Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!

Reid Hoffman is the Founder of LinkedIn, founding member of Paypal, early investor in Airbnb And Facebook. He is the co-host of the ‘Possible’ Podcast and best-selling author of books such as, ‘Masters of Scale’ and ‘Blitzscaling’. In this conversation, Reid and Steven discuss topics such as, why passion isn’t enough for success, the truth about the PayPal Mafia’s success, why Reid stepped back from LinkedIn, and how to adapt to an AI world. 00:00 Intro 02:16 How Have You Managed to Be So Successful? 07:34 What Did You Want to Be When You Were Growing Up? 08:46 Why Was Being Born in Stanford Hospital So Relevant to Your Story? 15:27 Self-Awareness as an Entrepreneur 17:38 Should Everyone Try to Be an Entrepreneur? 25:45 How Do I Know If My Business Is Good or Not? 37:06 What Was LinkedIn Like When It First Started? 39:09 Why Were So Many Successful People from the PayPal Mafia? 42:23 The Importance of Sales 49:11 How Important Is Hiring in Business? 55:16 What Are the Different Types of Entrepreneurs? 57:43 Elon Musk’s Approach to Business 01:03:17 Work-Life Balance in Startups 01:08:24 Stepping Back as CEO for LinkedIn 01:12:18 How Does Life Change When You Become a Billionaire? 01:13:58 Political Stance as a Billionaire 01:18:11 Trump’s Redeeming Qualities 01:22:32 The Shift Towards Freedom of Speech 01:25:02 Freedom of Speech as X 01:33:03 What Do You Think Social Media Will Become in the Next Decade? 01:37:58 How Should the Average Person Be Approaching AI? 01:40:12 Is the Gloom Around AI Warranted? 01:50:23 What Should the Everyday Person Be Doing with AI? 01:58:40 How Do We Learn About AI? 02:00:22 Your Early Investment in OpenAI 02:01:45 How Important Is Networking? 02:02:30 Underappreciated Qualities for a Good Entrepreneur 02:05:58 The Qualities You Look for in an Entrepreneur 02:15:21 What Is Happiness to You? 02:19:08 Marriage and Entrepreneurship 02:20:55 Should All Entrepreneurs Be Moving Fast to Build a Company? 02:28:51 How Should You Be Viewing Risk? 02:31:56 How Do We Know When to Quit? 02:34:25 LinkedIn’s Deck 02:37:44 Are You Still Interested in Building Companies? 02:40:17 Are There Any Unchecked Boxes? 02:42:28 Last Guest’s Question Follow Reid: Twitter - https://bit.ly/3OVphKO YouTube - https://bit.ly/3OSw33O Website - https://bit.ly/3ZP4GxT Podcast - https://g2ul0.app.link/IqXyrFoeiPb You can pre-order Reid’s book, ‘Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/6iAtlcEeiPb Get your hands on the brand new Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards here: https://appurl.io/iUUJeYn25v Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Linkedin Ads - https://www.linkedin.com/doac24 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  President Trump was threatening personal and political retaliation because I tried to help Harris get rid of him.

• 0:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think you'll be penalized?

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  And direct on you?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  And direct to me.

• 0:09Steven Bartlett?

  You're not planning on leaving the USIA?

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Um.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn and one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, playing pivotal roles in the success of influential companies, including PayPal, Airbnb, Facebook, and OpenAI. And now he is a leading voice in AI, helping people utilize this new technology to empower themselves in their life and careers.

• 0:31Steven Bartlett?

  You were part of what they call the PayPal mafia, who went on to create Tesla, YouTube, Reddit, SpaceX, LinkedIn, and become multi-billionaires. And so I've got so many questions.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 0:40Steven Bartlett?

  What are the key factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset?

• 0:43Speaker 00

  One is you have to understand that you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid failure. When we started LinkedIn, everyone said this won't work, but just because you don't have 100% chances of succeeding doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. But there's also a set of skills that are rare that you can actually teach to entrepreneurs that makes you much more likely to be successful. The first is...

• 1:03Steven Bartlett?

  And then, how do you know when to quit the job? What's your view on work-life balance? And if you were advising anyone to build wealth in 2025, what would you say?

• 1:11Speaker 00

  Here's some simple things. So one is...

• 1:13Steven Bartlett?

  Reid, what is your take on AI?

• 1:14Speaker 00

  It gives us superpowers. Now, there will be costs to it, but like electricity, it does electrocute people, but it's essential for human society.

• 1:22Steven Bartlett?

  And is there anything that the average person should be doing to capitalize on the opportunity that AI presents?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  100%. This is what you do. So...

• 1:30Steven Bartlett?

  Quick one before we get back to this episode. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode.

• 2:17Steven Bartlett?

  Reed, as I read through your life, it's remarkable in, it's almost impossible that one individual could be involved in so many companies that have had such a big impact on society. But at the same time, someone be able to seemingly see the future over and over and over and over again. So because, as I read through your life, I thought this can't be one individual. This can't be one lifetime. It begs the question to me, what is, in your view, the causal factors that set you up for such a life?

• 2:49Speaker 00

  That's interesting. I've never been asked that question before.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Probably it's a combination of the fact that my passion is, who are we as human beings and where are we going? So like, that's from, from a very young age. Like I've been like, and I think I got it by reading science fiction, right? It was kind of like, what is the scope of humanity? Like, you know, Isaac Asimov's Foundation and, you know, this kind of stuff. And then I ended up growing up, I was born in the Stanford Hospital. I ended up growing up in Silicon Valley. And, and so I got the exposure to technology can change the world. And so focusing on thinking about, you know, kind of this intersection of humanity and technology. And of course, obviously,

• 3:40Speaker 00

  science fiction has some play to that too. Although most of the technology in science fiction is just fiction. Like, we have wormholes and we do intergalactic travel. It's like, as far as we know, there is no such thing as wormholes for intergalactic travel. Right? I mean, all current contemporary theory of physics would suggest that there isn't. I mean, there may be wormholes, but they're not for, you know, put your Star Trek spaceship in it and go somewhere. And then probably the other part of it is, I played a lot of board games when I was a kid. And so it gave me a very deep sense of strategy. And so approaching life, yeah, exactly. Wow.

• 4:20Steven Bartlett?

  This one here, you probably remember this.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Yes, I do remember that. Right? And the name's on the cover.

• 4:26Steven Bartlett?

  Borderlands. What age were you when you started playing Runequest? You were very young.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  When I started playing Runequest, probably 10.

• 4:35Steven Bartlett?

  And what is the link between the life you lived and the board games you played as a ten-year-old?

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Well, mostly as a function, again, like the role-playing games is like strategy, right? So it's kind of, you know, how do you kind of think about like, like an adventure is both a narrative experience, but is also a strategic experience, like, you know, how do you save the town from the, from the, you know, the bandits? You know, that kind of thing. And so, so it gave me a deep sense of kind of like how does strategy and tactics and problem solving? And how do you do it as a group, right? Because, you know, in fantasy role-playing games, it tends to be, you know, especially when I was doing it as a kid, a set of blokes around the table. I hear it's now a little bit more gender balance, which is good, and especially, especially for the blokes.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  It's like, oh, we're not, we're not just geeks by ourselves here.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  And, and so, and the way that I got to doing this is I was enough, because this is kind of the focused, you know, kind of kid I was, is what I, I'd heard that the Chaosium had their offices where, were down the street from a friend of mine's. And so I literally walked in the door and started hanging out at their office.

• 5:53Steven Bartlett?

  And they're the maker of this game?

• 5:54Speaker 00

  They're the maker of this game. The chief editor, I think, wanted to get me out of the office. So he said, he handed me the pre, the in-development draft of this and said, here, go look at this. And so I took it home as an obsessive kid. I, I like redlined it. I worked my way through it and I brought it back. Like he gave it to me on Friday and I brought it back on Monday. So he failed on his get this kid out of the office mission, right? But he's, he was then, and I, I still remember this look of vague irritation when I handed him this. Cause he's like, oh, this kid is handing me this thing. Oh, fuck, I don't want to be a mean guy. And then he started looking at it and went, oh, this is actually good work.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  And it was like, I want to use this work. And I was a kid, so I didn't understand. He needed to pay me to use it. I was, that wasn't why, I was just doing it because I wanted to show that I, that I knew how to do this stuff. And so he then wrote me a check. So it was my, like my very first paycheck. To to be able to to use the work in the publication. Because, you know, this is how copyrights that that means he then owns all the work that I did. So he could publish it.

• 7:05Steven Bartlett?

  And is your work still in here today?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:08Steven Bartlett?

  So edits that you made to this game are still in here?

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:11Steven Bartlett?

  At what age?

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Uh, that was 12.

• 7:13Steven Bartlett?

  Wow, that's incredible. And how much did he pay you?

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Oh, it's like $160 or something.

• 7:20Steven Bartlett?

  It's not bad for a 12 year old.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Yes, no, no, no. My dad was originally opposed to fantasy role playing games. It was like, uh, what what are you doing? Like, you know, go like be on a path to a real life. And then when I brought home the paycheck, I was like, well, maybe that works.

• 7:35Steven Bartlett?

  And what was your, what were your dreams at that age? What did you think you were going to be when you were older, sort of 12, 13, 14 years old?

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Frankly, I had no idea other than the following entertaining thing, which is since both my mother and father are lawyers. When I was asked when I was 12, what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was not a lawyer.

• 7:52Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Yes, well, because lawyers, um, look, obviously a bunch of are barrister, the side of the pond. Lawyers are essentially modern gladiators who are paid to be the gladiator of whatever their paycheck is. Whether it's a client or whether it's, you know, being a full time employee and so forth. And it's quality work, it's important for society, but like I was like, no, no, I want to create things. I don't want to be a, you know, you know, belt on my sword and, you know, go to verbal battle for, you know, whatever the, you know, contract or or litigation or any of those things. And I was like, no, no, I I actually want to go build things.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  And so I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, other than, and maybe I still don't know. But what I evolved to is I normally have about a two to three year plan that's iterating. Right, and that's that's tends to be what I do. And being born at Stanford Hospital is pertinent as well. I don't think people in the UK and around the world necessarily know the significance of that. Yeah. But can you explain why that's important? Silicon Valley is a it's a network of a generative platform. So like, one of the things that that I have learned to think about is networks amplify productivity. That's not just as we get to, you know, why it is I thought I conceptualized and founded LinkedIn, but but it's think in terms

• 9:15Speaker 00

  of networks. It's one of the reasons why cities are such engines. Like, basically, if you really look at economies, it's city regions. And it's because the city region creates a network, right? It's a network of could be suppliers and all the rest, but also talent and capital and and and knowledge and communication and and strategic lenses onto the world. And so Silicon Valley has been and like, like, people go, oh, I'm a genius. It's like, no, no, I'm in Silicon Valley, right? And that really helps. And so being born in Stanford gave me this a set of different, you know, kind of perspectives. One, technology is a lens into the future. Another one is, as

• 9:58Speaker 00

  an individual, you can go create a technology or a technology company that can be a lever that can move the world, right? And that an individual, you know, from anywhere can kind of do that. And all of those things were part of the luck of being born in Stanford. The luck? Yes. Well, I don't choose where you don't choose where you're born. But a lot of people were born there and they didn't go on to do the things that you did. People like to tell stories of manifest destinies because I am great. I would have been great anywhere that I was, right? And it's self-delusional. I mean, yes, I think I'm smart. Yes, I think I'm hardworking. Yes, I think I'm strategic. Yes, I think I have skills that are

• 10:42Speaker 00

  rare in in in human condition. But any great achievement also has luck, right? And and I can point it in any companies. I can point it at any individuals. And for example, one of the basic luck is, like, I had exposure and connection to Silicon Valley. If I didn't have that, the technology destiny, or the technology achievements I've done, wouldn't have been able to do those, or wouldn't have been able to do those the amazing way that I did them.

• 11:13Steven Bartlett?

  So what would you say then, because there's people that listen to the show all around the world. Spotify just came out and globally, we have quite an extensive audience. It's funny, it's funny that it's so globally distributed, but I think a factor of being on YouTube and speaking English. What would you say to people that are born in, we've got an audience in Cape Town, in Indonesia, in Australia, New Zealand. What would you say to people in those parts of the world? Can you still be quote unquote massively successful?

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Yes, but, but you have to think, so, and I see you have a few of my books there.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  My very first book, The Startup of You, which came from the commencement speech I gave at my high school, the Putney School in Vermont. Because I was like, what do I say to a bunch of 17 year olds, right? And I was like, well, be the entrepreneur of your own life. And what that means, there's a chapter in there that says, the bad advice you're usually given is just follow your passion. And the problem is the passion, your passion might be very passionate, but do you have a strategic advantage there? Is that something you can do? And so applying the rules of entrepreneurship, yes, of course you have to be passionate about what you're doing. Because if you're not passionate, you could never be world class unless you're passionate about what you're doing.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  But that's not the only thing. And so you look at, okay, what are the market realities? What's the market? What does the competition look like? And within those, what can your aspirations be? And there's a whole chapter on that in that book, because that's, by the way, similar to how you plot out if you're founding a company. Right? If you're founding a company, you have to think the same way about this, but think about it as an individual. So if you're in Cape Town, there are many great things you could do. Now, if you say, what I'm going to do is create a search company to compete with Google, don't do that. I mean, unless you really have some real unique thing, because remember, you're competing with this intensely powerful, not just the company,

• 13:05Speaker 00

  but the network of Silicon Valley, which attracts amazing talent from around the world, capital, knowledge. And they're all sharing it with each other at a very fast clock speed. And so wherever you are, that doesn't work. Now, you do think about, okay, what can the thing I do? So, for example,

• 13:24Speaker 00

  You know, I love podcasts, as you know, I, you know, Master of Scale, Possible, etc. And so I had the delight of doing like interviews with Toby Lutka or Daniel Eck. And what you do is you look at part of their success, Shopify, you know, Spotify is, is what, how do I run my strategy from here? Like, how is it that I'm competitive and can win a global field marketplace that Silicon Valley doesn't do? And so, for example, one of the things that they're different in the cases, because like, for example, in Spotify, that was, hey, I can get the record labels to give me a chance

• 14:06Speaker 00

  to start doing the business by doing just Scandinavia, prove it and then expand it. Whereas those record labels, the capital to do it in the US would never happen, and hence you have Spotify. And in Shopify, it's, hey, the Silicon Valley tends to go, oh, e-commerce is over, it's owned by Amazon, we're not going to do any of that as a platform, maybe, you know, this thing or that thing, but we're not going to do it as a platform. Well, but they're wrong, and I can do a long place. And then, once I get to this network effect of a whole bunch of, you know, small and medium businesses doing their own, you know, kind of websites and e-commerce, then I am the platform for that. So it's kind of a long, under-the-radar strategy where you're not directly competing with Silicon Valley companies.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  And by the time the Silicon Valley companies go, oh, there's a major opportunity, you've got it. So those are plays that you can do if you're smart and strategic, but you have to know, like, Toby Lutka, like, is deeply informed of what's going on in Silicon Valley. Like, when he's charting a strategy, he's aware of that. He's got connections, he visits, I mean, I'm a friend of his, right? And that's part of, like, if you're doing a global software play, you have to be aware that your competition is global.

• 15:26Steven Bartlett?

  There's an element of self-awareness required here.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:30Steven Bartlett?

  And it's funny because when I was younger, I certainly didn't have that self-awareness. I thought that I could start a social network from my bedroom without ever doing it before. And I wasn't necessarily thinking about the geographical situation or Silicon Valley. How important is self-awareness as an entrepreneur? And how does one cultivate it to know what they can, what challenge is actually befitting of their skills?

