Building a Company in Stealth | Travis Kalanick with a16z

Travis Kalanick, Ben Horowitz, and Erik Torenberg reunite to reflect on Uber's early days, the investment that almost happened, and why Kalanick believes the next great technology opportunity lies beyond software. They discuss the lessons of building Uber, the value of founder-led companies, and why Kalanick spent nearly eight years quietly building Atoms before stepping back into the spotlight. The conversation explores industrial AI, robotics, autonomy, mining, food production, and Kalanick's vision for digitizing the physical world, where software, manufacturing, real estate, and transportation come together to transform entire industries. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:09 - The Deal That Got Away: Uber's Series B in 2011 13:22 - Why Uber's 2017 Wouldn't Have Happened with Ben or Marc on the Board 17:38 - When the Pirate Becomes the Navy 21:14 - The Fall from Uber & Finding CloudKitchens 32:00 - 8 Years in Stealth: Building Without the New York Times 34:47 - Digitizing the Physical World 39:47 - Bringing It All Together: Atoms Vision 49:13 - Great Companies Are Always About a Great Entrepreneur 01:04:57 - Creating Problems vs Solving Them 01:17:24 - The Second Industrial Revolution & Resistance to Change 01:28:07 - Building the Team Resources: Follow Travis Kalanick on X: https://x.com/travisk Follow Ben Horowitz on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Erik Torenberg?

  Travis Kalanick joins TVPN to discuss why he's betting his next company on industrial AI. He shares his vision behind Adams, explains how autonomy is transforming industries like mining and food production, and discusses why bringing AI into the physical world may be an even bigger opportunity than software alone.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Before we start, the last time you were on here, that was, for me, the best moment of making the show ever. John and I, it was totally surreal and we really enjoyed the conversation. But to me, we left that and it was almost depressing because as somebody who started getting into startups in the 2010s, you were that guy. And then I was realizing with the show, we had that conversation with you and it was a significant day for you. But it was sort of depressing because I realized like a moment like that would never actually come again, where I got to basically interview.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  It will happen, guys.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  It will happen. It will happen differently, but a childhood hero having that conversation, that's one of one for me. I don't think it'll happen again. There'll be other, it was peak.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  It was good.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  But anyways, you've been busy since then.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  I've been busy. Look, I'm super excited. It's my first OpenAI podcast.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I'm very excited about it. Also, I want to let you guys know that if you need therapy sessions for what it's like to be a made man in retirement.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Like, if that's a thing, I can help motivate you guys.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  Isn't step one of therapy in this situation, just get a jet ski?

• 1:41Speaker 02

  No, it's just, it's actually denial. You got to get over the denial.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Okay, over the denial. And then the acceptance?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know the 12 steps.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Everyone just knows denial and acceptance. They don't know any of the other ones. Grieving, bargaining, there's a couple others in there, but you do go through that. It's natural. Yeah. It happens, but then you start building.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you guys need advice, you need therapy, I'm here for you.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  I mean, know the retard maxing is, you're not supposed to do therapy. I'm just saying, there are benefits.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Especially with your new partners. They're like, if there one thing, they wrote into the fundraising round, they wrote into the docs, like, cannot go to therapy.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Oh, that would be a pain.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Podcasts are modern therapy for men. This is what men do. They don't go to therapy.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  You should have, you should have, you should have office hours for founders, but they have to just come out on a jet ski while you're going and you're going 70 miles an hour and you'll coach them.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I'm, I am starting to teach many founders and people in tech world how to water ski, how to wake surf. A bunch of my engineers already, so there was one guy who didn't know how to swim, but I got him behind the boat, wake surfing.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Is that a life jacket?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Life jacket.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  The life jacket on.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Life jacket. It sounds weirder than it is, but it was still very weird.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  It's a high risk.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was good.

