Straight Answers

“I think we spoke maybe a year ago about this, or I think you said something like 50% of 50% of jobs. Um, I'm curious if that's still your, your, uh, your litmus test, or how do you think about it?”

answered: “Well, for one thing, I think that meter paper is worth unpacking”

“And what is that? What is the connection between grass and humans?”

answered: “grass is like kind of the newest big, Um, plant-based biome on the planet”

“What made you guys decide to even consider Twiga?”

answered: “supporting startups anywhere in the world that are tackling these kinds of challenges”

“Like, how do you, how does Lean Startup kind of help with that? Like, what have you seen on the front lines of that?”

answered: “can you explain to me what this person does?”

“Blog posts count as under SEC rules, right?”

answered: “So the way I think about the press and blogging is that you want”

“So where would you say the show is now? Like what, what kind of show are you trying to create?”

answered: “how would you describe where we are now?”

“Blog posts count as under SEC rules, right?”

answered: “the way I think about the press and blogging is that you want to do both.”

“Is it enough to just say we've got a lot of engagement and therefore we have a network effect? How do you actually know there is a network effect?”

answered: “So that's not completely apparent when we're investing.”

“But what does that really give us? Does it, I mean, cause when I think about big data, I think about in the abstract So it's still not clear to me what machine learning being a property of every application, like, so what does that do for us?”

answered: “Let me give you an example by a story from one of the”

“If you had to guess, what are the use cases outside of coding that could potentially yield, you know, daily activity?”

answered: “predictions are hard, especially about the future.”

“blog post sharing images, whether it's creating, you know, the next sneaker design that you end up selling. Are there areas that you've seen really emerge from this where people are using these tools today and applying them to, again, what someone might call a practical use case and In addition to maybe what you've seen so far, are there other areas where you're excited to see this be applied?”

answered: “when you see these things used, especially in prominent contexts, they might not be advertised”

“Is it enough to just say we've got a lot of engagement and therefore we have a network effect? How do you actually know there is a network effect?”

answered: “we brawl over this concept because the easy observation is businesses with network effects”

“So convince me otherwise, how is this different from traditional private equity?”

answered: “First, like, what is private equity? Like, I think that's important to, like, just talk about.”

“in this podcast about this importance of differentiation, if this is a tool that everyone has, it sounds like they would differentiate on data. So how do you in this ecosystem where you're making this argument that there's this horizontal versus vertical layer, are all these players willing to share in the ecosystem, the mapping companies, the sensor companies, the big vehicle companies, how do yo”

answered: “Data means a lot of different things. It's not like scenarios”

“Alex, how about you? How do you react to what's been happening or how do you make sense of what's going on?”

answered: “maybe I can take a step back before I even answer your question”

“Huff, can you just speak to maybe how regulation plays a role in enabling some of these projects, and whether any of that is changing, or maybe whether Vogel is an outlier? How do you think about that?”

answered: “not to Divert from your question about regulation, but I do think”

“Or is this a matter of certain companies just needing to orient around certain group kind of targeting Gen Z while others Targeting maybe an older generation. How do you think about attracting different folks with so many different competing interests?”

answered: “One provocation that I have is do organizations believe that remote work is a philosophy”

“But there is this chicken-egg problem in the sense of, You can't have a lot of users when you don't have scale, but you also need to scale in order to have a lot of users, because scalability is a pretty big bottleneck here. How is the community addressing that?”

answered: “There's a whole bunch of different interesting kind of approaches to improving that.”

