The Exchanges

Q Do you think you can reduce defense budgets, so when you have the global conflicts that we have today?

A Uh, yes. Right. I mean, it's not, we, we spend, like, if you said, where should DOGE focus? The answer is, actually, in fact, there's a lot of massive misspending within the Department of Defense. Now, part of that is not just the Department of Defense's fault. Let's take a specific. We should not be building aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers themselves cost billions, The planes on them are more billions. They put, you know, thousands of American lives on them, and in the modern world, you have to, like, sure, an aircraft carrier is great for bullying sedan, right, which is not a particularly good use of billions of dollars military. In a real conflict, a one or two hypersonic missiles, which are like two million dollars each, can take out an aircraft carrier. If you said, what should I be doing to save money in American events? It's like, let's stop building aircraft carriers. But of course, part of the political reason that doesn't happen is because the states and Congress people, like, one of the things that happens frequently is the Department of Defense says, well, we should stop these programs, and Congress says, no, we're continuing them, because this is where, you know, you're spending money in our district is. And that's the kind of thing that if Doge had guts, they would go to, right? But, you know, that's a difficult political target.

AI assessment note: “Uh, yes. Right... there's a lot of massive misspending within the Department of Defense.”

Q I don't have any. Honestly, I lost them years ago. Um, okay. I totally get you there. I think that's super interesting, and I'm glad on the competition element. Um, I, I do have to ask, you know, when you think back to your time with OpenAI, and on the board there, what are one or two of your biggest takeaways?

A You know, one of the things that was very interesting, and I think Sam doesn't get enough credit for this, Um, Sam was very, uh, very much wanted to have a board that was separate governance from himself. A lot of founders tend to set up as, no, the board is my rubber stamp vehicle. I'm in control. I'm doing this stuff. And, and part of that, for example, was when Elon had announced to the company that he was leaving and not financing it anymore, and, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, and, you know, Sam called me, and I said, look, I'll cover the salaries, and on, and he asked me if he joined the board, and I said, yes, I'll join the board. And so then, um, he said, well, will you come to a fireside chat? Because the company does, you know, only a few people here know you. Will you do that? I was like, sure, of course. You know, they, they should get to know me, and we should have mutual trust. And literally, one of the questions that Sam asked me that he hadn't prepared me for is, is we were sitting in this, in this, in this, you know, entire company meeting, and he says, so what happens if I'm not doing my job well? And I'm like, well, I would work with you to try to improve it. He said, no, well, what happens if I keep not doing my job well? I'm like, okay, well, then I would fire you. He's like, okay, great. I'm like, you just asked me in front of the whole company, would I f…

AI assessment note: “Sam was very, uh, very much wanted to have a board that was separate governance”

Q I don't have any. Honestly, I lost them years ago. Um, okay. I totally get you there. I think that's super interesting, and I'm glad on the competition element. Um, I, I do have to ask, you know, when you think back to your time with OpenAI, and on the board there, what are one or two of your biggest takeaways?

A You know, one of the things that was very interesting, and I think Sam doesn't get enough credit for this, Um, Sam was very, uh, very much wanted to have a board that was separate governance from himself. A lot of founders tend to set up as, no, the board is my rubber stamp vehicle. I'm in control. I'm doing this stuff. And, and part of that, for example, was when Elon had announced to the company that he was leaving and not financing it anymore, and, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, and, you know, Sam called me, and I said, look, I'll cover the salaries, and on, and he asked me if he joined the board, and I said, yes, I'll join the board. And so then, um, he said, well, will you come to a fireside chat? Because the company does, you know, only a few people here know you. Will you do that? I was like, sure, of course. You know, they, they should get to know me, and we should have mutual trust. And literally, one of the questions that Sam asked me that he hadn't prepared me for is, is we were sitting in this, in this, in this, you know, entire company meeting, and he says, so what happens if I'm not doing my job well? And I'm like, well, I would work with you to try to improve it. He said, no, well, what happens if I keep not doing my job well? I'm like, okay, well, then I would fire you. He's like, okay, great. I'm like, you just asked me in front of the whole company, would I f…

AI assessment note: “Sam was very, uh, very much wanted to have a board that was separate governance”

Q Can I ask, do you not think that that only really works when you are Andreessen and you have 200 people and it's like, it's almost a core job of your firm, not investing in many ways. Do you know, for me, I'm like, recruiting is so specialized. Having talent teams is only good if you have 50 in. Is that fair of me or not?

