The Exchanges

Q Yeah, and then DJ. I'm still a little confused. Can you, like, try to explain the path that led you to this very singular position that you, that you have now?

A Yeah, I just always followed what was interesting to me at the time. So when punk rock came along, well, first before punk rock would be heavy metal. Heavy metal at that time was really more like hard rock than what we think of now as heavy metal. So it would be Aerosmith, ACBC, Ted Nugent, Those were kind of the mainstays of what arena rock was like when I was 13 or 14 years old. And I loved that music, and then I got a guitar and tried to play along. And it didn't, it didn't go well. But then when punk rock came along, I could, it was easier for me to play along because it was more basic music.

AI assessment note: “I just always followed what was interesting to me at the time.”

Q Why do you like talking to entrepreneurs so much?

A I love, uh, I love hearing different people's ideas. Um, I love young people that are willing to take a shot and, and aren't afraid to do it. And, and literally, I mean, I, I, I should have my assistant Figure out how many of these I do a year, but it's multiple times a day, every fucking day. And even on Saturdays and Sundays. So I sit in this room and listen to people's pitches all the time about the businesses that they want to build and, and, uh, and their ideas. And usually you have these guys that will connect people to people and they want to be paid or a piece. I've connected more fucking people. You know, uh, that have done things together and been successful. I'm not looking for anything other than I hope they all win.

AI assessment note: “I love hearing different people's ideas. Um, I love young people that are willing”

Q What other co-experiences besides games take place on the platform now?

A We have all kinds of organic things popping up. There's arguably, of course, concerts, music that's starting to get, we're starting to see more and more of that be done organically rather than ourself you know? So I think Bruno Mars showed up on one of Jandell's games without us organizing it. I'd say that's a good sign of, I actually think Bruno was the peak concurrent of music anywhere on any immersive three D platform. And it was actually within a game. I think we're, um, early signs of shopping, early signs of who knows, you know, someday older people are going to go to church on the platform. Uh, older people are going to work together on the platform. Older people are going to do other things. I think the natural evolution of a communication platform, um, is what are the ways people use a communication platform?

AI assessment note: “There's arguably, of course, concerts, music that's starting to get... early signs of shopping”

Q You think it's in a vast majority of people agree with you?

A Look, it's becoming more common. I mean, when you get an Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, when you get these kind of archetypal examples of it, it's a lot easier to, you know, to, to, you know, to sell it. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, we were talking about earlier, like, you know, he's now a great case study of this, right? He had, you know, when Mark started Facebook, he has never, he had never had a job before. Okay. Not only had he not managed people, he had not worked for anybody, right? So like he had, he started with zero and his, his learning curve, which by the way, was, happened fully in the public eye. Right. His learning curve is vertical. And by the way, it's still vertical. Like he spends like an enormous amount of time learning how to become better at running, running, running these things at large scale. He's still the founder, and he's still the innovator, and he's still like a fountain of ideas on what to do. So he, so he's, he's, he's that double, you know, he's, he's like the classic example of a double threat. And then what happens is other founders look at that and they're like, oh, I could do that. Right.

AI assessment note: “Look, it's becoming more common.”

Q to that 1:02. But I like how you said, like, I was confused. Like, what is going on here? So you're not, your first instinct when you're confused, you start reading books, you start talking to people. What do you do to try to, to like, to essentially alleviate the confusion? Because you're like, oh, I don't know what's going on. I'm going to read Jonathan Haidt's part, for example.

A Yeah, all the above. I mean, it's, I read books and books are amazing. I think sometimes it can take reading, like, you know, as you know, it's like read for eight hours to get that one part. Oh, that's the key insight, you know? So actually calling people, I think it's faster if you have access to them, especially. Earlier in my career, I didn't have access, but now I feel like I can get access to more people, and it's often just a shortcut. Like, if you know the right person to call who's been thinking about that or working on that for 10 years, they can explain to you in 30 seconds what you need. Oh my gosh, like, that's the connection, of course. Like, so, yeah, that's exactly what I do, and I just am following my instinct a lot of the time. Like, a lot of, a lot of your job as CEO is, You know, your day can just get infinitely scheduled and you're just like trying to hire the right people and go talk to investors and build, you know, go to product reviews and stuff. But once in a while, you just need to follow your nose. If you're like, something's bothering me, you know, it's like, I've been, you're kind of always ingesting information, and once in a while you're just like, something feels really off over here, like this team doesn't, this team is rudderless, like going in no direction, or I don't trust what's going on over here, like, you know, in this policy thing, and …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, all the above. I mean, it's, I read books and books are amazing.”