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Potentially.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  The business.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Business. Dude, it's business time. Got to put on the business socks.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Unfinished business.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Unfinished business. So yeah, I announced earlier today, we did a $1.7 billion raise. There's some, there's some noise that's going to happen.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Now.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  One mallet.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  This is fucking, you guys are crazy.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  You have to do another one from downtown.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  I'm having it next time.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Come over the top.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  So much noise.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  So much noise. All right, but walk us through.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  I feel you came in very relaxed.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Walk us through, I think it's been, what, has it been four months since we talked?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Three or four months, something like that. Yeah. I think, did we talk in April or March?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  I think March.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. Yes.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Early March.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Four months.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  So, so yeah, so. What happened with the business to unlock the next round?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  I mean, we continue to go up and to the right, but like the announcement of Adams was, we are, we are going to do physical automation, physical AI, what we are calling industrial AI, to transform these industries one at a time.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  We did food, we moved into mining, we're doing transport, and it's working. And so that's how you go. And then, of course, there's like going out of stealth, there's all the things, and it was just the right time.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  So, so yeah, we just went to market. We said, when I originally went to market, I was like, these were separate companies. Okay, so our mining and transport was a separate thing. Food was a separate thing and we had a bunch of other, you know, a bunch of subsidiaries doing cool stuff. And I said, which one do you guys want to do? Do you want to invest in mining? Do you want to invest in food? Do you want to invest in this? And they're just like, we want to invest in you.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  And we heard that, like, we took, like, the first five folks we talked to all said that. So then what we did is we put the companies together and then sold the equity in a singular entity.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  So just put, put it together. And it's much easier for me. I don't know how Elon does it with all the different companies.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Different capables.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, no.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And borrowing employees.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  The answer is what's been happening, right?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  It's, it all comes back together. Guys, he did it for 20 years, though.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  And he's still technically doing it. It's actually, they are different companies.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Boring company, Neuralink, like, he's still got lots of cool stuff.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  The lesson in there for investors is like, even with Elon companies, there's such an insane power law where you have a $10 billion company and then you have a, you know, a $2 trillion company, right? And it's like, you just want exposure, you want broad exposure. Ideally, you know, you could just invest in the one that breaks out, but you want broad exposure to the category.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  When things are first getting going, there is a lot of upside of having them separate.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Because if somebody wants to invest in a really cool thing, and this is what happened when we first got the transporter mining thing going, if they want to invest in that cool thing, they're like, I don't know anything about food. By the way, food on its own is robotics, real estate, like restaurants, like, you know? And so they want, they want to be exposed to that one thing and they don't want to have to underwrite something going across all things. And they're like, well, if you're losing money over here, I want you to lose money over here. So how much of the money I'm putting in is going to go to that? There has to be a theory of the case of how you put it together, how you allocate capital across. And honestly, once you're starting to get to profitability on one or more, then that conversation starts to get easier. And I think that's, that could

• 6:47Speaker 02

  be why, I can't speculate on sort of Elon's world, but certainly I'm super excited to have those pieces put together into a single, into a single puzzle.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  What does go to market look like in the mining industry for you?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  It's the frickin' best.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Okay, because, but specifically, like, when I think of, when I think of your go to market.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Magic. It was deploying young people to a new city in Miami and they're doing a marketing stunt. And it's not like you're calling in favors or leveraging your network to get Uber up and running in a new city. That was something that was organizational design.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  So hold on, that's consumer.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Exactly. So how is it different?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Well, it's just like, well, all the food stuff we're doing is business, almost all of it. Really all of it. Mining's all business. So, so, look, there is a big thing. If you go from doing consumer to doing business, and I think we may have talked about this last time, that's a whole other ballgame. I mean, that takes years off your lifespan doing it, like getting good at it and then owning it. But mining, go to market is cray cray. Like, so, I'll just give you an example.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Like going to the mining conference or something?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Well, yes.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  How are we meeting CEO?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yes, you do that. But, but, you know, I can, a lot of times, look, when you have very efficient transportation, you can go places. So, a month ago, I dropped into deep Amazon in Brazil. Okay? Like, deep northern Brazil, like Amazon.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Places you can't even get a jet ski to.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Guys, it's the Amazon of the Amazon, okay?

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And, and like, tiny airports, you're just like, you kind of just start, you slide into the DMs, except there's a tarmac, okay?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Sure, there you go.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  And.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  You're a great pilot.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yes, of course. And massive iron ore mine that we're operating in there. And you see, like, we took, we were there for a couple days because we already have customers there.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  A customer's called Valet. It's a massive mining company. And.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  They uh, it's, it's like the world's largest iron ore mine. And you go and you get in a helicopter. Just going over one of the sites takes thirty minutes.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Okay? And it's fascinating. It's so fascinating and you're learning how the system works. You're sort of figuring out, how do I? You basically take a kit, you apply, you, you, you install it onto a machine and that machine becomes autonomous. And some of these machines are like twenty years old. Some of them are new. Um, and so there's lots of different kinds of machines as well. And you're making the mine more productive. You're um, you're making it way safer. It is super, like, they have lots of safety protocols, but like, it is mining.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Dangerous business.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  It is a dangerous business. Uh, and the OpEx goes down all at the same time. It's kind of a beautiful thing. And then, you know, I went from Brazil and then straight from there dropped into the border between Iraq and Saudi, on the Saudi side. So we have a phosphate mine that we're doing stuff there. The signals were jammed. So we had to like, my pilots had to land kind of like old school style, like

