The Exchanges

Q I'm excited, but I want to start today, and for those that maybe didn't get a chance to listen to round one, tell me, Phil, how did you make your first foray into startups, and now come to found All Turtles today?

A Wow, well, I think I started my first company when I was in high school, and I've been finding it difficult to hold down a job, you know, ever since, for about 25 years or so, uh, so I've made, uh, Made the first serious startup in kind of 97, and sold it 20 minutes before the first dot-com crash, and then, uh, pulled the same team together for a second one, and then, uh, we all moved over to Evernote, uh, I was the co-founder and CEO of Evernote for about nine years, and then after that, kind of decided I was done with being a CEO, and thought I wanted to be a VC for the rest of my life, and so I was lucky enough to, uh, get a job as a managing director at General Catalyst, where I stayed for two years before deciding that, uh, you know, investing wasn't actually, didn't actually feel like a real job, so I needed to go and do it again, and then started All Turtles.

AI assessment note: “Made the first serious startup in kind of 97... and then started All Turtles.”

Q Do you think all software could be botified?

A Well, all probably could be. I think the question is, you know, should they be? And no, I don't think all software should be botified. I think, I kind of think there's going to be two classes of things. Uh, there's going to be authoring and creation tools, like the stuff that you use to actually make things and author things. And those will probably still be, you know, bespoke, rich, uh, uh, UXs. Uh, so they'll still be, you know, Photoshop. Like, I don't think, I don't think photographers, uh, illustrators aren't going to be like illustrating their next design by telling a bot what they wanted in natural language. They're still going to be CAD tools. They're still going to be Excel or something like Excel for financial modeling. When you're actually creating these, you know, complex ideas and thoughts and entities, you'll still be authoring them in authoring tools, but I think almost everything else, at least in business, will go, will become conversational, will become a bot. So my guess is about 50% of what we use as consumers will become conversational, botified, and about 80% of what we do at work. Uh, I think that's the opportunity.

AI assessment note: “Well, all probably could be. I think the question is, you know, should they be?”

Q Do you think all software could be botified?

A Well, all probably could be. I think the question is, you know, should they be? And no, I don't think all software should be botified. I think, I kind of think there's going to be two classes of things. Uh, there's going to be authoring and creation tools, like the stuff that you use to actually make things and author things. And those will probably still be, you know, bespoke, rich, uh, uh, UXs. Uh, so they'll still be, you know, Photoshop. Like, I don't think, I don't think photographers, uh, illustrators aren't going to be like illustrating their next design by telling a bot what they wanted in natural language. They're still going to be CAD tools. They're still going to be Excel or something like Excel for financial modeling. When you're actually creating these, you know, complex ideas and thoughts and entities, you'll still be authoring them in authoring tools, but I think almost everything else, at least in business, will go, will become conversational, will become a bot. So my guess is about 50% of what we use as consumers will become conversational, botified, and about 80% of what we do at work. Uh, I think that's the opportunity.

AI assessment note: “Well, all probably could be. I think the question is, you know, should they be?”

Q That would be a tragedy. Uh, but taking all of that into account, kind of the, the one remaining thing for me to ask on the bot sphere is, If the big question for me is what kind of will the transition to bots and, and conversational interfaces, will it represent a major point of disruption or more an evolution in kind of the interface paradigm?

A I think it's a major point of disruption. I think that the single biggest change is going to be for the, for the past few decades, uh, almost all of our interactions with technology have been, uh, one person interacting with some system. So it's been like you using Microsoft Word or you using Twitter or Or like you pushing the buttons in your VCR. It's been like one person, one technology. I think what the real future of bots is that whole paradigm gets broken, and now it's going to be more about you and I having a conversation. You're talking to other humans, and there's bots that participate in the conversation and add structure to it. This is, like, it's hard to imagine a more fundamental change in how we deal with technology, where instead of having this, like, custom bespoke paradigm where, like, I'm poking at something, the technology is there, it's present, and it participates in a conversation Among multiple humans. Yeah, it's hard for me to see how that isn't completely, like, completely disruptive Of a lot of current things.