• 15:49Speaker 00

  So I think self-awareness is generally a very good thing for all human beings.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  And you still have to be irrationally ambitious, which is, I think, very important. And so sometimes self-awareness and, and just, you know,

• 16:09Speaker 00

  immense ambition sometimes don't go together. It's better when they do, but that's fine. What you do have to do is be very aware of what your competitive space looks like. Right? So just about everybody who succeeds in substantive, in a substantial way, is good at being competitive. Right? And, and you, if you're blind to your competition, you're kind of hosed. If you're successful, it's just because you're lucky. Right? Because, and that's part of what I was referring to earlier on, luck. If you, if you start a business where you have the luck, where competitors haven't, haven't identified it, haven't, and you get a long head start on it, that's an instance of luck.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Not all the successful companies are that way, but that's very, that, that can be very good and very useful on that. But you have to be very aware of what the competitive landscape looks like. Now, that's also true of individuals, right? Because it's like, well, who am I competing against is a relevant question. But it's, you can be kind of competitively blind as an individual and still be very successful because of the way it works. But if you're competitively blind, leading a business, leading a startup. Almost always that's hosed, right? That's one of the reasons why, like, you know, the all investors in Silicon Valley always ask about your competition. And if you say, I don't have any competition, you're like, wow.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  If they disagree with you, they're not going to invest because they go, you're competitively blind.

• 17:37Steven Bartlett?

  Is there any such thing as an entrepreneur in the sense of, you know, people always ask me, they say, can anyone be an entrepreneur and a founder? And there's so many different types of companies one can start these days that it's a quite tricky question to answer. But do you think any, because there's going to be people listening to this now that are in, they're managers in companies that, you know, they're, they're, they're working in a law firm or whatever, and maybe they've got an idea. I mean, everyone's got an idea and they don't know if they're the type of person that should pursue it or not. Is there a framework one can run through to decide that?

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll run through a framework to help the folks. The, um, the short answer is no, not everyone should be an entrepreneur, just like not everyone should try to be professional musician. Not everyone should try to be an athlete. Not everyone should be, you have to look at what your competitive advantages are and does your disposition, skill sets, path, give you a competitive edge? In this case of being an entrepreneur, right? Because any game that's competitive, right? And entrepreneurship is a highly competitive game. That's, that's part of the, you know, it's as competitive as trying to become, you know, a, uh, a globally renowned actor.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  It's as competitive as trying to become the CEO of a major bank or anything else. So it's, it's a competitive game.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  So for an entrepreneur, what you have to do is you have to say, okay, well, um, I have to be able, one of the classic ones, to, uh, to take substantial risks. Now, it's not being risk blind. Entrepreneurs are actually not risk blind. Or occasionally they are and occasionally they're lucky and it works. But almost all the successful ones realize.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  That I'm, that when you start a company, you're default dead. Right. By default, the company is out of business. Right. And so you're trying to get to a point where it's default alive versus default dead. Then there's a whole bunch of different things that go into that game. So one is, well, can you go get the capital? Are you in a market that allow you to get the capital? Can you move to a market that allows you to get the capital? How do you pitch the capital? How does pitching capital go? And then you get this, this kind of flywheel going between, you know, capital, talent, business realization, capital, talent. Right. And you're doing that.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  And the business realization obviously includes customers, includes go to market, includes building products and services, et cetera. And by the way, it's dynamic. So you say, well, I went and worked at a large company and I learned a bunch of things. Like, well, yeah, but you didn't learn how you're default dead. You didn't learn how to launch a new product. You didn't learn how to, how do you start with a small product and grow to a larger product? Right. You didn't learn how do you set up a team from scratch? And by the way, a team from scratch, when the vast majority of human beings like more certainty in what their week looks like. Like, I'm going to come work at a place because I can continue to work at a place. And as long as I'm capable of what I'm doing, I keep my job. Right. In terms of what I'm doing. And so I understand the certainty.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  So, so entrepreneurs have to do all that sort of thing. So in addition to kind of risk taking, you have to be good at bringing many resources from different vectors into your vision and working with you. So there's investors, there's employees, there's customers, there's advisors, there's partners. You have to bring the right set of those people along with you in this iterative, this, this kind of, you know, iterative journey. You have to be able to grow yourself and learn because the game changes. Like one of the metaphors I use to, to, to train and conceptualize young entrepreneurs is kind, and there's a bunch of different parallels between military strategy. It's part of like the board games thing and, and, and business strategy.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  But it's like Marines take the beach, army takes the country, police governs the country. Three, three very crude, broad generalizations about how you do it. So you go, what's your marine strategy? Do you, because you must, as a seed, Series A, you must have a good strategy, how you get on the beach? How you get, you know, initial product market fit? How you're heading towards scale product market fit? Okay, you're there. How do you win the country? Right? The market, right? What, how do you get to scale product market fit? How is that gonna work? How are you gonna play against competition? Different in these two? How do you get up to scale? You have to learn, this game is different than this game. Right? And you're learning new things as you're doing it. So you have to have this kind of, um, what I refer to as being an infinite learner. Like, you're learning what the new game is.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Because, by the way, no entrepreneur shows up at door one, at day one, going, wow, I know how to do marketing. I know how to do sales. I know how to do, uh, product development. I know how to do engineering. I know how to do engineering operations. I know how, like, no, no, you have to bring all that in. You'd be learning what you need to learn in order to do that, through that. And, and, and that's part of how you, you grow into that. And then, by the way, once you've established a business, because the thing, another thing that brings in a lot of competition is people say, oh, that's a valuable business. I'd like to possibly know that. And then, you, then a new generation of heavy competitors come in. So can you, can you kind of keep your position and grow your position in a market? Which is the police part, right? Police part, yes, exactly.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  And so, so you have to, you have to look, and each of these three is different games. And there's more games than that, but it's a, a way of kind of simply understanding it. So, uh, always being learning, being an infinite learner and changing your mindset. And so frequently, like, for example, when I'm talking to an entrepreneur, um, especially the first few times, is I will push them on their vision to see if they're learners. Now, one, they should have persistence and grit, because like, no, I've thought about this. I've got a good plan. This is how I'm gonna go to market. I understand what the competition looks like. Because if they go, oh, you're right, I should totally change that. You're like, okay. You have to have some grit and persistence. But on the other hand, if they're not like going, oh, yeah, no, if we can counter that, yeah, we'd have to do something about that.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  Like, if our competitors started doing that, and maybe we'd do this, right? So they also are learning. They have flexibility. So you want that combination. Like, one of the things about startups is... You have to bring kind of this dual lensed focus of things that seemingly are a little contradictory. So like persistence, flexibility. Another one is right now, long term. Right now, you have to do right now. But if you don't have a long term of how you're building something that's insanely ambitious, you're never going to get there. If you shoot for the hillside, you're never going to get to the moon. You have to shoot for the moon. So you're shooting for the moon, but it's me and my two friends in a garage right now.

• 24:32Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because the middle bit, does that matter?

• 24:35Speaker 00

  It does, but it's, it's a, remember like the Marines, Army, Police.

• 24:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Army, when you're doing the Marines is the middle bit.

• 24:45Steven Bartlett?

  Right, okay.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  Right. So, so it does, but it's not, by the way, and one of, again, mistakes. And that's part of the reason why there's another chapter in Starview is A B Z planning. The mistakes is like you have all plan and then you have plan B. It's like, no, no, you have a plan and then you have a lot of micro plan Bs. Right. So you're kind of like, well, if that doesn't work, then let's try this. If that doesn't work, then let's try this, you know, and, and you're iterating through them. And when you know to do a major pivot, because by the way, many successful businesses also do major pivots. PayPal started as encryption on cell phones. Right. That's, that's where it started. Right. So you do major pivots.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  It's when you go, oh, my current plan, which I've iterated for my first plan is worse than my first plan. Like the market circumstances, its chance of succeeding. Those are now worse. That's when you think about, okay, let's do a major pivot.

• 25:44Steven Bartlett?

  So with your analogy of evading the beach, how do you know what beach to invade? Like, how do you know if you've got a good idea? And how do you know what a good idea is? Because most people, as I said, listen to this, they've got a business idea.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:57Steven Bartlett?

  And how do they know if it's good? And part of the issue they often have is they've heard anecdotally, or they've seen that someone else is already doing it. So they go, oh gosh, it's already been done.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's, call it two kinds of ideas. And frankly, by the way, you think, you know, there's over eight billion people in the world. The fact that you think you're the one person who's thought of this idea, you may not be doing math well, right? So, so thinking you're the one person who's thought of the idea, that's a mistake, right? The question is, are you the person who can pull it together in the momentum? And, and pull it together and it's still, by the way, that may be, well, okay, that gets down to a hundred people. Okay, well, am I the one who's in motion right now? Am I the most person who's willing to take the risk, quit my job and do it?

• 26:51Speaker 00

  And you never really get down to one, right? So, so startups are risky businesses. Like, one of the things, let's get back to entrepreneurs, like, I think the greatest chance, and even when I was starting LinkedIn, after having started Social Land, after having, you know, co-founded PayPal as a board member, even when I was starting LinkedIn, what I would tell the people is like, look, we have about a maximum of 20, 25% chance of being successful. Right, just to be clear, right? We're gonna try to grow that to 100%, right? But, but we're a couple people in a garage right now, right? Like, there's all kinds of things that can go wrong. Anyone who's telling you it's 100% now, they're lying to themselves or they're lying to you.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  And, and, you know, like, I'm very realist and ambitious in my strategy. And so, so you, you should never think you're starting something 100%. Now, within the ideas, you go, there's roughly speaking, two kinds of ideas. One kind of idea is, well, people generally think that's a good idea. They think it's a good idea because you go to customers and customers say, yeah, I'd like that, right? They go to, they go, oh, well, hey, AI is gonna create a whole bunch of new SaaS businesses, right? Oh yeah, that makes sense, they have new, new technology transformation, right? Or what is that? Or people in e-commerce, they're gonna wanna buy this kinda stuff. Okay, you know, it makes sense. So there's a stack of things where they're pretty measurable as ideas.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Like, you can measure them with customers, you can, you can, you can do feedback and polling and other kinds of things. Now, the good news, there's good news, bad news on this category. The good news is, you can de-risk, is there a market for your idea mostly? Not, not entirely, but mostly. The bad news is so can a lot of other people.

• 28:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Right. And so in this category, there always tends to be competition and your competitive strategy, generally speaking, needs to be why against like in this category, you should be expecting competition. Why am I going to win out sufficiently against this competition in the global arena? I have invested in those businesses. Greylock invested in a bunch of those businesses because we do, but we're, you know, one of the best VCs at enterprise on the planet, you know, blah, blah, blah. Then the other kind of I think, which is the one I tend to start and the one I tend to most invest in is people think that you're, that you're crazy when you're starting your business.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  And by the way, that can be a, by the way, and frequently you are.

• 29:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  But, but people think you're crazy, which means most people think you're crazy, which means your competitive field is a lot less.

• 29:32Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Right? So for example, I'll give LinkedIn as an example, and I'll give Airbnb as an example. So LinkedIn, I go and I say, hey, individuals will join this network and bring in their, and establish a public identity and profile and bring in their network and, and use that even as the vast majority of the billion people registered for LinkedIn are, you know, basically work at companies, right? They're not starting company, like it's a great platform for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs get it right away. But like, I'm like, well, I'm working in a company is, am I going to seem disloyal to my company if I establish a profile here?

• 30:08Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Because back, back when we started it, like no one's going to use that.

• 30:13Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Well, because like they're worried about, will their company fire them or not give them a bonus or something else because they have a LinkedIn profile because they're saying they're disloyal.

• 30:23Steven Bartlett?

  So it looks like they're shopping because I mean, for most people that use LinkedIn now, you don't see it as I'm looking for another role.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 30:30Steven Bartlett?

  But back then people did.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Two thousand and three, literally everyone said to me, this won't work because you're individual focused. You need to be selling products to companies.

• 30:41Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Right? Right? And so I was like, no, no, I think I'm right about the way the world can and should be. Right? And, and so.

• 30:53Speaker 00

  I'm going to take that risk. And that's the contrarian risk. I'm going to take that risk and I'm going to, I'm going to play it forward. And if I'm right, I will create something that will transform the industry. That will be amazing for individuals, amazing for companies, et cetera. And we can go, obviously, whatever length you want to go through the LinkedIn journey, we can do it. Now Airbnb is an, as an investor example. So Airbnb was my first investment at Greylock. And so, and I was at Greylock because David Z, who was my partner, who was the Greylock partner, who was my most valuable board member at LinkedIn, convinced me that I should do venture at Greylock. And I'm very close to David. And so I bring in Airbnb as an investment and David looks across the table from me and says,

• 31:36Speaker 00

  "Look, every VC has to have a deal they're going to fail on. Airbnb can be yours."

• 31:41Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Yes. Because Airbnb, at the time, had so little volume in its transactions that the founders could have called everyone who used Airbnb that week if what they did is dedicated making phone calls, like, you know, five minutes of phone call, you know, through, through the week. That was how small it was. And David's argument at the Greylock roundtable was, "Look, this is very strange. Staying in other people's houses, you know, like the danger of something going wrong. Cities are going to hate it. Hotel lobbies are going to try to outlaw it within cities, you know, da-da. Like, this is just going to be a train wreck all over the place." And I was like, "No, but I want to take the bet."

• 32:27Speaker 00

  And he's like, "Great. Like, we hired you as a partner. We think you're smart. Go ahead." Right? Now, to David's credit, six months later, the transaction volume in Airbnb is like this classic hockey stick. It was years of very small, and then it grew to being very big. So that hockey stick hadn't started yet. And David came to me and said, okay, because because like they always be learning is also useful in venture capital. He came and said, okay, you were totally right about Airbnb and I was I was totally wrong. What did you see that I didn't see? Like, how did you know when I was sitting there blowing smoke at you, saying this is going to be a total failure, you said, no, I want to do this. I said, well, look, you were right about all of the risks about that could happen with Airbnb.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  You were absolutely right. Any of those things could have made the business worth zero. But this is the reason as investors, we do a portfolio. Because, yes, Airbnb could be zero, but if it worked, it was going to be huge. Right? It was going to transform an industry. This is the kind of investment I like doing as an entrepreneur or as an investor. And I said, look, we had a plan for each of those risks. We had a plan A, we had plans B, we're going to try to navigate. It isn't that we could guarantee the risk, but the fact that everyone else saw those risks meant that we had years of no competition, that we could establish the network, we could establish the marketplace. And then, once we're there, we are the marketplace for how that works. And that's the kind of investment I like doing.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  That's the same thing with LinkedIn as I as I founded it. Same thing with, you know, kind of with Airbnb as an investment. And so that category of investment, you cannot validate with the customers.

• 34:08Steven Bartlett?

  I was gonna say, so if everybody thinks it's a good idea, it's probably not a big idea.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Yes, it's much more challenging to be a big idea.

• 34:14Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. Really interesting. Hmm.

• 34:20Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's funny, because when people pitched you, they say, I've asked everybody and everybody thinks it's great.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:26Steven Bartlett?

  So that's probably an indicator that it's probably not big or they're bullshitting.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  Yes, and I'm looking for, both in my creation of ideas and in my funding of ideas, it's not dumb people who think it's a bad idea, it's smart people who think it's a bad idea.

• 34:41Steven Bartlett?

  You want smart people to think.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Yes, because then you have something that's contrarian. Because that's what contrarian, contrarian isn't, I don't understand technology at all, I think it's a terrible idea, it's like, well, who cares? You don't understand anything. Right? It's smart people who think it's a bad idea.