A Well, actually, it just depends on how you do it. And I think the way we do it is we have a network approach versus just a recruit. Recruiting approach. And to give you an example, when we were talking to Kevin Systrom about investing in Instagram, and they were 13 employees, and they said, well, what's their major pain point in terms of how they operated? We said, okay, great. Because we have this network of recruiting and engineer, we'll actually go to the network, and we'll find two or three people that will have serious, like, conversations with you and possibly join. And literally, in three days, we had two, and then the fourth day, we had a third engineer that was interviewing them. They said, these people are amazing, and those people joined. And then like, you know, like substantially increase it. So it actually, in fact, is your operational throwaway, your strength of how you deploy the network, not necessarily the size of the operation, but you have to design it with that in mind, right? So like, for example, as I understand it, the Andreessen pattern tends to be more like, oh, we have recruiter, and then we'll put our recruiter into your company with you. That's not how we operate. We actually are running networks. Like we have a whole university recruiting program that we run for all of our portfolio, not like, oh, we're trying to recruit just for Aurora.

AI assessment note: “it just depends on how you do it. And I think the way we do it”

Q So many things I want to unpack there. Uh, we mentioned kind of, uh, AI. What does Elon's political ascendancy mean for the future of AI?

A Well, it's a little unclear. It kind of depends on what he, how he chooses to use his, uh, time and focus. So if his time and focus was, let's make sure that Um, all of the kind of players in US industry are, uh, greatly amplified, like availability of power, uh, and, and the creation of new data centers and power for do that, and that's across the entire industry. That would be an enormous boon. Um, if the question around, okay, let's make sure that we are being rational about how we are willing to import talent, as we have done in the history of the US, To bring in talent that can work on this across the entire industry. That could be really good. Um, if it was the, I want to make sure that we are, um, uh, inventing the future at the speed we need to be doing it, that's really good. Now, the challenges would be is, what if he goes, no, no, the most important issue facing AI is woke AI. Because we have this, this calling card, which means a whole bunch of different kind of, You know, like, you know, these people are evil and terrible. That's silly, right, and not good, but easy to fix, and not the most important issue when you consider what, like, AI means for American prosperity, well-being, a bunch of other things. Like, that's an easy fix.

AI assessment note: “Well, it's a little unclear. It kind of depends on what he, how he chooses”

Q Do you think you can reduce defense budgets, so when you have the global conflicts that we have today?

A Uh, yes. Right. I mean, it's not, we, we spend, like, if you said, where should DOGE focus? The answer is, actually, in fact, there's a lot of massive misspending within the Department of Defense. Now, part of that is not just the Department of Defense's fault. Let's take a specific. We should not be building aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers themselves cost billions, The planes on them are more billions. They put, you know, thousands of American lives on them, and in the modern world, you have to, like, sure, an aircraft carrier is great for bullying sedan, right, which is not a particularly good use of billions of dollars military. In a real conflict, a one or two hypersonic missiles, which are like two million dollars each, can take out an aircraft carrier. If you said, what should I be doing to save money in American events? It's like, let's stop building aircraft carriers. But of course, part of the political reason that doesn't happen is because the states and Congress people, like, one of the things that happens frequently is the Department of Defense says, well, we should stop these programs, and Congress says, no, we're continuing them, because this is where, you know, you're spending money in our district is. And that's the kind of thing that if Doge had guts, they would go to, right? But, you know, that's a difficult political target.

AI assessment note: “Uh, yes. Right. I mean, it's not, we, we spend, like”

Q What deal did you do that seemed like a crazy price? Was a phenomenal embarrassment.

A Well, um, when I did the Series A of Airbnb. What was the price? Uh, sixty million. Post. At that time, the founders probably could have gotten on the phone all week and called every single person who had used an Airbnb that week if they were working through the call list. So it was a very small transactional volume. Right. And the question is, would it grow? What would happen with cities? What would happen with market acceptance? There was a bunch of other things. But part of the way that I invest is I go, look, if I'm right, if the theory of this investment is correct, then it will transform an industry. And that's what I tend to do as an investor. It's majority of my investments, not all. There's some other things. But if that plays out to be the case, and so then is my theory of my investment at least a reasonable probability, right? Like, it has a reasonable chance of, of working. And that's why I did the Airbnb one. So that would be, that would be one example. I'm sure there's others as I, as I would think about it. Um, but I also tend to be more careful about, um, like, like part of the discipline that I've learned from Silicon Valley is when you look at a seed, a series A, a series B, you go, ok, is this, is this, it isn't that price is irrelevant. Does, does the coherent sense of this make sense in terms of what future capital will need, How the entrepreneurs are think…

AI assessment note: “when I did the Series A of Airbnb. What was the price? Uh, sixty million.”

