause it's always your own psychology that
you know, gets you. One of the kind of most insightful things she said to me is
You know,'cause he was in sol most people who are in solitary for seven years.
Uh, that's it. You're insane, like you're never coming back from that. It's just an impossible thing.
But if you like
study his story, he actually kind of really
was massively self improved coming out of solitary, which is, you know, like and he wouldn't recommend that for anybody, just to be clear it wasn't solitary.

But what it was, you know, is he changed in solitary, he was able to
Change a big set of beliefs that he had about himself.
that kind of got him out of that. And the thing that his conclusion from it, which I thought was really interesting, he's like look
I was in prison for nineteen years, I was in solitary for seven, I come out
I can't rent an apartment. I can't vote uh you know, I can't get a gun, I can't do like like
No rights.
None of that was anything.
Compared to what I did to myself.
And I think that's very true for CEOs in general, and people in general.
Yeah.
The like all the things that you perceive that are happening to you that that are bad, you know, be it like
the systems against you or somebody undercuts you or racism or sexism or this or that or the other
Is very small compared to
Like it means a lot if you believe it.
You know, if you believe what people say about you, if you believe
What they did to you, um, then then that destroys you, but if you
If you go like that's not me.
Um you can overcome almost anything and that's you know
He's got a new book out on that anyway, that that I think is very good because that's the
You know, I'd say more than anything, that's the key to success.
Something new.
It's like if you
Look at all the writing you've done. It's essentially about the struggle and pain and suffering of being a C your hard you know, your first book's the hard thing about hard things.
There's a lot of talk these days about just how important struggle is and how valuable it is to go through struggle. Jensen's big on this, you know, he talks a lot about just you have to go through
Pain and suffering to be a great leader.
Yeah. But y you don't really have a choice, you know like that. That's true.
There's something that I saw you share that I love, which is running towards fear.
versus running away from fear, something that you tell all your leaders to to work on. Uh easy to hear, uh hard to do. We don't like doing things that are scary, running towards things that are scary. Why is this so important? Why is this something people need to learn to do?
Well, so the biggest mistake that you make there the the the the worst thing that you do as a leader, like there's things in your control and there's things like out of your control and
Hesitation is
Uh.
You know, that that's generally the most destructive. I mean I may I can go through all the ways that it's destructive, but it's
Extremely bad. And
The thing that causes you to hesitate is
Mm
You know.
Both?
Decisions.
Uh
Handy.
Right, like th th there is like e y it it's that business school where like you're going through a case study and if you had done that then the company would have gone this way, but if you had done that, it's a great success.
Like that's not actually
Yeah, what happens to a CEO. What happens to a CEO, it's like
Okay, if we
Rearch you know, like this product is the architecture is not g actually
Get us to where we need to go.
I kinda know that.
But if we re architect it life, we're gonna probably miss all the features, miss the quarter.
Have trouble raising money.
Yeah.
So like that's really bad.
And then not re architecting it is really bad.
And so I'm just gonna try like an avoid this subject'cause I don't I don't even want to deal with either of those, and that's
Th that's the worst thing because if
We are ca you know, if action is the better choice, um
Yeah, that's good. And then if you don't make an explicit decision
Then the whole company's gonna get nervous because
They know that the architecture is whack.
And you gotta fix it.
Probably one of my bigger ones on that was
You know, we went public
With
two million dollars in trailing twelve months revenue.
At eighteen months old, right? Like in the PL.
Like that's obviously a bad idea.
I mean like there's no question that wasn't a bad idea.
But the truth of it was the alternative uh because the where the private markets were was going bankrupt. And that's a worse idea.
And if you look at that time, you know, March of two thousand and one when we went public
You just look at the number of CEOs that hesitated on that.
And didn't do it.
And went bankrupt.
It's a lot. And so that's
Yeah, that's the
Getting good.
at making a decision that everybody's gonna go wow
That was insane, Ben. Like you went po like the the Wall Street Journal wrote a whole like long story about how stupid I was and then
Business Week wrote a story called The IPO from Hell.
That was the name of the
Like
Or idea, the ITO from hell, which like was accurate in in a sense.
But
So like that's really bad.
But
It it wasn't as bad. And this is why it's so scary to make that decision, because you know that's gonna happen. I knew those stories would get written. Like there was
No question. Uh
And uh yeah, and that's that's the kind of s muscle so like if you think about like the psychological muscle you have to build to be a great leader.
is to be able to like lick in the
Abyss and go okay.
We're going that that way slightly better. We're gonna go that way. Uh and it's very hard to do.
I know it's it's a thing people struggle with. And it began something.
Should I fire the head of sales. So I don't want to have that conversation.
Like and then I'll have to replace them.
And then like there's gonna be a bad PR story.
And then and and and and and and and you can kinda quickly all the bad stuff that's gonna happen if you do it.
But if you don't do it.
Uh that's probably gonna be much worse and you know kinda
That's why you have to run towards the pain and darkness.
What is the advice you share with founders? Because uh as you said, it's very hard to do this. Just like how what helps them actually get better at this? Is it just Ben being by their side telling them this is how it is? Is there anything else he could like I I would say this is one where
You know, I can't
Really
coach you to be good at this, like I can point it out and like so that you recognize
Um
that you were slow or whatever, but it's kind of like I was like and when I talk to them, it's like football, like you know, you could have a really fast, great athlete, but if they don't trust their eyes, if they don't

Then they're that step slower and then they're not
Um, they they'll never be as good. And COs are like that. You know, if you don't trust what you see
And you'll run at it.
Then
Like you're just not gonna be good. And