• 34:57Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  And then you have a theory of the game that's a good one, not perfect, very risky, can be very risky, about why they're wrong. So I'll give you the LinkedIn example. Literally, John Lilly, partner of mine at Greylock. I recruited him into Greylock later. He was the CEO of Mozilla that was on the board of. Super smart guy, friend of mine. I sat down with him about LinkedIn. Because this is how I go. When I'm starting a company, I go to all my smartest friends and I go, here's what I'm doing. What's wrong with it? I don't want to have the conversation of them go, oh, it's great. Useless, doesn't help me. Right? What's wrong with it? Why will this go? Why will this fail? And so I sat down with John. We had breakfast at a breakfast place in Silicon Valley. I said, da, da, da, da.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  And he's like, okay, you know, I'll come your friend. It's never going to work. Right? And I said, okay, well, why do you think it's never going to work? He said, well, look, you'll never grow the network. Like, the first person who comes in, no one else in the network. Not valuable for me. Why should I invite someone in? Until you have like, you know, I don't know, 500,000 people, a million people, there's no value in the network. So there's zero value. So it's never going to grow. You're never going to get anywhere. Right? And it was a very smart, perspicacious thought that was probably the key thing for starting LinkedIn was, how do you get to millions of people in the network? Because that's the only place where the value proposition kicks in. Right? I knew that if you had 1,000 people come in, 900 of those people would be exactly like John.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  They'd go, eh, I don't see anyone else here in this network, etc. But I knew that some of them, somewhere between 10 and 100 of them, would go, oh, I see what this could be. And I kind of want to play with it. So, you know, I'll invite Steven, I'll invite, you know, I'll invite some people in. And then, as it very slowly starts going, then all of a sudden, there's enough people in. It's interesting, it's curious, and you could grow to being valuable. So I knew that by persistence, through those initial exploratory people, people who are curious, people who want to experiment with it, people who got the vision of it, you know, etc., etc., that all of that, I could grow to your initial critical mass. And then, it would kick in.

• 37:07Steven Bartlett?

  The model of LinkedIn, obviously, I know LinkedIn more today than I did back then. In what, 90, no, so 2002?

• 37:14Speaker 00

  2003.

• 37:14Steven Bartlett?

  2002, 2003, and then really got going.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  May 5th, 2003 is when we turned it on.

• 37:18Steven Bartlett?

  Really? Wow. And back then, was it a social network as it is now, where there's a news feed and people are talking to each other? Or was it more of a public CV?

• 37:32Speaker 00

  It was a public CV with a search capability and ability to communicate with people.

• 37:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, interesting. So the network effects were slightly less important than the model is today because a lot of people today are using it not to search for a job or a professional, but to talk about themselves or to share their life, et cetera.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  And we knew that we would get to growing network effects. Like, for example, again, part of the Marines, Army, Police, is your network effects may very much evolve. You may start with no network effects. That's fine.

• 38:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  But you have a plan.

• 38:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yes. Yeah. So am I right in thinking? Because around then, there were social networks emerging that were very focused on people conversating with each other. Whereas LinkedIn, by design, it didn't really, really matter if anybody was chatting to you about what they ate for dinner that day. So a new network could penetrate the market that was less dependent on the like, social networking component. Because if I go on there and make a profile and put my CV up, it doesn't really matter if I don't come back for four days.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 38:35Steven Bartlett?

  Because I can get an email that will bring me back in saying, oh, there's a job here. But once my profile's up and ready, I'm now giving value to the rest of the network just by being there.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Yes. And that's a virtue, not a bug, because it was part of how we solved the critical mass problem.

• 38:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I could never understand how LinkedIn did that, but now it makes sense to me.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:54Steven Bartlett?

  Because I always think, God, it's building a social network is just asking for like, hell in your life.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I'm kind of a specialist.

• 39:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  Right. You know, one of the first investors in Facebook, one of the first investors in Friendster.

• 39:08Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, I didn't realize you were an investor in Friendster as well.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:10Steven Bartlett?

  You were part of what they call the PayPal mafia. I know you use a different term.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Network. It's less, it has less pizzazz, but we weren't really a criminal group.

• 39:21Steven Bartlett?

  But mafia is cool as well.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 39:23Steven Bartlett?

  People love the term mafia. And through that time, you worked with the likes of Elon, you knew Peter Thiel from your days at university.

• 39:32Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, everybody asked this question about PayPal. And why it was so successful, but also why so many of the alumni of PayPal went on to become multi billionaires. I think seven people that were part in that sort of part of that sort of early PayPal founding team went on to create Tesla, YouTube, Reddit, SpaceX, LinkedIn. Was it talent density? Was it was that what made the PayPal mafia?

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Well, it certainly was a component. And so it's it's it's it's a couple of things. So one, that high density talent of folks who are willing to take intensive risks, want to do contrarian things, believe in what their contrarian thing is against common sense wisdom. That's one part. Another part is when PayPal went public, it was one of it was a it was a technology winter. It was one of two technology companies that went public that year.

• 40:30Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Right. So all of a sudden, and then got bought by eBay. So all of a sudden you had this talent group of people that had a bunch of money in their pockets and the network within and that believed in the consumer internet. So the network of Silicon Valley at that point had thought the consumer internet was played. They were going into clean tech and to enterprise. So if you asked, if you try to ping a venture capitalist about, I have a new consumer internet idea, they wouldn't even take a meeting with you. They would take a meeting if it was clean tech, and they'd take a meeting if it was enterprise software. Right. Now, then you get all the PayPal people coming out going, hey, I can fund

• 41:10Speaker 00

  my own initial idea. I've got this great idea, YouTube, right? LinkedIn, and I can fund it and I can get it going. And then, and this is part of the Web 2.0 movement. I coined the term Internet 2.0 and then Tim O'Reilly made the much better term Web 2.0, right? And so.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  The, uh, these folks going, no, no, the consumer internet is like, that was just the first wave on the beach. The tsunami is still coming, right? And so we were all out investing and we were talking to each other because frankly, we're like, well, these, these VCs don't get it. Like this is coming. And then of course you started seeing, you know, YouTube and you started seeing LinkedIn and you started seeing, and it was like, okay, like we will, like, these are important things that we're going to invest in. And that, that's, that's part of the reason why the, that's the, uh, cause by the way, remember, you know, a bad competition, right? That's one of the reasons why not just talent, not just capital, but also competitive steering is part of the

• 42:16Speaker 00

  reason why the PayPal network or PayPal mafia had such a massive suite of success.

• 42:25Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I often hazard a guess at what the, like the, the fundamental game of business is for a startup founder. And I've hazarded a guess before that it's recruiting the best group of people you possibly can, binding them with a culture that gets the best out of them and setting them a vision that's worthwhile. But from reading your work, there's a couple of things, just from hearing you today, sales is so like

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Well, whatever your go to market is, and it can be sales, B2B enterprise, et cetera. But like, for example, in, in social networks, it's usually a viral, you know, a viral marketing or viral growth plan.

• 42:56Steven Bartlett?

  So when I say sales, I actually mean like selling to

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 43:00Steven Bartlett?

  Employees.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. Yes.

• 43:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  And like, you must.

• 43:02Steven Bartlett?

  You said like partners, investors.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  Yes. Cause you have to come, come on board my vision.

• 43:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Invest in my vision. Cause by the way, a partner, when you're a startup, is also investing in your vision.

• 43:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  An employee is investing in your vision.

• 43:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Right?

• 43:16Steven Bartlett?

  How do you be good at that?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  There's a limited set of skills that you can actually teach to entrepreneurs versus the entrepreneurs just learning by doing. One of them is pitching, right? One of them is understanding the, how do I communicate my vision in a way that other people can go, that's really exciting. I want to join your vision with you.

• 43:39Steven Bartlett?

  And if I was a young entrepreneur telling you, right, I want to be better at pitching my vision so I can get world-class people to join me, world-class investors, partners. Is there any advice you could give me on things I should and shouldn't do?

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. And by the way, there's, we could spend the entire podcast only doing this. I mean, there's, there's a very deep well, but here's some simple tips. So one is, The mistaken lesson that most people learn is to try to do reality distortion. It's like, no, no, no, no, silicon chips to make ice cream shakes. It's the thing. No one's thought of it. It's really big. Right. And people are like, okay, what you're convincing me is you're crazy.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Like, you're literally like, please leave now. Yeah. Right. So you have to realize that all pitches are dialogues. And you want to be listening to smart people. And you, like, generally speaking, everyone you want to be recruiting, you want to be recruiting smart people. You want the absolute best talent working with you. You want the absolute best talent working in your company. You want the absolute best. So you want people who are thoughtful and asking good questions. Like, for example, I pitch insanely aspirational businesses, but I don't pitch them saying, oh, LinkedIn is guaranteed to succeed. There's no universe in which LinkedIn won't be the transformer of professional work and careers. What I do is say, it can get here.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Like, we have a real chance at this. Now, we have to navigate these risks, but if we navigate these risks, we're going to be here. Right. And then people say, ah, you're credible. You have a huge vision. You're compelling. I think you can do this. Right. And then they come on board with you. So one of it is to pitch the huge vision, but show that you're aware of the difficulties of getting there. Right. Now, you don't have to go through all of them. You just have to go through enough of them or a big enough one. The person goes, okay, great. I get it. You're seeing it. Right. Another part of it is to say, this is part of the reason why competition is important, is like, I understand what game I'm playing.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Right. Here is my theory. This is what competition plays in. This is why I think the market will favor me. This is why I think technology trends will favor me. This is why I think I have a very unique edge. And, you know, in Blitzscaling, which I think is another book on your thing. Most consumer internet plays are what we call Glengarry Glen Ross markets, which is first prize the Cadillac, second prize the steak knives, and third prize is you're fired. So you have to be pitching why you're possibly first.

• 46:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, right, because there's only going to be a couple of winners.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Yes, and so like this is why we can win. Right, and so now there's also mechanics in pitching, which is, you know, how do you tell a story of it? Part of the thing I tell entrepreneurs is to, even if the person doesn't ask you the risk, tell them what the risks are and how you're navigating them. Because it'll establish trust, right? So like, for example, in pitching investments, now this I didn't know until I started learning it in terms of a mechanic pitching is entrepreneurs tend to go, oh, when I need money is when I, you know, write out my PowerPoint and I hit, you know, knock on the door, it's like, hey, give me some money. That's a foolish time to start the conversation. Much better to start the conversation when you're not saying, give me money.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  So if you like, as much as you can in all of these things, start the conversation well before you're getting to a potential contract of any sort, a partnership or an investment, or even an employment contract. Like, so for example, always be recruiting doesn't mean, oh, I want to hire you right now. It's like, okay, find great talent. This is one of the things I learned from SocialNet and brought into PayPal. Find great talent and start talking to them, right? Even if today you don't have the right position to hire them. Right now, obviously, there's a whole bunch of great talent. You could waste a whole bunch of time. You want to be talking to people that, you know, you either really would love them to join at some point, not too distant future, or they know other people who would be like that.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Because by the way, part of when you, when you meet great talent, you realize how to like, because you're always, you're always adding new great talent. You're like, oh, my God, we need people like this. How do we bring them in? So for example, one of the things I learned that was, you know, from SocialNet that I brought to PayPal, was at SocialNet, I was trying to hire people who had 10 plus years' experience doing the thing that we were hiring them to do before. Because the classic kind of wisdom that you get from business schools is make sure they have experience on their CV. Look, they have to be able to do the job, right? No question. But if you said two years of experience and an insane learning curve, that's much better.

• 48:32Steven Bartlett?

  An insane learning curve, by that you mean someone that's rapidly learning,

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:36Steven Bartlett?

  self-teaching?

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:38Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  And learning on the job and going and figuring it out. And so when I went to PayPal and like was up, when the company was founded, I was on the board of directors. I was like, this is what you're looking for, not this.

• 48:51Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Right. And so back to your like PayPal mafia question, that's because we hired those kind of people. Right?

• 48:57Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  But it was a very limited set of people in the company who had had more than a couple of years' experience working within payments,

• 49:07Speaker 00

  within banking, within, you know, because it was the, I don't know, learning curve.

• 49:12Steven Bartlett?

  When you look at your portfolio of investments and the entrepreneurs you meet, do you think young entrepreneurs realize how significant hiring is to their eventual outcome? Because they tend to focus on like how good the product is or sometimes capital. But I, just looking at my own portfolio, I often find myself like feeling like an old man because I'm telling them that like, spend more time hiring, not just hiring your friends because they're willing to come work here.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Yes. A proxy for a founder, if you're not spending a third of your time hiring, you're very much under delivering. This is the thing, it's like, look, uh, life is a team sport, companies are team sports. Right? If you could just do it yourself, you wouldn't hire anybody, you know, you're hiring people. So like you say, well, I've got a really good, let's, you know, you use a European football analogy. I've got a really good striker. Great. Well, we don't need to worry about the halfbacks or defensive or, you know, goalkeeper. No, no, you have to hire all things and you go, well, I'm a really good halfback. That's great. You need the others too.

• 50:12Steven Bartlett?

  I think when I was young, I was 18, 19 years old, I, somewhere in my brain, thought my outcomes were going to be determined by how hard I worked and how good my ideas were. And it wasn't until I accidentally hired someone fantastic that I realized

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:24Steven Bartlett?

  the absolute tremendous impact that an A player can have

• 50:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:27Steven Bartlett?

  on everything.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:29Steven Bartlett?

  And that was just such a mental shift for me.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Literally, I think Zuckerberg puts this in a very good way. He wants to hire people he would work for.

• 50:40Steven Bartlett?

  And why? Why is that?

• 50:41Speaker 00

  Because that's a demonstration of high talent.

• 50:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, yeah. Yeah. When you're a young founder, you're somewhat insecure, though. You think, oh, God, why would that person want to come work here? Or I can't afford them, or?

• 50:52Speaker 00

  You want to hire the best people you can. And by the way, if you can hire people better than you, oh, my God, it makes you much more likely to be successful.

• 50:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's my experience that young founders don't really think about that. Because they're also insecure, so they think, I can't manage that person.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Well, but but your theory of management is, look, if you're if you can hire someone where your only management technique needs to be let them loose, that's that. That's best.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Like, just go. Right?

• 51:21Steven Bartlett?

  And is there any anything practical about hiring? You know, people say like, hire slow, fire fast, or other sort of like cliche advice around hiring that matters? Like, how important is it that they're culturally aligned or?

• 51:33Speaker 00

  So culture can matter. I would say, look, in terms of, and I hopefully, it's not a cliche, but hopefully a heuristic principle.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  References are more important than interviews. Right? We get a lot of repetitive experience at being compelling in an interview. And if you can't, and by the way, some great people aren't compelling in interviews. Right? They're they're they're not really great at telling themselves, but, oh, my God, are they amazing in the field? They're made like an engineer. Like, an engineer might be like, you know, like, okay. But, oh, my God, can they do great things? In which case, like, like, do whatever you can to hire that person. So if you if you ask me, you can only have references or only interview, 10 out of 10 times, I'll take the I'll hire the person on the references.

• 52:23Steven Bartlett?

  Surely you're not talking about the types of references where they give you the reference.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  No, no, of course not. No, no, and this is one of the features of LinkedIn. Like, you want to find references that will give you

• 52:35Speaker 00

  good perspective. Now, even if you can't go find someone that you know or you have a tie to, or as what you refer to frequently as an off balance reference sheet, easy not the one they give you to be a reference. So even if they say, oh, here's, you know, I'm reading, here's my reference, you know, Bob or Susan. You call Bob or Susan and you say, this is a standard question I will use all the time, but especially if I'm calling someone who's a given reference. Say, "Look, I believe every person is a combination of strengths and weaknesses. And if you don't give me a weakness, I will believe it's so bad that I should not hire this person."

• 53:18Speaker 00

  Right? So if you say there's no weakness, I'll just go, "Okay, I understand. I shouldn't hire this person. Thank you very much." Right?

• 53:27Speaker 00

  In that, they will always, almost always, give you something. Right? And you can think of it, because we are all combinations of strengths and weaknesses. Like, "I'm one of the best people to have on your side for creative strategic problem solving." Like, one of my employees once told me, he's like, "I would never hire you to run a McDonald's." I'm like, "I wouldn't hire me to run a McDonald's either. I'd be terrible at it." So that's combinations of strengths and weaknesses. Right? And so, everyone has them. There is no one who is all strengths. I mean, people tell themselves that, but that's self-delusion. Right? And so, so you have that conversation with a reference, and the reference will tell you something, because, because they're not used to saying it.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  So they might say, "Oh, you know, Susan or Bob, they're perfectionists." He's like, "Oh, so they get their work done slowly, because they're, you know, like, you know, like, you push them, like, because they're trying to get the one that's actually, like, more..." "Oh, they spend too much time working." You're like, "Oh, that means they're unintelligent about how they do their work?"

