The Exchanges

Q Weren't you at Clorox before that? You were working on charcoal.

A One year. One year. Yeah, exactly. Salad dressing. But like, you're crazy to go join a taxi company because it's, you know, it's slow moving, it's heavily regulated, it's high capex. And like, those people just like, didn't spend two brain cells thinking about what Uber was actually building. And I feel like it's the same thing that people were saying to us in 2020. When, you know, we went out and started Construct. First of all, there's a lot of software companies. Secondly, there's a lot of physical world companies that don't need to look like really slow moving, high capex companies. And, you know, the only way we're going to get productivity is putting software into these spaces. And like, if you looked at the signals, even like four or five years ago, like the crisis was mounting. You know, we appreciate the markups that come from everyone piling into these spaces. We're also now the prices are going up like, you know, to a crazy amount, obviously on, on some of these early stage stuff, because a lot of people who like would never give these spaces kind of a second look are now the voting half of their, I don't know, billion and a half dollar funds to them all over the place. So anyway, it's an interesting time. People actually come through DC. It's great for our large conference room, which now gets use, and good for the existing funds and the portfolio.

AI assessment note: “One year. One year. Yeah, exactly. Salad dressing.”

Q are ready to go. They're green in a lot of ways, but they don't want to go to consulting and banking anymore. They like the idea of dropping into like small businesses, having more ownership control, et cetera, et cetera. Can you kind of tell me kind of the story of that and your, your discoveries around that and where it works and where it doesn't and things like that?

A Our lens on everything, right? Just to sort of like to understand the framework was the Toyota production system. It was all about applying technology and people, right? And how do you keep making things repeatable? We looked at the tech enabled factory and how do you make everything really, really, really repeatable and tech enabled? And so for us, so, so when that, like, if you inspect, so the, like the leadership component of building our team shares, so we said, okay, what are going to be as we scale, how are we going to be able to predictably and repeatably like bring in Successful, high quality leadership candidates every month, right? And the places that are natural to look and think through that are, you know, firms like consulting firms and sort of on campus business school recruiting because there are, you know, for people who are less familiar, like there's a repeatable funnel of people graduating. There's a repeatable sort of class of people.

AI assessment note: “how are we going to be able to predictably and repeatably like bring in Successful”

Q What will bending spoons do with it? Do you think?

A If anything, this is the right way to go about things when The dynamics that Sam has described have played out and oftentimes founders don't try to pursue a split kind of, I don't know what to call this, a split landing. One where you're landing the former product in a home that is as good of a deal as you can find, but then you're keeping your team together, your core creative team together to go pursue the new opportunity and giving your investors upside in that. And that's the other thing going on here, which is, as I understand it, Investors are going to get a piece of hyperagent, maybe not the same piece that they had, but something.

AI assessment note: “If anything, this is the right way to go about things”

Q product kind of does the thing that they sold, but they're, Also developing it in flight, and it's not totally clear to me that this revenue is high quality or gonna stick around, especially if you can't really get the AI product to do what you sold it can do, right? Yeah. Um, and that, that's a little bit of a scary thing for me in the market right now.

A Well, I always get nervous when markets get pulled forward, you know, like, even like our, you know, broad based economy. Right now. Like, you know, how much of it do you get it pulled? It seems to be resilient. It seems to be doing well, but I just wonder how much purchasing power got pulled forward because businesses and individuals are panicked about the potential, you know, tariffs. And so make that purchase right now. And then, you know, then when those things happen or don't happen, you know, you've pulled forward all that revenue and, you know, there's a bit of a, You know, stall, so to speak, and so I do worry about that a lot, but I also, you know, do believe that there's some monstrous, you know, companies, obviously, there's obviously at the infrastructure layer, there's massive companies that are being built, but I think there's going to be at the application layer as well.

AI assessment note: “Well, I always get nervous when markets get pulled forward, you know, like, even like our”

Q Well, I mean, wasn't Twitter a perfect example of that, right? A lot of brands pulled out of advertising on X, you know, based on Elon and everything else that was happening there, but it, I mean, how detrimental was it to that business? It didn't, I mean, a lot of them came back.

A More like if we, if I think it's right to say that this moment is sort of defined by a lot of the companies distant, sort of being able to distance themselves, their business and their employees from some of these issues, not all of them, but some of them. And also to recognize that these things are a cycle. And I think part of the reason they can do that is because The businesses went through huge layoffs, and like, they just have a lot of leverage that swung back. I think if you play it out, I mean, we've talked a lot about OpenAI and how we think a lot of the decisions that have been made there have been made by very zealous people who, you know, not necessarily on culture war issues, but, you know, maybe AGI and those things do become culture war issues, and it seems very beholden to employees. So, I don't know. I guess it's like on the corporate side, which way do we think the pendulum's swinging? Do we think three, five years from now we'll be in the same boat where, you know, Google's going to Do deals with the Israeli military and, and fire its companies who oppose or, you know, are we at the risk of things swinging back?

AI assessment note: “I guess it's like on the corporate side, which way do we think the pendulum's swinging?”

Q Okay. But what do we do about that? Or what we, what do you guys do about that? Because that's a reality today.

A Once people start realizing, once the everyday person in Texas that I grew up with is like, whoa, I made a thousand dollars from this random AI thing I created, which I don't think is gonna happen today, but like maybe a year from now. And that's gonna, that sentiment's gonna spread and people are gonna be like, whoa. And by the way, Dave and I did an hour long meeting with our head of school this week. It was just like, Every time we do conversations with like normies, like the head of school or whatever, they're like, what? I can like do all this stuff, but like all the parents hated and everyone's, you know, everyone's disputing how we should use AI and how should we do all these things. But also like, I could run my school more efficiently.

AI assessment note: “Every time we do conversations with like normies, like the head of school or whatever”

Q Yeah, no, I agree. Wait, I have a question, Jess, what do you mean by feminine energy? Like, what do we need to bring to the, to bear here?

A I mean, whatever people want to break, whatever they want, the point isn't to define it. I just think that, like, the discourse among business leaders and political leaders and everyone around the world is, like, to get loud right now. And every individual is unique and authentic in their own way, but, like, I think for the people who, like, feel called to, like, get loud about their accomplishments, their Point of view, you know, their interests, their hobbies, their convening power. Like, I think that is powerful, and that some of that is needed to break through and highlight the contributions of, um, you know, a broad group of people right now. But I don't, it's like, the point isn't to define it. The point is to, like, unleash more energy. Because what's really clear is, like, the rhetoric, the energy, The discourse has, like, been dialed to a 22, um, and I think, you know, and, and from conversations, like, a lot of people don't feel like they have a seat at that table, and I, I think one of the things that does make a difference, and then I'll shut up, is like, you know, this idea of role models, the idea of seeing people who are out there, the idea of people taking cover for other people, and I think that's just a powerful thing, and it doesn't have to just break down along gender lines. It's actually, like, a point much broader than that.

AI assessment note: “the point isn't to define it. The point is to, like, unleash more energy.”