Q That was the prompt? Like, what would a competent CEO do in this situation?

A I love to take the view that, like, I'm a, um, Um, corporate raider. And, uh, um, Shopify went bankrupt, and, uh, I bought it on a fire sale, and I, I'm like, uh, marching in on day one here, and previous management was crazy, and, um, we need to turn this place around, right? Like, that's my favorite. Like, this is, I, I love playing this game every, uh, like, year, um, figure out what I would do differently, and then, like, it's like, let's go. I, I have my to-do list. And, um, I asked a lot of teams to do this a lot. Like, it's like when we have systems that just don't work, um, one of the most powerful, you know, maybe through affirmations, maybe through experience, things you can do is just don't be prideful about the prior work too much. It's allowed, you're allowed to have pride in it, but like, you want to wake up better every day, right? You want tomorrow's version to be better than today. And for that, you have to kind of downgrade What's there? Like you can't, like the sunk cost fallacy is so powerful.

AI assessment note: “I love to take the view that, like, I'm a, um, Um, corporate raider.”

Q working on the ball barrel, right? And you discover what a cyclone is because you were solving a problem with the ball barrel. You had, there's no way you could have predicted at the beginning that you could apply it to another domain and then wipe the floor with all your competitors. Can you explain what you were doing and how you accidentally discovered the cyclone for the first time?

A The important thing is, is to observe things all the time for an engineer and work out how they work and also Uh, incidentally, you're always working out how to make them work better. Would it be better if I did this? Isn't there a better way of doing that? And, um, and that, that always happens with all the inventions. They don't just come out of the sky. They occur because you observe something. So curiosity and observation and trying to understand things is the way to come up with new ways of doing things. And so it was with the, with the vacuum cleaner. As we said, we, we, um, we had this huge plant that, uh, They sprayed the, the frames with powder. A lot of the powder missed the frames, because they're spraying sort of open things, there's masses of it missing it. And you suck it, we were sucking it away onto a cloth filter, a huge cloth filter, which clogged all the time.

AI assessment note: “we had this huge plant that, uh, They sprayed the, the frames with powder”

Q You're almost at your third year anniversary for, uh, running Raising Canes and starting this. I want to ask you a question. I love, I've heard you say this before. What is the advice that these so-called, the bad advice, these so-called experts gave you when you were trying to start the very first Raising Canes?

A I think, you know, so having a dream to start a chicken finger only concept was just, uh, back then was in Louisiana, was kind of unheard of. It was just a totally new idea. You know, we're known for our Cajun and Creole food here. Like at lunch, people would get a plate lunch, some Cajun dish, and that's what people are used to. Also in the industry at that time, you know, McDonald's and these other big quick service restaurant chains, they were adding menu items because they didn't want the, the veto vote is what they called it. One person in the car that might not have the choice at that restaurant that they could get, they said they would veto the whole car and go somewhere else that had that menu item for their deal. They're also adding healthy items back then, so Starting a, you know, a restaurant and having an idea to do and to focus just on one thing, one singular product focused menu was just really unheard of at that time. We didn't have In-N-Out Burger in Louisiana, right?

AI assessment note: “they were adding menu items because they didn't want the veto vote”

Q Going back to the, the kind of like founders archive in your head, like how many of the great founders were making things, manufacturing, building, moving physical stuff around?

A I mean, if you think about, like, the most famous, like, just go through, like, the robber barons, where their names are known, it's just, like, there's only one, there was essentially one robber baron that did finance, and that's, like, Jay Gould. But, like, J.P. Morgan. I have a different take on that, where, like, if you read, I've read every single book I can find on J.P. Morgan, he has an interesting character. I found his dad to be much more of a formidable individual than, than he was, and there's a funny thing when, um, J.P. Morgan dies, they, his size of his estate is revealed. I forgot the number, it was like, fifty million, which is still a ton back then, but Andrew Carnegie goes, oh, to think he wasn't even a rich man. But like Carnegie and steel, Rockefeller and oil, Vanderbilt and transportation. There's not, you know, they were building things. They were creating, I mean, they were creating essentially entire industries. If you really think about it, they were building the best company inside the industry, but they were really creating the industries.