Q And people believe it. So should there be policing?

A Look, if I could, through a democratic process, because I believe in democracies, I believe in collective governance, get, um, our society to agree to say, hey, what we should do is identify some topics that panels of experts can, can yield To a truth determination on. I would prefer we do with all media, and by the way, it's not just social media. It's also cable news. It's also talk radio. We say, look, if you're going to speak your opinion, which you may do, you can say the world is flat. I can get on Harry's podcast and go, I believe the world is flat. And then what you say is, oh, by the way, uh, expert opinion says that's completely false. And just Along with my saying, the world is flat, expert opinion comes up and says, hey, by the way, if you're listening to this, you should also consider that expert opinion says this is totally false, right? And so, it allows you freedom of speech, but it then allows, allows a collective learning system in the system. I would prefer that, but we need to get there through a democratic process.

AI assessment note: “I would prefer that, but we need to get there through a democratic process.”

Q Can I ask, on the tariff side, what would you do with tariffs? What is the right way to leverage, use them to benefit America?

A Look, America benefits enormously from a global trade regime. We, um, the, the whole country gets a lot of economic prosperity. Including, uh, things that support Areas of the country that have more economic challenge. So, you don't want to create trade wars. The trade wars will create a massive drop in prosperity in the U.S. and in other places. Now, that being said, there are places that, um, either have, um, like for example, take Iran, who have, are bad actors within the international context. Um, or Russia, and that actually, in fact, um, you know, are creating violence and war and, and chaos and, um, you know, kind of in various countries around the world, and you use tariffs and other kinds of sanctions as a way to, to rein in that behavior. That's one zone. Another one is, if you have, um, countries that are behaving irresponsibly within the global economic system, And so, for example, with China, um, there's ways in which they, um, they slant the field, so they say, well, we can do economics in your country, but you, we can, you, we can do business in your country, but you can't do business in our country. I think responding to-

AI assessment note: “you use tariffs and other kinds of sanctions as a way to, to rein in that behavior.”

Q Do you think NVIDIA continues to accrue power and monopolization, or monopolies, ah, or do you think it continues to be eaten away by Apples, Googles, Amazons, building more and more of their own chip supply and ability?

A So, unsurprising to you, because you and I have talked a bunch, both. Right? So both, NVIDIA's business will continue to go very strongly, um, because they have an amazing Lead, currently, in amazing chips, and there is, um, you know, massive demand for their chips for doing compute, and many players, Google, Amazon, others, including AMD, are building out chips as well. So you both have them developing what is still a very valuable leading resource, and a bunch of other chips developing as well. We have Kind of like electricity, we have infinite demand for compute at, at kind of, call it modest, at moderate price, pricing. So as long as we can deliver that, we will, demand will completely fill.

AI assessment note: “unsurprising to you, because you and I have talked a bunch, both.”

Q Got you. Okay. So when we think about like that merging and actually going, actually there's a huge amount that we can gain from the distribution, the cash flow of Microsoft's this big partner. Terrible question. Uh, do we think that AI, and it's just, it's so, it depends, but I'm just intrigued. Do we think that AI favors more incumbents or favors startups more?

A I think the answer is both differently, right? So, and I'm not trying to weasel out of a question. Look, if you're saying what really matters is, like, the driving function here will be the billion dollar compute run to make this model, it'll be very difficult for startups to do that, right? I mean, even in this more modern global venture capital where startups can raise, you know, billions of dollars, If it's a billion dollars per compute run before you've got your revenue, like, really working in a way that that you, you, you can predict where that becomes very valuable, that becomes very difficult to finance. So that's all large companies. That's, you know, Google, Microsoft, or, you know, kind of their partners, OpenAI, other, other folks. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of room for startups. Startups can do all kinds of things. They might build smaller models. They might build models in different ways. They also might Use the frontier models through APIs, but they can do things. They can take on markets because a company can only, any company can only take on like a couple of markets really in a serious way. Sure. So there's a lot of markets that, you know, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera, don't get to. And so it's like, okay, startups are opportunity there. And what if you were creating something, you took a risk in getting there where people thought you…

AI assessment note: “I think the answer is both differently, right?”

