Keith Rabois
Managing Director, Khosla Ventures. On 6 shows, 15 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutiveoperator@rabois ↗LinkedIn ↗khoslaventures.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
A member of the PayPal Mafia, Keith Rabois served as an executive at PayPal, LinkedIn, and Square. He co-founded Opendoor and OpenStore, and has backed companies including Stripe, Ramp, and Affirm across tenures at Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund.
6shows
15appearances
350statements
47resolved
27supported
13contradicted
57%fully supported
333said about them ↓ Everything Keith Rabois said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Rabois: Opendoor should cut headcount from 1,400 to 200–300 max
“There's 1400 employees. There should be like more like 200 or 300 max”
Rabois: I refuse to let colleagues talk to consumer customers
“I refuse to allow colleagues of mine to talk to customers.”
Rabois: Criticizing employees publicly optimizes for the system over the individual
“When you give people feedback negative individually, you're optimizing for the atomic unit, not the system. The reason why to do it in public is it's more important for all the colleagues to understand that there's an issue it's being addressed.”
Rabois: High-performance teams do not have psychological safety
“No, no, I don't believe in that at all. Like high performance machines don't have psychological safety. They're about winning.”
Keith Rabois claims Jerome Powell lowered interest rates to help Kamala Harris
“I think he has Trump derangement syndrome. He just hates Trump. That's why he artificially lowered rates to try to get Kamala elected. It is indefensible cutting 50 basis points off in, you know, last fall.”
Keith Rabois predicts ChatGPT will become a multi-trillion dollar monopoly
“I think ChatGBT becomes a monopoly. It's the fastest growing consumer product of all time. It is transforming how everybody, every normal person basically does their work, runs their life. And so that product alone is a several trillion dollar company.”
Raboy: Lina Khan's Yale academic paper on Amazon contained false data
“She published a paper that was false. Like, her whole claim to fame is this paper about Amazon. And the data in the Amazon, the data she used in the paper at Yale was false.”
Rabois: No $100 billion European tech company has been created since 1990
“There hasn't been a hundred billion dollar European company created since 1990.”
Rabois: LinkedIn developed a mediocre culture because early engineers wanted 35-hour weeks
“Yeah, we didn't have an Olympic work ethic. We had a bunch of French engineers that wanted to work 35 hours a week. At the time, In 2003 to five, when the company was really founded, most people thought the internet was dead, so we didn't, Reid Hoffman, who fo…”
Rabois: Building a tech company in Silicon Valley is an active disadvantage
“And I now believe Silicon Valley is a disadvantage not even neutral, it's an actual disadvantage.”
Rabois: Lack of corporate data creates recruiting alpha in younger talent
“Like one of the reasons why, you know, sometimes it's controversial to say this, but one of the reasons why the net impact of by higher undiscovered talent is you wind up skewing younger. It's not because you need young people. It's that younger people have by…”
Rabois: Conventional PM roles make no sense in the AI era
“Well, I saw this podcast, or listen to this podcast that Peter Fenn did, and he convinced me that the idea of a PM makes no sense, basically, in the future. If you think about decomposing the logic, is what does a PM usually do? They take these inputs from cus…”
Rabois: Consumer interviews give misleading data due to subconscious buying decisions
“Customers don't know what They want, and they're very bad because it's a subconscious decision, especially for consumers. Like what I purchased, what I wear is not a conscious decision. And when you're consciously trying to answer a subconscious decision, you …”
Rabois: Companies should skip failure retrospectives to encourage risk-taking
“I don't want to deter people from taking ambitious shots on goal. And if you overemphasize failures and, you know, really people think they're going to get criticized. This is where the psychological safety maybe has some validity, which is be ambitious, be bo…”
Keith Rabois predicts multiple countries will make peace with Israel within months
“You're gonna see lots of countries You know, make peace explicitly with Israel, which is great. Whether they join the Abraham Accords directly or indirectly, it's all gonna happen in the next six months.”
Keith Rabois predicts 4% US GDP growth will render national debt irrelevant
“We're gonna have four percent or more growth all of next year. That will make the debt irrelevant. You can grow your way out of deficits.”
Keith Rabois claims half of the non-military federal government can be cut
“I actually believe you could probably cut 50% of the federal government ex-military easily.”