• 54:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Right? So you can push them into where they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Like, "They can get a little disorganized when they're stressed." "Okay, great." Right? And then you can, but anyway, because when you get that from reference one, then when you're calling reference two, you say, "Oh, I heard that the person is disorganized." Like, "Can you tell me a little bit about that?"

• 54:51Steven Bartlett?

  Right, yeah. That's an ammo and they can't then say, oh no, I've never seen that. They'll probably give you a little bit more context.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 54:57Steven Bartlett?

  On all these great people you've worked with, specifically, you know, during that PayPal period of your life. One of the things I was reflecting on is they're all independently successful people, but they're all very different people. And that in and of itself is evidence that there's not one version of success. There's many different types of success. Presumably, there's many different types of entrepreneur leader.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:20Steven Bartlett?

  Give me a flavor of the different types of entrepreneurs you've worked with. And, and, and what, you know, because I sat with Walter Isaacson and he talked to me about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and I was like, Steve's really great at hiring people. Elon's not as good as at the people team building part, but he's better at this part.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Yes. So no entrepreneur wins at every game.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try to win to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on. Same thing is true. So some people, for example, like take a Neil Bussery at Workday, right? He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional. So it's a HR product for work. His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people were going to do cloud software. For the first, I think it was 500 people that Workday hired, he would always do a cultural interview at the end because to make sure that the first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things. So, once you get through all the competence and all the rest of the stuff,

• 56:27Speaker 00

  he would make sure that was a fit and that's part of how you get cultural coherence. That's like one example, right? Another example, Elon is the, like, I have a big idea and I convince myself 100% that it's absolutely going to be the case, like, I am going to settle Mars. We're going to terraform Mars in our lifetime, which is, no, it's impossible. No, no human being on the planet, including Elon, is going to do that within Elon's lifetime. Right? But I'm going to go all in. I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to be technologically sophisticated. I'm going to work against the odds, right? In order to make that work.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  That's a. You know, Anil, very professional, understands the workplace mark. Elon, like, I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to. And, and his pitch, though, to my defense, was, I'm gonna send a turtle to Mars. And I'm like, that's not a business. And you're competing with national governments and like Russian subsidized rocket programs and so forth. This is not a good, I was wrong, he was right. There's not a good equity, you know, kind of play.

• 57:43Steven Bartlett?

  He pitched to you as an investor?

• 57:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. At what point was SpaceX at when he pitched it?

• 57:49Speaker 00

  That was before he started it.

• 57:51Steven Bartlett?

  So it was an idea?

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Yes. And I'm gonna send a turtle to Mars. And then it became, I'm gonna send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it to Mars. Cause they'll grow up and the first person will send life to Mars. And you're like, okay. Right?

• 58:04Steven Bartlett?

  What did you think genuinely when he said that to you?

• 58:08Speaker 00

  I thought he'd gone off his rocker.

• 58:10Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Well, yeah.

• 58:11Steven Bartlett?

  Of course you would, yeah, like someone's, my friend said that to me. I think I'd make a couple of calls just to check in. Do you know what I mean? Like, is Elon doing okay? He just told me about this turtle.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Yes. It's like, that's not a business.

• 58:24Steven Bartlett?

  Has your opinion of him changed over time in terms of his potential and ability as an entrepreneur?

• 58:31Speaker 00

  No, no, I've always thought of him as one of the world's great entrepreneurs.

• 58:35Steven Bartlett?

  Always?

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, all, all the way back to PayPal days.

• 58:39Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, he has done repetitively amazing things. Now, he pitches everything with the same level of certainty. Right, like, you know, I have this idea for online banking. I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities. I have this idea for creating a pneumatic tube for a hyperloop tube. All of them, he has the same level of, I am 1,000% right that this is like guaranteed to be part of the future. Right, and I, you know, and I may be the unique person to make it happen. Right, so you have to have some discernment. But he's, his, you know, on base batting is pretty good.

• 59:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, for such major ideas.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  But it's not, it's not 100%.

• 59:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, people kind of excuse that, though.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 59:23Steven Bartlett?

  If you get, if you're.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  If you get one that's big, that's fine, right? Yeah.

• 59:29Steven Bartlett?

  On the hiring side, has he been, is he up there with the best? Or is he not a direct hire of people like Steve Jobs was?

• 59:37Speaker 00

  Um, he hires well. Matter of fact, you can't be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  I think some people are better hires. Some people also have, like, are the kind of people that people would work for forever.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Elon tends to burn people out a lot. Like, there's lots of burnt out people in his wake. And when you go and talk to those people, what you hear is, some people say, that was the best work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again. And other people said, that was the worst work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again. So they're all, I never want to work for him again. Right? So, you know, as kind of a dynamic, because he basically looks at them as disposable parts and, you know, go as hard as you can, right? And then afterwards, you're out. Don't care.

• 1:00:36Steven Bartlett?

  Because he goes so hard?

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, he goes hard, but he also thinks, your only relevance to me is your relevance. Your only relevance to me is, can you help me with my mission? And after you're done, after you can no longer help me with my mission, you're not relevant to me anymore.

• 1:00:50Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think of that approach?

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  That's not my approach, right? LinkedIn mirrors my approach. Like, literally, I am referenceable by every entrepreneur that I've ever worked with, right? As a board member and as an investor, right? Who, you know, even ones that I've, like, fired as CEO and so forth. Those people will say, he was really good to work with on these things. They may also have some critical things, there's no problem with that, right? But like, like, literally, like, when I'm pitching an entrepreneur, I just like, call anyone that I've worked with.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Right? Because you, I try to work with people in a way that even when we're at a, at a, at a difficult moment, because I disagree with them intensely about how well they're doing, or what they're doing, or something else, that I'm doing it in a collaborative, constructive way. And so my goal is to work with people, like, anyone I want to work with. Brian Chesky, you know, Mark Pincus, et cetera. I want to be able to work with them for, you know, the rest of our lives.

• 1:01:59Steven Bartlett?

  What's interesting is I think these strategies fundamentally come down to what you think matters in life.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Steven Bartlett?

  The most because you could optimize, even you could optimize more for building more companies or something at the expense of something else. And it's a trade off of something else. Like you could go harder.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:17Steven Bartlett?

  But there's a trade off happening here and we often, because Elon's done these crazy things like the cars and the near links and this tunnels. And then now the AI and the X and the spaceships and stuff, we go, oh my God, that's so amazing. And I do that as well as one person can do that much. But we almost never talk about the trade off.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  Yes. Yep. You're 100% right.

• 1:02:35Steven Bartlett?

  And we, and it's so, this goes back to the point about self-awareness. It's like, it's so tempting for the like, the brain to go, oh my God, I want that. That's what I want. Because you're not seeing the trade off.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:47Steven Bartlett?

  You're not seeing the darkness.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  That is 100% correct. And look, I respect it. I understand the burn people out, like treat them as disposable assets. That when they burn out, you just jettison them and you can be very, Elon's not the only entrepreneur who's very successful doing that. Right. But for example, on the other side,

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  like if you go to Mark Zuckerberg and you talk to the people who work for him, they're like, that was great. That was the best working experience of my life. Of course I would work with them again.

• 1:03:18Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:03:21Steven Bartlett?

  Cause there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming, rising through the ranks at the moment that have kind of been raised on the Elon philosophy of do shit tons of things, do them intently, do them with less of a regard for the, I guess, the human consequence. Do them with less of a regard for work, life balance.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, you have to have

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  the nature of this thing, because it's, it's, you know, you're by nature dead as a startup. Work, life balance is not the startup game. Right. So like, like what, when, like when we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families. So we said, sure, go home, have dinner with your family. Then after you're done with family, open up your laptop and get back into the shared work experience and keep working.

• 1:04:04Steven Bartlett?

  If you say that today, though, you're toxic.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  The people who think it's toxic don't understand the startup game and they're just wrong. Right? The game is intense. And by the way, if you don't do that, then eventually you're out of a job.

• 1:04:22Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, the people that say it's toxic are often those that have never had to do it.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and look, that's fine. It's not that everyone has to work at startups. Working at startups is a voluntary choice.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  But that's the game for a startup. And so that's how we try to balance. In the early days of LinkedIn, we tried to balance how to be human because we like a third of the company had kids, right? And so you're like, okay, like, we all have to work this way. So we can't say, oh, you third, you sure you guys can go home and you're out of the office and then, and then, then call in or whatever. We'll all go for dinner and then we'll all plan on getting back to work after dinner. So you get time with your family, you get to have dinner with your kids. It's the right human thing, right? But we're working hard and Saturday morning, we're working.

• 1:05:11Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a way to build a startup, in your opinion, where you have work-life balance? And I define work-life balance maybe as being able to see your friends often, spend time with your family often?

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Only in two circumstances. One, it's a small startup. It's both, it's both an absence of competition. That's the general. One is it's so small, no one's really competing with you. That's fine.

• 1:05:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:05:38Steven Bartlett?

  My screen bound in a village.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Right?

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  On number two, you have some such intense competitive mode that people can't compete with you.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Like say, for example, you have some, like, the only thing that matters in this business is contracts with these three companies and you have those three contracts.

• 1:05:58Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  Fine. But absent that, that's the reason, because the startups that you're, if you're in a valuable space, the startups that you're competing with, right? Like, we had to make the deliberate decision, the startups we're competing with aren't going home for dinner.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  Right? They're serving dinner at the office. That's what we did PayPal. We served dinner at the office of PayPal. Right? Right? And that was a deliberate thing. We were one of the first companies that started not only serving lunch, but serving dinner. Right? And then other, because this is the learning network you get with Silicon Valley, other companies are looking at, oh yeah, we're gonna serve dinner too.

• 1:06:32Steven Bartlett?

  So people don't go home?

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't go home, keep working. Right?

• 1:06:36Steven Bartlett?

  To some people, this does, it sounds somewhat toxic, right? It sounds like, oh God, but that's not what life's about. This is like capitalism. This is people just wanting to make loads of money.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  Well, choose what your life's about. That's fine. There's nothing that says you have to do that. And, and what gives you the right to tell other people that they can't do that? I mean, like, what are you patronizing? Like, people choose their own lives. Right? So, and, and people can choose that. Now, you have to understand the game. It's like, well, I'd like to be a world-class Olympic athlete, but I really only want to swim two hours a day. Well, that's nice. Right? Not gonna happen. Right? You have to understand the game you're playing. If, if you're playing an Olympics game, like, someone who's trying to compete in the Olympics in swimming, they're swimming seven days a week, 12 hours a day. Right? So, that, that, choose the game. And you say, well, it's toxic.

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  Fine. Not for you.

• 1:07:33Steven Bartlett?

  I think the important thing, which I see some companies doing well, is just to be honest about that, when you're onboarding people and don't shy away from the fact.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. No, that's like in early days of LinkedIn, when we were talking to people, we'd say, by the way, this is how we work. Right? We work six and a half days a week. Right? We do get people home for dinner, but everyone, including Reed, is expected, you know, you know, you know, online working after dinner.

• 1:08:04Steven Bartlett?

  And you pay people more for that than the average rate?

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  So they get paid in equity. And this is one of the things, again, is, you know, the first, I don't know, some hundreds of people at LinkedIn, all don't need to work anymore. Because their equity is enough that if they choose not to work anymore, that's totally fine.

• 1:08:25Steven Bartlett?

  Which is a trade off that was clearly worth making. You stepped back as CEO after four years when you were at LinkedIn, right?

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:08:33Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you do that?

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  So I had had awareness of strengths and weaknesses. Like, I know how to do the CEO job, right?

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  And I think it kind of, 150 people or less, I'm as good as anyone else, right? Like, that, that, that scale of CEO job is a scale that I, that operates within my strengths and weaknesses.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  When you start getting to, call it 500 people, 1,000 people, part of the CEO job ends up becoming, like, how do you govern the community of the company? Now, it's not the only thing, but like, okay, like, you know, with the kinds of things that Jeff Weiner, that I learned from him on, was, all right, well, you start thinking of recruiting not as you going out and individually recruiting people or helping your hiring manager recruiting people, but you think about recruiting as a general strategy for the company. And how does that general strategy work? And how do you have, like, for example, you get to this point in these scale companies where you start having onboarding days. So like, for example, new employees start at one of the onboarding days and they start as a group together. Right? So it's kind of like, okay, we're going through kind of how it works and

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  we're integrating people into the different groups, like, you know, the salespeople, the engineers, and they're all starting. And they're going into their different groups, but like, we're approaching it as, as the engine of the company. And the things that I, you're only world class, but the things you're passionate about, the things I'm passionate about is like, the technology strategy, the product strategy, the, the kind of, the big idea for what you're doing there. And I love working with super high powered talent. And one of the things that I had kind of learned is, well, that's the reason I like working with founders. That's the reason I like working with CEOs. Because to some degree, it's like, okay, you're the talent I'm working with on this company, right? In order to do that.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  And so I was like, eh, I like doing more of being a board member, working with CEOs, more than I like being the CEO, once you get past, you know, one hundred and fifty people. So that's what I should be doing. And what I need to do is I need to get LinkedIn to a point where it's already, you know, it's, it's already kind of hit breakout velocity. Right? And so you can recruit now a world-class CEO that you can work with. Right? And that's what, that's what I should do. And, you know, I, like, for example, the entire time that Jeff Weiner was the CEO of LinkedIn, my primary office was immediately next door to his.

• 1:11:15Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. So you stayed close, but you.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Steven Bartlett?

  Again, this is another point of self-awareness, which a lot of founders don't have. But the great founders that I've met and interviewed, whether it's, I don't know, Brian Chesky, or whether it was some founders from the UK like Bennett Jimshark and Julian from Huul, one of the things that really defined them was they did a low ego move to move out of that CEO role, which is typically associated with like the glitz and the glam.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:11:41Steven Bartlett?

  Because they knew that their skill set was in branding or marketing or something else, or just vision for the, the future of the company. A lot of CEOs don't do that because the CEO title comes with a certain.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I understand.

• 1:11:51Steven Bartlett?

  Esteem.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  And yes, everybody, myself included, does have a big ego. But my ego is you, you have to attach the right way. My ego is attached to LinkedIn succeeding.

• 1:12:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big difference.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:09Steven Bartlett?

  LinkedIn went public in two thousand and eleven with a four point three billion valuation. And then Microsoft later paid twenty six billion to buy LinkedIn. And at the time, it was reported you owned about eleven percent of the company, which made you a multi-billionaire.

• 1:12:24Steven Bartlett?

  How does life change when one becomes a multi-billionaire?

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  So it's funny, I try to never like, like, one of the funny things, I never repost things that call me billionaire and so forth, because I try to not have that identity. I am aware that it's an accurate descriptor.

• 1:12:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 00

  But it's not like the way I think of myself. I don't think of myself as Reid Hoffman billionaire. I think of myself as Reid Hoffman technologist, Reid Hoffman public intellectual, Reid Hoffman creative strategist, Reid Hoffman, etc. So I try to change my life as in those directions, not in the the wealth direction. Now, of course, you know, I travel around in a private plane, you know, I own houses in several different areas of the world, you know, that kind of stuff.

• 1:13:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 00

  Right. But I try to live a life within those, you know, high wealth things as much of a as an upper middle class person as I can. So for example, before I came here to do the interview, I got here a little early. So I went to the nearby Starbucks, had a cup of coffee, pull up my laptop, was working on it.

• 1:13:34Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  You know, because because that's the way that I want to live. Right. And I want human relationships that are like that. I think human relationships are really important. I feel lucky to have relationships with some people who are these really, really amazing people. But by the way, there's amazing people who are like world celebrities and there's amazing people who the world doesn't know about. I just like, I just like going through life with amazing people. And that's part of what I mean by that.

• 1:14:02Steven Bartlett?

  You've always been associated with the left side of politics. Your parents were very left leaning, to say the least. I heard that you got pepper sprayed when you were a kid because.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  Because I was, I was a kid on my father's shoulder at a demonstration against, against the Vietnam War.

• 1:14:20Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so that's, it's in your DNA.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:14:24Steven Bartlett?