“What you're really talking about, Arun, is a shift to the new future of work. What do you see as the key challenges of that shift?”

answered: “let me start with some of the benefits of that shift”

“Are the enabling conditions at all changing that can make it possible? I feel like we're seeing a resurgence again of interest in, in advances that show that they might be more possible to build than they have before.”

answered: “before I answer that, actually, let me just make a quick comment here”

“I think we spoke maybe a year ago about this, or I think you said something like 50% of 50% of jobs. Um, I'm curious if that's still your, your, uh, your litmus test, or how do you think about it?”

answered: “I think that meter paper is worth unpacking a little bit more”

“What you're really talking about, Arun, is a shift to the new future of work. What do you see as the key challenges of that shift?”

answered: “let me start with some of the benefits of that shift”

“Are the enabling conditions at all changing that can make it possible? I feel like we're seeing a resurgence again of interest in, in advances that show that they might be more possible to build than they have before.”

answered: “before I answer that, actually, let me just make a quick comment here”

“That's great. Did you guys, I have to ask, did you, um, kind of put any Kickstarter projects up there yourselves just to give it a whirl?”

answered: “I will come back to your question. Um, one of the things that's been fascinating”

“I'm curious what, what sort of inspires that sort of, uh, you know, sort of state statement, and then also what might change your mind either way? You know, that it might not be as big as the internet, because of course the internet was obviously very big, but also that, hey, perhaps it might be bigger.”

answered: “I don't want to kind of get into... I think the question is more like”

“What do you advise us to do then? What should they be presenting when they're talking about we have this B to B to C?”

answered: “maybe it'll be helpful to go through kind of like the mental life cycle”

“Are, are there certain areas you feel were under allocated or over allocated if, if you could, uh, you know, just wave a wand?”

answered: “Oh, we're all, every area is under allocated, of course.”

“And just to evaluate one of those paths, if Satya could go back in time, knowing what he knows now, do you think he might've done something or would you have considered doing something different? Um, how, how should we think about how this has worked out for Microsoft?”

answered: “You can't ask me questions about my friends”

“You could also imagine like a decentralized influencer where basically like not only is their worth distributed amongst a bunch of people, but actually like what they do, their narrative might be influenced by the people who have some sort of ownership over them. Trevor, why don't we start with you and just like any, any ideas on how technology actually advances, empowers our ability to create the”

answered: “One thing I think about a lot is, like, why culture is not viewed”

“I guess today the technology is getting better, but like, what are the technologies that are going into creating little Michaela and then not just look Michaela on Instagram, but these music videos, I think she's on Spotify. Like what technologies are you actually using to accomplish all this?”

answered: “there's a lot of different ones. I think that there's a huge”

“Are you also doing that? Are you bringing in lawyers who are specialized in these areas to take a look at the output from your models to hone them in or improve them?”

answered: “Yeah, we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us”

“Okay, so a frequently asked question is, when is the best time, timing-wise, for a startup founder to bring in a PR agency?”

answered: “PR is not a transactional thing. It is a long-term thing.”

“I'd love to hear more thoughts from you guys on what do people actually do, because it's not enough to just say, like, okay, the social safety net is not there. Now what do we do moving forward?”

answered: “loss of collective bargaining power and income inequality is how we arrived”

“Why does humility matter? I would think that being on the field, you have to be competitive and aggressive and not necessarily humble.”

answered: “I think resiliency you brought up is a common term right now”

“What are some of the other counterintuitive characteristics? I think, by the way, procrastination was super interesting to me.”

answered: “many of them resisted that temptation and used procrastination productively”

“Seuss, like, published Cat in the Hat, like, super high on patents? Like, I mean, those kids were fully defying their parents with, like, the cat in the house.”

answered: “Yeah, I think there's, uh, there's a case to be made there, and more recently”

“I just, as is the first I've heard of it, what is your, um, Thinking on it, the feasibility of it, will compute, move to orbit? Yeah, what do you think about it?”

answered: “our mentality at Northwood is we want to take space missions further faster.”

“Do you think there's some kind of co-evolution between AI native software and new types of interfaces? For example, new customer service AI platforms that might not have had as much human facing UI or system of record software being built without a front end at all because its primary user will be AI agents querying it directly?”

answered: “They're things I struggle to have a strong opinion on”

“What have we learned? What are the ups and downs been, et cetera?”

answered: “Zillow was like, oh my God, like, you know... I have to go do what Opendoor does.”

“So what's the right balance here? And, and I mean, I know there's no right answer, but what's the best practice?”

answered: “Shannon can probably answer the, the HR aspects of that very, very well.”