AI assessment note: “Carnegie and steel, Rockefeller and oil, Vanderbilt and transportation. There's not, you know, they were building things.”

Q That had to be appear like a tiny business though, right? At the time. Like if that's your initial idea, you were, you didn't go, you weren't going into it thinking this is going to be a giant business. Like you're one of the fastest growing startups today.

A You know, we, we actually thought it was a huge business at the time too. So we thought it's like, if we think about all the content, all the stories out there, how incredible if they were available in audio and, and, and, and it's, it's the, whether it's some of the biggest streaming companies, whether that's TV, whether that's the conversations, all of those could be, could be actually delivered in the local language. So we fit it. We thought it's actually huge and we still think it's huge. And then if you shift this to, to even the conversation we are having now, could this be in the future, this version where I speak, Polish, and you understand me in English, or I speak English, and you understand me in any language that you want. And Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, there's this idea of a bubble fish that you put next to the ear, and you can understand everything around you regardless of the language that you speak. So we knew that we will get there, but initially it was like dubbing. So I'll give you like a full, full, full way of how kind of it progressed. Initially it was dubbing, and then as we started diving into what we need to do to solve dubbing, we realized there are three steps in dubbing process. There's Transcription step, then it's translation step to another language, and then you need to regenerate that in another, in another, in another language. Um, but the r…

AI assessment note: “we actually thought it was a huge business at the time too”

Q I'm gonna ask you one more time. I just want to go back to this in case we missed anything. Is there anything else that you learned working at Palantir that we didn't talk about that you think is valuable?

A Well, this is a stretch and I'm biased, biased, but, uh, in Palantir, frequently there was this concept of like how, um, how, You, you, you need, you need a little bit of the understanding of the art to do your job well, or like people need to, uh, um, need to effectively try to be artists, even if, if, if, if, if we aren't, uh, uh, like one of the phrases that was used was artist colony. And if that was ever publicly said, I never fully appreciated the strength of that, but I do feel like a lot, a lot more about this now, as we kind of intersect that AI and creative space in many ways. Whether it's building the audio research models, there's a lot of new ones in how that's delivered. Like, even the, even every voice that is delivered, you like George in 11 Reader, like, everybody will have their own preference, and, and how you make sure you capture those voices, how you deliver those preferences is, is, is a tricky challenge. And then, too, as you work with some of the brands that are trying to define how they communicate with the world, that, too, requires some, a lot of the, of the art in that. And we're trying to, to bring, of course, a lot of the, the people to combine that. Blending that art and science, Pantier definitely tried to do. I think I'll let Lauders judge to do it successfully, but we also will, will try to do and, and, and hopefully are doing good steps in th…

AI assessment note: “in Palantir, frequently there was this concept of like how... understanding of the art”

Q thinking about, okay, let me summarize your, your handful of ideas and you tell me if I'm missing something or if I'm wrong on any. Number one, lean into what makes you distinctive. Two, go direct and not in any particular order. Three, uh, you have to simplify your message so it, it spreads, right? And then four, you have to have some kind of mission. What am I missing?

A Trust yourself. This sounds very self-help kind of cheesy, but this is the message that you need to believe in yourself versus a hundred other people, a thousand other people, millions of other people. You need to have the actually insane confidence in your idea that you're willing to trust one person over everybody else. That is very hard to do. Right? If you're looking at any kind of scenario, and there's one guy saying this, and a million people saying it can't be done, you might want to side with a million people, but like we said, one man plus the truth is a majority, and you have to believe that you're that person, and that what you're seeing is the truth, and you have to pursue it. And then you have to stay with it, because you can't compound something that changes. The way compounding works is that it has to be a set principle that then compounds, and if you change what that thing is, you start The clock, again, you start the compounding over again. It's not compounding. Compounding is incompatible with changing the thing that you're compounding. So I, I would say that that's the fifth quest, that's the, um, fifth point. And then one other, I'll tell you what the takeaway is, but I'll actually illustrate it for you. I'm gonna tell you about a sequence of events, and then you're gonna react to it. There's a man and a woman, sort of older, and they're immigrants from Euro…

AI assessment note: “Trust yourself. This sounds very self-help kind of cheesy, but this is the message”

Q That was going to be my next question to you. Who do you think actually wins this? Because you just named, you know, three, Pretty big, well-established companies, Stripe, Robinhood, Newbank. You think it comes from them, or you think it comes from a startup?