Q Two company specific ones, then we're going to do a really cool read AI. Um, you mentioned ByteDance earlier. I'm so sorry for the base question. Should it be banned? Is it a threat to US democracy?

A I don't think that it is an unusual threat to US democracy. Um, although I do think that one of the things that, um, look, I think that the, the key question is, is, um, Uh, you know, China bans Western, you know, kind of social media and other, uh, companies with it. So I think it's not an unfair thing to say, hey, look, if you're banning ours, we can ban yours. I think it's, I think that's the, the baseline of the kind of the fairness side. Now, that being said, you know, part of the Chinese, uh, approach to these things is they view that all of their companies essentially work for their governments. Now, they think that's true of the West, too. They don't realize, no, actually, in fact, we, we operate differently. Like, Google does not work for the US government. Microsoft does not work for the US government. There is, there's ways they're accountable by law, but they have to go through a legal process for that kind of thing. And so, given that legal process doesn't exist within China, one worries about what security vulnerabilities and other things that happens because the companies don't have the kind of autonomy That our companies have, that they have, where, for example, they can sue and say, no, we're not going to respond to this, this subpoena or this request from government because we think that's an illegal order, which you can't really do in China. And so, so that k…

AI assessment note: “I don't think that it is an unusual threat to US democracy.”

Q When we think about like the business model of foundation models, as you said that we've got this real, uh, race to the bottom in terms of pricing. Um, How do we think about when the marginal revenue exceeds the marginal cost, and when they actually become viable businesses, and actually are they viable businesses?

A So I think that there is literally no doubt in my mind that there's viable businesses that will play out, and... Purely in the foundation model. Purely in the foundation model, um, and also the others, but the foundation model as well, in part because, look, at some point, It is the classic venture thing of you start investing, and you may even have bad operating margins. Like, for example, if you said, you know, the first X thousand stays at Airbnb, the operating margins were terrible, right? It was kind of money losing. You have to get to a certain scale. You have to, you have to bring a certain amount into it to then make it into the amazing business that it is.

AI assessment note: “literally no doubt in my mind that there's viable businesses that will play out”

Q Do you think we dramatically overestimate the concerns around, ah, kind of AGI?

A Broadly, yes, for the following reason. The problem that I have with these critics is that the real issue is AI is a human amplifier, right? So it's part of the, ah, the thesis that I've been going out and trying to get people to understand is actually, in fact, it's a human amplifier for a large number of years. I don't know if a large number of years is 10 or 500 or whatever, but it's, it's a human amplifier. And amplifying bad people too Is the question. So whether it's a terrorist, a criminal, a rogue, rogue state. And so we go, ah, the robots are coming. It's like, well, I'm a lot less worried that the robots are coming than Putin is coming with his AI enablement. Right. So, so it's like, let's focus on the, on the bad humans. Right. And what's happening there. And then pay attention some to the science fiction side.

AI assessment note: “Broadly, yes, for the following reason.”

Q I'm terrified actually that we're just gonna regulate every element to the point of it not being able to progress in the way that it could. Is that, is that a legitimate?

A Oh, it's a definite risk. I mean, this is one of the reasons why the vast majority of stuff that I talk around technology and AI is, um, we will have much better tools to make much better things for human beings and society in the future. Let's make sure we get there to building those tools. So, for example, your average press person, your average government official will say, what's the most important thing in AI? We make sure that those big tech companies don't, you know, dominate with the AI. That's the most important thing. I was like, well, that's interesting. I think your most, your most important job is I have a line of sight to a medical tutor, or sorry, a medical assistant, probably better than your average general practitioner on every smartphone. Don't you think your actual job is how do you get that on everyone's smartphone that every single person in your country, maybe in the world, has potential access to good medical advice? It may not be perfect medical advice. Wouldn't you think that's your top job? Or how about a tutor for any age of per, of human being in any subject? Wouldn't having access to all of that for every child that you have in your company, wouldn't that be your top job?

AI assessment note: “Oh, it's a definite risk. I mean, this is one of the reasons”

Q Well, that is so kind of you, and, uh, always an ego boost is a good way to start the show, but let's start with a little bit of context on you. So how did you make your way into the world of startups? I'll pretend like I haven't stalked you for the last, you know, 24 hours listening to everything you've done before this.