AI assessment note: “I think it's a major point of disruption.”

Q What are your big productivity tips and tools? Obviously we will use Evernote. That is the must.

A Uh, thank you. Boy, uh, I've got lots of things that I've just kind of started that I've been doing for years that really help out. A really quick one is, uh, I don't work on airplanes. I made this arbitrary rule where I will not work on an airplane. Uh, I, you know, I, I sleep, I read, I play video games, I watch movies, but I, I refuse to work, and that makes me, like, look forward to long flights. Like, I've got a 13 hour flight coming up in a couple of days, and I'm, like, giddy with excitement, because I know I'm gonna spend that 13 hours, like, reading sci-fi and, and, and, and watching movies, and, like, I never get a chance to do that. Makes me look forward to travel.

AI assessment note: “A really quick one is, uh, I don't work on airplanes.”

Q want to deep dive on that. And I want to start by asking bots aren't new, but they've been around for many years. So why have we seen this sudden explosion of excitement? Uh, when I saw you in particular in February in San Francisco, it seemed to be the only thing anyone cared about. And, and so why have we seen this sudden explosion in the space just now?

A Well, I think the hype cycle and the excitement isn't really the same as, as important progress. And so it's hard for me to predict when, when things get hyped, what that cycle is like. I don't really Focus too much on that. I do think there's a lot of genuinely really important work being done, uh, in the bot space. Um, you know, we have a package, kind of a basket of fundamental technologies that have each gone from being early and academic to, uh, just getting good enough where now they can be combined in commercial ways. Uh, and I think this is, this is kind of always how technology works. You know, you, uh, the, the things that make up bot ecosystem are, uh, advances in, uh, natural language processing, in AI, in messaging, in voice, both text to speech and speech to text. And all of these things have been around for decades, but just in the past, let's say, They kind of all crossed over to the point where they're now good enough, where you can combine them, like a good general purpose engineering team can now combine these fundamental technologies into new products, and so you see exponential growth, what people are working on. And I think it's the same exact thing that happened with apps, you know, back when we started Evernote in 2007, 2008. Same kind of thing, you know, the fundamental technologies that made apps so explosive in oh eight were, you know, smartphones, mo…

AI assessment note: “fundamental technologies that have each gone from being early and academic to, uh, just getting good enough”

Q Do you find it difficult to delegate? So like, it sounds awful, but I find it difficult to delegate, say, with the media company, because bluntly, it sounds terribly arrogant, but I know my own company well, obviously. Like, I don't feel other people can do things as well as I can, so I just struggle so much. How do you get over that?

A I mean, there's your problem, Harry. That's it. You just said it. I can help you with this. This is founder of therapy, man. You just gave away the answer, right? The answer is, you know that you can do things better. Than the other people on your team. So never hire someone whose job you can do better than them. Only hire people, only surround yourself with people that are ridiculously better than you or that are superior to you in their job or other things as much as possible. Like always be the worst person at any given job in your company. And if you do that, then you have no problem delegating. Like I have no problem delegating because I know that whoever I, like everyone who's doing their job, if they got to be in our company, it's because they are ridiculously better at their job in I'm, I'm decent at a bunch of jobs, but obviously everyone that actually works with me as a professional is much better than I am. So if I delegate, if I micromanage, the outcome is just going to be worse because not the best person did it. So yeah, it all just comes down to like knowing that the job of the CEO is to kind of be the worst person in the company at any given function or else, you know, or else you're doing it wrong.

AI assessment note: “if you do that, then you have no problem delegating.”

Q Can I ask what's been the most effective there? You know, I speak to a lot of founders and they're like, should we do hackathons? Should we go into colleges and do sponsored events? How should we really expand our network and get the most talented people in? In terms of, like, effective processes, insights that you have from expanding that network, what's worked?