  The thing about being on the left is it's typically the left that have a opinion of billionaires, that they're evil.

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  Yes, I'm aware of that.

• 1:14:31Steven Bartlett?

  But not just billionaires.

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  I've been, I've been called evil by a number of people on the left.

• 1:14:34Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  Yes, of course. Look, I, they are wrong that that is a necessary correlation. Right. But I, you know, I try to understand people. I understand their perspective.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  I disagree with it, but I understand.

• 1:14:50Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. It's, I mean, you're, you're one of the few people that's still a billionaire on the left, it seems.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  No, I'm not. I actually.

• 1:14:57Steven Bartlett?

  In the valley, especially in this election cycle.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  Uh, well.

• 1:15:00Steven Bartlett?

  It's the public facing people that we see on the podcasts and stuff and.

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  Look, so part of the reason why I think less people were public about it this cycle was because, you know, President Trump was threatening, you know, personal and political retaliation. And so you had to have a certain degree of courage to stand up. Right. And so encourage in the public area, not just encourage in taking risks, but in the public arena for doing that. And so I literally had conversations with billionaires who were like, oh, look, I really applaud what you're doing. And I think what you're doing is that right thing. And that's for you, not for me. Right. I mean, trying to get people into it. And so, um, so I was aware and because they kind of did the simple mini max.

• 1:15:48Speaker 00

  And they said, well, if, if Harris is elected, I won't get penalized for not having supported. And if Trump is elected, I will get penalized. So I'm just gonna stand out of it. And.

• 1:16:01Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think you'll be penalized?

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  Uh, I think that, uh, I think that there is a greater than 50% chance that there will be,

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  uh, repercussions, uh, from a misdirection and corruption of the institution's estate, uh, to, uh, respond to my having tried to help Harris get elected.

• 1:16:23Steven Bartlett?

  You must spend time at night thinking about what that might be because if I would.

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, look, it's a range and look, I hope that it's only in the soft edge of the range, like IRS audits or phone calls, like, you know, Trump made saying, you know, deny Bezos that, that DOD contract because, you know, he owns the Washington Post and I don't like him, you know, that kind of stuff. I hope it's in that arena, right? Could get much worse, but I don't really want to speculate on it because I don't want to give anybody any ideas, right? But like, I think it's like, I think I would safely win a bet that there will be political repercussions that are, that are essentially undemocratic, un-American.

• 1:17:10Steven Bartlett?

  And direct on you.

• 1:17:11Speaker 00

  And direct to me, yes. I think I'd safely win that bet. I'm hoping that it's in the, what I'm terming the soft arena.

• 1:17:20Steven Bartlett?

  You're not planning on leaving the USRI?

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  No, no. Oh, my residence outside of Seattle and, you know, we have a constitution, you know.

• 1:17:27Steven Bartlett?

  Because Mark Cuban was the same, right? Mark Cuban was very public and vocal. He's a billionaire. He was very pro Kamala Harris, very anti-Trump through the cycle. He took a lot of flak as well.

• 1:17:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:36Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, I follow everybody on Twitter, so I watched it play out and it was kind of like he was stood in no man's land, just taking shots from everywhere.

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:42Steven Bartlett?

  And you were kind of in the same category.

• 1:17:44Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:17:46Steven Bartlett?

  Would have been much easier for you to just shut the fuck up or fall in line or something.

• 1:17:49Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. Well, but that's the problem. You can't allow that form of neo fascism. Right? It's precisely when you feel fear. I have huge respect for Mark Cuban. When you feel fear, stand up. Because that fear that you're feeling, that's you're feeling as a powerful, wealthy person.

• 1:18:07Speaker 00

  Right? And if you're not going to stand up, who is? Right?

• 1:18:12Steven Bartlett?

  Can you see any redeeming qualities in Trump? I know you're pro Kamala Harris.

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Well, I think he's going to bring a wrecking ball and some of the places a wrecking ball are useful. Like, so for example, if you say, hey, on regulation, you want a new regulation, replace two. That kind of refactoring is a good thing. Hey, we're going to need a bunch of energy in the future and we're going to need good, clean energy. I understand everyone doesn't like nuclear. I don't care. We're going to do nuclear. Like, I can see a number of things that could come out that'd be very positive and I want those things to happen. As a matter of fact, you know, part of being an American, you know, I'm going to try to make the next four years as great for America as I can. Right? My precise complaint with some of the people I'm in political opposition for is don't ever try to break the country.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  Try to always be building the country. It doesn't matter if the person you agree with is in power or not. Be working towards a good collective future. And so I'll be doing all of that and I'm hopeful for some of that from this administration.

• 1:19:08Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think it's a good time for entrepreneurs to be building companies with Trump coming into power?

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  Um, fundamentally, I think it's always a good time as entrepreneurs to be building companies. So one is like, you have a good idea, the time's now, go do it.

• 1:19:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  Capital markets harder, fine. Actually, if you can get capital, you get competitive differentiation from people who couldn't. I mean, it's like, so you have to, it's always like, trying to figure out how to turn the negatives into positives in terms of what you're doing. Now, I think Trump will be broadly very good for entrepreneurship because I think he's going to reduce a lot of regulation. Some of that regulation will have very negative consequences on the society, which, you know, as a society person, I'll be concerned about like climate, like, you know, you get the new EPA person coming in, Environmental Protection Agency, and you ask him what the job is, and he says, we need to drill more oil wells, right? You're like, that's not the EPA. That might be the Commerce Secretary or something

• 1:20:06Speaker 00

  else, the Energy Secretary. That's not the EPA. So there will be a reduction of regulation because we do have climate change, we're living in it, and it's going to get worse. So those will be places where there'll be real damage from the wrecking ball. But for entrepreneurs building new businesses, like for example, I've invested in a number of fusion and fission businesses because nuclear, because that's the clean energy that we're going to need to, you know, just to bring more, more of the billions of people into the middle class and, and to, and to try to remove carbon from the environment and so forth. So, and I've known the regulatory stuff is, is ferociously bad for that. Well, actually, in fact, I have hoped that, that they are gonna, they're gonna reset that

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  thing. And so all of a sudden, that entrepreneurship turns out to be in retrospect wise. But I think they're going to reduce regulation across the board for all entrepreneurs, right? So I think like, that's helpful on entrepreneurship. Now, they're going to be probably much more closed at the border and immigration is an important part of entrepreneurship. You want to, you want to be able to get the best talent from anywhere in the world. It's one of the advantages that's helped built the US. That, I think is going to be more uneven. Anyway, so it's like, goods, goods and bads.

• 1:21:18Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that is very different, I think, in this administration with the people he's appointed is there seems to be quite a few entrepreneurs being appointed to fairly important, high roles.

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  Well, by entrepreneurs, you mean zero experience ever doing the thing that we're doing before?

• 1:21:34Steven Bartlett?

  Potentially. I was referring particularly to Elon Musk, David Sacks, doing, I think he's doing AI and technology. I think there's another guy who's, looks like he's built a business before.

• 1:21:44Speaker 00

  So David, Elon, obviously super smart, very accomplished.

• 1:21:48Steven Bartlett?

  You work with both at PayPal, right?

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Yes. And now David knows crypto very well. So he's the AI and crypto czar and the PCAS person. He has crypto very well. He hasn't yet done anything in AI. Like, he hasn't been mentioned as an investor or a, like, when I talk to all the AI entrepreneurs, you know, as a desired person for them to work with and so on. So, you know, he's very smart, so I presume he knows something. But, you know, AI, I think, yet TBD what he knows. And what he tweets about is anti-woke AI is the most important thing. You're like, that is not, that is not even on the top 100 of the issues around how to, you know, promote and build and navigate AI. But he's very good at crypto. He's done a bunch of good stuff there. So that'll be, and Elon obviously understands AI quite well.

• 1:22:33Steven Bartlett?

  On this point of speech as well, obviously, there's quite a big shift in speech that's happened in the last, I'd say, two years, really from Elon buying Twitter's where I saw a drastic shift in globally.

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:22:46Steven Bartlett?

  And what we think is okay and not okay. What's your thoughts on the change in speech? Good, bad, positive, negative?

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  So I, you know, gave a couple of days ago here in London, the Sir Isaiah Berlin speech. And one of the lines that I used in the speech was that there's competing freedoms. You could say there's the freedom of speech to say whatever I want to say. And then there's a freedom to try to offer something in civil discourse where I'm not going to get harassed by a whole bunch of antagonists, right? And obviously, they're both good virtues. And what you want is the right blend, right, from them. I think that a lot of folks, like for example, what's happening on Twitter and X,

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  is just virulent, right? It's just toxic. It's terrible. Like when I tweet anything, including, "Hey, you know, I think the following thing is great entrepreneurship." I get a, "Oh, you evil liberal, you know, I hope you, you know, kind of fail terribly and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah." Okay, I was tweeting about this great entrepreneurship thing, right? And that's the kind of theme in TwitterX.com. I prefer what you kind of thing you see on LinkedIn. It's like, look, you can say critical things, but you try to say critical things within the theme of, "Oh, well, that entrepreneurial thing, I actually don't think it's going to be as good as you think, and this is why."

• 1:24:17Steven Bartlett?

  What's the difference in the in the design of the platform that results in two different types of behavior there?

• 1:24:21Speaker 00

  Well, Twitter is anonymous. It allows a lot of bots. It encourages, like it says, "Freedom of speech." Like if you're tweeting a rape threat, that's fine. It's freedom of speech. You're allowed to do whatever you want, right? LinkedIn is you're tied to a named profile that's tied to your identity. If you're reported for saying something that's frankly uncivil, doesn't even have to be as bad as a rape threat, just uncivil, like you're cautioned, right? It's removed and it's like, hey, by the way, that's not for the platform. And if you keep doing that, we'll remove your ability to post, right?

• 1:25:02Steven Bartlett?

  So on the Twitter example, what Elon said is that if it's legal, then it's fine. But is there an upside to having an environment where people can anonymously say what they want within the constraint of the law?

• 1:25:16Speaker 00

  Look, I think there are, it's important to allow, one of the things I think that online platforms give us the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. Like, I think it's okay for people to say such thing as vaccines are evil plots to put chips in people and they give us autism. It's 100% wrong, right? And every credible medical authority goes vaccines are good. And so you go, okay, 1,000 people get vaccinated, or call it, you know, 100,000 people get vaccinated, and 50 of them have adverse

• 1:25:56Speaker 00

  conditions to the vaccine, right? That happens out of 100,000, right? But 1,000 people or 10,000 people might have died otherwise, right? That your lottery for everyone being vaccinated is a very good lottery, everyone should do it, right? Because, by the way, you are more likely to have died in the lottery than have an adverse condition. That doesn't mean there aren't people who have adverse conditions. So all quality medical professionals, medical researchers agree. I am allowed legally on X.com to say vaccines are evil plots,

• 1:26:35Speaker 00

  right? To control the American people, to sell drugs and make drug companies profitable and blah blah. And I can say all that. And you see all that rampant on Twitter, rampant, you know, in talk radio and, you know, and all the other things. You can say that. That's a problem, right? I'm okay with people saying it. What I'm not okay with is promoting it and having it have broad reach.

• 1:27:00Steven Bartlett?

  So on this point of the vaccine, so just to clarify my position, I think vaccines are a wonderful invention that have saved a lot of people's lives. So that's my position. But I want to, I want to interrogate a little bit. With the vaccine rollout in particular, there's a lot of things that we didn't know at the time, right? So the lab leak thing, I had Boris Johnson sat here and he said, oh yeah, we think it's a lab leak. If I had said that on this podcast a couple of years ago, I would have been kicked off YouTube. And so having a forum where you can even entertain ideas that are contrarian, I also think is important. And I exist in the sort of dichotomy of like, speech is important, but at the same time. You know.

• 1:27:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, I am, um, I was on the support people being able to say lab leak.

• 1:27:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  Category, because by the way, I do think freedom of speech is a good thing. And part of the reason I have freedom of speech is sometimes you have a contrarian idea that should have freedom of reach.

• 1:27:58Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:59Speaker 00

  But there should be. And look, how do we make decisions as a society of what expertise, like what truth is, as we convene groups of experts? Like in a science, we have a group of scientists review a paper before it's published. We have scientists able to reproduce things. In a jury, we have 12 people who listen to the case and make a decision. So we use groups of people as experts and different kinds of expertise for different kinds of things to make a judgment, and we should also bring in expertise. Right? Right? Now, that doesn't mean that even while all the experts say that's completely wrong, you should say you can't post it.

• 1:28:39Speaker 00

  Like, I loved what Twitter did pre Elon, which is, they said, hey, you can post vaccines or this evil plot by the government to control you. But we're going to put a little box around it that says, oh, and by the way, experts disagree, here's where you can go get the facts. So you can say it, right? But we'll also put in, in selective cases, expert opinion. And I think that's like, for example, a balance of how to do freedom of speech and freedom of reach, because I do think, look, I should be able to say the world is flat. I should be able to go on and say the world is flat. And by the way, LinkedIn wouldn't take that post off because it's like, well, it's civil. I'm just saying the world's flat. I'm out of my mind.

• 1:29:21Speaker 00

  But I'm being civil. So the LinkedIn principles are not, you must say something that's scientifically truly true. It's you must say something that's civil.

• 1:29:29Steven Bartlett?

  I also think people shouldn't be deplatformed or canceled because of their speech, even if you disagree with it, providing it's in the constraint, like constraints of the law. I sat with a.

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  Oh, by the way, I generally think, agree on the constraints of the law, but I also agree on, I also think importantly, civilly.

• 1:29:47Steven Bartlett?

  And civilly means?

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  Well, like, no threat of violence.

• 1:29:50Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, yeah, I agree with that. You shouldn't be threatening anybody with violence.

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:55Steven Bartlett?

  I sat with a, I'm gonna say astrologist, I don't even know if that's the right word. It's not astrology, was it?

• 1:30:01Steven Bartlett?

  Cosmetologist, and he told me the story of Galileo discovering that the world was round and Galileo basically being threatened by everybody. Because it threatened the, I think, the Catholic institution at the time.

• 1:30:12Speaker 00

  Well, because the preach, the preaching of the church was a was odd.

• 1:30:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And so that's a cautionary tale, although it's a long time ago. In, there are always going to be strong forces that are heavily incentivized around some kind of ideology.

• 1:30:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:30:26Steven Bartlett?

  And I mean, that does happen today.

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  Yes, a hundred percent.

• 1:30:28Steven Bartlett?

  And these forces are powerful forces. So allowing dissent, even if it's coming from someone who is not credible.

• 1:30:36Speaker 00

  Yes, a hundred percent. By the way, I'm strongly in defense of that.

• 1:30:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:40Speaker 00

  Right. I just think that, and look, so, you know, I don't mind.

• 1:30:46Speaker 00

  People criticizing me, I don't mind them criticizing my arguments. I don't mind them criticizing my choices of who I'm going to support politically. Right? What I'm gonna do philanthropically. I strongly prefer that those credit, those criticisms be backed with.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  Some knowledge and intelligence and some argue, good argument point of view. And I really want it to be a civil discourse.

• 1:31:15Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because the human brain, when we think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, wasn't designed to deal with a thousand people tweeting at you that you're, you're an asshole. And as a podcaster, as someone who's in the public eye yourself, who is a podcaster but also a famous entrepreneur. You have to deal with that. Like, you have to deal with that. In a way, that's just, we weren't designed to.

• 1:31:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Steven Bartlett?

  And I struggle with it. I struggle with, when I first came into the public spotlight, when I started doing Dragon's Den, the Shark Tank in the US.

• 1:31:43Steven Bartlett?

  Opening my phone and being exposed to just a barrage of like, noise on the brain.

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:31:49Steven Bartlett?

  Now, whose responsibility is that? Is it my responsibility to like, delete the app? Or is it the platform's responsibility to moderate people expressing their innate?

• 1:32:01Steven Bartlett?

  Human, jealous, whatever it is, you know?

• 1:32:04Speaker 00

  So the classic thing that humans make in reasoning is they go A or B.