It it's hard to get CEOs not to hesitate.
But look one thing the the thing that does help is
You know, they look at it and I look at it.
Um
You know, and I kinda confirm though that that is
As it appears.
Uh
And you know, sometimes they're afraid of the conversation. So that one I can help with. So
Yeah, a CEO might be
Afraid w like they wanna do something but they they don't know how to say it. They don't know how to have the conversation with the employee, so I can walk them through that.
Um, you know, I I had an instance where
The CEO said, Hey, you know, like um I need your help then.
My CTO, he's an asshole.
And I was like, Okay.
You know, like great. I said, but you're not gonna fire him.
'Cause I know he's a good CO. Or are you asking me should you fire her?
He said, No, no, I don't want to fire him and I was like so you're
Asking me what to do'cause you don't know how to
have that conversation with him about being an asshole without him quitting.
Like that's what you're saying.
And he goes, Yeah, that's the problem. And so I go well like
Why is she an ass?
He says, Well, he's an asshole because you know
The other day he made like a very junior young woman in our finance organization.
Cry.
And I was like, Oh that that's kind of Yeah, I got you.
I said like this is what I would say to him. I'd say I'd just sit him down and I would say
Look, you're a
Really good director of engineering.
Um,'cause you do a great job of managing the team, get the products out, all that. But like you're not really a CTO because to be a CTO
You have to be effective with other parts of the organization.
Um you can't just be like effective only with engineering.
And so
You know, and making like
Somebody cry. Like she's never gonna do anything you want.
You you you lost all effectiveness with all the findings by doing that.
And so if you want to get good at that, I'll help you all work with you on it.
But if you don't I'm gonna have to hire a CTO at some point.'Cause like obviously I need the
And you know, and and then he's like oh okay, I can have that conversation. You know.
I can't have the conversation that
Hey, you're an asshole.
'Cause I want'em to quit. But I can have the conversation that's more specific and a lot of
kind of getting people not to hesitate is just getting them over that and so
So often like and I would say
You know, early in a CEO's career a lot of it is just not knowing how to have the conversation.
There's also I imagine an element of I just want to be liked, I don't want people to hate me.
You have this great line that you want to be liked and respected in the long run, not the short run.
Yeah, that's
That's tricky'cause it's so
By the way, I have to deal with this in the in the firm too, and you know, like
you know, people want to be entrepreneur friendly. I'm like
No, it's not friendly, you know, y respectful.
But you gotta be able to tell'em the truth in a way that you probably don't tell most of your friends the truth.
Because
Your friend you know, like look, anthropologically we want people to like us. Like it's just so they you know, they don't throw us to the line or whatever. Like that that's just kind of a thing. So you say tell people what they want to hear.
But in dealing, you know, in a and a company level and a
you know, in a context of you're on the board of somebody's company.
You gotta be able to tell'em what they don't want to hear. That's the most important thing you're gonna say.
And
Yeah it's there.
Not gonna like it when you say it? There's no question.
But
over time like it could save the company.
And uh
Yeah, and M, you know, all the most important things I said are things that I said to CEOs.
That they did not want to hear.
Yeah, and I'm like it that's what the leadership is about. It's
Making
If everybody agrees with the decision.
Then you didn't add any value,'cause they would have done that without you.
So the only value you ever add is when you make a decision that most people don't like.
Um
And that's where leadership comes in'cause you know that's where it's gotta get to.
Uh
Yeah, and you know, that's that's a thing that takes practice. Yeah, I I think you know when Jensen talks about like you gotta
Get to near death to get yourself to do that.
That's true.
You know, it's hard it's hard to build that
If everything's going great.
Yeah, and I and I would say you like the CEOs who
kind of had an easy run of it for their like let's say they just launch a product and it's an instant hit.
It's very hard for them to develop that muscle compared to the ones that build company like Jensen where
He like, you know, get it out for
multiple decades before they had big success.
Clearly it's very
uh difficult and painful to be a CO to be a founder.
Uh in spite of that
So many people want to start companies, so many people like dream of having their own company.
What do you
Who who is not right to start a company? Like what advice do you share with folks that are thinking about starting a company?
that may not understand just what they're about to get into.
Yeah, so it it's funny so there's a couple of things, you know
John Reid, who was the CEO of Citigroup when I when I started as CEO.
said to me something I never forget.
Ben the only reason to start a company
Is
Because you have an irrational
desire to do so.
Because it's not worth the money.
And
You know, I was like wow, he does it, he didn't even.
quantify how much money. And this guy's running cities, so he's a very
Numbers banking guy.
He didn't quantify it.
And um
I remember when we sold Loud Cloud for one point six billion dollars, I remember thinking, Wow, that wasn't worth the money.
Spoker.
So I think if you're doing it for the money
Yeah.
That's a very bad reason and it'll be extremely difficult to get to an outcome.
You really have to have an irrational desire to do something larger than yourself to kind of improve the world in some way, um that you know somehow like that is your purpose. And if if you don't
Field uh
Uh
Then the you'll never get through it. It's just is too many
Too many bad things happen along, right?
So then how do you think of founders that are kind of looking around for ideas that kind of brainstorm that look for
You know, market opportunities versus come from I have this mission, I gotta do this thing in the world.
If you have a you know my uh
business partner Mark always talks about that. So like if you have a product that forces you to build a company
Um
Th that is a great case of it, right? Like okay, you build something and the world wants it and you need a company to deliver it.
That's gonna you know you already have the right product.
And so that's very helpful.
I think there are cases of people
I think Hewlett Packard was kinda built that way that they're like, Okay, like we gotta
build technology, you know, it's that abstract. We got build some technology for the world, you know.
And then they started with well like
What do you need?
They they call it the next bench thing. What is the uh
Engineer sitting next to me, need.
The next engineer on the bench was the kind of how they define the first set of problems.
So it can work the other way, but like I think the thing that is in common is
Like it's just a very abstract
idea that like you have to build something
That's gonna be important though.
Like is gonna
You know, people are gonna like working there, people are gonna
benefit from the products. Like you you have to have some
like weird concept other than, Oh, this is gonna be successful and I'm gonna make a lot of money. I think that's I think you're way better off taking sex off or meta and just
Well, doing that like that's a way
Better deal.
Along these lines, something else Shaka suggested ask you about it.
Apparently there's a story where the CO of Databricks asked you for two hundred thousand dollars in the early days.
And you said no.
And it's not because you didn't want to, you know, invest in and it was more about helping him think bigger.
Uh how did what happened there?
Uh so there were six six of them. They're six H D students and uh
Uh well and Jan Stoika, who is their professor.
Um
And yeah, uh super
Genius. Uh but
You know, they mean.
Yeah, when I when I met with them.
They were like, you know, we need to raise two hundred thousand dollars.
Uh
And
I knew you like I knew at the time that
Uh what they have is this thing called Spark.
And they had you know the competitor
Uh was something called Hadoo.
And Hadoop.
You know, had
very well funded companies already running towards it and Spark was open source.
So like the clock was ticking.
Uh
And
You know, and th I think they didn't quite know what they had.
Oh yeah.
But I and then there's also a thing always although I I wouldn't say Jan has this mentality, but
Professors in general, like it's a pretty big win if you start a company and you make fifty million dollars, like you're a hero on campus. Like that's a
That's a pretty cool thing to have done. And so I'm always a little
nervous about
uh kind of a company that comes out of academia.
Thinking too small anyway.
And uh
So I said look, I'm not gonna write you a check for two hundred thousand dollars, I'll write you a check for ten million dollars. Um
'Cause like this company, you need to build a company. You need to really go for it if you're gonna do this, otherwise
Like you guys should stay in school.
And they were all graduating right right then. So
That was kinda that and Ali.
Ali actually was VP of engineering at the time.
And
It was a while, you know, before uh I made him

And
Then that was very good luck on my part'cause I had no idea that they had a guy that good inside the company who could become CEO.
When I invest it, like
That that was just you know.
God smiled on me and gave me that one.
Um so speaking of Ali, I actually asked him what to ask you about.
And he immediately shared the story.
I don't know if you remember this, in your first one on one with him after you made him CO
He was struggling with a bunch of low performers'cause he was coming in to lead the company.
And he was trying to turn things around, trying to coach them, trying to level them up.
And your advice to him was
Quote You don't make people great.
You find people that make you great, that make the company great, that you learn from.
Not the other way around.
And then something that he called managerial leverage.
What is that all about? What's the lesson there?
Oh yeah. Yeah, so like i understand here just to come see ya.
So I was
Teaching him, he had been VP of engineering.
And she o is different.
And and I'll get into why and and what I mean by leverage. So
I actually wrote a post about this with a
Little Wayne quote where and I think the quote was
The truth is hard to swallow and hard to say too.
But I graduated from that bullshit. Now I hate school.
And and that that that that was always my feeling about this particular idea.
Was
Look, if you're VPA engineering
You can develop people.
you can teach'em to be better engineers, you can teach'em to be better engineering managers, like that's very like
Doable?
But if you're CEO
Like what do you know about being CFO?
Like what do you know about being you know DPA HR? What do you know about any of these jobs?
You know, except maybe DP of engineering, right? Like
And so the idea that you're gonna take somebody
Who doesn't who isn't world class at marketing and make em world class.
And you don't know anything about marketing?
Is a dumb idea. It just doesn't work.
Um and then
The company can't afford for you to be spending time on that because they need you to make very high quality, fast decisions. They need you to set the direction for the company.
And they need you to have a world class team.
And so like that
And it's a very hard lesson if you've been
V P of Engineering,'cause if you're a good VP of engineering, you do develop your people.
But as a CEO
Like
It's not like you don't do any of it.
Um, but it's very, very small.
You know, compared to so I like to make things just very stark, so you you get what I'm saying. I don't like to hedge it.
And then managerial leverage means just. It it's very simple.
It's
Okay, if
I had the ideas about what your department should do next. If I
You know, am kinda pushing you.
to kind of
Move your organization forward.
Then that's no leverage.
What's leverage is if you're telling me
What you should do and how you can push the company forward.
That's leverage. Then I'm getting kinda more than I'd have if you weren't there. Otherwise I could just manage a fucking team.
And
That's the point. When you feel like you're not getting leverage, when you got to go say, Hey, why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we doing that? That's when you got to make the change.
And by the way, he's
Unbelievable at that.
Um as good as anybody I've seen.
Not Calus as the CEO. He really cares about
the people who work for him. He really wants him to have great careers and all that, but he does not
Hesitate like if he's losing leverage, he'll make a move.
kinda going back to the origin story of A sixteen Z, something you guys were really
Big on was helping founders stay COs, become great COs, not replace them with professional COs.
I wanna I wanna flip this question on you.
When does it actually make sense to replace a CO? When are people not gonna make great COs?
It really the the there's a very consistent thing that happens which is um
Yeah, when somebody doesn't make it.
And it kind of starts with
Confidence is the way I would put it. So
When like if you you're you invent a product
You kind of recruit a team so forth, all of a sudden you're CEO.
Yeah, but y you haven't run a big organization. You don't know how to do that. Like most founders are like
Um
And so
If you don't know what you're doing.
You're gonna make mistakes. And they all make a lot of mistakes.
And then when you make those mistakes
They're very expensive. You know, like they could
Cost you to do a down round, or they could cost you to lose a company, or they could
cost your customer or you know, you screw up the product, like they're very high impact
And not just on you, but everybody who you talked into joining you.
And so that
Kind of motion.
Can really cause you to lose confidence.
Uh and then if you lose confidence.
What happens is you hesitate on the next decision and you know, as we
Talk about like hesitation.
is very dangerous because
One like it.
It locks up the company, but
Even worse.
What happens is if you have
Senior people working for you.
They get very nervous and they feel like they need to jump into that void.
And make the decision for you. And that's when it gets political, like very political, because people are like vying for power.
Inside your little
You know, screwed up company.
And so now you've got a political dysfunctional organization.
And that um
Yeah.
You know, like that's that's generally where like
Okay, the founder probably can't run this thing anymore.
Yeah, that's how it happens. So
Yeah, most of what we do as a firm is to try to
help people with that confidence problem and there's like a whole series of
ideas that we have around that. But that's
You know, you kinda have to somehow climb the confidence and the competency curve together.
It's very hard to do.
Uh
Yeah and yeah, particularly like if you're
an engineer and you're used to getting things right, or if you've been a straight A student or something like that, it's very disconcerting.
I'm sometimes better to have like CEOs who are like C minus students, you know.