A You spend money on it. I mean, for businesses, you pretty much, it all comes down to the same tool, which is money. So if you're not spending money on it, you're not serious about it. So we spend money on recruiters and we specifically tell recruiters that we are paying you money to send us people that are outside of our comfort zones and outside of our networks, because we know plenty of, you know, middle-aged white dudes. And so there's going to be no shortage of, you know, just people that I went to college with, people that I'm friends with, like they're all going to be in the network anyway. We're talking to all these people. So if we're going to pay recruiters above and beyond that, we specifically want to pay recruiters to send us candidates that we wouldn't otherwise be seeing. It works. You know, it's a business. You, you pay money, you get good service.

AI assessment note: “we spend money on recruiters and we specifically tell recruiters”

Q Can I ask, I think often a hard thing in leadership is like the weight of one's words. You say something in a meeting and suddenly three weeks later it's done and, you know, it's been executed on and it's easy to forget the weight of one's words with team members, especially as kind of an Experience leader. How do you think about that, given what you just said?

A I try to tell people that work with me that, um, it's not your job to do what I say. It's your job to do the right thing. And sometimes, hopefully, you know, more frequently than not, if I say something, maybe I'm pointing things to the right direction, but sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I'm just wrong. Often I'm just wrong. You don't get credit for, like, doing what I've said to do if the outcome isn't great. And the flip side of that is you get massive credit For, like, not doing what I've asked for, if it turns out to be the right thing. In fact, much more credit than, you know, that, like I said before, like, my favorite thing in the world is when the team does something that I was not involved with that comes out, you know, amazingly good. So, you know, like, there are no points for following instructions. There's only points for, for succeeding, for doing the right stuff, and we try to just have a culture that, that, like, that is what's expected. And some of that is having a little bit of humility about saying, like, look, just because I'm, like, speaking confidently about something doesn't mean I'm right. That's just like a, That's just an old vaudeville move. Like I can, I speak confidently about things and wave my hands around. It doesn't mean I'm actually correct about it at all. What's important is what's going to be the end result, not what our intentions are. And I …

AI assessment note: “it's not your job to do what I say. It's your job to do the right thing.”

Q amazing experience with Hamelon. He's awesome. Speaking of kind of How you think? I spoke to Chris O'Neill, who obviously was at Evernote also, and he said Phil sees the world differently to 99% of us. Talk to me, what do you think he meant by that? And how do you think about the ideation process, the creation process, and really kind of seeing the world differently, as he mentioned?

A That's a good question. I think part of, probably, one of the things that I do that, that a lot of people don't is, again, I try not to be infatuated with my own thoughts. I think that's actually a very common thing in other cultures, but in, in, in Western cultures, particularly in the U S we are so indoctrinated from an early age about how like our opinions and our thoughts are magical and privileged and like amazing. And everyone has an opinion and everyone is like your thoughts and preferences are important. You know, modern sort of ad based micro targeted businesses have just, have just made that infinitely worse. And so we all like, we were all told every day about how our opinions matter. Actually, they don't that much. And like the people they should matter the least to is ourselves. So I think like, Maybe the thing that I just kind of woke up to one day is this idea that, yeah, just because I believe something strongly doesn't actually make it any more or less likely to be accurate or true than if some random person in the street believed in it strongly. I should question it the same way and just, you know, not be infatuated with myself. At least I try.

AI assessment note: “one of the things that I do that, that a lot of people don't is, again, I try not to be infatuated with my own thoughts”

Q Tell me, what would you most like to change about the Silicon Valley tech scene?