A I think it comes from them. Uh, because first, they're still founder-led, or Revolut, also. They're still founder-led. Those founders are pushing the boundaries of all of this. They are at an age, and they are at a place, and if you talk to them, they're still as hungry as they were on day one. They're still in that day one mentality, and they're just going faster than the incumbents. For a while, I thought the incumbents were going to catch up. In, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, Fair enough. There was not much difference between a financial product offer from an incumbent or from a, one of these new brands. That's different today. Again, AI has just become a rocket, a nitro rocket for the, for this breed of technology companies to just accelerate even faster and separate themselves again, which is the beauty of the infinite game. In the beauty of the infinite game, you never get to win or you never get to lose. You're simply ahead or behind. And they were ahead for a long, long time, and then they were, the other ones were catching up, but the rules change. What happens? You're ahead again, and the other ones fall behind. But the game never ends. That's the way I live my life. That's the way I think about everything I do. That's the way I make decisions. I don't think about winning or losing ever on anything I do. I just think about, will this put me ahead or put me b…

AI assessment note: “I think it comes from them. Uh, because first, they're still founder-led”

Q Is that one of your highest grossing restaurants?

A Yeah. And so, I mean, that's an amazing story. I mean, I basically found a restaurant that Had closed down during COVID because they were afraid about what was going to happen. It was sitting there relatively new and, you know, relatively unknown, you know, in the sense that I knew that I could come in. It was in a perfect location. Everyone says, how did you find this location? And I say, well, A hundred yards in each direction, exactly, basically, from this restaurant are two of the highest grossing restaurants in America. Joe's Stone Crab and Prime One 12, since I've been a kid, ok? These are two of the highest grossing restaurants in America. Every time that list comes out, here are two of them. We're directly in between the two of them. That's all the math I'm doing. They're like, oh, well, what about the thing across the street? I'm like, I don't care about the thing across the street. You got the two highest grossing restaurants in America on either side of me. How bad can this be? You know what I mean? Like, this is gonna, of course, it's gonna be a great location. So I basically told them, You can change any, I knew they couldn't do that much in that amount of time, right? So I was able to say things I don't normally say. It's like, I like, you know, I had like an Ocean's 11 style. I flew, everyone was all over the country, and we flew them in from all over the, you kn…

AI assessment note: “Yeah. And so, I mean, that's an amazing story.”

Q How do you get to where you're saying, do you mind it? There is no, like, you're just the interface between humans and computers.

A So now we're going to get into a philosophical discussion of what it means to be a programmer or a software engineer, right? And I, I think like, you know, if you go all the way back, it's You know, there, there was a time where programming was like using the vacuum tubes, like plugging all those in and having it do the, the machine do the arithmetic, right? Like the ENIAC was, um, you know, with the first, in some sense that the first computer out there, although it was obviously very different, or it would have been like, you know, filling out the punch cards and like setting up the, or, or writing, you know, the, like putting down assembly, you know, or writing in basic or something, right? So, so we've gone through a lot of generations already is my point. And what does it look like? You know, going forward, when you talk about programming, all it really comes down to is like, how do you tell your computer what to do? And like every single piece of software that you use, if you're using, you know, Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or whatever, like that's a piece of software that somebody, or like some, you know, in these cases, some pretty big teams of engineers came together and thought through all these details of, okay, here's what I want it to do. Here's how I want it to look. Here's what I want this button to do. Here's how I want to architect it. Every single little dec…

AI assessment note: “And I think what we'll start to see is that abstraction will continue to climb”

Q Do you think all this stuff is a little crazy?

