The Exchanges

Q No, I, I love that response. I do have to pick up on one element there. You said about kind of the very definition of companies that are changing fundamentally. How do you think about the company of the future? Is that a completely decentralized workforce? Is that one where there's no hierarchy at all? Paint the picture. How do you envision company evolution as the kind of structure itself?

A Look, the whole concept of companies is getting outdated, and it's going to start with startups. The concept of a startup is kind of a stupid concept. Think about it like this. Think about other industries. Like, let's say that you happen to be one of the most exceptionally talented, you know, naturally gifted musicians alive today. You know, let's say you are Mozart level brilliant, you know, one in a million musical prodigy. You don't have to make a music company to reach an audience. You just play, and the platforms have been created over the past couple of decades, like YouTube, where you just play, and if you're that exceptionally good, you're going to reach billions of people. If you're one of the most exceptionally talented writers in the world today, you don't have to start a writing company. You just write, and the platforms are created. If you're one of the most talented filmmakers, if you're a, you know, brilliant young student graduating from film school, and you have this, like, burning obsession with a TV show that you, that you want to make, you don't want, you don't think about, like, starting your own film studio. You start about, like, Like people in the world and you've got this like burning idea for a product that you want to make, you know, you're one in a million most talented product people. You have to make a small company first. The first step that you …

AI assessment note: “the whole concept of companies is getting outdated, and it's going to start with startups”

Q I love the wall of jello. I do have to ask, I love stories. Is there a story of maybe an inflection point that's changed how you act as a CEO itself and kind of what was that story?

A There's been lots of these points in over 20 years, and I was never actually motivated to be CEO. I'm not primarily motivated by starting companies. I'm not motivated by being in charge. That's kind of a misperception, I think, that some people have. I'm motivated by making things, and if the best way to make something is to, you know, join a group that's already making it and contribute to that, that'd be great. That'd be my preference. Often, the things that I wanted to make, like, no one else was actually actively working on. Probably my biggest realization was It kind of came at Evernote. It came towards, you know, when we started getting to that large size, which is just that the core job of a CEO is just to, like, you just have to repeat yourself over and over and over again. You just have to say the same thing for what feels like literally a thousand times, even though it's may only be a hundred times, but it's the constant over communication. Like you have to communicate to the point where it feels like deeply wrong and unnatural to you and that you're saying it way too much. And people must be rolling their eyes at half when you're repeating it. And like, if you don't have the feeling that you're like, Saying the same thing way more frequently than you ought to, then you're not saying it nearly frequently enough. Kind of my major, I think, breakthrough.

AI assessment note: “Probably my biggest realization was It kind of came at Evernote.”

Q No, I, I love that response. I do have to pick up on one element there. You said about kind of the very definition of companies that are changing fundamentally. How do you think about the company of the future? Is that a completely decentralized workforce? Is that one where there's no hierarchy at all? Paint the picture. How do you envision company evolution as the kind of structure itself?

A Look, the whole concept of companies is getting outdated, and it's going to start with startups. The concept of a startup is kind of a stupid concept. Think about it like this. Think about other industries. Like, let's say that you happen to be one of the most exceptionally talented, you know, naturally gifted musicians alive today. You know, let's say you are Mozart level brilliant, you know, one in a million musical prodigy. You don't have to make a music company to reach an audience. You just play, and the platforms have been created over the past couple of decades, like YouTube, where you just play, and if you're that exceptionally good, you're going to reach billions of people. If you're one of the most exceptionally talented writers in the world today, you don't have to start a writing company. You just write, and the platforms are created. If you're one of the most talented filmmakers, if you're a, you know, brilliant young student graduating from film school, and you have this, like, burning obsession with a TV show that you, that you want to make, you don't want, you don't think about, like, starting your own film studio. You start about, like, Like people in the world and you've got this like burning idea for a product that you want to make, you know, you're one in a million most talented product people. You have to make a small company first. The first step that you …

AI assessment note: “the whole concept of companies is getting outdated, and it's going to start with startups.”

Q What's been one of the biggest inflection points in your career of, of your self-development?

A You know, I've actually never thought about my career. This is, this is really when I first had an inkling that I probably shouldn't be the CEO of Evernote. Like when we got too big, it's when I started having like constant career talk with, with employees. And I just like, I didn't know what they were saying. It's, it's sort of an alien concept to me that you kind of think about, well, first I'll do this and then I'll do this and then I'll kind of get promoted this way. It's a very important thing. And there needs to be people who are really good at that. And obviously running a big company, that needs to be your primary skill. But I don't think about it like that. I've always just been on this quest, and that's what I still see myself on now.

AI assessment note: “when I first had an inkling that I probably shouldn't be the CEO of Evernote”

Q And I'm talking about the team at GC. I do have a question from one of your partners, Nico, who introduced us and he asked three questions. So sorry for the rep, Petition here, But he asked first, what were the biggest from your incredible time operating with Evernote, and how does that lend now to you being a better VC?