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Visual.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Physical, visual.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Is that because of the conflict going on in the region?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  And just the general, the vibes on the borders there.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yep. So um, but same story. And so go to market is wild. Just end up in like

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Literally go to market.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Crazy places, but it's super needed. And so what's happened is the, the pronto technology has got, gotten past human productivity. Which means you go to a gold mine CEO, you talk about go to market, you go to a gold mine CEO and you say, would you like to have twenty percent more gold per year?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Good stuff. We haven't heard no.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. But they're, but they say prove it.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  And that's where the rubber meets the road, right?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  How long does it take to prove?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  It used to take a lot longer. Now, be, like, once you've proven it enough times, then it sort of gets its own momentum.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Gets around.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  And so we're in that, we're in that place on pronto where that momentum is taking hold. Because there's enough proof points where it's just working in so many different places. Where people are like, alright, let's go. We're gonna, think of mining, autonomous mining, almost like um, almost like enterprise software where you get a pilot. There's like a ten thousand person company and you've got, you, you, you got an enterprise startup and they're like, I got like eight seats, but it's this huge company and if we get it, it's huge.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  And I've got this other ten seats over at this other one, it's a pilot, but I swear it's gonna work. And they're out there pitching and trying to make it happen.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  But once it works, and in mining, that means human productivity. Human level, better than human productivity. Once it works, it goes big.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  And they're like, okay, let's get across, let's get across all the vehicles. And so we're sort of in that mode with a bunch of different customers right now.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  How big is the opportunity to just increase uptime of mining operations? I imagine that there are mines that are trying to operate twenty-four seven, but getting a night shift in the middle of the Amazon reliably, everyone showing up and being, you know, healthy and happy and eager. It gets a lot easier when it's like, yeah, we're still gonna have a bunch of people on site, but they're gonna be overseeing robotic workers.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  So uh, so yeah, I mean, the um, there's two parts to the productivity gain. First is the machine per hour doing more.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  That's part one. Part two is hours and callouts and all of that stuff. Uh, as well as just, you know, the safety protocols change when you have less risk.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of things like this that pile on to each other. My guess is you could even end up thirty percent, forty percent more productive at the end of all of it.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  And when you do that, the opportunity speaks for itself. A gold mine that's doing thirty or forty percent more gold per year is kind of, whoa, but that's for every mineral. That's lithium. That's, like, we also go all the way down to quarries. Quarries are different because quarries are basically, it's about cement, let's just say. That's the main jam, there are others, but let's just go with that. You can't, you don't just go do more rock because you need cement customers on the other side. They're only using so much cement.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Like where to store it?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  And so, so that's more of an OpEx play. And there are thinner margins there. But I'm in the game. And it's kind of interesting, it's a lot of fun. And for that company, for pronto, they were super, Anthony Levandowski and the team there, super scrappy, true startup style. Lean as hell, like, so lean, like that Christian Bale movie, I can't remember the name of it.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  The Machina.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Dude, is like super lean and I'm like, guys, we gotta go from lean to muscular.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  You gotta go to Batman.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  And that's what we're doing, like, and you think of that, this in an enterprise

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Lean to muscular, that's a good, that's a good phrase. You just wanna be muscular.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  And so you think about enterprise go to market. Part of our go to market is, is um, building credibility with our enterprise customers that we're going from lean to muscular. Because they, the demand is there. It's ready to go. They're like, we need you to be muscular. We need the protein powder and the whatever else.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  What, what holds, what holds you back?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  You could go to the gym, whatever.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  What holds you back from scaling? Let's say you do a pilot, it works well. You're attaching hardware to existing systems and hardware that they're using. And they say, okay, we're getting more out, maybe we wanna place orders for more machines. Are those, I imagine the lead times on some of this mining equipment could be insane. How much of the stack do you wanna own?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Say the question again, I'm sorry, just blank, go for it one more time.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Like, right now, you're taking existing mining equipment and you're augmenting it with, you're bringing, you're, you're making it AI enabled. You're making it autonomous, you're making it more efficient. And they say, great, this is working, we wanna scale up our operation. Cause maybe we need less or we can do more with the same, you know, human headcount.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Um, but what's the, I imagine there's some things that are out of control for, for you at that point where they're like, okay, we need more of this heavy mining equipment. Let's, let's add it to the site, but is there like a lag time there?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  The real lag time is getting, so you have to, you're, so, let's say we wanna get a bunch of machines that are in the Amazon up and running.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Okay? How do you do that? So I've gotta ship a bunch of sensors, a bunch of compute, a bunch of equipment and mechanical systems, let's just say, so that a team can then go install it.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you're basically building a data center on site?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  So, it's sort, I wouldn't put it that way. I would say, I mean, if you considered a machine with sensors and compute a data center. I mean, you could, but it's really, think of those, there are servers, but I wouldn't say a data center.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Some operations would bring like an Armada style, like shipping container sized level of