A I think the Silicon Valley part of it, which I think is changing. I think that's, like, the good news behind the recent changes, is that I think it's fundamentally unfair that exceptional talent, like, Mozart-level brilliant, exceptional talent is very, very rare in the world, but it's evenly distributed, and, but opportunity isn't, and so it is bad for the world that, uh, so much of the opportunity for crazy, exceptionally talented, creative, out-of-the-box thinkers is concentrated in the 50 miles around Stanford, in San Francisco. I think that it's great for this area, but in terms of the overall talent that is able to be realized in the world and change the world, it's bad, and so I think the, uh, The thing that I would like to change about the Silicon Valley tech scene is the Silicon Valley part of it. I really want it to be more distributed and more global, and therefore, 10,000 times larger.

AI assessment note: “The thing that I would like to change... is the Silicon Valley part of it.”

Q Can I ask what's been the most effective there? You know, I speak to a lot of founders and they're like, should we do hackathons? Should we go into colleges and do sponsored events? How should we really expand our network and get the most talented people in? In terms of, like, effective processes, insights that you have from expanding that network, what's worked?

A You spend money on it. I mean, for businesses, you pretty much, it all comes down to the same tool, which is money. So if you're not spending money on it, you're not serious about it. So we spend money on recruiters and we specifically tell recruiters that we are paying you money to send us people that are outside of our comfort zones and outside of our networks, because we know plenty of, you know, middle-aged white dudes. And so there's going to be no shortage of, you know, just people that I went to college with, people that I'm friends with, like they're all going to be in the network anyway. We're talking to all these people. So if we're going to pay recruiters above and beyond that, we specifically want to pay recruiters to send us candidates that we wouldn't otherwise be seeing. It works. You know, it's a business. You, you pay money, you get good service.

AI assessment note: “we spend money on recruiters and we specifically tell recruiters that we are paying you”

Q Do you find it difficult to delegate? So like, it sounds awful, but I find it difficult to delegate, say, with the media company, because bluntly, it sounds terribly arrogant, but I know my own company well, obviously. Like, I don't feel other people can do things as well as I can, so I just struggle so much. How do you get over that?

A I mean, there's your problem, Harry. That's it. You just said it. I can help you with this. This is founder of therapy, man. You just gave away the answer, right? The answer is, you know that you can do things better. Than the other people on your team. So never hire someone whose job you can do better than them. Only hire people, only surround yourself with people that are ridiculously better than you or that are superior to you in their job or other things as much as possible. Like always be the worst person at any given job in your company. And if you do that, then you have no problem delegating. Like I have no problem delegating because I know that whoever I, like everyone who's doing their job, if they got to be in our company, it's because they are ridiculously better at their job in I'm, I'm decent at a bunch of jobs, but obviously everyone that actually works with me as a professional is much better than I am. So if I delegate, if I micromanage, the outcome is just going to be worse because not the best person did it. So yeah, it all just comes down to like knowing that the job of the CEO is to kind of be the worst person in the company at any given function or else, you know, or else you're doing it wrong.

AI assessment note: “never hire someone whose job you can do better than them”

Q Can I ask, I think often a hard thing in leadership is like the weight of one's words. You say something in a meeting and suddenly three weeks later it's done and, you know, it's been executed on and it's easy to forget the weight of one's words with team members, especially as kind of an Experience leader. How do you think about that, given what you just said?

A I try to tell people that work with me that, um, it's not your job to do what I say. It's your job to do the right thing. And sometimes, hopefully, you know, more frequently than not, if I say something, maybe I'm pointing things to the right direction, but sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I'm just wrong. Often I'm just wrong. You don't get credit for, like, doing what I've said to do if the outcome isn't great. And the flip side of that is you get massive credit For, like, not doing what I've asked for, if it turns out to be the right thing. In fact, much more credit than, you know, that, like I said before, like, my favorite thing in the world is when the team does something that I was not involved with that comes out, you know, amazingly good. So, you know, like, there are no points for following instructions. There's only points for, for succeeding, for doing the right stuff, and we try to just have a culture that, that, like, that is what's expected. And some of that is having a little bit of humility about saying, like, look, just because I'm, like, speaking confidently about something doesn't mean I'm right. That's just like a, That's just an old vaudeville move. Like I can, I speak confidently about things and wave my hands around. It doesn't mean I'm actually correct about it at all. What's important is what's going to be the end result, not what our intentions are. And I …

AI assessment note: “it's not your job to do what I say. It's your job to do the right thing.”