A Well, so I was originally thinking I was going to be an academic, and the reason I was thinking about being an academic was a public intellectual, which is the discourse about who we are as individuals in a society, and who we can and should be, and I thought that academia would be the right pattern, and so actually, I got the Marshall Scholarship, I came over, I was a student at Oxford, because I was thinking about, you know, the, the UK having such a strong public intellectual culture, and something that I could learn from, and so I came over, and then what I realized was that part of what was, was attracting me to Public intellectual was, was to have some kind of ability to help society, to help humanity, to help the world, to have a scale ambition in what I was seeking to do, and that the academic path was very challenging for doing that. The very, very focused, specific scholarship within a particular scholarly discipline, and so forth, and that before you could get to the public intellectual side, you'd have to spend at least 20 years, you know, kind of being a very, very, very focused and narrow scholar, and I was like, well, that's not what I wanted to do, and I had the privilege, the luck, To have attended my undergraduate at Stanford, and that had brought software entrepreneurship into my lens of learning and focus. I'd never really thought about it before, but the in…

AI assessment note: “brought software entrepreneurship into my lens of learning and focus”

Q about kind of trust maintenance, Obviously, I am VC for my sins today. Amazing how podcasters can turn into VCs these days. But, like, VCs today, and I constantly think about trust maintenance within my partnership. Have you got any lessons or advice in terms of how to maintain a true sense of trust at the very core of a venture partnership? And does trust differ in venture versus startups?

A There's some things that are a little bit different, but the fundamentals of trust are the same, which is the fundamental of trust is, you know, one angle of trust is kind of where a person... Sees you kind of doing what you say, doing what your commitments are, and maintaining that over time, and in conditions of stress or adversity. And that, a fundamental part of that is having the, the communications around it so that people understand what your commitments are, what your goals are, you know, when you're making commitments of certain sorts, and how you make them, and that kind of thing. And that's true for both startups and, and VCs. Now, what makes VCs a little different than startups is that it's kind of much more of a, these kind of much longer loops that Because, like, for example, in startups, you're generally speaking in the, like, at the beginning, you're in the same room, seven days a week, every day together. You know, very easy to have, you know, high patterns of communication. In venture, when you're in a venture partnership, most of the time, you're in the same room one day a week, right? And obviously, in modern pandemic times, in a Zoom, you know, once or twice a week as together. And so, what it means is that you have to go the extra mile in venture to communicating and doing stuff because you don't have that intermediate check-in. You have this And by the wa…

AI assessment note: “There's some things that are a little bit different, but the fundamentals of trust”

Q Can I ask you, you said you were hopeful there. There's multiple different outcomes that can come. If you think, like, what could go very wrong with this administration, and then what could actually go right, if we look on it, what could go wrong first?

A So, Um, if the administration were to engage in a lot of idiosyncratic political persecution, um, so, uh, whether it's, uh, individuals, uh, politicians, military figures, businesses that, um, were attacked entirely for political reasons, um, and kind of the, the balance of politics versus legitimate reasons, right? Um, because, you know, sometimes people do You know, bad things, whoever they are, and that's fine, but, like, that that was the, kind of, cause of what's happening. That's, for example, I think one of the reasons why, um, like, this whole tariffs thing, which could be enormously destructive, is, I think, is like, well, how do I apply tariffs idiosyncratically, like, against my political opponents, but not for my political allies? You know, it's, kind of, ways of happening. Um, Economic corruption. Um, what, what if foreign actors, Russia, others, were transferring economics to people with political power in order to influence the U.S. and what they're doing? You know, easy ways to do that are like, you know, buy true social stock. Um, easy ways to do that are buy, uh, freedom coin or currency. Uh, invest in businesses that, you know, people who are, Um, you know, have a lot of political power, or then it's potentially payoffs. All of those things would be in the category of, like, disastrous things.

AI assessment note: “All of those things would be in the category of, like, disastrous things.”

Q You said that, uh, you might be critical of some things. I'm critical of some things of this wonderful labor government. Yes. Well, everything that they do, bluntly. Um, and someone said to me that you should be a bit more careful. Um, some of your tweets might piss them off. Ah, do you feel like you have the freedom and flexibility to be critical?