• 16:28Speaker 02

  You're just real

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Palantir as one.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  So you bring in the stuff.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Okay? You have to install it.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Um, you have to like bring it up and make sure, okay, this is a new place. How does, does this machine work properly in this new place? And calibrate and make sure it's safe and all of this. So there's like a process of getting it up. Then there's change management. Because that, that site's going from, there are people that show up in the morning. There's all this very regimented process uh, to make sure everything's going exactly as planned and people are exactly where they're supposed to be. Because otherwise, weird things happen on a, on a mining site.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  So you have to go from that to, okay, we're now running a autonomous mining operation. It's just a very different thing. So the installation and the bring up and what we call commissioning are sort of like the things you have to do. And, you know, like, why does it take a long time to install? Because that machine may not even be drive by wire.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  So you have a mechanical system. Like if you turn the steering wheel, like it's, you know what I mean?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a mechanical system. A hydraulic system.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  So you're bringing

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Where you have to go

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Actuator that might push a physical button.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  You're, yeah, you're, you're trying to make electricity then do a physical thing, so then you need physical actuation.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  To do the things, because it's not, these machines are not natively drive by wire.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that, that sounds That sounds uh, incredibly difficult, but necessary, because you're not gonna get a mine to rip out tens of millions of dollars of equipment that they already have. But would you eventually go full stack, like build the entire?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  I mean, look, we ultimately, I mean, if you go in the mining industry, there's like this, this uh, term, it's called no entry mine. A no entry mine is a mine where there are no people in the pit.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Lights out factory.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of like that version, a version of it. There might be people in a control center, there might be, but like, in that pit, no human.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  And it's a wildly different calculus from a safety perspective, I imagine.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Totally different, obviously. And so there's drilling, there's blasting, there's loading, there's haulage. Uh, there's crushing, I'm just going through the different parts of the mining operation. And what you do is you start somewhere and then you start extending to those other areas to get to that no entry thing. And the no entry thing is, you can have an autonomous thing, like, like our haulage system is autonomous. If you're getting into a new place, you can do remote control and move into autonomous. If you want to go super no entry or lower entry mine, if that makes sense. It's, it's super fascinating.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  And then you're talking about, you're talking about loaded a two million pound machine that's moving potentially thirty-five miles an hour down the road. And it's, it's an off-road thing.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Two million pound machine moving thirty-five miles an hour off-road.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  This is why you have to jet ski to work.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  This is the ultimate ATV. So no, you get in it and you can, you know, you can experience it. I mean, it's not like there's like an amusement park for this, but like I've certainly experienced it where I can get in the, I get in the machines and, and check out what's going on.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  This is like the dump truck, the 20 foot tires, it's actually.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Are any of these, are any of these companies like acquisition targets? Where you would, you would be able to come in and say like, you're doing a lot of stuff well, but here's all the stuff that you're never going to figure out like us and.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  I mean, look, I would say the way we think about it is the, the haulage part of a mine is where most of the vehicles are. And so, and we think of haulage as the cardiovascular system of a mine. So we're obviously very connected to all the other machines, but we don't do all the other machines. So we're like in an ecosystem. So we can work with them where like there's APIs, cause like if you're doing haulage, you need to know where the other machines are and what their status is.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  As an example, there needs to be orchestration and coordination there, which is pretty interesting. In terms of like acquisition, like, you know, I, I do, I have to sort of admit like the Uber mentality. My mentality, let's just say.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  My Dune.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's like not, I guess Uber is different today, but in my world, we didn't acquire shit. We just built.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  I, I don't know if I have an opinion yet. I'm not like religious about it. But if we feel like we can build something, we do, but that, but sometimes people have differentiated awesome stuff and you're like, let's partner. We're open to it, you know?