Q almost kind of the informal gathering. When does one have to start placing structure around it? Because, you know, you've raised the, the, I think, thirty-one million dollar round recently, like, and with the scaling of funds and scaling of orgs, When does one have to go from, you know, social gathering, informal, incredibly talented people to a much more kind of hierarchical organization, or a much more structured organization?

A Yeah, structured. Not necessarily hierarchical, but structured. I think really fast, especially around, you know, hiring. One of the many things that are wrong with startups is, uh, startups are all about shortcuts. All of the incentives are to take as many shortcuts as you can. The biggest shortcut that you can take is just hiring your friends, and this is a really Figuring out how to be more disciplined around, around hiring, around retention is really a day one thing. So we've, we've tried to be, this is one of the founding principles of Behind All Turtles, behind the product studio that Mhmmm came out of, is that we, we take the team building very seriously. So yeah, we have all sorts of processes in place to try to get good outcomes, try to make sure that we can keep working with people that we know are really fantastic, But we're always looking for new people who are outside of our core social networks, outside of our connections, and we have to make sure that we are working with people who aren't just our friends and people we went to college with.

AI assessment note: “I think really fast, especially around, you know, hiring... really a day one thing.”

Q Now, as CEO, as we said, for over 20 years and multiple different companies, there must have been some shit hit the fan moments. How do you personally deal with shit hit the fan moments, and what's that coping mechanism?

A Paradoxically, like, those are often the easiest psychologically, so moments of clarity are relatively simple and stress-free, and so when things are sharply going wrong, it's actually the part of the job that's, in many ways, the simplest, because you know what you have to do, and then you just do it. And you have like, you have one major objective. The objective is clear. And even if it's dire, it's still like, it's not necessarily complex. And so that, that clarity, that simplicity is actually refreshing and energizing. And in fact, like I feel much more stress and just about every CEO I know feels much more stress when things are going generally okay, because then you've got 10,000 things to work on. And then you got to like decide like, well, is the basket of things that I worked on today? Are those the right things? I don't know. Like things are kind of going okay. And when you're, when you're facing an existential But looking back, you were like, yeah, that was the best time ever. So I actually don't mind the moments of clarity that emergencies induce. The best thing to do is to have a plan for known emergencies. It's really good to have a plan beforehand, just so that you're not deciding the plan of action when it happens. So thinking ahead and knowing, okay, what are we going to do if we get hacked? What are we going to do if a important employee dies? You know, what a…

AI assessment note: “The best thing to do is to have a plan for known emergencies.”

Q No, I do completely agree with you there. As I said, I spoke to Nico before the show about AllTurtles and the exciting progress that you're making. Let's kick off with that, because we maybe jumped a step talking about going global from day one. So kicking off with that, what fundamentally is AllTurtles?

A We make AI products, and we make AI products in multiple places in the world. In, right now, in San Francisco, in Tokyo, in Paris. Everything we work on has a few things in common. Basically, we only work on things that solve real problems. By which I mean problems that you can actually describe as a problem statement and actually point to the real human beings or companies that feel these problems and quantify the impact of the problems. And we only work on things where we have a proposed solution that is possible for the first time ever, like something that we can solve this year in a way that would have been completely impossible, you know, even three years ago, because something has changed in the world because some new technology, some new platform or some other major trend has happened. So we basically want to work on things that are mainstream possible and For the first time in the history of the universe, and do that in a way that's repeatable, that's scalable, that's on time, that's on budget, and that's global.

AI assessment note: “We make AI products, and we make AI products in multiple places in the world.”