“And so let's say Trump brings you in and says, hey, I've noticed that, uh, you know, nearly all of computing is, uh, you know, every layer of stack is, is done in China and, and, you know, Asia more broadly, um, and I'm trying to sort of decrease our dependencies, um, Microsoft man. What, what should I do?”

answered: “there are much smarter people who know more and have much more at stake”

“Is Lamina One almost like a transparent layer under these existing engines? Or, or can you share a little bit more about how that might work?”

answered: “I'm not sure if I would say transparent because that suggests invisible.”

“If you had to guess, what are the use cases outside of coding that could potentially yield, you know, daily activity?”

answered: “predictions are hard, especially about the future. Um, and I think there's a sort of”

“If not too difficult, I want to ask, uh, Jorge a question adopted to these, uh, additional spaces, um, robotics, um, sort of BCI and, and longevity if appropriate in terms of, and the three questions I believe were, what's overhyped? What's, uh, where do you see, uh, uh, opportunity or path and what's got heft already?”

answered: “I think the cool thing about agents generally is that They do real work”

“And could we see Apple do a similar type of play where they sort of buy the talent in house or buy the company? How do you think about that?”

answered: “I'll let Meta decide how great it is for Meta or whatever”

“You obviously, you know, before TruMed, you started a bone broth company. What are other big companies that could be built in the space or opportunities to make a difference?”

answered: “figuring out how to make These sorts of lifestyle interventions, part of the healthcare system”

“Or, you know, people said it is the new version of the new internet. Maybe hopefully it still happens, but in terms of where it is right now, is it, you know, mostly just a subset of fintech?”

answered: “how and where does crypto and fintech fit into the existing set of consumer behaviors”

“What, what would need to happen? What, what, what would, uh, what would evolve our thinking?”

answered: “we would have to be seeing something that would really shift our perception”

“Does that just take time? Or do you think we need more experimentation, iteration from these vertical AI startups to get Is this the right shape of software for the future?”

answered: “an interesting turn on this is this is both what, what strategy consultants do”

“Because I hear you describe the sort of landscape. How do we then come in with new ideas that help change what you described?”

answered: “So I think software is a huge part of it, because this is exactly”

“Who would be good for me to date? We have, you know, these platforms get all this information about us, you know.”

answered: “an interesting area that's, you know, maybe inform like where this all goes”

“Um, do we need another breakthrough of a different kind? What is your view on some of these questions?”

answered: “one of the things we, you know, we all swim in this universe of extrapolating”

“Let's get deeper, just on the effects of AI and the economy, if, if scaling laws hold to some degree, do, you know, will it show up in the productivity statistics directly? Um, you know, what does it do to, uh, wages?”

answered: “if you read the Bommel, you know, Curse of the Bommel stuff”

“And could we see Apple do a similar type of play where they sort of buy the talent in house or buy the company? How do you think about that?”

answered: “I think what, what Meta is doing is at the very least, it's great for AI.”

“So what concretely can entrepreneurs do to a build data network effects or think more strategically about it early on versus by accident? And secondly, what do you want to see in pitches from entrepreneurs when they talk about data network effects?”

answered: “often we see situations where maybe that plan hasn't been well thought out yet”

“There are technology trends like AI, and so I guess just to kick things off, with so many things happening at the same time, what are each of you paying attention to? What's really grasping your attention when it comes to this question of What it takes to attract talent in twenty-twenty-three.”

answered: “how do we kind of build a resilient business against unpredictable change.”

“And yeah, tell me more about, like, operationally. How do you make that happen?”

answered: “using that then to inform The longer form content”

“So where would you say the show is now? Like what, what kind of show are you trying to create?”

answered: “how would you describe where we are now?”

“If you put your founder hat on, are there certain companies or gaps that you think really need to be addressed that could help podcasters like you and I?”

answered: “There are a lot of these, like, tools that are now coming in and just getting really good”

“And so you can't like fine tune it in the same ways as maybe some other skills that we've learned in the past. And so how have you learned to actually become a better prompt engineer given that black box nature?”

answered: “I think another aspect is you and I both type in the same thing.”