• 21:16Speaker 03

  How would you pitch me if I was a young person? Stanford CS, new grad worried about software engineering not being the easy path where I can bounce around from Google and maybe Uber had a cushy job for me. Pitch me on going to the Amazon and building.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  And that's awesome. I mean, that's awesome. I thought I just did. I mean, that was the pitch. That was the pitch.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Do you think, do you think, uh, young people are receptive to this pitch yet? Are we about to be receptive? Why should they be receptive?

• 21:50Speaker 02

  It's really interesting because I only run into the young people that are receptive.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Like I'm not out there pitching like lame sauce dude who doesn't want to work.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Sure, sure.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Like I don't end up, I don't end up in the same room as this guy.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Do you want a, do you want a, a job where, do you want a laptop job or do you want to be dropped in to a mine in the Amazon and like build, build, you know, science fiction?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  This is the thing, right? This is why the Adam's thing is cool. Because you're not dropping a, you're not dropping a fucking app in the app store. You're like automating a two million pound machine going 35 miles an hour carrying gold.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Do you, do you watch, uh, do you get, do you get in?

• 22:32Speaker 02

  There's a lot of profanity happening today. I don't know why it's happening, but it is.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  No, it's let it flow.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Just wanted to acknowledge it.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Do you, do you watch, uh, sign, do you, do you get inspired by science fiction at all? I can, I can imagine like watching Dune for you. Is you're just like texting pictures to the team like.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Of course. I'm like, uh, I'm, my fave is, is Asimov. He's my fave. Um, you know, the iRobot series is like just so epic.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  What is your takeaway from the iRobot series with regard to AI safety doom generally? Have you ever had moments of, uh, maybe we won't figure it out?

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Won't figure what out?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  The alignment problem broadly, like the, the iRobot, the three laws of robotics.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Sure, sure.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Elegant solution. It's tested, obviously, but, uh,

• 23:24Speaker 02

  I love.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  I would love to come back to a world where, where everyone, both the doomers and the AI builders agree that yep, the three laws of robotics will be sufficient.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  In some ways, well, in some ways in the series, the three laws don't always work out.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  So I think there's a lot of, I, I thought there's a lot of nuance to those three laws, even though the laws are sort of so simple.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  I love the intention of those laws.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I, I sort of think of it a little bit differently, which is I have been entrepreneur-ing for a, a long time. Like a long time.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  And I have failed. And when I think about why I failed, it's usually because I was building something that nobody liked.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  So if you build something that people don't like, I don't think you're going to succeed. So how does that relate to your question? He's like, please tell me, because I'm not connecting the dots at all. What are you talking about? Well, if you make something that is anti-human, if you make something that doesn't serve people, I don't think you're going to make it. I don't think you're going to make it. And by the way, like, yes, we're using AI to help us make decisions, et cetera. But what do those AIs really, really want to do almost too much? They want to please us. So I just think if you're not making stuff that humans want, it's not going to work out. And that's kind of obvious, obviously, but I think it keeps going.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  And yes, there's the dangers and the things and the miss. But that's my, that's my starting point for how I think about these things and we can't control all the things.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And I do think, of course, you have to have safety situations and there's collisions of like,

• 25:14Speaker 02

  what do I, what do I prioritize first and how do I do it? Which is I think where Asimov's laws go, but, um, I, I, instead of writing sci-fi books, I'm just doing the thing and I'm making sure that the, the machine stays on the road.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Yes. And, and related to that idea of like doing the thing, making the machine stay on the road. I imagine that your, your world broad view is somewhat informed by your contact with reality. The fact that you can see the progress of diffusion, how long drive by wire systems take, took to roll out. And the need for AI to be deployed in like tactile ways that, uh, that that, that you, you just see it as more positive sum, more upper, there's more opportunity.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Feel like you're deploying robots that people want. Right now, robot, I mean, look, there's some point where robots have their own bank accounts and their citizens and all this. We're just not there yet.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Sure, sure.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And before we, until we get there,

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  that robot is owned by somebody.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  And that somebody has a bank account.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  They are paying based on the value you're bringing them.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Because they like your stuff. So if you are doing things that humans don't like, you're done.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  And trust me, I've done it.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  I've built things that nobody liked and it sucked.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  I don't recommend anybody do it. If you can avoid it, you totally should.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  On the business model side, what are you doing now in mining and where do you think it could go over time? Cause if you're able to bring in a system that helps someone increase their yield 30 to 40%, I, I imagine eventually do some type of JV so that your guys have.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  We're selling.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Incentive.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Well, look, there's, there's, you know, and the, the instinct should be how do enterprise company, enterprise software companies do it? Start there and you guys will know that. Like you, you know that.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  What's the answer? Let's just say you're enterprise software company, you're making a company more productive. What do you do?