Q that is such a brilliant and succinct description of a phenomenal career. I do have two subsequent questions to ask. You mentioned selling before the crash there. I'm always, having honestly never lived and worked through one in a working career, I'm always really intrigued. How did seeing the crash and seeing the boom and bust cycle firsthand, how did that affect how you operate and think about scaling companies?

A Well, uh, it kind of made me realize that I didn't really care that much about what, what state the market was in at any given time. I always kind of sort of suspected it, and this just reinforced it, uh, kind of going through the crash of 2000, and then again, the crash in, uh, you know, 2007, 2008, and kind of always having companies at that time looking, you know, either raising money or operating stuff. I just kind of confirm my suspicions that I don't really care about what the rest of the market is doing right now. You have to be generally aware of it to not make any stupid mistakes, but for the most part, a good idea one year is still a good idea, regardless of whether the market is up or down.

AI assessment note: “made me realize that I didn't really care that much about what state the market was in”

Q Eli Gill and Avichal Gog said on the show that the thing that will always Keep Silicon Valley's dominance is the tribal knowledge of the people that scale billion-dollar companies multiple times across the ecosystem, and it's that tribal knowledge that will retain that kind of crown. How do you think about that and kind of the importance of the tribal knowledge and kind of its effect on the decentralization?

A I don't think it's important. I think the Silicon Valley model and the kind of the VC-centered Silicon Valley model has been pretty effective at serving its own needs. It's been pretty effective at Capturing a lot of value and basically distributing to a small group of insiders. I think it's been singularly ineffective as a vehicle to actually make innovation worldwide. I think it's kind of kept the rest of the world down. So yeah, there's structural advantages that Silicon Valley has managed to carve out for itself, but those advantages aren't good for the world or for innovation. They're just like self-serving good for Silicon Valley, and they're becoming less and less important because of a lot of platform work that, well, honestly, Silicon Valley companies have done because of Apple and Google and Amazon. I guess Amazon's probably not technically Silicon Valley. These companies have really worked to make what used to be the kind of tribal knowledge, the inherent advantages of Silicon Valley, much less important because you don't need to do most of these things. You just use the new platforms to make the product that you want to make.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it's important.”

Q No, I do completely agree with you there. As I said, I spoke to Nico before the show about AllTurtles and the exciting progress that you're making. Let's kick off with that, because we maybe jumped a step talking about going global from day one. So kicking off with that, what fundamentally is AllTurtles?

A We make AI products, and we make AI products in multiple places in the world. In, right now, in San Francisco, in Tokyo, in Paris. Everything we work on has a few things in common. Basically, we only work on things that solve real problems. By which I mean problems that you can actually describe as a problem statement and actually point to the real human beings or companies that feel these problems and quantify the impact of the problems. And we only work on things where we have a proposed solution that is possible for the first time ever, like something that we can solve this year in a way that would have been completely impossible, you know, even three years ago, because something has changed in the world because some new technology, some new platform or some other major trend has happened. So we basically want to work on things that are mainstream possible and For the first time in the history of the universe, and do that in a way that's repeatable, that's scalable, that's on time, that's on budget, and that's global.

AI assessment note: “We make AI products, and we make AI products in multiple places in the world.”

Q that is such a brilliant and succinct description of a phenomenal career. I do have two subsequent questions to ask. You mentioned selling before the crash there. I'm always, having honestly never lived and worked through one in a working career, I'm always really intrigued. How did seeing the crash and seeing the boom and bust cycle firsthand, how did that affect how you operate and think about scaling companies?

A Well, uh, it kind of made me realize that I didn't really care that much about what, what state the market was in at any given time. I always kind of sort of suspected it, and this just reinforced it, uh, kind of going through the crash of 2000, and then again, the crash in, uh, you know, 2007, 2008, and kind of always having companies at that time looking, you know, either raising money or operating stuff. I just kind of confirm my suspicions that I don't really care about what the rest of the market is doing right now. You have to be generally aware of it to not make any stupid mistakes, but for the most part, a good idea one year is still a good idea, regardless of whether the market is up or down.