A I think it is directionally correct, but I think there's some, you know, there, there, there are definitely some places where people have gotten carried away, you know, people talk about, oh, like, yeah, like we rank our engineers by how many tokens they're spending. Well, let's, let's try and rank people by how much output they're actually producing or how much good work, you know, is actually getting done, you know, but, but obviously I think the, like, the math works out in terms of like, you know, the GPUs are expensive, but like, if your engineers are actually able to ship three times more, you know, then it's very clearly worth it. You just want to make sure you're doing it the right way, right? Obviously a lot there on just like, Tying to specific outcomes, tying to, okay, what are the actual tickets that are getting done? What are the, what are, what are the projects and the initiatives? And like this project, which was scooped out for 18 months and was going to be handed off to, you know, an outsourced contractor, um, and, and was going to cost you fifteen million. Like, let's just talk about how that you do this all internally with your own team and you do it for one million and you get it all done in three months, you know, uh, stuff like that, uh, which I think is super important. The second thing which I'll call out especially is Just being neutral. A lot of discus…

AI assessment note: “I think it is directionally correct, but I think... places where people have gotten carried away”

Q Did you send employees down to South America for NewBank?

A Well, so NewBank, I mean, the first one, honestly, our entire team was the Ford deployed team. Like we all flew to Brazil. Like, I mean, it's, it's like the first case, you know, it's like, it's like, Let's be real here, ok? Agents did not work generally, ok? And so, there was a lot of like, how do you make it work for you very specific? Like, we all flew to Brazil. I was there, the whole team was there. We were sitting there with their engineers, understanding, ok, so this is what you do in that case, this is what you do in that case, and this is what Devin needs to know, and Devin needs to be able to read these things, and like going and debugging their like exact problems. Now, obviously, it's not like that at all, because, you know.

AI assessment note: “our entire team was the Ford deployed team. Like we all flew to Brazil.”

Q Wait, did you do that deal, or was that before you?

A That was way before me, but I remember when he said, you know, the, the line, like, he said the line, you know, first thing first, obey your thirst, and like, he talked about Sprite. Like, you've seen these things, or St. Ides malt liquor. You should look at these ads with, with, with, with Ice Cube and St. Ides. Like, these, These, these things were so powerful that hip-hop would be working with these brands, and like, it would influence urban culture immediately. And when I talk about urban culture, I'm talking about dense cities, not even black kids. I'm talking about just dense inner city, uh, uh, uh, you know, I use it as a measurement of space, density of people. They would gravitate towards these products that these artists talked about either in their, in their music or did blatant acts for. So by the time I had gotten to Will Smith and Men in Black, I mean, I had seen it for 25 years, but it still wasn't mainstream cultural impactful yet for reasons that I still don't understand. Like, it was very clear and obvious, but You know, like most things, when the alternative is working, when the incumbent can still rely on the old business practice, they won't disrupt themselves, they'll just keep doing that, right? Like, why would I invest any money in understanding hip-hop when Kenny G is still selling? I mean, no disrespect to Kenny G, Michael Bolton is still selling, what…

AI assessment note: “That was way before me, but I remember”

Q entire life. Just him deciding not to stay in this fucked up place and come to America and then me be born, you know, 30 years later or whatever the case was. I've heard you a few times and I think you call them dummies. About these young kids that seem to be attracted to, you know, hating billionaires or being anti-capitalistic. Can you talk a little bit about that?

A Yeah. Um, it's funny because if you look at the situation that California's in right now, right. And all these billionaires are trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there. Billionaires are very important to the ecosystem of the United States. You know what I mean? The amount of money these guys pay in taxes. How do you think everything stays afloat? How do you think the state Uh, comes up with the money to fix the roads and build the highways and, you know, uh, infrastructure in every city in America comes from billionaires, millionaires, the middle class, and people who work their asses off and pay their taxes. That's where all the money comes from. I was just doing an interview, I won't say, but two days ago, and they were walking around looking at my office and looking at the gym, and the woman was like, you know, There's hard times right now. Some people are going through it. And don't you think if they're going to see this and be like, uh, well, if they're going to see this and be like, you know, oh, this is terrible that this guy had, you're, you're not it. And you're never going to be it. You, you, you got the victim mentality and you're never going to be that person. What you should look at what I have and say, that guy barely graduated high school. Right. And, uh, believed in something. Did all the right things. If that guy can do it, I can do it. That's how…

AI assessment note: “Billionaires are very important to the ecosystem of the United States.”