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Raise prices, subscription.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Or you, the price goes up when you prove that productivity. So there's baseline and then based on outcomes, you get a little extra juice.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Sure, sure.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  And you could say.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Or you're always trying to make sure that like, you want to be producing, creating more value than you're capturing, but there's this sort of cat and mouse game where you're always trying to, you don't want to give away maybe too much value.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Here, totally. But here's the thing, you never go to a customer, I don't care what you're selling. Okay. I don't care if it's enterprise software. I don't care if it's widgets. I don't care what it is. You never go to a customer and say, give me a percentage of your stuff.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  You go to a customer and say, here's the price of our stuff. And if it does really well for you, we think we should get a little more scratch, kishish, stuff, you know, whatever. You know what I mean?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's that simple. Don't be crass about it. And, you know, partner with folks and they're down. They want to win too, you know? It's literally an enterprise, it's an enterprise software style negotiation or approach to the whole thing.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  And the more differentiated your value is, the more you're going to get.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  What is your process for hiring executives today?

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Pray.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I was hoping, I was hoping you had the Kalanick system to achieve a 99%.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  I know, but why would I tell you? Why would I tell you? No, I mean.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  No, but I think you can. This is one of those things. You can tell people exactly what you do and they're not, they're not Kalanick, so they're not, it doesn't, that doesn't mean they can compete with you.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  You know, they could, they, yeah. Okay, so how would I put it?

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Look, I think no matter who you go, nobody's nailed executives all the way. It's, it's, it's weird because what will happen is executives talk a fucking awesome game. And there's two things you want an executive to do. You want them to be able to organize at scale, organize and manage at scale, lead at scale. You also want them to be epic problem solvers, the most strategic badass problem solvers alive. This is like being left-handed or right-handed. And there's very few people that are ambidextrous, but you need that. Now, somebody's, they're always leaning a little bit one side or the other. The best executives are the ones that are doing both well.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  But I have come to the conclusion over my years doing the stuff is the problem solving is the most important thing. If you get somebody who organizes and manages well, but cannot solve a problem, they're going to be doing ridiculous stuff in a super organized way. And so that's, and, and sort of my theory, I, I, maybe there's a couple of theories on how I manage or how I lead, is that the only constraint on your imagination is management capacity. But what is management capacity? It's really problem solving at scale.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Cause if you are doing super well over there, guess what? They're problem solving there. I can create other awesome problems.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like I love creating problems.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Go solve those too.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  But if I don't have the management capacity, then I'm F'd.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  True.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  So the, the management style that I do is sort of problem solver in chief, which is I take the most impactful problems that are not being solved. And that's on my desk.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  The, or desk or room or whatever you want to call it. That's where I'm spending my time. So people go, oh, what do you spend your time on? Like it depends what the fricking problems are that matter. And it can change. And that's how, how I roll. But it means, once you have a problem solver in chief mentality, that flows downward. That means any direct report of mine must be the deputized problem solver in chief. And they've got their, cause there's only 24 hours in a day. I can only solve so many myself. They have to then take that for their world and do the same thing and then do the same thing to their people.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  So the bottom line is you gotta prove that these folks can solve actual problems and aren't just talking the talk. That's the number one.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  I remember.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  And then on the interview process, simulate what it's like working together so that day one is really feels like week two. And day one, you better be excited. So if you're excited in day one, after simulating what it's like working together in the interview process, then day one is really week two and you're still excited. Ah, you took a lot of risk out of the system. That's all I got for you.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  I have a question about regulation. Uber famously went city by city.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  The AI labs are duking it out over federal preemption. Did you ever have, develop a theory around when federal preemption is better than state by state regulation? Do you have a philosophy around this? I, I, it seems like the labs go back and forth on what they want. It's hard to see where the chips are falling.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Federal preemption is good when you are pro regulatory capture.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  When you want to squeeze others out, you should get federal regulatory bigness going for you.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause then you don't have to do the ground game that you went.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Well, no, you're squeezing others out.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  It's just the whole point is to squeeze everybody out.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I never did that. Like we never did that ever. We basically never, ever proposed or pushed any rule that would be beneficial to us versus somebody else.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  We always were trying to open up the market and we said, let the best man win. And we just went for it.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  But I think we gotta be careful of some of these closed weight things that are creating situations where they need to be regulated and they want it. I'd be very, I'd keep an eye on that.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you gotta have customers that love your product and they're willing to.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  So when you guys, when you guys,