AI assessment note: “it kind of made me realize that I didn't really care that much about what state the market was in”

Q Eli Gill and Avichal Gog said on the show that the thing that will always Keep Silicon Valley's dominance is the tribal knowledge of the people that scale billion-dollar companies multiple times across the ecosystem, and it's that tribal knowledge that will retain that kind of crown. How do you think about that and kind of the importance of the tribal knowledge and kind of its effect on the decentralization?

A I don't think it's important. I think the Silicon Valley model and the kind of the VC-centered Silicon Valley model has been pretty effective at serving its own needs. It's been pretty effective at Capturing a lot of value and basically distributing to a small group of insiders. I think it's been singularly ineffective as a vehicle to actually make innovation worldwide. I think it's kind of kept the rest of the world down. So yeah, there's structural advantages that Silicon Valley has managed to carve out for itself, but those advantages aren't good for the world or for innovation. They're just like self-serving good for Silicon Valley, and they're becoming less and less important because of a lot of platform work that, well, honestly, Silicon Valley companies have done because of Apple and Google and Amazon. I guess Amazon's probably not technically Silicon Valley. These companies have really worked to make what used to be the kind of tribal knowledge, the inherent advantages of Silicon Valley, much less important because you don't need to do most of these things. You just use the new platforms to make the product that you want to make.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it's important. I think the Silicon Valley model”

Q I mean, I'm just so tempted now. You said you've got your sights set on something much bigger. I'd love to ask, what does success look like for you with AllTurtles, and what, what is that sight for you, so to speak?

A The TLDR of this is, uh, we're just building Netflix. Like, AllTurtles is meant to be like Netflix. We want to attract the most talented, the most creative people in our industry. We want to create and distribute really innovative products, and we want to do this globally. We want to do this in We make tech products. Our model is very much Netflix for tech. And you know, that sounds like a little bit like a flippant analogy, but it actually holds a lot more water than, than even I originally thought it would. You can take this pretty far. It's obviously imperfect, but you can take it pretty far. So the vision is, you know, in five years, we'll be in eight different cities. We're in three. Now we're opening up the fourth one next year. We'll be in eight cities, eight world cities, each one working on a number of very practical products that solve real problems, producing them on a schedule, producing them on budget, working with the best local people. And doing the, the actual production and the distribution of them.

AI assessment note: “So the vision is, you know, in five years, we'll be in eight different cities.”

Q With such exciting opportunities and massive markets ahead, why do you think we're not there yet Then in terms of kind of conversational box, what are, what are the kind of barriers that are preventing this mass proliferation of box?

A Well, I think, uh, there just haven't been very many good ones shipped. You know, this is, I kind of compare this to the early days of apps. You know, I remember in, uh, I would go to all these panels and shows for app makers because it was like starting to be a really popular thing. And I remember I was on this panel in New York city for like top apps and there was three apps on the panel. It was me. It was the guy who made, uh, I fart. And it was, uh, the guy who made the Obama, 2008 campaign app. And like, that was the spectrum of apps. It was like the fart app, Evernote and the Obama app. And like all three of us were, you know, taking questions about making apps and kind of what it was like. And this was very, very early days. Most of the stuff was frankly low quality, but there were already people who were like, saw the potential and who were doing really kind of amazing things. Uh, and I think bots are the same way. It's like right now, most bots are, uh, You know, they're just gimmicks. They're toys. They're developers playing around. Or even worse, they're just app ideas that have been botified for no good reason. But you'll start to see native bots coming out, you know, in the next few months. I think you're already starting to see them. These are experiences that could only happen conversationally that aren't app replacements that actually do something meaningful. An…

AI assessment note: “Well, I think, uh, there just haven't been very many good ones shipped.”