Keith Rabois predicts AI will enable 4% to 6% inflation-free GDP growth
“Well, I think you can run four to six percent durably without inflation, which is magic.”
Rabois: Anthropic and rivals present no real competition to ChatGPT
“But ChatGBT alone, there is no competition for. It's not like Anthropic or all these other companies have any competition for that.”
Keith Rabois predicts people will stop using Microsoft Word within five years
“Do people draft documents in Word in three, four, five years? Probably not.”
Rabois: Promoting CFOs to CEO Is Almost Always a Mistake
“Promoted this completely mediocre CFO, which is almost always a bad idea, to be CEO. And she went from mediocre to, like, the worst CEO in the planet.”
Rabois: Reinventing an industry requires non-experts rather than domain specialists
“So I think if you're going to reinvent an industry, you don't want experts.”
Rabois: Every successful startup is a cult with a non-consensus worldview
“Every successful company is a cult. And what a cult really means is you have a view about the world that's different than other normal people. And you're right to be successful. Like a cult doesn't have to be right, but the startup is a cult. That's right. And…”
The other half of the tape: Keith Rabois's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 310 times in 124 episodes across the shows. 23 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 97John Coogan 31Molly O'Shea 23Jason Calacanis 23Matteo Franceschetti 16Jordi Hays 11Delian Asparouhov 11Jason Lemkin 9
Statements about Keith Rabois, by other people (23)
Nejatian proposed to Keith Rabois taking Opendoor private together to fix it
“My wife's plan, literally, genuinely, honestly, was that we would, like, sell everything we owned, leverage ourselves as much as we could to take Opendoor private, so we could fix it. So I called Keith back in, I think, April, and he was, hey man, I'm thinking…”
Hartz: Paul Graham rejected his exploding term sheet for Airbnb's seed round
“Little known secret is Keith, Javed and I gave an exploding term sheet to Airbnb, and Paul Graham said no bueno, and teed off on us.”
Lemkin: Top VCs have made their best investments from cold inbound pitches
“They all have done some of their best investments from cold inbound. All of them.”
Nejatian: Would not have taken Opendoor CEO role without Rabois and Wu
“Wouldn't have taken a job, would not have taken a job without them. Like a strip wouldn't have done it. In fact, I said I won't do it without them.”
Hays: Founders who follow 90% of Keith Rabois's advice will succeed
“I would say that overall Keith's advice, I'm like very bullish on any founder that takes like 90% of Keith's advice to heart and follows it. I think it's a really good framework”
Calacanis: Speakers refused to attend All-In Summit due to political lineup
“One of the major challenges I had in this event Was certain people attending the event made some people in that group unwilling to come to the event. No offense, Keith. In other words, like, Keith, Sachs, you know, and then even Glenn Grunwald and... Greenwald…”
Franceschetti: Keith Rabois and Delian Asparouhov did not realize Eight Sleep co-founders were married
“To the point where I think Delian and Keith, when they invested for the first year, they, I, I'm not sure that they were not even, they didn't even know we were married. Obviously, you disclose it when you do a round, so it has been disclosed in every round, b…”
Franceschetti: Keith Rabois pushed Eight Sleep for immediate payback from day one
“Well, in our case, we look at the immediate payback period. This is actually something where Keith was really pushy and he was correct since day one. So he wanted us to have an immediate payback period.”
Vasavada: Alpha comes from hiring fewer, high-agency, high-ownership people
“I think a real learning was the alpha was in hiring a small amount of people that were, that are high agency, that are high ownership, that could take on a lot, you know, as Keith or boy says your barrels you know, find a lot of key barrels and find the right …”
Nejatian: Keith Rabois and Max Levchin are exceptionally aggressive in execution
“And I think it may come out of how they grew in tech, is that they are, I see this with admiration, more aggressive than anyone you can imagine being. They're incredibly kind, but very aggressive, ah, in their execution, in their ambition.”
Hartz dismissed and missed an early investment opportunity in YouTube
“I think of when I was stepping down as CEO of Zoom, Keith and Roloff held a lunch for me in the city, in San Francisco. What was the name of that place? And Keith was talking about this YouTube thing. I was just kind of Burnout of like, you know, it was like a…”
Vasavada: Keith Rabois Would Not Have Responded to Cold Outreach
“I don't think Keith would have responded to a cold message. Maybe he would have, but that was really helpful, having them on board.”