Why is that? Yeah, the little facetious like Well like it's just good to be used to filling.
So I think I
I wrote this, but like the the the median on the CEO
Kinda.
Test is like
Eighteen. It's not like ninety.
Mm-hmm.
And so
You gotta be comfortable getting a lot of D minuses.
'Cause the D minus is fine.
You know, as long as you don't get the F, as long as you don't run out of cash, as long as you don't lose all ten.
Yeah.
Okay, like you got through it. Keep going.
You know, and that's
That's a lot of the
The thing that we try to do as CEOs.
Yeah, it comes back to the your
a core, I don't know, message through your first book is just how
much you will fail and how much you will struggle and how much paid you'll go through as CO. Yeah, yeah. And you know, like I mean a lot of why I wrote that book was just to
Normalized that.
I think what happens is
Yeah, particularly you know, when I wrote it and
I I think it's come back and been true now is like the way
the narrative gets written on all these successes is like oh they came up with a genius idea and then they built this
company and they hired all these smart people and it was all great.
But
Like that's not at all how it happens.
Um and you know, I've spent enough time with like
Everybody from like Mart Zuckerberg to Sam Alman and so forth that
Like they all.
go through that same thing that you who has you know your struggling company go through. Like you you screw a lot of things up. And it
They have massive consequences.
Yeah.
But you
You you have to kinda maintain your confidence.
Actually I was at a storytelling event last night and uh we were chat I was chatting with someone that I ran into there and told her I was chatting with you today and she said how
meaningful uh your first book was to her as a founder, exactly as you said, normalizing that it's very hard and painful. And this is just the way it is.
Yeah, and the feeling look, I mean, you know, like if you think about organizational design or
VNO.
Yeah.
Goals and objectives or okay or what well whatever management technique. Like you need like a you know, a basic like eighth grade education to like do any of that stuff. It's uh it's not that complicated.
The difficult part is the
The feeling.
That you have when you have to do it.
Uh
is very well like the hard thing about a a reorg is you're redistributing power, so you're gonna have people really frickin' mad at you.
'Cause somebody's losing power if you do it correctly.
Uh and that person may be like a really good employee.
Dealing with that is the hard thing. Like knowing how the
Organization should work to make communication better. It's not that complex.
Yeah, I think about I was at Airbnb for a long time and just thinking of Brian who
I don't know even know if he had a job before Airbnb. Oh yeah, no, no, no. I spent a lot of time with Brian and he uh after Covid he it all kinda clicked for him.
Um and then he did that he in that good talk on founder mode and so forth, but
The reason that was so articulate is'cause he had screwed every one of those things up.
And you know, he hired
Yeah, T and
you know, all this stuff and you know these are very senior people and
You know, he didn't he wanted us to defer to them, but you can't defer as the CEO.
You know,'cause you know
what Airbnb should be doing, he may know what
fucking finance should do, but you know what Airbnb should do and this kind of thing. And
Yeah, then then it gets
Really wild.
Yeah.
When you
Like you can't defer decisions to SGO and you gotta like understand what people are saying and go, No, we're gonna do this.
And this again comes back to the point of you have to go through the struggle and pain and failure to learn those lessons.
Yeah, no, like I mean uh it's they're really hard to learn
Without
Kind of doing.
And without often like without paying the consequence.
And I you know, like even I like I make mistakes. I I was having a conversation with Ali the other day and I was like he's like
How's it going, Ben? And I was like, Well, you know, like I'm finally dealing
was something that I had put out for
You know, a very long time.
And
He said, Why did you put it off? I said'cause things were going too good.
I didn't have to deal with it. And it's like, yeah.
He said, I know that.
Like a
I'd say Ali is, you know.
One of the
if not the kind of best private company CEO out there. And he's making a mistake. And I'm making a mistake. So like it it's just tough.
You said that one of the maybe the main reason
Founders fail the COs is they lose confidence.
And you had some ideas that you guys have to help.
Founders work through that. Are there a couple you can share how you help? Yeah, yeah. So we do we do a lot of things on that. So the kind of design of the firm is about
Confident. So
The first thing is well
What would give you kinda well, like if you can get stuff done. So if what if a
I could give you
Network.
Yeah, it's as good as Bob Iger's network.
Day one, like the day you step into the job. And so yeah, we have six hundred people at the firm.
And why is that? Well, most of them are building that network for you so you can call
Any CEO.
Or anybody in Washington. Or you know
Kind of.
Any executive or
That kind of thing. And get'em on the phone and they'll talk to you and you can kind of
Deal with that thing.
Uh and then that just makes you feel like a CEO.
And then
You know, we have a lot of people in the firm like myself.
Who you can talk to
On like a CEO to CEO basis, as opposed to an investor to
See our
And
Just kinda feel that.
Bring back in some form this thing called the C O barbecue.
And it was like
You know, a lot of people have these events where like, you know, they bring in speakers and this and that and the other
And I always felt like
Those were one, they were too many days and then sometimes
Yeah, the
what they said wasn't really applicable and that kind of thing.
And so well I said why why don't you just have a barbecue?
And like I would barbecue.
We got everybody in my backyard.
I must five hundred people at the peak, which is why the kind of stuff'cause I couldn't quite get much fooder after that.
And then uh you know, we'd have
Larry Page and Mart Zuckerberg and Pamiere West
And
So you're a CEO in there of Prov you're like wow, like I must be important. I'm here with all these guys and we're just hanging out.
Having a drink, eating barbecue.
Um
And so then when I go back to my company I like I feel like I am somebody and like okay.
I might not be like perfect at all this, but
I am really a CEO.
I was at the CEO barbecue because we're crying out loud and that kind of thing.
And so yeah, that that's
But it's all
The whole idea was always like
Okay.
Do you feel like you can do it?'Cause that's
Yeah, that's half the battery.
Yeah.
And look, having been in
And you know what?
Every CEO has been in a position where they feel like, Well, maybe I shouldn't be the one running this thing. Maybe it's just too big for me.
Yeah.
Bad.
You don't you don't want to go there.
Uh and because as as we said, founders
Can get to the next product.
And that's something that
You know
Almost no professional CEO is able to do. Like there have been rare cases, but very rare.
So clearly you've worked with a lot of companies, a lot of founders.
Let me kinda zoom out a little bit and ask you this question.
What's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned about building companies that goes against common startup wisdom?
Well, you know, the common startup wisdom t keeps changing, isn't it?
Yeah.
Uh like one of the early ones that um
you know, was wrong and kind of Brian articulated it. And then now I think a little bit of what people have gone to is also wrong. So
the the first idea that was wrong was like okay, build uh a team of like senior executives you know what cities you get product market fit as fast as possible and they can scale the thing.
And I think that
You gotta build that team.
Slowly and deliberately kind of pace to your ability to man integrate and then manage them.
Because if you bring in a bunch of senior people and you don't know really
how they match your company or how that function works or so forth, then
You're gonna start deferring.
And once you start deferring
It's gonna get out of control very fast.'Cause they're gonna build empires, they're gonna get political, they're gonna do all that kinda thing. So that was bad advice.
You kind of have to do it in a measured way. I think that
Founder mode I think a lot of people have taken to never hire anybody with experience. And that's also bad advice. Uh
In there.
What?
Somebody who knows how to do something can really accelerate your thing. So very early in
One of the founders, great founder, uh Solong.
Yeah, Databricks was running sales.
I'm like Ali
Like
You're gonna have to hire like
somebody who knows sales, um, PSR Slan's PhD in computer science, like I like that.
But um that that's probably
Not where you're gonna have to start if you're gonna catch these guys.
Before they take spark and like
use it against you.
And
You know, and I sat down with Arsal and I explained why I said look
You know a lot of what s sales there's a lot of knowledge.
in how to build a worldwide sales representation. Maybe knowledge of customers, territories, tip territory splitting, rec profile stuff, there's just like a litany of stuff.
that you really can only learn by doing trial and error.
And
You don't know any.
And so
Like you're phenomenal. Like, let's get you you know, and he's still he's a very senior executive in the company now.
But we need somebody who knows that.
And
The idea that there are companies that go, Okay, we're just not gonna hire that'cause we're in fan remote.
That's also a mistake.
It's more subtle than you think.
Uh and it's more complex than you think.
And so you kinda have to get all the way to the truth and these little snippets of advice that DCs give.
Because they watch some fucking podcasts.
Are all fucking stupid Like it's just it there's a lot of depth to these things. You have to know
The answer to the next question, the next question and the next question.
And
It does drive me crazy, like by the way, fine other things that happened, um
along these lines just to show you how little
You know as an investor about what it means to be CDO.
Uh one of the
We were at a board dinner, one of the CEOs uh says to me, he goes
Or one of my one of our COs says, Hey, you you know, Ben like
That thing you told me a while ago about don't be CEO at home.
Like I I I
Yeah, I I was doing that and I stopped and it really helped me.
And then the other kind of V C said
Yeah, you know, you gotta unplug something.
And I said, I was like, What the fuck are you talking about? He's CEO, he's not on plugin.
Like he's getting shit all the fucking time. Like he's gotta deal with that. Like I was not what I meant. I was like, You can't go home and boss your family around. That's what I meant.
You know, like
So so it's
B
You hear something from like somebody who
But if you haven't done it, you don't even know what that means.
And so then you
kind of then trying to transfer the advice to the next guy. That's not gonna work.
So anyway, so but it's you know, like he he was very innocent, I was don't want to kinda
Uh speak bad of him, but like it
That's how it sounds, right?
But that's not what it is.
That's an amazing story.
Yeah. So the advice partly here is just don't believe everything you see on Twitter and little sound bites of advice. Yeah, I mean like I and I think actual CEOs know it. And that's kind of how like uh people in my profession gonna get a bad wreck because like giving advice
Well that that's not something that you know, but something that you heard is very dangerous, I think.
So speaking of advice that uh you've shared that might be out of date now.
You are famous for writing uh one of the most popular
pieces of literature for product managers. There's a lot of PMs that listen to this podcast called Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager. And if you actually go to that post today,
At the top you say
This document was written fifteen years ago and it's probably not relevant today.
For PMs, I present this merely as an example of a useful training document.
Still people link to it. I actually just link to it as an ex is just like this is something every PM needs to read.
What is it that you think people should maybe not take away from it and what do you think people still should take away from it?
That piece. Yeah, so the reason I wrote it when I wrote it was um
The I had a lot of product managers. And one thing about product management is um
It's a job that's completely different at every company, but like and there is no training for it. So like everybody kind of figures it out how as they go.
And depending on life what's being emphasized
Like they'll get wrapped around the axle on
You know, like if it's enterprise company, okay, well like you know
pitching to customers or like I need to be like really good with the press or I need to
be really good at writing, you know.
The
Product requirements document or that kind of thing.
And none of the those are all like these tasks.
Um but none of those were the job.
Uh
And
What I was trying to get out and good product manager, bad product manager was
The job is
Fundamentally
The leadership job.
And it's a tricky leadership job because
Nobody is actually reporting to you.
So it's like this
Influence how do I
Get people to do what I want.
You know, even though the
I'm not paying'em, I can't fire'em, I can't promote'em, and so forth.
And w which is kind of the essence of like real leadership because if you start to rely on
promotion and firing and so forth for authority, then you you're never gonna be good at being CEO or anything.
So I wanted them to get into the mindset of
Okay.
Your actual job.
is to
Get a product into market that
customers love that's better than anything that anybody else in the world put to market. Like that's your job.
And so to accomplish that job.
You need
engineering to
Understand you with
Clarity. You need to understand engineering with clarity.
You need to have a really good view of the market and the competitors and the technology and so forth.
And you need to kind of put that all together.
And deliver the thing.
And all the other things.
Are tasks that may or m you may or may not need to do. I don't know if you need to do'em.
But
Like the thing is
You know, you have to be the leader. You've got to get the thing done and
And so what I think it's still good on is that like the the mindset.
Like
You know
Be the leader.
Uh
I think
The details of it.
Um
You know, of any kind of
Thing that was
Kind of.
Task specific was like really for my group at Netscape in like nineteen ninety six.