A Well, I decided, um, I think to kind of structure my life now so that people wouldn't have to tell me to, uh, to focus. So like I get to tell other people to focus and, and I could work on, on a basket of things. And that was kind of the biggest eyeopening thing was, you know, when you're running a company, it really is all about focus. And so People were constantly telling me to focus, you know, investors, board members, everyone else. I always, I was always doing a lot of stuff, and there was a lot of interesting stuff, but I always felt vaguely guilty about, uh, you know, just going off and learning about something cool, or meeting great entrepreneurs, because I always had to tie everything back to what was best for the company, and when I, when I did focus, that's when, when things went great, you know, when I worked on things that were interesting, but not directly a hundred percent in line with what was right for the company, you know, things went kind of sideways, and it's, Pretty, uh, pretty great to be in a position where, you know, I get to tell other people, boy, you really need to focus now. Uh, and, uh, and I can kind of do what I want. Um, so the realization of that was a big, big takeaway.

AI assessment note: “when you're running a company, it really is all about focus.”

Q I think quite strongly that, you know, there's so many different specific feature requests and verticals that need to be built out. We're going to see this kind of generation of unbundling Zoom for musical instrument instructors, to fitness teachers, to meditation guides, you name it. Like, how do you think about the unbundling of Zoom, and do you think that will happen, or do you think it won't happen?

A So I don't think we know, because I think we are right now in the beginning of a multi-trillion dollar restructuring of the world that, to me, feels bigger than, you know, when I started my first company, it was a company called Engine Five. You're one of the first dot-com companies. It was, like, right at the beginning of, like, the commercial internet being everywhere. And I remember getting into the debates with people in 97, where people would say, well, what percentage of companies do you think are going to be on the internet? And some people were like, we think 25% of companies are going to be on the internet. And other people were like, that's crazy. It won't be more than two percent. And we were like, we think it's going to be a hundred percent. And you know, it was a hundred percent. It took like a decade, but a hundred percent of close to a hundred percent of all organizations, like we wound up getting on the internet and that wound up transforming absolutely everything about everything. And now the same thing is happening with video where nine months ago in the before times, like what percentage of every school, hospital, church, restaurant, big enterprise, small company store, what percentage of all of them had to conduct important parts of their business over video?

AI assessment note: “So I don't think we know, because I think we are right now in the beginning”

Q What is the largest role of a CEO then?

A But also that assumes, that whole answer assumes that the goal is to keep growing, which is, like, one of the central problems of the company and VC model. How many products have I personally killed because they couldn't grow fast enough, even though they were, like, perfectly good and virtuous and satisfactory at their scale? Like, why start with the assumption that everything needs to grow? But it isn't any longer. It isn't how Netflix thinks. Like the whole idea of getting out of the hit-driven mentality is kind of a core part to modernizing and industrializing the industry. I think any CEO You have to make sure you have the right people and you have to make sure there's enough money in the bank. Those are the three things you have to do. No one else is effectively going to do them. It's always those three things. Anything else you do is kind of a bonus, but you know, you got to set the vision. You got to make sure the right people are around you. You got to have enough money in the bank and the skills that are required to do that change dramatically from stage to stage in the company. So right at the beginning, when, if you're making a small startup, like you still need to do those three things, but you know, setting the vision is basically creating something out of whole cloth, Getting the right people, unfortunately, in the early days often just means like calling your fr…

AI assessment note: “You got to set the vision. You got to make sure the right people”

Q do want to move a little bit more, though, to mm-hmm, and to the market around mm-hmm. And so, I want to specifically ask around, like, and I spoke to Naomi, I spoke to Chris, I spoke to Roloff, and they all said about this, which is, like, ask about Consumer application usage versus business application usage. How do you see the two differing usage patterns and where fits in?

A I kind of love that question because I think it highlights a, a method of inquiry, a way that we think we gain knowledge, which is on the one hand, like very well developed and very useful. And on the other hand, like completely inadequate to most things, which is the differences, like analyzing the differences. How is B to B different from B to C? You know, how are Product managers different from project managers. How are, you know, dogs different from cats? And you definitely learn a lot by looking at the differences, but I actually think very often, like, you learn more by looking at the similarities and understanding why are they the same? So, like, if you reframe that question as, like, well, how is consumer business the same as an enterprise business? Like, that's kind of interesting, and why is it the same? What are the things that, like, make it go the same way? Like, why have we arbitrarily drawn these dividing lines between things? This is like a very Western way of understanding. This is like the, you know, you can learn a little bit about a frog by dissecting it, but you can learn a lot more about frogs by not dissecting them. You can, like, learn a lot more about frogs by, like, going and hanging out with some frogs, and we just don't do that a lot. Like, so much of our analytics, stats, metrics, you know, what people teach in business school and science is really …

AI assessment note: “if you reframe that question as, like, well, how is consumer business the same”