Q Let's just focus on this. So now you're, you know, 350 to 400 of them today. What were you back then?

A Uh, so we were more, yeah, I'd say probably close to double that, and so this guy, Giovanni, who just started as CTO, he joined, and he, he joined in November, 22, and he's responsible for him and Basel, that the CTO I talked about, they, they basically together worked on the Axon two model, really, Giovanni led it, and then built out the team, and he runs the team. Now, the reason I raised his name is, he came in, and he started asking me interesting, but difficult questions. Questions like, why do we have this person? Why do we have this team? Why do we have, like, these processes? And as a business, you sort of go, when I first started, I didn't want any process. I have almost a no meanings rule. Like, I wanted everything to be as highly efficient as possible, but over a decade plus, you inherit some process. You go public, you're told you need these processes, you need these people. Well, you got someone in who's fresh blood, who's really hungry, insanely high IQ person. I mean, one of the smartest people I've ever met. Much smarter than I am. And he's grilling me with this question every day. Like, why is this person in this role? Why is this person here? Like, how come this person is a VP to this person and the person underneath that person is much better than the VP? So I kept getting these questions and I was like, either I'm going to have to address these questions or …

AI assessment note: “so we were more, yeah, I'd say probably close to double that”

Q Yeah, that's what you described, like, when you started, that's right. And so talk a little about, like, What you think AI will do to a company like yours, where it seems to be like a design first culture?

A I think AI is like probably the best thing that's ever happened to, to Snapchat, which is great. Um, I think the reason why is because we've always had a ton of ideas and a deep connection with our community and our customer, but we've always had very limited resources and we're up against monopolistic companies. And so we've essentially been engaged in like trench warfare with monopolies for 15 years, right? And I think what's so funny, like, You know, you look at the last 15 years, we learned very, very early on that there's no moat in software, which was an incredibly powerful lesson, right? All of our ideas, the things that we invent, people just try to copy right away, and it's easy to do that with software. But what's fascinating about the world today is that it has never been easier, right? I mean, almost instantly you can copy nearly any piece of software. And so because we learned that lesson very early on, we've evolved our business to really focus on the things that are It's hard to copy, right? A network effects business of people communicating with one another. These platforms, right, like our augmented reality platform or our content ecosystem that are not just pieces of software that you can, you know, easily copy, but ecosystems of people communicating with one another or creators making content that people are watching or people building augmented reality exper…

AI assessment note: “I think AI is like probably the best thing that's ever happened to, to Snapchat”

Q Do you find a lot of the greatest founders that you've spent time with and backed and partnered with are at low introspection?

A Yeah, generally. Although in fairness, um, you know, the, the, the introspection is probably linked to the, the personality trait of neuroticism, right? Um, so, you know, a lot of, a lot of the best founders are, you know, I think Like, zero percent neuroticism. Like, they just don't get emotionally phased by things that happen, which is a superpower when you're an entrepreneur. But having said that, some of the great entrepreneurs are, in fact, very neurotic. Like, you know, that's also the case. It's not a, you know, it's not, it's, maybe it's nice to have to be low neuroticism, but not necessary. And so, you know, there are some that kind of get wrapped around the axle on kind of personal issues. You know, as you know, you know, these days, sometimes that then, you know, kind of turns into, you know, use of, Uh, you know, psychedelics, you know, different kinds, and hallucinogenic drugs, and, you know, that's like one very interesting kind of trajectory for, you know, kind of the culture of the country, culture of the world, and, you know, we'll, we'll see where that goes.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, generally. Although in fairness, um, you know, the, the, the introspection”

Q The machine and the man, or the man and the machine, right?