A I do, because of the principles of America, which is we should aspire to continue to be a place where we can speak truth to power, that we can criticize when things are wrong, And I will continue to do that. Now, that being said, one of the things that I think is part of the reason why I have been critical of some of Trump's supporters and some of what Trump has done is because, um, there is, uh, even in the first administration, there was the, there were some abuses of instruments of state for personal gain, for personal Um, uh, power. And that is, I think, uh, anti the spirit of anything in democracy, anti the spirit of anything in American. And so, those are the things that I would still be, continue to be opposed to in as much as they play out. Now, my friends argue, no, no, that's just the electoral path, that when he, when he talks about the fact that he is going to, um, kind of, Attack enemies within, or threaten, execute generals, or other kinds of things. That's just, that's just politicking. That's not something that we will actually see. I am hopeful that they are right, and I am hopeful that we'll get back to, you know, the business of America, which is business.

AI assessment note: “I do, because of the principles of America”

Q Do you think acquihires are inevitable for LLM companies? We see the likes of Mistral in France. They just don't have enough cash. It's spade to spade. Are acquihires inevitable?

A I would, in a well-functioning society, um, hopefully it's acquisitions rather than acquihires. Um, part of the thing that Um, there's a, there's a threat of antitrust that misunderstands their own game. So, for example, the threat of antitrust roughly looks like this. It says, we should stop the aggregation of power in the large companies, so we should block acquisitions. And in some cases, limited specific cases, that makes sense. But in general, if you want competition with those large companies from startups, Investors, say for example, I'm an investor who's gonna put a billion dollars into a company that might compete with one of the large tech companies. I'm only gonna put the billion dollars in if I have a chance of an acquisition exit, because I'm gonna need the billion dollars back, possibly. That's a huge loss. So if I am blocked, if you go, if you have a regulatory authority that says, we are never gonna allow that, then I'm never going to do the investment That allows a company to potentially compete with those large tech companies. And, and so their theory, which is we're stopping the aggregation of big power, is they're creating more aggregation of big power because they're stopping the financing of competition.

AI assessment note: “hopefully it's acquisitions rather than acquihires.”

Q You mentioned that the propensity for older people to vote, um, completely obviously true. What, what Trump did well was harnessing actually TikTok and younger people to vote. I'm intrigued. We mentioned, you know, BYD and Chinese car imports. Should TikTok be banned on the back of this?

A The right way, I think, to think about this from an American or any other perspective is to say China bans Competition in China from Meta, Twitter, etc. And so the right way to say is like, look, if you're banning our companies, we should ban yours. Commercial, entirely a commercial question. Not a question around, you know, um, like, well, that's a Chinese social media company. It's a, cause I actually believe that there's a different question when you say, well, what should be the rules of governance for social media companies when you get around the world? And I think there should be, You know, some transparency, responsiveness to local laws, etc. But, um, but I think that's the, the, the, the right thing to do now.

AI assessment note: “look, if you're banning our companies, we should ban yours.”

Q Does AI do more to help or to hurt climate change?

A Well, it's a frequent misconception, because there's obviously a growth of a, of a electricity curve, That AI has got climate impact. One, it's, it's something like data centers, I think, are something like, it's some single digit percentage of all power consumption. Like three, something, so it's not very big. And then AI within data centers is like, you know, a single digit percentage of that. So currently AI is not accounting for Any of the electricity that makes any of the difference. Now, but it's growing, and you go, well, what happens if it continues to grow in a compounding way, and so on. So you go, and so everyone goes, ah, haha, I can be, I can be green in climate by posturing in the media, by saying, you know, AI is bad for climate. Pay attention to me, please. Pay attention to me, please. And actually, in fact, This is a little bit like the people who were being anti-nuclear, which then caused a whole bunch of coal plants to be built, which caused a whole bunch of environmental degradation, uh, as a consequence of being anti-nuclear. Um, the, it's a similar thing, because AI has several points of being massively positive on climate. Here, here's a simple, actual data point. So, uh, Google's engineers, some of the best in the world at running data centers, thought we have run our data centers as efficiently as possible. It was, I think, five, seven, eight years ago,…

AI assessment note: “AI has several points of being massively positive on climate.”

Q Sorry, this is so unfair for me to do another final one, but I'm just interested, you know, you are the master of social networks, and you spotted network effects before 99.9% of everyone in the world. Um, everyone thinks TikTok's a social network. It's a paid machine in the early days. To what extent is TikTok a social network, or actually a case of very effective paid marketing?