You you know, as a kind of document I read out of frustration.
Uh.
But
I I'm I am glad that the the people still like it.
And
I think leadership in general is
Under
Undervalued, underestimated, um it's a it's the most powerful thing.
Yeah, and and most of the great you know, great companies. Jensen is a great example, like what a phenomenal leader he is, not just of
NVIDIA but of the whole industry.
And he doesn't have authority over the industry, but like he drives it forward.
And that's
And and that's why the good product manager
Bad product manager is so important because
That thing if you learn how to do it, that's the thing.
Uh I didn't realize you wrote that in initially as just an internal document.
And then you missed it.
It was it was kind of before um blogging took off. So it's just an internal thing. Uh and I probably should have later.
It was i I was just getting so mad, you know, uh and by the way, my product management team
at the time was like very good.
Uh very talented people. They just didn't they they just were not getting that concept. So, you know, like David Wyden said.
Coastal Ventures.
Ragu Ragaram, who was v went on to be CO of VMware. I mean like the team was like that team.
Uh
But
They were driving me crazy.
And so I I just I was like I I can't yell at people anymore, I have to like explain myself.
Yeah.
And so
It's a good thing. If you find yourself yelling at people like you probably haven't explained what you want.
Is was the other big takeaway from that.
Do you ever think that piece would be so long lasting and so I don't know. Not till no, I thought I I didn't even know like
I thought it was kind of like aggressive.
When I wrote it. Like you could tell I was mad because I called it good product manager, bad product manager. It's like bad dog, you know.
Bad, bad, bad product manager. That's the that that was kinda the emotion I had, so
Yeah, you know, it's it's kinda shocking.
Yeah, some of the plans that you write.
I I I would say though that's you know, I'm kinda creative and you probably know this.
Like the idea is that you have
Um
The things that you write in five minutes end up being much better than things you write in five weeks, you know, and uh
I I find in talking to
You know
Yeah.
musicians or writers or anybody everybody has that same experience. Like the thing that you've already synthesized so much that you just have to rent it out.
It is uh that's the best stuff.
There's something that you mentioned there in your answer about the PM being the leader.
There's always this kind of sense that the PM
Is not the mini CO, how dare you call yourself that.
I actually think that's exactly what the PM is. They're basically the closest
They're kind of
m job is to think like the CO within the team.
Yeah, people get mad, you know, like you'cause
Everybody
Like this is the whole
challenge of management in general. Like people get jealous over student shit.
But look from from the perspective of the PM
Like it doesn't matter if you write a good spec or you have a good interview or you do this or do that.
Like what matters is that the product range.
And you have to get all the way to there.
And kind of work backwards from that.
And
You can't do that without
Leadership because
It is about it.
We wanna build that and and it you're not necessarily the Christian comes up with every idea or this or that. I mean you're just the keeper of the vision.
You know, and that's true for CEOs too, like
You don't mind every idea in a company coming from the CEO. Like that's I think it's a misunderstanding what a CEO is is why
People don't like that.
They don't know what a CEO is.
But a CEO isn't the one who has every idea, gives every order, does everything that's not the way it works. The way it works is
There's somebody who's gotta consolidate
You know, get all the good ideas.
Prioritize them.
Decide which good ideas we're gonna do.
And then get everybody on the same page so that they have very high fidelity understanding of what that is.
And
Is she you know, so that it is a CEO kinda function. Now it doesn't mean like I'm better than you, it just means that like that's what I'm doing.
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Let's talk about AI. I'm very proud of us. It's been almost an hour. We haven't even mentioned AI. I think that's a record.
Uh okay, so I asked Adam Newman
Uh
We work founder, now Flow Founder, someone you work closely with now.
What to ask you about?
And he said he has some really interesting insights about how AI is impacting hiring.
You know, Adam
is probably the single most controversial investment that we ever made. Like we got
called everything from stupid to sexist to racist to this and that for like like literally just funding that.
He
Um
And
I think it's gonna end up being one of the best investments we ever made. Um, he's doing a phenomenal job there.
But it's
There's an important principle in
In that
Which kind of
We do as a firm which I
Think
Is um
Not
Widely done, but I would love it if people copied it.
Which is
Yeah, it's something I learned um
You know, somewhat from Shaka, which is you
You don't judge a person
By the worst thing that ever happened to them.
Like we've all had bad things happen to us.
We've all made bad decisions. Most of them
They don't make a mini series about.
Right.
And so like to judge him on that
You wanna judge people.