A It's one, it's one, I'm not sure if it's that one, but it's one of those. I think it might be that one, yeah. He actually went back, and this is like, you know, this is what we're talking about, like, making forties, 19 fifties, 19 sixties, and he went back and he got them, at that time, they, they had a, they had a secretary transcribing in real time all of the executive staff meetings, uh, every, every Monday morning, and he went back and he actually got the archives of the transcripts of the executive staff meetings, and it's just literally Thomas Watson's just, like, cursing everybody out, and just, like, just like a complete tyrannical psychopath, just, like, screaming at people, and it's all, it's all in the records, and so it's like, you know, So how much of this stuff ever changes? You know, it's like, you know, whatever, I don't know, whatever Elon gets accused of or whatever, Steve Jobs, it's like, oh no, that guy was, whatever it is, it's a pale version of what that guy was doing. But anyway, the point being is like IBM, so by the time I got involved in IBM was like six years later, you know, yeah, six, 50 years later after that, and so they were kind of peaking in their power, but what happened was, I remember this because I was their intern and I was trying to figure out whether I should, I should work, I should work there after college, and they had a, their intra…

AI assessment note: “I'm not sure if it's that one, but it's one of those.”

Q I made that. Yeah. Why do you draw so much inspiration from physical things?

A I'll take some guesses because I don't know, just like, I don't know why I like certain flavors. I just do, right? You can't really explain these things, but if I had to guess, again, it comes back to there's something real about them. Um, I like being able to hold things, touch things. I like texture. Something you'll see in a lot of our software products is actually texture, which is, it's not real. It's simulated, but a lot of software these days is very flat. I like gradients and colors and lines and some texture. I just find it to be very, Fulfilling and real to, like, rub your finger over something and feel it. I like patina. I like age on things. Software doesn't age. I mean, it does age. It can look old or whatever, but, like, software looks the same over time. A great building, a great, a great brick, to get back to bricks. Bricks are beautiful because they look even better as they get older. Um, they collect age on them. They get stronger. They're just, they build into other things. I just, there's something about the physical world to me that is just, We're from it. Ok, like, we are it. We are part of it. Like, there's something so fundamental about it that I try never to get too far away from it. Um, I would much rather lay on the ground than, like, fly in the air. You know, I just want to be closer to things that are real. Um, now, flying in the air is real, too, o…

AI assessment note: “there's something real about them. Um, I like being able to hold things”

Q Oh, now you've moved to Balibu. Are these rocks crystals?

A They're not crystals. I was gonna save that in case you asked me. They're not crystals. I'll just find something at the beach, or I'll find something interesting with a cool pattern in it, and I just, like, I just like it. I don't know. I love nature. I love all the textures and patterns and colors. Like, for example, you know, when you're coming up as a designer in the early days when I was designing, like, identities, like, logos and stuff, you kind of would go, you'd go through these, like, logo books. Or like corporate identity books. Um, I think there was an organization called, um, I want to call it Brand, but maybe I'm wrong. Print actually was this magazine that had all these pictures of business cards and stuff. And Every designer I know would look through other business cards for inspiration, for, like, color patterns, and palettes, and layouts, and like, I, I'm like, go outside. Like, the best designs ever are right there. That leaf is the best it's ever been. Obviously, it's, like, survived and evolved. This is a great thing. And so I, like, if you want to find great colors, look at a bird. Don't look at a book. Like, look, look, look at a leaf, right? Look at the ocean. Look, look, look, look, go to a tide pool, and just look at the colors in that tide pool. Look at the way the light reflects. Like, that's the real stuff. And whatever, I have goosebumps. Like, for …

AI assessment note: “They're not crystals. I'll just find something at the beach”

Q Could you use the word essence or no?

A I mean, essence is part of it, I think. Maybe you could. Um, what's the French word for essence? I want to hear you say it. Um, uh, essence. I don't know what the hell it is. But it's, it's more about the, the, um, It's, to me, it's purity. It's like, that's the beauty, is that this is the initial idea, this is the original concept, and this is the first execution of that idea in three dimensions, in, in a product. Actually, the, the, the gym I used to go to had some old concept, getting back to the concept two, old concept two rowers, and I actually really liked looking at the early ones, and then looking at the changes over the years, and in that case is, in that case, the changes were more functional. Like, they used better materials that lasted longer and stuff, but the idea, the fact that this idea of this product that's so good today was so pure back then, and still kind of the same thing, like, just gave me, I'm, I'm, I'm more attached to the brand because of that. Like, they didn't just add stuff to add stuff. They added stuff that literally did improve things, not just to sell new models, but to, you could see the material changes. Meanwhile, like, a lot of things like watches and stuff, it's just like, New dial colors and new stuff just to kind of sell more.