Glyman: Mapping business equations creates operational focus and enables rapid scaling
“He talks about this concept of, can you really articulate cleanly your business equations? What are the outputs you're trying to drive? What are the inputs in your business? Can you list that very clearly and map that? And that exercise of mapping, how does ou…”
Rabois: Founders should operate like Navy SEALs, not the Army
“He actually did give a metaphor of like, I'm operating more like the army where the army is like very much like operational efficient across everything. No, no mistakes. Whereas what I should be doing as a founder is being more like a Navy seal, like going all…”
Franceschetti: Everything at Eight Sleep is public internally except compensation
“Everything is, everything, this is another rule from Keith, I think, from the, his time at Square, where, so essentially everything is public in our company except comp. Usually comp, you don't want to share it, but everything else is shared.”
Franceschetti: A company's project capacity equals its number of 'barrel' leaders
“Output usually is a function of how many barrels you have. Barrels are people in your company that can get everything done from zero to completion, right? And you have barrels and ammunition. Barrels can lead anything from zero to completion. Ammunition suppor…”
Sandler: TrueWork board included Lin, Rabois, and Sarracino
“All three investors on our board, Alfred Lynn from Sequoia, Keith Erboy from Kosla. And Steve Saraceno from Activant.”
Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund invest $10M Series A in Lava
“Coastal Ventures, led by none other than Keith Raboi, has teamed up with Founders Fund to throw a ten million dollar Series A pass to Lava, a Bitcoin lending platform out of New York.”
Glyman: Rabois's 'How to Operate' lecture enabled Ramp to scale rapidly
“Change my ability to operate and helped, you know, ramp reach the scale that we're doing quickly is, is this talk he gave a decade ago called how to operate. It's on YouTube. It's free. It is worth a lot more than that. And I recommend everyone watch it.”
Franceschetti: Paul Graham and Keith Rabois excel at explaining complex ideas simply
“You see people like Paul Graham or Keith or Boyce, right? They are some of the greatest at expressing a very complicated concept with few words in something that I call it the grammar rule by something that my grandma could understand.”
There Is No Secret PayPal Alumni Group Chat
“There's not a PayPal group chat. Not, not that I'm invited to either. So if he's not invited, I'm not invited either.”
Glyman: Keith Rabois's "How to Operate" talk is very underrated
“Like I still think is how to operate talk he gave over a decade ago is, is as good as it is. I think it's very underrated.”
John Coogan says Keith Rabois logged over 1,000 workouts in 2024
“It was like, I think it was over a thousand. It was the most insane stat. I would look at it and I was like, this can't be real. I mean, I understand he works out every single day and he had a number of days worked out. It was like three 64.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 174
TBPN 60
Sourcery 33
All-In 29
the a16z Podcast 9
Lenny's Podcast 5
2026 40 mentions in 16 episodes 3 per episode
- Inside Opendoor: The $2.8B Bet with CEO Kaz Nejatian · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Max Levchin: “The Net IQ of the World Is About to Go Up 50 Points” · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg: How to Make Mega Deals | Lessons from Rabois, Halligan & Grady · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Labour, Engineering, Social Media, GrokBots, Cybercabs: 7 Predictions for How AI Changes the World
- Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Inside Opendoor HQ on Earnings Day (Office Tour + Live Stream) · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- AI Safety Timeline Takeover, Bending Spoons Acquires Miro, iPhone Duo Reactions | Diet TBPN
- Should American Enterprises Work With Open-Source Chinese Models? | Only 10% of Neo-labs survive
- 8 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 66 mentions in 37 episodes 2 per episode
- SpaceX Valued at $800BN & Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Price & Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Software Finally Eats Services - Aaron Levie
- How Vise Became a Unicorn With Just 40 Employees · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Ramp's CEO Eric Glyman reflects on the journey to $13 Billion and their exciting future
- 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster
- Benchmark's GP, Everett Randle on Why Mega Funds Will Not Produce Good Returns · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated?
- Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers, Apple’s Leadership Shakeup, SpaceX Prepares For IPO | Diet TBPN
- 29 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 116 mentions in 25 episodes 5 per episode
- Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Crypto is Back Baby (ep5)
- Reid Hoffman: The Future of TikTok and The Inflection AI Deal | E1163 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How we became the fastest growing podcast (ep20)
- The "Switzerland of AI" is Crazy (ep3)
- Kevin Hartz: "How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet" | E1180 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E170: Tech's Vibe Shift, TikTok ban debate, Vertical AI boom, Florida bans lab-grown meat & more
- 17 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 30 mentions in 11 episodes 3 per episode
- Matteo Franceschetti: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | E1084 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Every VC has a FRAUD in their portfolio; The IPO market is about to EXPLODE | E1046 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Lessons from scaling Ramp | Sri Batchu (Ramp, Instacart, Opendoor)
- Sam Corcos: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible | E1093 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E132: SEC goes after crypto giants, Sequoia splits, LIV/PGA, Messi's deal + LIVE Q&A!
- Roundtable #5 with Jack Altman, Auren Hoffman, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings | E1077 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ed Sim: Why Seed Has Never Been More Competitive & Why Pricing Has Never Been Higher | E1076 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Harry debates Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Should startups target niche markets?" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 34 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference
- Jason Lemkin: Cold Email Tips; Why Only 15% of Founders Listen to their VCs | 20VC #954 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Brian Singerman: How I Became a Partner at Founders Fund, Why We Put $400M into Anduril | 20VC #943 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E76.5: Food shortage, China's grand plan, inflation, French election plus an All-In Summit preview
- E68: Trudeau invokes emergency powers, Bitcoin vs. government, Tiger Global's new strategy and more
- Jeffrey Katzenberg & Sujay Jaswa: Takeaways from Dreamworks; What happened with Quibi? | 20VC #952 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E83: Market slide continues, and how to address Uvalde
- 20VC: WTF Is Going On? 3 Outcomes for What Could Happen From Here; What Needs to Happen To Avoid Recession? Why Stagnation is Most Likely and What This Means for Startups and Venture & Why Catastrophe is More Likely Than Ever and Switzerland Could Be a "H
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 16 mentions in 13 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic
- E57: Understanding Omicron, tech stocks plummet, VC's great resignation, Jack Dorsey's departure
- 20VC: The Rise of Quick Commerce and Why CPGs ARe Misaligned Being Powered By Ad Spend, The 5 Core Components Consumers Care About When Ordering Today & Why Amazon and Alibaba Will Not Be The Big Players in 10 Years with Ralf Wenzel, Founder & CEO @ JOKR
- E40: A Bestie gets COVID, Delta breakthrough, Billionaire Space Race & more
- E38: Bestie brawl, Robinhood's $70M fine & S-1, Delta variant, next gen candidates & more
- 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition
- 20VC: Ramp's Eric Glyman on Why You Should Never Take The Highest Price, Working With Venture Funds vs Crossover Funds and How To Determine What To Buy vs Build as a Founder Today?
- E28: Current state of public & private markets, Archegos debacle, US debt issues, wealth tax & more
- 5 more episodes that year, every mention in 2021 →
2020 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: The Chainsmokers on Raising Their First $35M Fund and Entering The World of Venture, Dealing with Vulnerability and Insecurity Today & How Music and Venture Compare; The Similarities and Differences
- E5: WHO's incompetence, kicking off Cold War II, China's grand plan, 100X'ing American efficiency
- 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Opendoor's Scaling Journey, How To Implement Systems for Growth & The Right Way To Structure Customer Discovery Processes with Julia DeWahl, Angel Investor
- 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Haystack's Semil Shah on Whether Founders Are Bypassing Seed Funds in Favour Of Less Dilutive Multi-Stage Funds, How Fund Strategy Changes With Fund Scaling & Why The Hardest Challenge is Price Discipline
- 20VC: Why Lead Lime's Series D Funding Round, Why Engineers Are Underpaid & Why 74% of US Venture Firms Still Do Not Have Female GPs
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Keith's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 6 +1 | 177 | 57% 12/21 | full record on 20VC → |
| a16zLEDGER | Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 1 | 42 | 60% 3/5 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 4 | 42 | 50% 6/12 | full record on All-In → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 1 | 40 | 67% 2/3 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 2 | 32 | 50% 2/4 | full record on Sourcery → |
| TBPNLEDGER | Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 1 | 17 | 100% 2/2 | full record on TBPN → |