• 1:32:08Steven Bartlett?

  Right, okay.

• 1:32:09Speaker 00

  And your answer is both.

• 1:32:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:32:11Speaker 00

  Right? So there's responsibility on both sides. Like it's like, oh, no, it's a responsibility of the individuals. Like, well, like, are you kind of saying, I have zero responsibility? There's zero I can do to be positively contributory here? Of course you can. Right? So for example, like, it's totally possible to say, I have a freedom of speech network. And if you were engaging in threats, like, for example, you're Trump and you're tweeting that Mark Milley should be executed when he is the Joint Chief of Staff's general. That's a threat of violence. That should be removed. Right?

• 1:32:51Speaker 00

  You know, so it's totally doable to say violence has no place on this platform. Or threats of violence. Now, violence is illegal. Threats of violence is not. Right?

• 1:33:04Steven Bartlett?

  One of the theories I had many years ago, and I don't actually think this theory was based on anything other than I read it and it sounded good, so I used to say it, was that over the next 10 years, and I used to say this about six, seven years ago on stage, social networking would become more and more siloed into these smaller interest-based networks. And I was thinking the other day in the taxi, I was like, oh, my God, that's actually happening now. You're having like Blue Sky and Threads and you've got your Instagrams and your Rumbles. And we've got more and more social networks that are more like centered around different pockets of people. What is your theory of social networking over the next decade, two decades?

• 1:33:39Speaker 00

  I'm always open as an investor to interesting ideas.

• 1:33:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  Right? And here we are in a business podcast, so I'm always looking at stuff.

• 1:33:47Speaker 00

  Look, I think they will grow to be increasingly, just as they've grown massively in the last 20 years, they will continue to grow to be an important part of life. I think there will be different social networks that fit different parts of our lives. That's part of the reason, like, for example, like, back when I started LinkedIn, it was also thought to be, oh, no, no, no one's ever going to do a business network. It's only going to be social networks. Right? It was only going to be, at the time, it was like Friendster, then it was MySpace, then it was Facebook. It's like, look, there's only going to be that. There's never going to be those. And then people say, well, there's only going to ever be one social network. And you're like, well, actually, in fact, we do have like Twitter and we do have Snap and we do have, right, there's, there is multiple ones. And I think there will be more.

• 1:34:30Speaker 00

  So I think they're going to have more social networks and they're going to fit into different people's lives and they're going to have different community cultures for them. And so, and I think not only will they get multimodal, but they'll use AI in different ways and so on. Then part of that invention, like, one of the things I tend to think, people say, well, what ideas are you looking at as an investor? And I'm like, look, I'm looking for that great idea that I haven't thought of, that someone out there amongst the millions of entrepreneurs has got that great thing and can possibly make it work. That's what I'm looking for. So when I look to a future of social networks. Now, to give a little bit more of a specific answer, like, I tend to think social networks need to both have individuals as customers and societies as customers.

• 1:35:13Speaker 00

  So you need to think about, like, that balance of, you need to think about both in how you're designing them, right? So it's, and that doesn't mean no freedom of speech and, you know, autocratic and whatever, because I actually think, more or less, you should allow people to post whatever they want, as long as it's civil, right? And if you want to choose to have an anonymous social network, that's fine. Like, there's the definite rule for, especially when you get to places where the government is oppressive, you know, go to Iran or, or Russia or something else, like, well, anonymity is important for saving your life, right? But on the other hand, you should also be thinking about, like, okay, what is this means of society? And part of what we want in media networks is we want to be collectively learning.

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  So if I'm posting that, you know, vaccines are an evil plot for corporations to try to kill our children, you're like, well, you're trying to persuade people to do something that's bad for them and bad for society, so we should respond in some way. We may still allow you to post, but we may put a little box around it saying, you know, here's what experts, you know, here's what all of the doctors at all the elite hospitals, you know, survey says, 99.999% of them, you know, there's only one out of all the doctors at elite hospitals who don't think that these vaccines are a good idea.

• 1:36:28Steven Bartlett?

  And do you think social networks have been a net positive for society?

• 1:36:32Speaker 00

  I think broadly. Look, it doesn't mean that they're, that they don't have some challenges. Like, people criticize.

• 1:36:40Speaker 00

  Facebook, for example. But actually, in fact, a billion people get on it every day. They share their experiences, pictures, lives with loved ones, friends, etc. All of that's very, very positive. I think Twitter unfortunately has taken a turn for the worst. I think if you go, you know, where is the largest site which has the most untruths on it? I think it's Twitter, right? But, you know, that doesn't mean it can't also be improved and fixed over time.

• 1:37:07Steven Bartlett?

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• 1:37:51Steven Bartlett?

  To help you get started, LinkedIn is offering a one hundred dollar credit to launch your first campaign. Just go to LinkedIn dot com slash D O A C twenty four to claim your credit now. That's LinkedIn dot com slash D O A C twenty four. Terms and conditions apply. There's so many different takes that I've heard on AI. I've spoken to Mustafa Suleyman. I've spoken to lots of different, I know you know Mustafa because you invested in his company.

• 1:38:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, we co-founded Inflection.

• 1:38:14Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay, so you co-founded Inflection, which then sold to Microsoft?

• 1:38:17Speaker 00

  Well, it's, it did a commercial deal with them. It's still going as a company.

• 1:38:20Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay. All right, because Mustafa moved over.

• 1:38:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, he moved over because he wanted to do a consumer agent and Inflection is doing B two B software sales now.

• 1:38:29Steven Bartlett?

  What is your take on AI? And how should we be thinking about it? How should Dave and Jenny, the average person with, you know, working in a company or building a small startup, think about AI?

• 1:38:38Speaker 00

  So I think AI is in a, look, so I, last year I published a book called Impromptu, which is the first book on AI, co-written with AI, right? To show as well as tell that AI is not just artificial intelligence, it's amplification intelligence. It gives us superpowers, right? As part of that, I'm publishing a book in January called Super Agency, which is our human agency, even with this agentic technology, can and will be magnified. We will get these superpowers. And super agency is the time where when a lot of people get access to a new general purpose technology, the transformation of society that comes and it's like printing press

• 1:39:22Speaker 00

  or electricity or cars or mobile phones. It's it's this amazing

• 1:39:30Speaker 00

  transformation of all of our lives because not only do I get the superpower by having AI, the fact that you have a superpower with AI also increased my agency. So for example, you're a doctor who now has access to AI. Your ability to help tend to lots of people's hells now just get amplified. And it's the same thing like when a car was created, a doctor could now do have a broader range of places they could visit to go help. That part of his cars have that super agency. It's not just I can drive places now because the doctor can drive places. That also increases her or his agency and also my agency through super agency. And that book's coming out in January.

• 1:40:14Steven Bartlett?

  There's a lot of gloom around AI as well as feared all the time with new technologies. Is any of that gloom warranted?

• 1:40:20Speaker 00

  Yes, but with an asterisk, which is every time a new general purpose technology comes out, the discourse when the printing press came out, the discourse was very similar to the current discourse on AI. It's going to destroy society. It's going to destroy human learning and knowledge. It's going to disable the current people who are the who are the custodians of knowledge, which mostly priests, you know, in society from from from being able to control the flow of information. And we're going to have all this misinformation, et cetera, et cetera. Now, by the way, you don't have a scientific revolution without the printing press. Right? So now, so there's always this fear. And you say, is the fear completely unwarranted?

• 1:41:02Speaker 00

  Well, look, human societies are bad at new general purpose technologies. Right? So with the printing press, we had nearly a century of religious war because of it. So the transitions are very difficult because we as human beings are difficult at new general purpose technologies. And so the transition, look, the transition is going to have pain. There's going to be challenges and reordering and silver disruption because of it. No question. What I'm hoping, and part of the reason I write these books, is say, look, let's manage this transition better than we've managed the previous transitions. Right? Let's, I have 100% confidence that the other side, this will be enormously amazing super agency.

• 1:41:45Speaker 00

  What I wanted to do is manage the transition as best we can. Now, people say, well, shouldn't you manage the transition by being really slow and being really regulated? Well, the challenge is, is that these new technologies are developed competitively across the entire globe, different countries, different industries, different companies, et cetera. And we don't set the clock, like there's no one group that sets the clock. And if you don't like go with it, like take the industrial revolution, which also had a bunch of things, why did Europe basically set the drumbeat for the globe for centuries? The answer is Europe embraced the industrial revolution robustly and early, right?

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  The, you know, it's part of what, you know, made the British Empire, right? And so that clock is set by different human beings all running at it. And by the way, they have different theories of the good. They have different theories of how technology should be in society. They have different theories of what the risks are, technologies. Like, you know, when these people published this pause letter, that was like, that's a mistake. Like other people aren't gonna, like, it's a simple thing you look at. The people who care about humanity, if they all pause and the people don't care about humanity, don't pause, your letter, if you, if you achieve your success, will cause a bad impact on humanity. So you have to be developing it.

• 1:43:12Speaker 00

  You have to be going with the clock that's set by the world, right?

• 1:43:17Steven Bartlett?

  When I think about AI in its simple terms, the way that I've, I've been thinking about it, and this is not a perfect analogy or whatever, but it's just a simple way to think about it, is if there was one Steven Bartlett here that has an IQ of a hundred, and there was another one sat next to me that had the IQ of a thousand, what would this Steve do and what would that Steve do?

• 1:43:35Speaker 00

  It's a good question.

• 1:43:35Steven Bartlett?

  Is that an apt analogy? Is that somewhat?

• 1:43:38Speaker 00

  Well, it depends. This is, part of the thing is, we human beings are very bad at imagining future technology. So I can tell you stories about where we have created AIs with IQ of a thousand.

• 1:43:52Speaker 00

  I can tell you stories, we've created AIs with IQs of 200 of 150. And I can also tell you stories of AIs where we've created that are kind of equivalent, because today we have this, as a forms like idiot savants. Like today's AIs are super intelligent. I'll give you an example. So if I go to a human being, I try to look around at a human being and say, "Explain to me mixture of experts, creation of AI within AI." What does that mean? It's a, it's a technique by which modern AIs are created that have different kind of expertise roles in the accommodates. The chat GPT is created this way, that create their output.

• 1:44:34Speaker 00

  It's a, it's a particular technical definition for the way of creating a, a world-class AI model. Then I say, okay, compare a mixture of experts. So use only thousands of people who understand how to do that. And I say, okay, compare that to modern economic game theory.

• 1:44:57Speaker 00

  Well, there's probably some humans that can do that too. We're probably now down to like 50 to 100. Right? Then I say, okay, compare those two to modern oceanography. Right? Okay, now we're at zero human beings. There's no human beings that can do this, but I can go to GBD4 and I can run this. GBD4, because it's ingested a million, a trillion words of knowledge, can write the comparisons between these three things. Because it knows all three. Because it knows all three. That's a superpower that no human being has. We have AI superpower today. Right? But of course, no one's alarmed about that. Because like, oh, that's a great amplification intelligence. That really helps me. I think there's a very good chance that what happens is

• 1:45:42Speaker 00

  Is that what we're creating with all of every current AI technique that's under development is these amazing savants that are these great co-pilots, right? And that's what we're creating, not Terminator robots, not super intelligences. There's a possibility of that, and I can address the existential risk questions around the possibility of that, because people think about that poorly. But, um, but I think the likelihood is that we're going to be having these kind of co-pilots that give us these informational GPSs, these cognitive superpowers that make us as human beings a lot better.

• 1:46:24Steven Bartlett?

  That act is a gonna?

• 1:46:25Speaker 00

  Yes, that too, yes. That's the bigger worry. So you say one worry is transition, and another worry is whenever you're creating this new technology, you want to say, I want to empower all these people who are building better lives for themselves in society, and I'd want to not empower criminals, terrorists, rogue states.

• 1:46:42Steven Bartlett?

  And also you think, I also need weapons that are sufficiently advanced at attacking my, my enemies. And everybody globally is thinking that.

• 1:46:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:46:53Steven Bartlett?

  China might be thinking about the, the West, and the West are thinking about China, Russia are thinking about this person, this person, the Middle East are probably thinking about a couple of people.

• 1:47:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:47:01Steven Bartlett?

  So with, with all developing weapons or defense systems, they're going to probably make those robots you talked about, the Terminator robot that can go to the battlefield.

• 1:47:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:47:10Steven Bartlett?

  And that's super smart. They're going to probably make some cyber weapons as well.

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:47:14Steven Bartlett?

  So those things end up existing, and then they're in the wrong hands, the mistake happens.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  So you want to build them in the right hands first. That's all. I mean, look, there will be costs to it. There's never, look, electricity, essential for human society. It does electrocute people, right? It does do things in the wrong hands too, right?

• 1:47:35Steven Bartlett?

  Is this technology different though? Because there's been comparisons to the printing press electricity. But is this?

• 1:47:41Speaker 00

  No, no, it's new, but by the way, each technology, the printing press was different when it was created. Electricity was different when it was created. Cars were different when they were created.

• 1:47:52Steven Bartlett?

  Is this the most profound?

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Well, it's certain. It's cer- it might be, right? That's, that's a possibility.

• 1:47:59Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think it is?

• 1:48:01Speaker 00

  I think there is, I always think in probability distributions, I think there's a good probability of it, but to some degree. Like, it doesn't matter if it is or isn't the most. It is a profound new technology. It's as important, at least, as these other ones. That's the only thing that matters. Whether it definitely is or not, doesn't really matter. And, look, what is different? It's the fact that it's agentic technology. Which means? It's creating agents that can operate on their own. Right? We already have that, by the way. Like, the agent, you can be running an agent with a connection to the internet on your computer, and then it can go buy stuff for you. But you can do that today. It's doable.

• 1:48:44Speaker 00

  You have agent, it's just a question of what the shape is. Right? So it's agentic. It's cognitive. Like, like, it's very strange that we have a technology now that we can talk to in various ways. And so you have people mistaken going, "Ooh, it must be conscious," because they asked if it was conscious, and it said it was conscious. And I was like, "No." But by the way, before this technology existed, that was a good test. It does, by the way, there are conscious things that can't, there's, there's mute people. And the fact that they can't tell you they're conscious. So conscious, not perfectly, they tell you they're conscious, but you tell me you're conscious, that was a pretty good test before. Now it's a little bit more complicated, because I don't think any of the current AIs are conscious. And we know in depth the reason of neuroscience and other kinds of things about why that is.

• 1:49:30Speaker 00

  It's not a, just a human species parochialist view. And figuring out under what circumstance it would be conscious is a very interesting question that we need to, we need to figure out, because it won't be that it has gray matter. It'll be something else. Or, you know, maybe, we'll figure this out. So, so that's new. The cognitive superpowers are new. The fact that the speed of deployment is going to be unusual, because now we have the mobile phone internet. So I create a new agent, and tomorrow, a billion people can use it.

• 1:50:04Speaker 00

  Right, that's new, right? So, so all of these things are new. And by the way, new is anxiety producing and new is difficult to navigate and new can make transitions very difficult, right? But by the way, the fact that we're facing a new challenge is not itself a new challenge. Right?

• 1:50:24Steven Bartlett?

  For the average person out there, that's, I know they might be working in a hospital or it might be a lawyer or a doctor, whatever, just someone with a job that's heard this term AI and they're seeing ChatGPT. Is there anything that they should be doing on an individual level to make sure that they can capitalize on the opportunity that AI presents?

• 1:50:43Speaker 00

  The basic answer is absolutely yes. And it's part of the reason why, like, like I do my podcast, Possible, I do Super Agency, I do Impromptu, because the strong advice they give everyone, and literally, I was sitting with the governors of the Bank of England yesterday, and my advice to them, among other things, was personally go use AI, right? Don't just use it to make a sonnet for your kid's birthday. That's great. Don't just use it for a recipe for what happens to be in your refrigerator. That's great. For something that matters to you, that part of your expertise and so forth, start using it. And by the way, you'll find that some of the things is still not useful for at all.