Q And then Nico also asked, what were the biggest surprises that you maybe didn't expect about the, the move and the transition onto the dark side?

A Oh, so much sitting around, so much email. I had sort of like, I'd kind of stopped sitting, uh, and I stopped doing email almost entirely. Like for the past few years of my life, like I had very, very slight contact with email, you know, kind of surrounded by the circle of people that I work with. So there's a lot of in-person communication, a lot of messaging, and it was just kind of like a shock, like how much, how much sitting in meetings and how much going through email there was at, uh, at VC. That was probably my biggest, my biggest negative surprise. The biggest positive surprise is like how amazing all of the big picture things are, how I can, how it's my job to learn about really cool things and how people that are Building amazing things want to talk to me and want to tell me what they're working on. All of the really important things are 10 times better than I imagined they would be. And a lot, a bunch of the minor things are frustrating, but small stuff's frustrating, big stuff's amazing.

AI assessment note: “That was probably my biggest, my biggest negative surprise. The biggest positive surprise”

Q What's your biggest strength and then your biggest weakness, 30 seconds on each?

A The nicest thing that anyone's ever said about me that's kind of resonated is that I, I try to see inherent conflicts of interest and alignments and just avoid them, like, way before they happen, which I think is, I think that, that sounds true. At least I'd like to believe that about myself, that I can, like, I can structure things to avoid persistent, long-term conflicts of interest of People and other entities pulling in different directions, and I think you, you get a lot further if you don't have structural conflict from the beginning. My biggest weakness? I don't know. It's probably the arms. I just have, like, pretty poor upper body strength. Like, if I had to hang from a helicopter in an action movie, I couldn't do it. I was like, I don't think I could hang from a helicopter for more than, like, two seconds, so I would, I would not survive the action scenes.

AI assessment note: “It's probably the arms. I just have, like, pretty poor upper body strength.”

Q amazing experience with Hamelon. He's awesome. Speaking of kind of How you think? I spoke to Chris O'Neill, who obviously was at Evernote also, and he said Phil sees the world differently to 99% of us. Talk to me, what do you think he meant by that? And how do you think about the ideation process, the creation process, and really kind of seeing the world differently, as he mentioned?

A That's a good question. I think part of, probably, one of the things that I do that, that a lot of people don't is, again, I try not to be infatuated with my own thoughts. I think that's actually a very common thing in other cultures, but in, in, in Western cultures, particularly in the U S we are so indoctrinated from an early age about how like our opinions and our thoughts are magical and privileged and like amazing. And everyone has an opinion and everyone is like your thoughts and preferences are important. You know, modern sort of ad based micro targeted businesses have just, have just made that infinitely worse. And so we all like, we were all told every day about how our opinions matter. Actually, they don't that much. And like the people they should matter the least to is ourselves. So I think like, Maybe the thing that I just kind of woke up to one day is this idea that, yeah, just because I believe something strongly doesn't actually make it any more or less likely to be accurate or true than if some random person in the street believed in it strongly. I should question it the same way and just, you know, not be infatuated with myself. At least I try.

AI assessment note: “I try not to be infatuated with my own thoughts.”

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 What are your big productivity tips and tools? Obviously we will use Evernote. That is the must.

A Uh, thank you. Boy, uh, I've got lots of things that I've just kind of started that I've been doing for years that really help out. A really quick one is, uh, I don't work on airplanes. I made this arbitrary rule where I will not work on an airplane. Uh, I, you know, I, I sleep, I read, I play video games, I watch movies, but I, I refuse to work, and that makes me, like, look forward to long flights. Like, I've got a 13 hour flight coming up in a couple of days, and I'm, like, giddy with excitement, because I know I'm gonna spend that 13 hours, like, reading sci-fi and, and, and, and watching movies, and, like, I never get a chance to do that. Makes me look forward to travel.

AI assessment note: “A really quick one is, uh, I don't work on airplanes.”

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”