The Exchanges

Q When you left Fujitsu to go, um, to just go out into the world, what was your plan? Did you have an idea of what you were gonna do?

A Well, when I left Fujitsu, I had began to formulate a basis of some of my theories about how the internet and the networked world was going to change, could, could evolve human existence, and what kinds of products could be good for it. And so I had an idea for starting a company called relationships.com, which eventually became socialnet.com. And part of the reason it would, it evolved is it started with a, well, we'll start as kind of a dating service like match.com, but we actually want it to be a generalized platform. And so it's like, well, relationships sounds only like romantic relationships. Let's generalize it. Let's call it a social network. So let's call it social net.

AI assessment note: “I had an idea for starting a company called relationships.com, which eventually became socialnet.com.”

Q Reed went off to boarding school in Vermont during high school. And then, in 1986, he landed at Stanford. You were there at, at a, a pretty incredible moment. I mean, you were classmates with, like, Jerry Yang, who, yep, the founder of Yahoo, um, and, and of course, famously, Peter Thiel. Um, how did you guys meet?

A So Peter and I had heard about each other. He had heard that there was this, uh, and I'll use the, the youthful, energetic language at the time, there was this pinko commie, That's because I'm a progressive and a lefty, and I had heard those guys, right wing of the Till of the Hun, that's because he's conservative, and, uh, we'd heard about each other. We met because we took a philosophy class together. Um, we literally walked up to each other and said, look, I've heard about you, right? I'm like, yeah, I've heard about you too. Like, let's talk. And so we arranged a time to go talk, and our first conversation was, I think, eight hours long, where we were literally just, like, Ferociously arguing with each other. And so, um, we, uh, became such good friends that even when we decided that we were both gonna run for the Stanford Student Senate, uh, we basically conjoined our campaigns, even though we were just basically totally different people. Mostly because then in the campaigning process, we could go around talking to each other.

AI assessment note: “We met because we took a philosophy class together.”

Q You are, uh, just 50 years old. Are you done starting businesses? Are you finished with that?

A I think so. Um, you know, it's kind of this never say never thing, but, um, uh, you know, there's a wide variety of really important organizations, um, that I, uh, sit on the boards of. Microsoft, obviously, one of them. Airbnb, Convoy, um, there's a, there's a set of these different, um, you know, kind of, um, You know, game changing, uh, organizations. And, um, and they're all on my LinkedIn profile, because of course this is part of what LinkedIn's for. Um, and so I would have to, I'd have to seriously reduce a bunch of that if I were, if I were going to start a company. Now, maybe the right thing occurs to me, it's the right thing for the world, it's the thing I should do, but I think it's very low probability.

AI assessment note: “I think so... but I think it's very low probability.”

Q And, and just, I'm just curious, like, Was it important for you at that point to, to make a lot of money, like to become rich? Was it, like, was that something that you felt you had to do to make your mark?

A So I did want, ah, enough money to solve two problems. One problem was that I wanted to be able to not be constrained by having a salary. So the way I'd put it was my ransom money, and I don't know if you're allowed to say this on a podcast, but a bunch of people call it you money. Um, And then I additionally would like to have some more money to be able to fund projects, to be able to do the kinds of things in the world that I wanted to do. Um, I've never kind of thought about it as a kind of a race for, like, whose bank account is biggest. Because I just think that's useless. It's, it's not a spiritual identity. It's actually self-destructive to your own spiritual character. It's not the way you should think about it. So I never kind of run that kind of comparison. The What it was is I wanted to have meaningful impact on the world. I wanted to do things that were creative. I wanted to create new things. I wanted to be innovative. I wanted to inspire new things.

AI assessment note: “I did want, ah, enough money to solve two problems.”

Q So you, you joined PayPal as the COO, and you, what was your role? What were you supposed to, to do?

A Well, the primary, the first conversation that Peter had with me was, we don't really have a functional business model, but we do have a really good way of attracting customers. So what we're likely to do is try to sell the company. So what we need to do is we need to have the company running with a strong organizational coherence, and all the people working here, none of us have had any executive or management experience about how to run, like, building startup teams, and building management, and building process as you get, as you start from no process as a startup, and as you, you lightly build into it and go, and we need that to help package the company, because what we're very likely to do is sell it, and like literally the By the time that I, between I had agreed to join, which is in December, um, and then joined, December, and joined, we were already in conversations with four different companies about buying PayPal.

AI assessment note: “we need to have the company running with a strong organizational coherence”

Q And, and this thing that, that you're working on there, uh, eWorld, this was like a, like an early baby social network?

A Yes. And, uh, well, not social network even. It was like America Online. It was an online service. It had social network communities part of it. There was a group of people, because there was still a lot of Apple fan people, which I was one of, who, um, you know, kind of said, oh no, this internet thing, it's going to be huge. We should be pivoting towards the internet. We should be taking all this eWorld stuff, and we should be making it all internet things. Um, and so I started working on that, and then Uh, ultimately, uh, it became clear that Apple Computer was going to shut down eWorld, didn't really have any plans on the internet side, um, and so I was like, alright, well, going and starting internet things is the right thing, and, and what I really needed to be was a product manager. So I went to, uh, Fujitsu Software Corporation, a subsidiary of Fujitsu, because they were willing to hire me as a product manager, and, you know, that was obviously very helpful to me. But, You know, the career advice that I give people is to, is to go to where the central, the heat of the action is.

AI assessment note: “well, not social network even. It was like America Online. It was an online service.”