• 1:51:26Speaker 00

  Like when I sat down to ask GPT four, how would Reid Hoffman make money investing in AI? It gave me an answer that was the smart business school professor's answer who didn't understand venture capital. It was like, well, study which areas have the largest total addressable market, then look at what the possibilities for competitive disruption are, then, you know, market research test that. And it's like, no, it's not the way, like, go find a great entrepreneur with a great idea, right? You know, and, and it's best when the idea is something you haven't thought of and few other people have thought of too, right? Is the way of doing it. So it got it completely wrong from how I, how Reid Hoffman, how I invest in AI and what I do very successfully. Now, he said, well, then it's useless for venture capital.

• 1:52:11Speaker 00

  I was like, no, no, because I kept experimenting with it. And I said, okay. I fed in a, uh, an entrepreneur's plan and I said, "How would I do due diligence on this plan?" And it came back with a pretty good list. It was like, "Yeah, yeah, one, that was, I was absolutely planning on doing that. Two, I was absolutely, three, yeah, I could see why you'd think that's doing it. That's not important. Oh, four, I would have gotten to that, but it would have gotten to it like four days down the road of doing the work. And now I know it now. So it's useful there. So it is today useful to everybody. You can use it for things that you care about today. So go start playing with it. And I love Ethan Mollick's line, which is, "The worst AI you're ever gonna use in your life is the AI you're using today."

• 1:52:56Speaker 00

  So one of the reasons to start using it is to start getting familiar with it. Because like, it is a stunning tool. And I'll give one, since you're talking about everyday people, I'll give one kind of tip that I give everybody at the beginning. It's part of the reason I wrote impromptu, et cetera, which is, what is AI? AI is great at adopting a role that you tell it to adopt, right? So here's a very simple one. You have an argument for something. You can paste it into an AI and you can say, "Counter this argument. Take the role of critic, argue against me." And you can see, it will immediately give you, you know, a capable argument against your position. That is very helpful.

• 1:53:41Speaker 00

  It's helpful for cognitive development. It's helpful for learning. It's helpful for our understanding, you know, what are the strengths and weaknesses? But by the way, you can also say, "Take my side. Give me another argument for the thing I'm arguing for." Like, make that argument. But that's just the beginning. You can also say, like, for example, if I go, "Okay, I'm making this argument for, how general-purpose technologies always have initial strong fear by people and how they're described as the end of society, the end of humanity, et cetera. It's happened a number of different times." How would a historian of technology analyze my argument? How would they criticize my argument? And then you get it.

• 1:54:24Speaker 00

  So you can get to like, it's literally, it's only your own creativity and your own inspiration of who, what role should I be talking to? And once you start realizing that, you can start using AI very powerfully for whatever you're trying to do.

• 1:54:39Steven Bartlett?

  Should entrepreneurs be thinking about building companies in the field of AI at the moment? You know, as a entrepreneur who's like roughly thirty years old, I look back and go, gosh, I wish I was of entrepreneurial age when the dot com boom came around because everyone became billionaires. And is that, is this that moment in time?

• 1:54:58Speaker 00

  Yes. The short answer is yes.

• 1:55:00Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so what, so I'm an entrepreneur, I'm thirty odd years old, I've got disposable income, I'm financially free. I'd love to take part in the next revolution. Should I be flying out to San Francisco and building an AI, joining an AI startup like that?

• 1:55:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:55:20Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:55:21Speaker 00

  So, so one of the things with Silicon Valley, so Silicon Valley has built itself up off multiple, the reason it's called Silicon Valley is because it started with silicon, right? It's now software valley. Silicon Valley almost never invest in silicon anymore.

• 1:55:36Steven Bartlett?

  Silicon being the chips.

• 1:55:37Speaker 00

  Yes, being the chips, yes. So now really it's much more software valley. It's like we invest billions and billions of dollar every year into new software companies, right? So we went from silicon through, you know, networking equipment like Cisco, through like just stacks of different things getting to where we are now. AI is the new one. By the way, we did the thing with internet, we did it with mobile phones, we did it with web two. Now it's AI. And so, you know, the principal thing is, when you get this new, like, new general purpose

• 1:56:16Speaker 00

  technology, it opens up massive amounts of entrepreneurial space because, one is all the new things that can be built that were never possible before. Airbnb couldn't be done before the internet. There's just no way. All right. So it opens up these things that weren't possible before. And so like, the internet's a good proxy to the, to the wave we have now with AI. Then it also, by the way, makes a massive transformative force on all existing businesses. So you say, well, I had a business of, of selling, you know, kind of, of e-commerce and doing, you know, mail order catalogs. Well, now there's e-commerce,

• 1:56:59Speaker 00

  right? So it, it, it transforms all of these businesses. And so, by the way, for example, the internet is part of what makes the cloud revolution. So now it's like, well, actually, in fact, it's not software on your desktop. It's not software on your, your phone. It's in the cloud. And of course, it bounces back and forth a little bit. Then you have, well, no, actually, in fact, you've got this really great app on your phone and so forth. But these kinds of things, AI is the next one that affects all of them. So you have green field. You have potentially revolutionized any particular place where there's a product or service, especially that intelligence could be added to it, right? There's a possibility

• 1:57:39Speaker 00

  of a great startup idea there. So, so, yes. Now, should you go try to build your own frontier model, which is a $10 billion computer? It's a hard thing. That's a hard amount of capital for startups. No, no, no. Try to figure out, like, the degrees you use frontier models from, you know, OpenAI or Microsoft or Google or, you know, others as ways of doing this. But you still may build your own model, right? That lots of, lots of startup companies are building their own models. I invested in this customer service company called Sierra that Brett Taylor is doing, and their thing is, we're not building our own models. We're just deploying other models. So we have best of breed for what models are available to us. You could do that as an AI startup.

• 1:58:22Speaker 00

  There's a whole range. And part of what I love about entrepreneurship and invention is, like, I have a whole set of theories about what kinds of things will be really big, and some of my theories will be right. And I've also discovered some other people who have amazing theories. And that's one of the things I really think I and we at Greylock love to invest in.

• 1:58:41Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. Oh, what's the best way for someone to go and learn about AI right now? Because like going to university feels like it would be.

• 1:58:48Speaker 00

  Start using it. Start building it. If you want to, if you can, if you're technical, download an open source model, Llama, Mistral, other, start playing with it.

• 1:59:00Steven Bartlett?

  What if you're not technical?

• 1:59:01Speaker 00

  Well, then, well, generally speaking, like, you can't do a technology. It's very hard to do a technology startup without a technology co-founder. So then go find a technology co-founder.

• 1:59:11Steven Bartlett?

  So for someone like me who's built my my career in building teams, marketing, social media, content, media, those kinds of things, who is really interested in AI, should I go and do you think I should go learn AI now and start trying to be a technical person?

• 1:59:26Speaker 00

  Too slow.

• 1:59:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, yeah, I'm sorry.

• 1:59:29Speaker 00

  No, no, speed matters. Speed matters in startups. But by the way,

• 1:59:34Speaker 00

  like, because we tend to so much lionize what is usually the man versus the person, that most of these people are men, the individual. Startups succeed because their initial team, that's part of the hiring point we were talking about earlier. And so generally speaking, if you ask me what I rather invest in an individual,

• 1:59:55Speaker 00

  founder or two to three co-founders, I'd rather invest in two to three co-founders. Right? So going and finding a co-founder is a great thing. Because, by the way, your your throw weight, your capability weight is so much better when you do that. And so, you know,

• 2:00:12Speaker 00

  Mark Zuckerberg had Dustin Muscovitz, Adam D'Angelo, right? You know, Chris Hughes. That's a really important part of how things get created.

• 2:00:23Steven Bartlett?

  You invested in OpenAI almost a decade ago.

• 2:00:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:00:26Steven Bartlett?

  Before everybody was talking about it. What did you see in that company?

• 2:00:31Speaker 00

  So Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskefer.

• 2:00:38Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 2:00:40Speaker 00

  And they had a focused, bold vision, which is, yes, Google has invented the baseline of the attention-based transformer, but they don't realize that it's just scale. Like, apply scale to this. We are going to bet the entire company, everything we're doing on scale on it, and we're going to be very focused on doing it.

• 2:01:03Speaker 00

  That's, that's great.

• 2:01:05Steven Bartlett?

  But people had said the word AI for a long time and it had never manifested in it.

• 2:01:09Speaker 00

  And I had passed on a lot of AI investments. But the thing that people need to understand about AI is it's a transformation to scale computing learning systems. So as opposed to we program it, like we program the AI, we program a scale computing learning system, so it learns. Right? And that only becomes available once you have scale compute. So you need the internet, you need the cloud, you need massive data centers, and you need access to massive amounts of data, which you get from the internet and other things, and then you need a scale team to build it.

• 2:01:47Steven Bartlett?

  Now, on that point of people, how important, if you're trying to be successful as a young entrepreneur, is networking?

• 2:01:54Speaker 00

  Almost always critical, because you need that initial team. Now, you don't need networking of, I should spend 12 hours a day, seven days a week, going to every party that I can possibly go of and shaking people's hand and giving them my business card. That's not particularly useful. What you need to be is, just like you have a strategy for your business, you need to have a strategy for how you're building your network around your business, your network around you. Like, who are the people that I should be talking to? Who are the people that I should be learning from? Who are the people that I should be trying to bring into my network that I have the project that I'm creating? And how do I meet those people?

• 2:02:32Steven Bartlett?

  There's so many obvious things that people talk about when they're describing what makes entrepreneurs successful. They say hard work, they say have a big vision. But is there anything that's really?

• 2:02:42Steven Bartlett?

  Underappreciated. Like when I say this, I'm talking about being a nice person or being etiquette or politeness or manners. Are there any things like that that you think make a big difference, but people don't appreciate?

• 2:02:55Speaker 00

  Well, I don't think politeness and etiquette are really particularly good competitive advantages. I'm not saying the one should be rude, but like an emphasis, like if an entrepreneur is like, I'm reading my etiquette manual. It's like, don't spend your time like, sure, be nice. I think building a network, like entrepreneurship is a team sport. It is not an individual sport. It's a team sport. So you need to be building your team.

• 2:03:21Steven Bartlett?

  You've seen entrepreneurs be successful that were bad at that, right?

• 2:03:24Speaker 00

  Not ultimately at scale.

• 2:03:26Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:03:28Speaker 00

  Right. Because it is a team sport, right? Like, you know, it requires high talent people around you doing it. Now, for example, you can get enough initial success going and capital that even though you're bad with your team, people will come on board because they'll go, oh, I believe this is going to go somewhere and I can make a bunch of money doing it. I'll come do it. And so you like, for example, a classic trope within Silicon Valley, which is broadly correct, and that's part of the reason you have the tropes is I want missionary, not mercenary cultures. Right. Because the missionaries, I believe we're going to change the world. We're going to do it this way. And by the way, mostly of the big successful companies, most of them are missionary cultures. They say, oh, they're all missionary culture. No, no, there's mercenary cultures that have gotten big too.

• 2:04:13Steven Bartlett?

  How do you define mercenary in this context?

• 2:04:15Speaker 00

  All I care about is making money. Like all like, the only thing that matters is I'm selling something. I'm going to make money. That's all that matters.

• 2:04:23Steven Bartlett?

  Do you sometimes think the mission's bullshit, though? Just like bullshit to get people to feel something?

• 2:04:28Speaker 00

  There are bullshit missions that that are like the, I'm just telling a story. I don't really care. Right. I'm telling a story that's incorrect. Right. There are like, like, like the Silicon Valley TV show on HBO. Kind of, you know, you know, satirized this in a particular way. It was like, I am creating a reverse double encryption system to change the world. Right. You know, that kind of, and yeah, there is BS there, just like any other.

• 2:05:00Speaker 00

  Large scale human activity, there's a lot of BS in different places.

• 2:05:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do you need the BS in that context? Do you need to end it with, I'm gonna change the world?

• 2:05:08Speaker 00

  Uh, well, it's helpful. The reason why people use the BS is because that's what people want to do. People want to be in things that change in the world. So you have to say, like, I'm LinkedIn. This is how I'm gonna change the world. I'm OpenAI. This is how I'm gonna change the world. I'm Airbnb. This is how I'm gonna change the world.

• 2:05:25Steven Bartlett?

  Because humans are emotional, story animals.

• 2:05:29Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, yes, you need it. But of course, it's much better if it happens to be that you actually are trying to do that. You are actually, in fact, you have a good plan for how you might succeed in doing that.

• 2:05:43Steven Bartlett?

  Cause you know, a fizzy, like a, I know, fizzy drinks company.

• 2:05:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:05:48Steven Bartlett?

  Conglomerate, even they try and end their like value proposition with, we're gonna change the world.

• 2:05:53Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:05:54Steven Bartlett?

  And you know, it's bullshit. It's a public company. They got shareholders who want to return.

• 2:05:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:05:59Steven Bartlett?

  But even they, I guess, have to do it.

• 2:06:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Steven Bartlett?

  On the mindset front, what is the mindset? The factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset? What are the key things that you look for when you're investing in one?

• 2:06:09Speaker 00

  Insanely great ambition, right? I'm, I'm shooting for the moon and, you know, sometimes literally, but most often like, like, if I'm successful, I will transform the industry.

• 2:06:22Steven Bartlett?

  I hear.

• 2:06:24Speaker 00

  An awareness of, like, a good plan for how you might do that, right? An awareness that, that entrepreneurship's a team sport, not an individual sport. And I have a plan for how I'm bringing in, like, all of different elements, capital, talent, et cetera. Like, for example, one of the ways that I interview executives is I say, who are the three to five? The five, I love it, but minimum three world-class people who've worked for you before.

• 2:06:57Speaker 00

  And I'm gonna call them and ask them what it's like working for you.

• 2:07:02Speaker 00

  Because, and by the way, if it really matters, I will then reference check those three people on are they actually world-class? Right? Because only hire people who are gonna hire world-class people who play it. Now, similarly, like, who are the world-class people who think you're world-class as an entrepreneur? And like, this is one of the things that actually Entrepreneur First, that we actually, in fact, learned was, it isn't necessarily who everybody thinks, it's who some world-class people think that this person is world-class, because they're edgy. Yeah. Right? So you look for that. It isn't that you look for people that everybody loves, and everybody says, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with that person." No, no, no. Like, having someone that say, "Oh, that person's hard-driving, and they're difficult." That can be a very strong positive.

• 2:07:48Speaker 00

  I've invested a number of entrepreneurs that way. What about resilience? Well, resilience is also very important. Almost every startup goes through what I call a valley of the shadow moment, which is like, "Why did we think this was a good idea? Oh, my God." Like, when I started SocialNet, one of my connections from Apple dropped me, who had started doing startups two years before, dropped me a one-line email that said, "Welcome to where 15 minutes is the difference between exultation and terror. I'm gonna change the world. Oh, shit, I'm gonna die." Right? So resilience is super important, because it is a dogfight.

• 2:08:29Speaker 00

  And multiple times, PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, "Oh, God, we're gonna die. This is gonna be worth zero." Can you spot resilience in someone? Um, you can have a high-probability guess. Based on? Well, it's kind of like, so you push them on things and see what they've done. Have they taken risk? How do they respond to risk? Are they trying to persuade themselves that the thing that they're doing is zero risk? "No, no, I'm guaranteed to succeed."

• 2:09:00Speaker 00

  No one is.

• 2:09:02Steven Bartlett?

  Does it help if they've been through some difficult things in their life?

• 2:09:06Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, because then if they've gone through the difficult things and they've been resilient in there, that's likely, not a hundred percent, that gives a good probability they'll be resilient.

• 2:09:16Steven Bartlett?

  Like traumatized people.

• 2:09:17Speaker 00

  Well, it depends on how they respond to the trauma, right? What did you learn from it? Like, how did you respond to it? Like, because generally speaking, you need to be able to convert negatives into positives, right, on the entrepreneurial journey. So it's like, look, that was, that was really bad and I learned from it.

• 2:09:33Steven Bartlett?

  If you were advising a young person on how to build wealth in 2025.

• 2:09:38Speaker 00

  Huh?