Screwed up.
And
Yeah,'cause that's where you see the talent. I mean if you look at what Adam did well.
It's truly spectacular.
Uh you know, like we work.
Everybody knows how we work it.
A more important commercial real estate brand than
We work like you can't.
Yeah, and so like what an accomplishment.
And then
Yeah, and there were so many things that went into that and and
Yeah, so many things he did right.
And then if you kinda look at really unravel the things
That went wrong.
most of it was like a combination of inexperience and nobody around him
That were telling the truth.
And so like that.
And you know, maybe he wasn't.
Good at listening to the truth either at the time.
Um
But to throw away a guy on that, which is by the way the world was so mad at us for not throwing him away.
For for believing in them.
Um
It's just a it's a big mistake.
And
Uh you know, I credit Mark'cause Mark is the one who
Called him up originally.
And just said, Hey Adam, what are you doing?
Uh'cause like
Yeah, we watched what you did at WeWork and we thought it was pretty impressive.
And so I think that uh
You know that
That's probably
the biggest secret there. It's not really about AI, but I think that
Um look looking
Yeah, you judge a
Al Davis once said, You know, coach players and what they can do.
And I think that's very true. You know, judge people on what they can do.
Um
Yeah.
coach people on what they can do, like help them
Take their strengths and use them as opposed to
overfocus on their weaknesses and just, you know, hand wring about
The one fucking thing they don't know how to do?
Um because look, everybody's uneven.
But it's that like what you're describing, essentially, this is the job of an investor is to find an underappreciated asset and invest or before something people don't see.
Yeah, and I mean I think that it's you know, like
Venture capital is really
About investing in people, right? Like
You know the
Yeah.
You have ideas as an investor, but
Like
what you really are ultimately going on as the entrepreneur.
And the entrepreneur's idea because
Initial ideas and where they end up usually.
It yeah, it changes a lot. Um with with everybody we invest in. So
You know, you kind of have to make the judgment on the person.
And
You know, how you do that.
Is uh
is really, really important. And one of the things we emphasize inside the firm is look, like we're investing in strength.
Not lack of weakness. Like I wanna know like how good it
Like
Are they world class?
They were world class, strength.
And
You know.
Can that be to anybody?
And like the everybody's flawed. And so like let's help them deal with the flaws and you know, surround'em with people who can
Handle that and put the right person on the board.
Who can't
Talk to him like I go to all Adam's board meeting, even though Mark's on the board, I go to all his board meetings because
I'm the one who's good
Yeah, like killing a guy.
Who's that?
Confident.
Um
When he's like, Okay, that's not your best idea, like that's a good role for me.
Uh, but that's how you deal with that. You don't
You know.
throw'em away and go, Oh, okay, like we don't want to be called names, so we're not gonna invest in Adam Newman after we built rework. That's crazy.
It's also why you guys invested in Clue, I imagine. Similar to you, yeah, no, that's right. Like I mean, like if you look at what those guys did.
That was like some like high level marketing genius too. Yeah.
And
Yeah, that that's really something. Plus the product is also.
I'm gonna bring us back to AI. Something that a lot of people are talking about right now while we're recording this is this potential huge bubble we're in with AI.
Sam Altman said we're in a big bubble, which is, you know, that's saying a lot.
I'm curious just how you think that's what is it. What what is it saying?
So you gotta like
First of all, I should qualify this by saying
I'm an investor.
Um
And Sam's a CEO. So CEOs
Have to have much more purpose when they talk.
Investors just have to be entertained.
Um
So
You gotta give Sam credit for
Like
What is it in his interest to say well?
Like if it's a bubble, then
The one thing you should invest in is him.
And not all these guys chasing after him.
Um
So that I I I would say like that's very smart. And then the other thing that's smart about it is
There's nothing that you can say to the press.
That will make them love you more.
than saying all investors and like entrepreneurs chasing this are eight.
They love that.
Because she's gonna
The the press are generally haters.
And so it's just like red meat for the haters, which is
Also super clever.
So I think whether even he believes that or not, that was a super smart thing to say.
I'm so I'll just put it there.
Whereas what I'm gonna say
Um
Won't be as smart.
But it will uh
I I don't really have a
An axe to grind here. I mean I could have an axe to grind and say, Okay, like let's get all the other investors out. I'll say it's a massive bubble.
Oh.
Goodbye.
What I would say about that is um
So the first thing the one thing
About bubbles is
Any time.
Everybody thinks it's a bubble.
It's not a bubble.
Because in order for it to bubble
You need capitulation.
In that you need kinda everybody to believe it's not a bubble because then the prices really go out of control.
But as long as there's people who think it's a bubble.
Then it's hard for that to happen.
It's funny, I had this debate um
And
Uh in the economists
I think with Steve Blank and like
Two thousand
An eleven or twelve when
Everybody thought it was a tech bubble, if you can imagine that.
Which it absolutely was not.
But because there were like fourteen hundred articles saying that we were in a tech bubble.
And yeah, I mean you know where prices were then to compare to where they are now.
And but I knew'cause everybody was saying was a bubble when a bubble like I knew that.
The prices were higher, but the reason the prices were higher
was we're getting to a global market.
AI prices are higher.
And
prior prices.
But if you look at the revenue growth in numbers,
We've not seen anything like it.
The products are working.
Chat J Sam's product worked so amazingly.
We've never seen that before.
Like not not even Google, not not anybody.
And so
Like that's real.
And
Yeah, we have companies
But you know, went from zero to eight hundred million in a year and that kind of thing.
And so it's not a
I would say there's a basis for the prices going up.
First of all.
No.
Will the
The I think the thing that's right about kind of what Sam is saying is
The landscape is early.
Really early.
The technology is very immature.
is amazingly as it works.
Yeah, there's a long way to go to improve it. So
It's very possible, you know, when you have
that much technological change that the positions that these companies have achieved with their high revenue.
Із інстайнба.
And that that you know there will be a competitive
uh change that either kinda
lowers prices or any number one emerges or that kind of thing.
And so th yeah, that's possible, but I I I won't characterize
That as being like a financial bubble.
Uh
In that like if you go back to the
Great dot com bubble that everybody is always waiting for it to happen again, which
I was CEO during
The thing that happened there was very different.
Which is
It was the internet.
And every smart investor knew that the internet was a big deal.
Like how could you not fucking know that the internet was a course, it's a big deal.
But
Like if you go back to nineteen ninety six
At Netscape we had
Ninety percent browser shit.
And we had fifty million.
Users.
There are fifty five million people on the internet in total.
And half of those were on dialogue.
So
And then to build a product
Like Evite.
The greeting card company.
Had three hundred engineers.
That's how hard it was to build this stuff.
And
So the math didn't work. And the math didn't work on any of
Those ideas.
And
But the investors kept pouring money in.
And then eventually, you know.
Um
Everybody went bankrupt because there was no revenue coming in. And like when they figured that out, then nobody would invest in anything. And of course
Then everybody realized, well, the internet was actually real.
And Paul Krugman didn't know what he's talking about and
Like it was gonna be a big thing.
And then Facebook and Google and all these things emerge.
But
The thing that
made in a bubble was like
The unit economics didn't work, the businesses didn't work, like these businesses are all work.
And they're being priced appropriately for how they're growing.
So that's not an effect.
So the the thing that you could say is
They're not gonna keep growing like that.
Or like and so forth.
And
I'm not sure about that. Like the products, like I said, are working so much better than any technology product that we've ever built has worked.
Like it's just mind blowing.
How good this stuff is.
And so
I don't know. I I if I had to bet, I would bet not a bubble.
Uh yeah, there I think there will be some dislocation. I think companies that
I think
The always in venture capital if you've got like a run like this, then the great company and the
Crap company both get funded.
But
Yeah, that's just
That's just venture capital, that's not a bubble.
four founders starting companies these days, when you look into the future of the AI industry.
Say in five, ten years. How do you
How do you think things will play out, slash, where do you think the biggest opportunities are remaining? Where are you guys looking to invest most?
In infrastructure um
I I think that you know like there is obviously like a real estate power cooling play. Um
Yeah, I I think that's a little outside of
you know, kind of hardcore technology investing that we do.
But there's another layer which is like who can run
You know, take a given open source model.
Who can run it?
The cheapest
Um
With
the kind of lowest latency.
And that's gonna be extremely valuable, like whoever has stack.
Uh and you know, Google has been historically very good at that and so forth.
Um and I Sam is really trying to build that.
Um now a stargate.
And so I think that's gonna be a very important layer of value.
I think that you know, on the foundation model side, you have to be very selective as an investor. So
In order to compete in foundational model world, our basic rule of thumb is
You have to be able to, you know, without
Much product product.
progress phrase at least two billion dollars.'Cause that's basically what it's gonna cost you to
Train something that gets you competitive enough to make money.
Um
And they're just very few founders like that. Uh
So Ilya is one of those
Yeah, Mirror's one of those.
Um Fei Fei is one of those, but like
That's the kind of class of person you need and there's
You know whatever, there's certainly less than ten of those in the world.
And so that that that's kind of like an important area.
But a small area
Uh.
Amen.
I think the application
layer is gonna be very, very interesting. And I think that
Yeah, if you look at
Sam, like he's making most of his money off Chat GPT, almost all his money off Chat GPT now. And Chat GPT is like
You know, I
It looks like it's got a real
Like it or not, it's got a real moat. It's very hard to knock it off. It's perched. There's a lot of
Yeah, everybody's taking a shot at it. People great distribution like Google and
Yeah, I'm.
And Zuckerberg and everybody and like