• 33:23Speaker 02

  you know, decide to tell your own hacker to hack the thing and then go to somebody, then go to the federal government and say, then go to the federal government and say, um, dude, we saved the day. Like, you know, you don't have, you don't have. You guys don't have to do this. You guys don't have to do it.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  On regulation, I'm sure you saw the trial lawyers that are fighting back against autonomous vehicles because they're worried they're going to be too safe.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  I'm sure that's not surprising to you.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  No. So look, every bad thing that you see in transport, like systemically, and any, anything in transport that you view as systemically bad was most likely pushed by the trial lawyers and the insurance companies.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Every single bad rule that's weird and dumb.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  The insurance companies and the trial lawyers were in the game, big time.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Where, where do they align?

• 34:28Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Well, because trial lawyers, I imagine want more accidents.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Insurance companies. The ones that pay for it. Wait, yes.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  No, no, remember insurance companies make margin on accidents.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  If there's no accidents, there's no insurance company. They, in a weird way, they love accidents.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Premiums go up.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  As long as it's in their actuarial table, they're pumped.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Right? Though what they don't like is accidents they didn't plan for.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  But accidents that they planned for, woo, big insurance outcomes.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  They love. Like I remember, we went to DC and the taxi system, the, the liability on a ride, if you took a taxi, it might still be this way to this day, was like $25,000 in a taxi. But we went to, we being Uber at the time, went to DC and they pushed a one and a half million dollar policy per ride.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Okay. So what does that mean? That means, well, this, you know, accidents are going to happen. We're probably like Uber's probably safer.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  But it just, do you think the trial lawyers weren't pumped about that? You think the insurance companies weren't also pumped about that?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  They can go get up to them.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Because by the way, the insurance company might be on the other side.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, there's a, there's a one half million dollar bank account here that I can get access to on a random accident.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  What can you share on the transportation side of the business right now? How much are you, how much is that business in service of mining or food versus?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  It's number one. So number one is it's, it's, so I call it wheelbase for robots, which is if you're gonna do specialized robots that move and act in the physical world, they're either humanoids, which we're not. I'm not anti-humanoid. I'm just non-humanoid. Specialized industrial robots, right? So that's, it's high scale, industrial scale tasks, which means you would not have a humanoid ever do that.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  That means you gotta be on wheels. So we gotta build wheels. So that means, okay, well, when food, when supply chain is going into our facilities, that's a freight vehicle. We probably should just turn that into a robot that moves stuff and actually interfaces with our facility in a really cool way. When the, when the food is coming out of our facilities, there's probably like a, a machine that holds food at temperature. That's like a box on wheels. I call them autonomous burritos. And it brings it to your home. And it costs 75 cents instead of like the $12 per drop that it costs like an Uber Eats or a DoorDash today.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  So it's serving, remember, I, I'm taking, I'm sort of going through an industry and saying, how do we transform it? Full stack. How do we automate full stack that entire industry? So, okay, that's the food thing. Obviously mining's pretty obvious, but you can imagine there's a lot of other machines that move. Like I talked about haulage, but what about like, what about grading the roads, the dirt roads? You gotta grade them. That's a machine.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  What about the, you spray water so there's not a lot of dust all over the place? That's a fricking machine.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Like, what about the material that ultimately goes somewhere beyond the mine? Well, that's a freight machine.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Like, there's lots of things moving.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  You know, I saw something that was like, think about just forklifts.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  I know a company, or main unnamed, that's spending three and a half, this is on the supply chain side, three and a half billion dollars a year on forklift labor in their facilities.

• 38:17Speaker 03

  That probably shows up in the SEC filing if we want to get creative and figure out what company you're talking about.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Saying, but you see what I'm saying?

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, big opportunity.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  If you just solve the forklift problem.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Yes, but on solving the problem, what do you think about this distinction between jobs versus tasks? Like, a lot of people would have assumed that there would be no more marketing people because the job is just writing marketing copy, but the job is actually much more. Writing copy is one task. I was looking at automated trucking and I found some stat, like, I think 30% of truck drivers are armed. They carry weapons. And so, driving the vehicle is one task, but in that job, you are also providing security for that payload. And you are also doing other things, refueling the vehicle, maybe some minor maintenance.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  And so, just the steering and gas and brake pressure is just one task that you're doing. How do you think about that in the context of all this?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  This really gets to the jobs question, I think.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Which is basically like, okay, well, if I do everything that we are imagining on food, which is, I have industrial real estate, which is manufacturing and logistics. I automate the manufacturing, which is production, robotic food, robotic food machines, robots. And I have robotic couriers. What happens? Food, the price of food goes down.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Okay, when the price of food goes down, remember, robots don't have bank accounts. When the price of food goes down, what happens? More people have more money.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Jevon's paradox.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  What do they do?