A Well, Uh, it was a genius invention that came about of necessity because the Chinese government didn't want to have any social networks with more than 500 followers. So how do you drop out the whole following mechanism and still get a high scale, people are producing content, individuals, and individuals are consuming content, and how do you make that happen? Because the way that social networks like LinkedIn and others made this happen is through, I have a graph. I have a graph of Of LinkedIn connections. I have a graph of followers, et cetera. And they couldn't do it that way. They couldn't do followers, all of YouTube. So they, what they did is they paid for so much content to be created, but then that created a scale effect in the entire thing because like TikTok watches you the moment that you launch the app. Like how many seconds did you spend on this? Did you swipe, you know, on this, et cetera. And it's learning about you to the next thing because it's matching you to the Flow of current content in this stuff. Now, it's a social network, you know, as much as there's people, there's individuals who are creating stuff that's being consumed by other individuals, but it's not a social network in that, you know, I'm connected to my friend Harry, you know, on LinkedIn.

AI assessment note: “it's not a social network in that, you know, I'm connected to my friend”

Q Well, that is so kind of you, and, uh, always an ego boost is a good way to start the show, but let's start with a little bit of context on you. So how did you make your way into the world of startups? I'll pretend like I haven't stalked you for the last, you know, 24 hours listening to everything you've done before this.

A Well, so I was originally thinking I was going to be an academic, and the reason I was thinking about being an academic was a public intellectual, which is the discourse about who we are as individuals in a society, and who we can and should be, and I thought that academia would be the right pattern, and so actually, I got the Marshall Scholarship, I came over, I was a student at Oxford, because I was thinking about, you know, the, the UK having such a strong public intellectual culture, and something that I could learn from, and so I came over, and then what I realized was that part of what was, was attracting me to Public intellectual was, was to have some kind of ability to help society, to help humanity, to help the world, to have a scale ambition in what I was seeking to do, and that the academic path was very challenging for doing that. The very, very focused, specific scholarship within a particular scholarly discipline, and so forth, and that before you could get to the public intellectual side, you'd have to spend at least 20 years, you know, kind of being a very, very, very focused and narrow scholar, and I was like, well, that's not what I wanted to do, and I had the privilege, the luck, To have attended my undergraduate at Stanford, and that had brought software entrepreneurship into my lens of learning and focus. I'd never really thought about it before, but the in…

AI assessment note: “attended my undergraduate at Stanford, and that had brought software entrepreneurship into my lens”

Q Do you worry that with AI, with global conflict, with everything that we see today, climate kind of just falls down the pecking order?

A I think it's guaranteed, unfortunately, and given that it is an inevitable, it's, it's a physics process. I, I, I worry about that. That's one of the, Um, I think likely outcomes of the next administration that will be a serious impact. Now, that being said, like you said, okay, bull bear on the next administration, they'll go, oh no, as they've said, climate change is a fiction, and, and it's a, it's a liberal conspiracy, and, you know, dah, dah, dah, and you're like, why would the liberals bother with a climate change conspiracy? I mean, it's just like, the logic of this is not great. What they might do, which I would hope, again, be hopeful for, is they say, look, What we really need to be doing is doing the, ah, Apollo projects on the right kinds of clean energy, and we're now gonna, we're gonna now go, you know, 10 X down onto that, including all versions of nuclear, as well as everything else, and that actually might have a very positive impact over time in what we're doing with climate change.

AI assessment note: “I think it's guaranteed, unfortunately, and given that it is an inevitable, I worry about that.”

Q And people believe it. So should there be policing?

A Look, if I could, through a democratic process, because I believe in democracies, I believe in collective governance, get, um, our society to agree to say, hey, what we should do is identify some topics that panels of experts can, can yield To a truth determination on. I would prefer we do with all media, and by the way, it's not just social media. It's also cable news. It's also talk radio. We say, look, if you're going to speak your opinion, which you may do, you can say the world is flat. I can get on Harry's podcast and go, I believe the world is flat. And then what you say is, oh, by the way, uh, expert opinion says that's completely false. And just Along with my saying, the world is flat, expert opinion comes up and says, hey, by the way, if you're listening to this, you should also consider that expert opinion says this is totally false, right? And so, it allows you freedom of speech, but it then allows, allows a collective learning system in the system. I would prefer that, but we need to get there through a democratic process.

AI assessment note: “what we should do is identify some topics that panels of experts can”

Q Do you think we dramatically overestimate the concerns around, ah, kind of AGI?