So
I think the applications are both
More complex.
And
Yeah, kinda stickier than people thought they were originally.
People got very wrong as this whole thin wrapper around GPT.
Like
That's
Really bad.
In fact, here's how wrong it is.
Back in the eighty's
There that same phrase was used, but it was
Then wrap her around an R D DMS.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it meant
Companies like Salesforce.
were basically just a pin wrapper.
And I think that that's kind of the mistake people made. So like we're at this company Cursor and if you look
And the camera is in Paris here.
They've built like fourteen different models.
to really understand
Um
how a developer works like a high end like a
A real developer.
And
They have
That those models have tons and tons of interactions with how people
Talk.
to their friend Cursor about how they should
design their programming so forth.
And that's like real. That's not
That's not just a thin layer on a foundation model. And I think there are many, many applications like that.
Yeah.
And
And and so I I I think there's gonna be a lot of opportunity at the application layer. There's gonna be some opportunity at the foundation model, and of course you can invest in Sam, you can invest in
And throughout and so forth and
As well, um
But there will probably be like a very small number of companies that
Set and then a
Almost unlimited number of companies at the application layer.
And then
You know, as the technology advances, we'll of course see more things with embodied AI. I mean already
You know, autonomous cars are working.
Like really well now.
Um after a long long, long, long time since I give they've been
Sebastian when the uh
The challenge and
Two thousand and six when he drove the self driving car across the country.
Um and
We're here we are twenty years later and now they're deployed. So that was a long time.
Uh robots I think is a harder problem than self depth driving cars.
So
We'll see how that goes. Um, but uh
Yeah, there there's certainly a lot in that world as well.
Well
Okay. There's a lot to this answer.
Something that now that was ex exactly what I was looking for.
The cursor example, it's something that comes up a lot on this podcast in the application layer specifically. The uh
thought that the way to win in this space and to build a moat is
As you said, build your own model slash have proprietary data that you build.
Through people using your product.
Thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean I think that's
ends up just being what's required. So it turns out that um
The universe is long tailed and is fat tailed.
And humans are very fat tailed.
In terms of human behavior.
Human conversation.
And so forth.
So to get to the real meaning of it.
And to get to the
kind of essence of the problem.
You know, in any domain uh turns out to be I think more complex than we thought.
And so like the early things and
You know.
People were running around uh
Say okay, there's gonna be one big brain to rule them all and these kinds of things. Uh
That's kinda not played out yet.
Uh
And
And in fact, like if you look underneath the covers
You have LLMs which have generalized pretty
You know, like in fascinating ways.
But
They've kind of also asymptoted in that um
You know, we we have run out of data.
For the most part. And so
If you look at
The G P T five L. M compared to the GPT four one and how much more it costs to train and so forth, like it's
Yeah, it it's definitely not going linear anymore.
On the other hand, uh reinforcement learning side has been linear, but it doesn't generalize. So
If you build a great
Uh
Programming model.
It may be an idiot at mat.
And so that
I think it's just very different than what
people would have said three years ago.
And I think that's
Kind of, you know, that there's not something that's both scaling and generalizing yet.
And yeah, maybe we'll get there, but
Yeah.
Certainly opens the door to
Something that's more user friendly, that's more effective in
In a number of domains.
than just the basic foundation model infrastructure. Now those models are incredibly important and they're
And I think
Open AI is probably
eighty percent of the revenue in AI or something like that now. Like it's that's it. So that foundation model is really, really important.
Um and then the like the the the the basic consumer app is really, really important.
Um that just answers
Whatever the hell you want to know. Like the
Those things are like
Very, very real.
But I do think you know particularly
And then if you get into like enterprise stuff.
And then it's no longer internet data, it's their data.
That becomes very different on like Databricks's
Having
A lot of success there because
Okay.
Well, once you're inside a company, guess what, Light, you care about access control.
That's hard.
With in AI world.
Who has access to that information, who doesn't, and so forth.
Um you have semantic issues. So
If you look at an enterprise
Yeah.
Fine ten enterprises, they all have a different definition of what a customer means.
Like you would think customer is a basic thing.
Well, is it a department at A T T? Is it A T and T?
Is it like a person at ATT? Is like what the hell is the customer?
And it turns out to be very, very, very meaningful.
Uh, particularly if you're trying to um figure out like important games like churn and this and that and third.
So like that kind of stuff matters. So it's so it it
I I would just say like the the problem spaces
A lot.
Bigger than you can just attack with a basic foundation model.
Um currently, you know, maybe that will change.
And like if that changes then
Certain prices will have in retrospect look
Way inflated and others
Will look, you know, too low.
But
Mm.
Yeah.
That is Tig B Dig.
So a big takeaway from this is that there's still tons of opportunity for founders to start companies.
Building AI products.
I think so. I mean you can solve so many everything that we couldn't solve with software, we can solve now almost. So
It's a really big world.
Yeah, isn't it?
And it's funny, you know, like'cause we're investors in in Waymo and uh
One of the things when you get into like
What
Took so long to make Buenos
This so safe like they are now?
It wasn't the things that everybody reported on the podcast. It wasn't sleep.
And you know, heavy rain and
It was sh peep.
It was like the human.
Who was dragging seventy five in the twenty five zone.
It was very hard for the AI to anticipate because it was rare.
But important.
Um and the number of rare, important crazy shit that humans do.
Is very high.
Mm.
And I think that that goes for all of AI.
Um so to make things work really well you have to understand this this very kind of
Fat tail.
Of human behavior.
Along this AI thread, something that is really important to you clearly, something you talk a lot about is is
the US being successful in
AI and be and leading the world in AI.
Why is it so important? Why is something you spend all that time on?
It starts with
Uh I think my view of the US.
Uh
And its role in the world. So