• 39:56Speaker 03

  You start eating more. You just start having 10, 10.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  No, that's not what I'm saying, dude.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Everyone's already fat.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  This is hilarious. That's not what I'm saying. That's so funny.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  That's the problem.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  That's not what I'm saying. No, what I'm saying is, when, once you.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Jevon's paradox.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  I'll take, I was gonna get three pizzas, actually.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  I'll take six.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  You're like, one cent the price.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  No, no, no. So what happens? You have more money to do other things, but remember, that money is only ultimately going to humans.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  So it's, it's, the things that get automated go down in price.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Which then creates surplus.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  To do what?

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  To do other things.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is the bomb.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  So it doesn't always have to be, oh, marketing's automated, but sort of, and there's still people doing it. It's like, whatever, there's gonna be 100 other new things that come out.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Because there's this excess of capital and progress continues.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  And as long as humans still have things that we do that robots cannot.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  It's go-go time, man. It's gonna be super prosperity. We talked about the plumber that is paid like LeBron last time.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  It's gonna be across a thousand categories. And some categories, we don't even know.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Like, we don't even know what they are today.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  You raised 1.7 billion. Why didn't you raise more?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  That's a good question.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Because last time we were here, you talked about like, oh, well, if you were doing something and it was easy, you weren't going hard enough.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Seems pretty, going pretty hard, but.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Look, you have to stop somewhere.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Even I have my.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  No, it's like, but like, look, as you can imagine, today, my phone's blowing up. I mean, I'm pumped, like, A16, these guys, we should have done business at Uber.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  If we did it, business at Uber, my 2017 would have been a different year.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  So that's why I called it unfinished business.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And so, but yeah, like, my phone's blowing up. Like, we're probably just gonna do a second, we'll do a second close.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I figured.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  Come back for the second close.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Run it back.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Run it back.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we're not gonna do a big announcement on the same close, but like, you know, those people who are, who are texting me and hitting me hard right now.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  We got room.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  You know, well, we'll see.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  We'll see.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  You know, we'll see.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Depends on what the previous text was.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  If you're a homie.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  If we're not a homie, you should talk to one of my homies.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did come away from the last conversation thinking, all right, there's a lot of exciting companies in physical AI, and you could spend years and years and years trying to find all the best teams, or you could just give TK a big pile of cash and just say, go cook. And, you know, sometimes the easier route is better.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think there's this thing, physical AI, people are like, well, is that a humanoid? Is that a world model? Is it? And so, on this one, I sort of dialed the language a little bit and am calling it industrial AI.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  It's like, okay, this is a full stack, software, robotics, sensors, machinery, like, a full stack solution to automating an industry. And that's kind of how we think about it. And it's industrial.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  So it's like, heavy atom stuff. Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Well, thank you so much.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  This was incredible.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  You wanna get a signature? Can we get an autograph?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Sure, why not?

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Can we get something?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  They can figure it out back there. Oh, we got a gong.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Sign, yeah, we got a gong.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Love to have you sign this gong. We'll hang it in the raft.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  We wanna hang it in the rafters. We're trying to build our.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Museum of business.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  The museum of business grows one gong stronger today.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And we will all see you in Austin.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Next time you're on your commute, if you see two jet skis moving out of, out of your, you know, out of, out of sight coming in, it's probably us.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  That's us.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  If it's not, you're.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Guys, let me know if you wanna learn how to slalom ski.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah?

• 44:00Speaker 02

  If you wanna learn how to wake surf like well.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  I've only been waterskiing once or twice in, it was 20 years ago.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  I go at 7:30 in the morning.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Every morning. And I'd say half the time I'm out there at 8:30 when I leave the office.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  So, I love it. That's what we do.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Beauty of summer.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for coming on the show. Always a pleasure.

• 44:21Erik Torenberg?

  Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z Podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or a review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at A16Z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include paid promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with A16Z.

• 45:04Erik Torenberg?

  Such advertisements, companies, and individuals are not endorsed by AH Capital Management LLC, A16Z, or any of its affiliates. Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.