A Broadly, yes, for the following reason. The problem that I have with these critics is that the real issue is AI is a human amplifier, right? So it's part of the, ah, the thesis that I've been going out and trying to get people to understand is actually, in fact, it's a human amplifier for a large number of years. I don't know if a large number of years is 10 or 500 or whatever, but it's, it's a human amplifier. And amplifying bad people too Is the question. So whether it's a terrorist, a criminal, a rogue, rogue state. And so we go, ah, the robots are coming. It's like, well, I'm a lot less worried that the robots are coming than Putin is coming with his AI enablement. Right. So, so it's like, let's focus on the, on the bad humans. Right. And what's happening there. And then pay attention some to the science fiction side.

AI assessment note: “Broadly, yes, for the following reason. The problem that I have with these critics”

Q About Airbnb. The night before you made the decision, Talk to me about that two-hour conversation with Keith, and, and how did that go down?

A So obviously Keith, super smart. I've, uh, he's worked for me twice, once at PayPal, once at LinkedIn, um, and, um, you know, I, I provided him his instrumental reference for working at Square and, you know, a sack of other things, and so, um, I called Keith because he, he had, uh, worked with the founders longer and earlier, and I just literally met them a couple days before, and Was, you know, kind of sorting through the, you know, questions of, well, what are the questions that a smart person might have once they've sat with this project for a, for more than a couple of days? And have you got answers to those questions? Uh, how do you think about it? You know, et cetera. Which is the what I do on every investment, uh, that I do. And, you know, Keith was, uh, quite helpful. To my making my decision, because, you know, he's like, look, I've met them, I've talked to them, they're smart, they're problem, they're first principle thinkers, um, they're, they're not hiding any skeletons in the closet, you know.

AI assessment note: “Keith was, uh, quite helpful. To my making my decision, because, you know, he's like”

Q investment that it is, Two things come to mind for me, which is like, how do you retain mental plasticity with every new opportunity to not let the past infiltrate your future mind and how you view companies, whether it's good travel being just glory and hailed brilliance when it may not be, or terrible if it's the past investments going on. How do you retain that plasticity of mind?

A So what you have to do is you have to think about that you're always learning, right? So, and by the way, when you've learned something, don't treat learning as like it was bedded on the rocks Tablets, and that's now true for all times, and I've understood the one and perfect truth that never changes, because you may have only understood part of the truth. That may have been true then, but not true now, like the dynamism of change in markets and technologies and people over time. So when you say, A, I'm aware of the fact that I need to always be learning. B, I'm aware of the fact that I don't know everything, and even the things that were hard-fought learnings from before, I have to be open to reconsidering. Now, throwing them out is a mistake, because then you could... Because, by the way, we do learn. We do improve. I mean, I am, you know, year by year a much better investor, a much better board member than I was the previous year because I take a learning mindset. That doesn't mean that everything I've learned is now written in stone tablets, but that dynamic. I think that's really important. And then, by the way, a little asterisk to your question. You know, look, the fortunate thing for me, that was my first venture investment. I had been doing angel investing before, you know, things like Facebook and other kinds of things, and so I had had a pattern mindset. Now, I've le…

AI assessment note: “even the things that were hard-fought learnings from before, I have to be open to reconsidering”

Q That is great to hear. And then final one for you, Reid. What do the next five years hold for you? What does the grand master plan look like?

A Well, you know, I'm continuing to do, you know, tech investments. I most recently did this search investment, Neva, with Shreed R. Ramaswamy. So there's a bunch of change the world through scale tech. But I'm also, you know, beginning, especially because of COVID time, and we're all sitting here through our video conferencing windows, like we're doing this podcast, is I'm, I probably over the next couple years, I will be generating A bunch more kind of content. It is not just the elaboration of blitzscaling, not just the elaboration of what I've learned from Silicon Valley, which is part of what blitzscaling is, but probably also other kinds of things like, you know, how to think about what is a technology forward strategy for society. Or, for example, one of the questions you're asking is, like, how should boards of directors work? Because there isn't actually a lot of good understanding written by people who've been on a lot of boards about, like, what is the kind of the patterns of boards? For example, and so forth, and how to think about that. And so those kinds of things, I think, in addition to the tech investing, in addition to the non-profit work, in addition to the society work, would be things that I would do.

AI assessment note: “over the next couple years, I will be generating A bunch more kind of content”