AI assessment note: “I mean, essence is part of it, I think. Maybe you could.”

Q You told him the truth, too. Like, where did, where did that come from?

A Because not out of arrogance or confidence, it's comfort. My father really drilled in me from when I was a little kid that wherever you go, The place is better because you're there, because you're a decent person. He used, you're a humble person, you're a decent person, you're a good person, and you're not going to screw anybody in his language, right? So wherever I went in my life, I always feel comfortable, very insecure in my personal life, which I've grown out of in the list that that's 72, hello, right? Thank God, you know, who the fuck wants to die that insecure, right? But, um, You know, in, in work, I always had a certain amount of confidence because it came natural to me. I, nothing came natural to me before that, but when I set it a console and I put the faders up, the balance came very, very naturally and people liked it. So that's kind of where I got some of the confidence from, but you know, I just, I don't know. I was always willing to say what I felt about music and to anybody at any time, you know, and I, I, I'm, I mean, what's the point of asking me a question if I'm not supposed to give you my answer? I don't, I don't understand that philosophy.

AI assessment note: “My father really drilled in me from when I was a little kid”

Q How did you know there's a need for a new school, though?

A Because I realized it was education, because I realized it was siloing in education, that you go to, you, you, because I see, again, what do I know? I know, I know, like, the feel of young people, culture, right? So I see the way kids are being brought up. They're brought, brought multidisciplinary right now for the last, 15 years, they're all being brought up with multiple disciplines. You know, tech, music, culture, design, they're all fascinated by that. So when you go to school, when you go to college, you get siloed. You go to Wharton, you're an accountant. Yeah, they have classes and all that. They have an engineering course you could take. Well, you take that engineering course with 50 other engineers, right? So now you're seeing school, remember, we started this school 14 years ago.

AI assessment note: “because I realized it was siloing in education”

Q Okay, so that's the example he gave me. I haven't played the game. Can you elaborate on this?

A I completely agree. So like, uh, so again, this is like, man, the world has such a weird way of like, um, Somehow changing itself around me to make the stuff that I thought was, uh, uh, irrelevant relevant or is late in life. It's like absolutely amazing. Um, it's just like, okay, so, so video games. Video games are best thought. I mean, this depends on very much on the video game, but in the aggregate, very often see the good video games are simulations. They are word upon itself, and you are an, an high agency actor, and you modify, modify things. You, you, you take, you perform actions, um, you make decisions, and then the Game rearranges themselves, giving you a feedback loop of, usually a very quick feedback loop because of us it's unfun. Um, but it, you, you learn about consequences of your actions, so like, um, uh, competitive multiplayer games are very obvious there, and, and StarCraft and strategy games, they're not that popular as a category of games anymore, but like, um, you know, when I was going for my teens in the nineties, like StarCraft was the biggest, uh, game. And, um, You know, I loved it because it was really, really hard. It was, like, easy to learn how to master, which is exactly, I think, a hallmark of everything that's worth doing for motorsports, for, for, um, kiteboarding, for my, for my hobbies, tennis, all these things are like this. But, like, it …

AI assessment note: “very often see the good video games are simulations. They are word upon itself”

Q So, we were just talking about the fact that Compact and IBM, they were almost like Essentially, you got fuel from being underestimated. You've mentioned in the book that, like, you found it, I think you said something that's like a powerful motivating force. Do you recall why you felt that way?

A Yeah, it was, it was just, it was just like, okay, wow, this is going to be a multiplier for us because they underestimate us. They don't understand what we're doing. And, and so, uh, they, they didn't see us coming because they were underestimating us, you know. I think, ah, the CEO of Compaq, you know, would, would refer to us as a mail order company, or, you know, garage operation, or whatever, you know, and you'd hear that, and you'd go, oh, wow, this is, this is great, right? It's like, they have no idea what we're doing. All, all that was motivating, you know, any time You know, there, there was sort of a, a setback and the conventional wisdom or even whatever interpretation was, okay, you know, they're going to fail, they're going to go out of business, all that incredibly motivating.

AI assessment note: “this is going to be a multiplier for us because they underestimate us”