My personal view is like it's very, very, very important

society to be completely fair because it's not going to be completely fair or or completely equal,'cause we've never had one that's been completely equal.
But it's important that
Everybody have a chance.
um at life, you know, and particularly
Uh
You you know, kinda both culturally, but also just like you you can't advance the world if
You know, you can't
Tap into all of your
Resources.
And so if you kinda take away your motivation and and these kinds of things, you need you get into trouble.
And if you look at the kind of
every country today and and the th this is by the way um
So you want like the right amount of decentralized power.
Um
You know, you don't want it to be completely concentrated. Concentrated power makes it very, very difficult for everybody to have a chance. This is the big
kind of lesson of communism over the last hundred years is it turned out, right?
And and you know, we still have politicians selling it this way.
Today it's like oh it's power to the people.
No no no. It's
power to you because you're removing all power from the private sector and installing it into the government.
And then you're putting yourself in charge of the government.
And so I become extremely powerful.
And this is why it didn't matter if it was Mao.
Or pole pot.
Or Chochescu.
Or Stalin.
Everybody died.
Because when you give anybody that much power
Nobody has a chance.
There is no incentive.
Uh there's no carrot, there's only stick.
Yeah, and so use that stick.
And that's just the nature it's a systems problem. It's not a person problem. It's not Starin's evil. Chachesco's evil. It was like
That system is evil.
Uh and that's a chick saying with fascism, right? Be it Hitler or Mussolini, it doesn't matter, like that level of power.
Is evil.
Um
And the US does the best job.
Systematically, it's the best system.
It's got all kinds of issues, it's got problems, people always try to defeat it.
But you know, one of the things that um
You know, if you look at kind of
The
declaration of independence or the constitution like the the language is very important.
You know, it's we hold these truths to be self evident. What does that mean?
It means they're start my work.
Exactly.
The president's role.
It's God's
And so those rules are above the president.
And then you work in that context.
And that
That distributes power.
Because you're under the law.
Not under the person.
And we see that, you know, now even with Europe where
Europe is kind of the leaders are going, Well
I have a rule.
It's
You can't say certain things or I'll throw you in jail.
And
The kind of shield they hide behind as well, like we have to keep the kids it.
But if you say something that I don't agree with
And the kids hear it, they're not safe, right? Like so you the the the
Kind of. Um
transited property of bullshit.
Like is gonna override.
And so it's really important that we have at least like one society.
And as flawed as we are, as flawed as the US is it's still the best, and you can see it by the number of new company creations, the number of new ideas have come out of here and so forth.
Um
It's really, really important.
Yeah.
The US kind of
stays important and powerful.
In the world.
And we know from the last century, if you look at the last century
Who are the countries that had economic
Power.
Military power.
Cultural power.
You were the ones that industrialized.
Yeah, and the ones that industrial is first and best, and the ones that didn't
became coming, right? Like you know, Russia, China, like
They they were slow on industrialization.
And they fell into this very frecking dangerous
Uh system.
Looking forward, that's gonna happen again, but it's going to be AI.
Yeah.
So it is kind of fundamentally important not just to like America but to humanity.
Yeah.
America succeed at that. You know, like we don't have to be the
one winner or this or that.
But we do have to be like in that tier.
I and you know, as I go around the world and travel
I can't tell you everybody and and and everybody was getting, by the way, very, very worried about us. Uh
Earlier. Um
And they say, Look, we need you to succeed. You know, don't destroy the dollar, don't
Like
Fall behind AI. Don't overregulate it too early. Don't do do these things, please,'cause
We need you to win.
Like,'cause we're all like counting on that.
Uh
Yeah.
And I think it's um
It's the most important work that we do.
It's why we're so involved in polish and and and so forth.
Um I think this is also
you know, very gonna be very very true with crypto, which ends up being
And then
incredibly important networking technology that complements AI.
Uh.
And uh
Yeah, and so that's uh I
Yeah, and that's the thing.
Yeah, that work is I would say beyond for the money like that's
Yeah.
Although like we will end up making a lot of money with the right policies. Like so I don't wanna like seem totally philanthropic on this.
But
But it's more important then.
It's it's certainly
more important than us succeeding or anything like that. That that
A country succeed.
Speaking of
Philanthropic and other passions of yours, something that I don't think
most people know about you and I think we'll give them another
insight into how interesting you are.
You uh run an organization called Paid in Full.
Which uh is incredibly cool.
Talk about what that's about, why this is so important to you.
Well we kind of our our ethos as a firm is um
Kind of
Uh well it's something from nothing.
Um, you know, like that this is a greatness of entrepreneurship. You start with nothing and then you you make something really important.
And um
Yeah, that that kind of that that is also how hip hop started, where you have like a bunch of kids
Who didn't even have instruments. Um
And they kinda created something out of nothing and and the people in that world always talk about that.
And you know, one of the really unfortunate things that uh
happens is the people kind of who invent the art form. And certainly in the case of hip hop.
D
get anywhere near the kind of proportional benefit.
of their invention.
And a lot of the guys
Uh you know, people have forgotten about or you know, are kinda
struggling to make ends meet and so forth. So what we created was this thing called the paid and full
Foundation.
Named after uh
The right cameric, B sign.
Which I did call
Rock Kim and ask him for permission to use the name, so read it to him.
Yeah, what we do is we give
Essentially pensions to the old rappers. Um
that enable them to kind of continue their work.
Uh and then we have a big
event.
Go to Paiden Full Foundation dot org free tickets. Which is amazing.
Um where they kinda
Get the award and uh
Yeah, and they're celebrated by all their peers sh and so forth, and it's really
Phenomenal.
But yeah, so some of the awardees have been uh Rockem
Um scarface.
Uh
From the ghetto boys, um
Right, San Chante, Grandmaster Kaz, Krumod.
This year we're honoring uh
George Clinton for being sampled.
Cool G Rap and Graham Puba.
I'm and also uh Jaliel from
Uh Houdini. Um
And it's just
It's very I I can't even describe how high impact it is on these guys. I mean
I think Ra Kim was touring close to two hundred nights a year and he got his award and
came out with his first album in fifteen years and is doing amazingly well and all of a sudden
You know, everybody's going, Oh yeah, that's the greatest rapper of all time. So like they're finally going back and
Remembering
All the things he did. Uh Brock San Chante.
I mean nobody had mentioned her in years and years and years and
I think six months after we gave her the award and the Grammys gave her a lifetime achievement award, which is amazing. So
It's uh it's super high impact. It's a great
Then, you know, as a hip hop fan, I see dream come true, so
Silver.
What is what's the origin story of you in hip hop? I imagine many people look at you and wouldn't
Imagine you ha you s these records behind you, Nas gifted you.
You uh you're so deep into the community. Just how did this all begin?
Well, so there's I actually wrote a blog post on it called The Legend of the Blind M C uh which I think would be uh if you're really interested.
It's worth reading, but it is kind of a
Story of me uh becoming a rapper.
And um
And like how that occurred and how it went and so forth. But uh
You know like I always say the very short story is
Yeah, I was in New York when uh
At the birth of hip hop.
And where it can break. When it really became big
Kinda.
Eighty four through eighty eight.
And
Yeah, it's just the most exciting thing.
Yeah, to see a new art form kind of.
Pack out.
And the creativity and everything.
You know once music kind of becomes mainstream.
I I would take it's very shaped by business.
And like in the early days there's no
Yeah, everybody's just coming out with whatever idea they have and so forth. And so
There's
The early days of rock and roll were like that. The early days of jazz were like that. So
I see now even more why you guys uh brought on Eric Dornberg.
Uh, beyond his many talents, he's also really big into rap.
Himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to that that's a good reminder. I need to make sure he gets to pay for.

Ben, this was incredible. Yeah.
Is there anything else that you want to leave listeners with or share before we get to our very exciting
Quick lightning round.
Uh
Yeah, I mean uh
I would just say on you know, like if you're a
CO listening to this can
No the
Like
How you feel about yourself is gonna end up
meaning as much as anything. And so like
Take your time on that.

Don't uh
Yeah, like self evaluation is the one of my favorite quotes is um that when Maryland saw me a select players no
Yeah.
There no from this day on no credit will be given for
Predicting rain, only credit for building an arc.
And I think that's more true.
For a CEOs then anybody, you know, you you have to build arc. Like it doesn't matter, like if you predict you're gonna fail, you still fail. It doesn't it it gets you nothing.
Um so what you have to do is flip.
Figure your way out of it.
Um and spend all your time on that.
Well
With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? Yes, sir.
First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people, not including your own books?
Yeah, so two got um
I learned a lot from her w one is the weirdest people in the world.
Uh which um
It's a kind of big history book, but through an anthropological kind of cultural lens.
And
It's really fascinating. Explains an awful lot about like how society works and how little
Changes in the rules completely change the culture. Um
You know, one of the things that
He he basically endeavors to explain, okay, why did the West get ahead on the w rest of the world.
Um
And it kinda comes down to like a weird
anomaly with the Catholic Church where they've kind of enforced
um monogamous marriage.
And it turns out that the natural state of humans is polygamy.
Um, but the problem with polygamy is there's no cooperation among men.
Um which is a problem.
Uh
And
As a result
Uh and then everything is secret, so there's no shared there's no sharing of knowledge.
Uh,'cause it's all kept in the family.
And what he calls kin based culture.
It leads to something called pin based culture.
And like even recipes won't be shared.
If you're in a kin based culture,'cause it's a secret.
Um so you can't build science, you can't build cities, you can't build big companies, um
And you know, so because the West kind of enforced
Broad monogamous marriage early.
it was able to kind of evolve into all these things. And he kinda shows why and how
He does these psychological tests today with people from kind of
Monogamous cul marriage culture, kind of like Western culture.
And kin based culture.
And the psychology is completely different.
And he gives examples like um
Yeah, if a person murders another person.
Is that still murder if that person who did the murder is your brother?

Society, yeah, that's a murder.
In kin based culture, it's not a murderer.
It's just not


And so
Like that's really different.
And so like morality is different, like everything kinda comes off of that. So it's just a fascinating fascinating book.
Yeah.
Sna
That's one. Um
I I say you know, another book that I recommend a lot is Shaq's book
Uh his first book, Writing by Rhines. He has a new book that I think is better.
Which is called How to Be Free.
Uh so I'm gonna start it's not quite out I think or maybe it's releasing it's releasing like next month, so I recommend it. So
What it does is it goes through like how did he
work his way out of
prison in solitary confinement to his current
Psychology.
And what are the techniques you used? And it's um
They're very powerful.
Very powerful idea.
CEO's always asking like how do you deal with it? Like how do you deal with it, you know?
And it's like what are you talking about? No work life balance for seats.
Um
Or particularly like entrepreneurial COs, like come on.
But
Pleasure.
What do you do? Do you meditate, do you do this or that? But he kinda goes through the things that we really ought to do.
So there
That's what I would recommend if somebody's wondering like how do you deal
With all this pressure.
I love this uh just the whole idea of Shaka being this
Uh help
Someone that
Killed someone, went to prison, led a prison gang.
Uh I just love that how valuable it was.
Sorry for getting into this, but I'm not going to be able to
The problem with running Christen gang is
You're just dealing with
People who
All come from broken culture.
Right.
In any organization like the
Fundamental thing is trust.
And so you're y you're bringing in a bunch of no trust people.
And so
You can.
And like in it's kind of like a military organization. It's a gang. And if you think about a
Military operation. If you don't have trust, people don't trust the order.
then you're completely dysfunctional.
So how do you
Build trust from zero.
is a very interesting problem.
And he's a genius at that, by the way. Uh and
You know, I learned a lot.
Uh from kinda
So like that
From a management standpoint it's a
I would just say it's an important
Kind of
A boundary case.
Of how you build culture.
And uh so I
He is very, very smart at that.
I mean, I think it's a little bit more.
You you have to look at people
About
You know, their greatness not not the worst thing they ever did.
I I know there's a lightning ram, but uh can you just share one example of something you did that was like, wow, that's a really good lesson for someone trying to
Create a good culture.
That worked for him.
Yeah, so like one of the things that he did that that I thought was um
Really.
Smart is
Well I did a couple things.
He just made everybody
Eat lunch together.
In the game.

Rapport, relationship, trust, like it's all in one thing.
We're all together on that. And I think, you know, like particularly
in like remote world world and so forth, people really underestimate how powerful like just that idea.
Can be.
And then you know another thing he did is he
He made kind of like
Morality
You know, hi he had
kind of very specific things about
You know, if you
You you have to be good to your word.
Internally and externally.
Um and so normally again you want like you know, like I said, it's kinda a kin based culture thing.
But it made it much more powerful.
When he said luck.
Like
You
You can't do Dious like
Shit outside the game either.
Um
And he he had a bunch of examples of that.
That I went through in the book, but
It's a very um
Like it like I said, because you're building it from zero.
you really t have to take a hard line
On things that I think people in companies don't even take a hard line on, like.
You know, is it okay to lie?
Internally probably not. Is it okay to lie to a customer? Well, in some organizations it is.
Um, but like in Shaka's organization, like that's as big a cutting as line internally.
And
And and these things I think end up being really important.
We're gonna link to this book. This is uh What You Do is Who You Are This is your second book that fewer people know about.
And this is one of the stories you tell and just what the lessons are. I think people don't
You kinda have to survive to want to care about dealing with the cultural issues.
Yeah.
The survival book has a bigger audience.
Yeah.
Amazing. Okay, uh we're gonna keep going with Lightning Round. Is there a favorite recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed?
Yeah, so uh on T V I really like slow voices, which is like uh
So about the MI six came at cast offs.
Um guys.
Amen.
I you know, I haven't seen a lot of movies lately, but I watched centers that went to the uh
Theater for
Center is in it.
I mean the just the cinematography is
Unbelievable and the story is really original.
And the acting is incredible and the costumes are amazing. So it's it's just like a great
Kind of.
comprehensive piece of work.
The craftsmanship on that thing is just a lot beyond
What most people making movies are doing these days, so
I I I really enjoyed that.
Mm. Yeah, I hate scary movies, but I I watched it and loved it.
Yeah, it wasn't that scary. It wasn't that scary, but still, you know, zombies popping out of corners. Yeah, yeah. Not not my gem usually.
Yeah.
Is there a product you recently discovered that you really love? It could be a gadget, it could be clothes, could be something else.
I bought a coffee machine called the Technorm
Mokomasser which is
Freaking incredible.
In fact uh
A friend of mine saw it and I was like, What is that? and I just bought it for him too,'cause it's so awesome.
It like this thing makes coffee.
Yeah.
It's just like perfect.
Like there's no bitterness, it's completely clean.
To make it like
Only problem with that is I can't drink.
Coffee that it doesn't make anymore.
Which I mean, I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, but
Well, that might be. That might come out someday in the AI future.
Yeah, yeah. Uh two more questions.
One, do you have a is there like motto that you often come back to find really useful in work or life?
The thing that
I would say has had the biggest impact on me is something my father said to me years ago, um, which is life
Is unfair.
And
That that seems like really, really simple, but I think that
Um
The thing that
Defeats people.
more than any other thing that I've seen just in life is the expectation of some fairness.
Uh
You know, like it's just not fair.
And
There are like
All kinds of stuff that are gonna happen to you that
Yet.
And it happened to everybody. Um
Yeah.
Don't happen to other people that are
Completely unfair. But it doesn't matter,'cause that's the way it is.
And as s soon as you get that idea out of your mind
Um
Then you can just deal with it. Like, Oh yeah, of course it's not fair, but I'm gonna what should I do now?
Which is the real question, not how do I go back.
And get people to be fair.
'Cause nobody's gonna be fair.
It's not fair.
It's the nature of it. If you think about it for more than five seconds, you'll realize that.
And I think a lot of uh
You know, and it's as an individual, like if you want to make the world a better place, whatever. But
For as an individual.
Do not expect anything to be fair. It'll only defeat
Final question. This comes from Shaka, actually. Uh he gave me so many great suggestions. I had to save this one for last.
Okay, so the question is if you had to build a business curriculum
From two hip hop albums.
And one funk album.
What would they be and what?
I think
Probably
Follow the leader.
Um
By Rackham. I thought that was so
And and and the reason is kind of uh
What we had kind of
Gotten.
Into
earlier which is um
Leadership so when he came out with that
song which was by you know maybe the greatest hip hop song ever written.
You know, he's telling people to like follow him.
Um you know, follow the leader.
Uh and
Just to have the idea that he was the leader of the entire art form, not just
You know, his band.
It isn't a like amazing idea.
Um
And and then the way he expressed it was incredible.
And then he's got uh
He's got
Okay, great.
Concepts in there.
Um that would give you like it's hard to listen to that record not have confidence.
I think
From a like competitive purely competitive standpoint, still Matic?
Um
From Nas. I mean that's one with Ether.
That's the one with uh get yourself a gun, that's the one with you to man. It's kind of like
All of like
The idea of competition is kind of encapsulated on that.
In that album. So that that would be the other one.
Uh
And then funk.
Oh, for one nation under groove, for sure.
Because it's kind of like
This is
Uh
How did you
Initiate
People
Into like
A concept or an idea.
And
And

Like one nation under a groove is all about joining the nation.
Um
And like it's
So musically interesting and and kinda getting people to be part of that. That is probably
I don't know.
Incredible. I'm gonna go listen to these. Ben, final question, where how can listeners be useful to you?
If you get something that makes you better, please take it. If you need kind of more advice on it, let me know.
But um look my job is to help everybody
Build something great.
So if you're if you're an entrepreneur, um thank you for that.
Uh also check out Paid in Full Paidin' Full Foundation dot org if you want to learn more about that nonprofit. Yeah, definitely. We would love to have you.
Amazing. Ben. Thank you so much for being here. All right, awesome. Thank you, Lenny.
Bye everyone.
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