• 2:09:39Steven Bartlett?

  And when I say young, I mean eighteen years old.

• 2:09:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:09:42Steven Bartlett?

  What would you, and you had to plan out the roadmap of their life. Can you walk me through how you'd be thinking about those seasons of life, like eighteen to thirty, thirty onwards, et cetera?

• 2:09:51Speaker 00

  So part of the reason I wrote Startup Review was that the advice that universities frequently give is, you know, follow your passion. First, do the things that you're passionate about. Oh, you want to go volunteer in Bhutan? Do it now is tends to be, and it's terrible advice, right? They, that, that actually is the, the wrong end for the advice. The right thing, and it doesn't mean don't follow your passion, but the right thing is to start with, how do I get to a place where I have established myself and have, like, the ability to, like economically, the platform to move, or it could be enough wealth to be, you know, to no longer need a salary. That was my own personal goal.

• 2:10:33Speaker 00

  But it also could be the, I'm well known, I have a network of contacts of people who would want to hire me and so on. And now I'm going to go spend a year volunteering in Bhutan because I really want to do that. Right? So the answer is go be vigorous about the thing that matters for your entire life early.

• 2:10:51Steven Bartlett?

  And take the big risks.

• 2:10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, take the big risk early, right? Now, you might say, I want to be a doctor. It's not particularly risky, it's fine. But then go to medical school, establish yourself as, as, as, as a medical professional and so before you do that. So whatever thing that is the thing that you think gives you the platform for resilience in your later life, go establish that now. And by the way, that's part of the thing of like wealthy, but wealthy, by the way, could be measured in, I have a bank balance, right, or on stock equity portfolio. But wealthy can also be the, I have a great network of people who wanna work with me, who wanna hire me, who value my talents, right? So this whole range for things, but go establish that first.

• 2:11:36Speaker 00

  And that can be, take big risks. If you, if, by the way, some people say, I wanna take as few big risks as possible in my whole life, cuz that's who I am. Fine, but go establish yourself first. Now, if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, you wanna be an entrepreneur, then like, for example, it's like, okay, maybe you shouldn't start a business at eighteen, but maybe you should go join a startup, right? Start learning it, start building the network. And it's roughly build the network is the broad thing. And by the way, build the skills and, you know, get, like frequently doing a startup is very difficult economically. Usually you start with no salary, etc. Like, having some reserves is a good thing to have.

• 2:12:18Steven Bartlett?

  I read a book and in the first chapter, I was trying to figure out what this platform is for young people. And the way that I kinda described it is these five buckets, the first one being knowledge, and then when knowledge is applied, it becomes a skill. And the good thing about these first two buckets is they're the only two that no one can ever really empty of what you put in there.

• 2:12:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:12:35Steven Bartlett?

  The next one I posited was, me trying to remember my own book, was your, I'm gonna say network, then your resources, then your reputation. Now, anyone can take these last three. Like, life can happen, you can get fired, you can lose your friends, whatever.

• 2:12:51Speaker 00

  Well, network is hard to lose if you've really authentically built it, right?

• 2:12:58Steven Bartlett?

  It can be lost, though.

• 2:12:59Speaker 00

  It can be, but it's very hard. It's kinda like a nuclear bomb kinda thing. I mean, it's like, look, you may, like, one particular person and you may have a real difference of opinion. You know, you may move and then a lot-

• 2:13:13Steven Bartlett?

  Get fired.

• 2:13:14Speaker 00

  Get fired, and a lot of your network is that, but by the way, even if you've gotten fired, if you've got a couple people at that company that you had good relationship with, they may still be part of your network.

• 2:13:24Steven Bartlett?

  So am I right in thinking that the knowledge and skills part is really the critical thing to prioritize when you're?

• 2:13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, this is part of what we did in Starview. Soft assets are very important. People under-prioritize them. They tend to say, oh, I should take the job that offers me a 5% higher salary. And the answer is almost always that's not the criteria that you should be looking at. Even 30% higher salary is not the criteria you should be looking at. You should be looking at where are my soft assets? Where's my knowledge? Where's my skills? Where's my network?

• 2:13:55Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 2:13:57Speaker 00

  Because the soft assets are what compound generally to the much larger. Like, the fact that you took a job with a 30% higher salary is not necessarily the predictor that you're going to get the job with a 300% higher salary. It's the soft assets that are likely to get to the 300% economic outcome.

• 2:14:14Steven Bartlett?

  So it's short term versus long term?

• 2:14:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:14:16Steven Bartlett?

  So soft assets are longevity?

• 2:14:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:14:18Steven Bartlett?

  And the hard assets, I guess, are short term?

• 2:14:21Speaker 00

  Yes, immediate.

• 2:14:23Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a different game you play when you hit your 30s, do you think?

• 2:14:25Speaker 00

  Well, you have to evolve it. So, for example, you can, when you're in your 20s, you can say, well, I'm going to, I'm going to take more risk. Like, can I always take the jobs that have zero salary, lower salary? Because I'm going to live in the house with five of my friends. You know, we're going to have beans and toast for dinner. You know, da, da, da, da, as ways of doing it, because I can take those risks now. And then when you're 30, it's like, well, maybe I'm planning on having a life partner and being in an apartment or a house with them. And so it changes as you go through.

• 2:14:57Steven Bartlett?

  And then you have kids?

• 2:14:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:14:58Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have kids?

• 2:14:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:15:01Steven Bartlett?

  Because I'm in that region now where I'm thinking about having kids. And I'm just, I'm wondering how disruptive it's going to be.

• 2:15:07Speaker 00

  It's another startup. Like, it's fine. You can do startups and have it, but it's a complete startup.

• 2:15:13Steven Bartlett?

  Which, do you think lowers your chance of being successful at a startup? Because doing two startups is more difficult than doing one.

• 2:15:20Speaker 00

  Probably a little.

• 2:15:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:21Speaker 00

  But maybe worth it.

• 2:15:23Steven Bartlett?

  On balance, okay. What is happiness to you? Because you've got the money, you've got the success, you've got the reputation, you've got the CV. What is?

• 2:15:32Speaker 00

  Happiness for me is going through life with people I love and building great things. But like, by the way, if I failed at everything I built and I was still going through life with people I loved, great.

• 2:15:46Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that so important?

• 2:15:48Speaker 00

  Because I think part of the meaning of life is how you contribute to the people around you. It's like, again, I'm sorry, I keep referring to startup view, but it was my first book is Advice to Young People. Right? It's the I and the we. Like, like, like, do things for yourself, do things for the, for, for me, do things for we. Right? And I, I learn from people, I get delight from people. I feel meaningful as I contribute to people's lives. And obviously, you know, there's people immediately around me, there's people in the whole world. I mean, like, you know, LinkedIn, billion people have signed up for it, like, like there is, there is, there is.

• 2:16:29Speaker 00

  Like, that's part of what I think is essential in the, in the meaning of life, and for me especially.

• 2:16:36Steven Bartlett?

  How did you have happiness wrong when you were younger? If, in any way?

• 2:16:45Speaker 00

  I probably thought, like, it was important to be top of your class.

• 2:16:53Speaker 00

  Not that it was important to just do well, but it was important to be top. Right? And what I've come to realize is, you know, there's eight billion people. Right? Nobody is the best at everything. Right? Some people delude themselves that they are, but, but nobody is. You could be the best at something, and by the way, being the best at something, that's a good thing. But by the way, to really be obsessive about the being the best, the absolute best at that thing? Well, maybe you're actually, uh, being, you're, you're less investing in other things. It's a little bit like your earlier question about managing, like, you say, you'll be, I, I'm an oracle,

• 2:17:34Speaker 00

  and I'll tell you, you'll be four times as economically successful if you're a shit to the people you work with. Meh, no, uh, not okay for me.

• 2:17:46Steven Bartlett?

  And love, how does love come into all of this? You're you have a long term life partner?

• 2:17:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:17:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. In Seattle, what role has that played in in your happiness and your professional success?

• 2:17:58Speaker 00

  For me, all the people around me are people I learned from, and that includes Michelle. Like, I learned all kinds of things from Michelle. Michelle and I are actually both, in some ways, very similar people. Deep belief in ethics, deep belief in the importance of being a good person. And in some ways, very different. She like, I'm Mr. Scale, she's anti-scale. Right, she she she thinks she's fine with my doing the scale things. But like, she wants to go connect with local people in the community. Right, like, she's like, look, I'm volunteering at the senior center. Will you come volunteer with me? No, no, I don't do that. I'm happy to give money to the senior center, but that's not what I do. But that that's that's her life. And I learned from that, because, by the way, life is both. Life is both here and here.

• 2:18:42Speaker 00

  So it's it's one of the balance of different people. She she is intensely going in. She's taking this kind of, call it Quaker Buddhist approach to creating art. Right, and and that's just amazing. Like, I love being on that journey with her. Right, and that's her journey. Right, but I learned from it. And those are the kinds of things that are that are.

• 2:19:06Speaker 00

  You know, like, part of what I think the meaning of life is, is how we learn from each other.

• 2:19:10Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I mean, if two entrepreneurs come to you and they pitch the exact same thing, but one of them is in a long term marriage. What is the difference between those two entrepreneurs in terms of how they'll show up in business, in your view?

• 2:19:23Speaker 00

  Interesting, I've never been asked that question. It depends.

• 2:19:28Speaker 00

  I do think, like, one of the things that I treat as a very relevant fact is how someone treats the people around them.

• 2:19:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so it's somewhat evidence that there?

• 2:19:38Speaker 00

  Yes, so like, if a person is good to the people around them, then that's a person I am more likely to, much more, much, much more likely to want to go through. Because like, a startup is like 10 years. Like, I have passed on investments that I've literally referred to, and I won't name them because it's uncivil. But I've literally passed on investments that I thought, this is going to make a ton of money. And I've told my partners at Greylock, hey, look. This entrepreneur and this business, this is gonna make a lot of money. If any of you want to do it, great, and I will support you. But I don't want to index, I don't want to spend the 10 years of this entrepreneur. Right? Because it's just, you know, life's too short. Right? And I was right.

• 2:20:23Speaker 00

  Those businesses made a ton of money. Right? But it was, yeah, no, no thanks.

• 2:20:28Steven Bartlett?

  Not worth the headache?

• 2:20:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:20:30Steven Bartlett?

  When I was reading blitzscaling and I was watching the videos that you did, you've done several talks on it. And I've seen pretty much all of them over the years. One of the questions I had as an investor myself is my early-stage companies that aren't in the consumer internet space, they're selling, I don't know, they might be selling a drink in a supermarket or something. Should, should they all be pursued, pursuing this idea of blitzscaling where you go lightning fast to building a massively valuable company?

• 2:20:58Speaker 00

  Not necessarily.

• 2:20:59Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:21:00Speaker 00

  Blitzscaling is a strategic response to global competition.

• 2:21:04Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:21:05Speaker 00

  Right? And so now there are certain industries where global competition is the norm, not the exception. You're building an internet property. Right? Right? Or mostly like much software, not all software, but most, like many software companies. In which case, and by the way, if you can get away with not blitzscaling, it's much better because blitzscaling is spending resources inefficiently to get to market size ahead of your competition. Right? So like a classic example is like, you know, Uber would interview somebody, offer them a job, and then say, who are the three best people at your company that, that, that you worked with?

• 2:21:47Speaker 00

  And send job offers to those three people without even interviewing them. Right? Because that's blitzscaling. That's I'm going super, super fast. And that was a blitzscaling technique I learned from Uber. I was like, oh, yep, put that one in the tool chest for when you need to do that. Right? Because outpacing the competition when you're in Glengarry Glen Ross markets, which is first prize Cadillac, second prize steak knives, third prize you're fired. It's the game.

• 2:22:21Speaker 00

  And it's one of the things like when, you know, you and I were chatting a little bit before we started the podcast, like one of the places that things that places like, you know, London and the UK and Europe need to learn is when the competition is global, it's not the people down the street. It's the fiercest competitors around the world and Silicon Valley has fierce competitors. China has fierce competitors. You have to have a theory of how you're playing that game against those, the fiercest competitors in the world. And so blitzscaling is in part, like this is stuff I've learned from Silicon Valley and from the stuff I've done in China to say, like when you're in a global competitive business and you're trying to establish it and you have competitors who are doing this, this is some of the techniques that you need to do.

• 2:23:05Steven Bartlett?

  If AI is going to be so transformative, when you think about a country like the UK, where, you know, we don't have the blitzscaling advantages as entrepreneurs and founders that you guys have in Silicon Valley.

• 2:23:19Steven Bartlett?

  If you were the Prime Minister of the UK, what would you do to give us a shot at getting some of the value that's going to accrue because of this opportunity?

• 2:23:26Speaker 00

  So I think there's two things. One is you need to enable some of your company's ability to blitzscale as much as you can. Right?

• 2:23:35Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:23:36Speaker 00

  So, because if, if, if a company, if company one is not blitzscaling and is competing against company two that is blitzscaling, company one's going to lose.

• 2:23:47Steven Bartlett?

  I don't think we've got any AI companies that are blitzscaling over here.

• 2:23:50Speaker 00

  Company one is going to lose. Right? Company two might lose too, right? But company one is guaranteed to lose and company two is not guaranteed to lose. Right? So if you're competing against companies that are blitzscaling, you must also be blitzscaling. It's part of the, the reason I wrote the book. It's part of the reason I give talks. It's part of the reason I help Sherry Kutu stand up the scale, the Scaling Institute here in London, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Now, so we can't, we're not going to be able to. Well, then choose areas where the competitors are not blitzscaling.

• 2:24:26Steven Bartlett?

  I've got an example I want to give you. I invest in a matcha company. They make matcha like the, you know, green tea. And they've, they've grown very, very quickly. They're called Perfect Ted, hashtag ad. I'm an investor, etcetera. I'm an investor in a company, I think. And I was wondering, they've grown so quickly. So they've gone from, I don't know, zero to they'll probably do maybe thirty million pounds next year. And they've done it in a, could be measured in months, really. And I wondered, I was like, matcha is this trend that's coming into shore. Everyone's drinking matcha now. Every coffee shop you go to has matcha.

• 2:25:00Steven Bartlett?

  Should they be blitzscaling to capture the opportunity globally?

• 2:25:04Speaker 00

  So it depends on two things. One, most centrally, competition. Do they need to be outpacing their competition?

• 2:25:13Steven Bartlett?

  You could argue yes.

• 2:25:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, but if yes, then, and especially if their competitors are blitzscaling, then absolutely yes. If the competitors are not blitzscaling, it's called blitzscaling, enable us to outpace them. Because by the way, it does involve moving so fast, you're taking risks and hiring and capital raise and expenditures. You're doing marketing that you would, like you're Uber, you're, you're launching in twenty cities at the same time. It's whoa, you know, etcetera. Because that does add risks, right? But you're saying those risks that it adds are less of a risk than not blitzscaling. That's kind of the trade off. So competition is a central reason for doing it.

• 2:25:56Speaker 00

  And by the way, most of the company, most of the times where you can raise capital blitzscaling is because if you, if it's a Glengarry Glen Ross market where first prize is Cadillac, second prize is steak knives, well then, generally speaking, investors are willing to invest at premium prices, give a lot of capital, etcetera, etcetera, because they'll go, we agree that you're going to get a great market position if you blitzscale.

• 2:26:22Speaker 00

  And by the way, part of the problem is investors are not always right. But if some investors are willing to do it, then and are they going to do it in your competitors? Then you absolutely have to do it if your competitor is going to do it. So competition is the first thing. The second thing is, do you need to get to critical mass scale? So like your payments industry. And this is one of the things I learned at PayPal, which is basically payments businesses are dead unless they have at least a billion, you know, dollars of, you know, transactional volume through them per year. And that was back in 2002 when I was looking. I'm sure it's higher now, right? Maybe it's 10 billion, whatever. But it's like, if you don't get to that scale, you're dead. You're irrelevant.

• 2:27:01Speaker 00

  So getting to that scale and getting through the highly unprofitable, getting the scale as fast as possible really matters. And so that's one of the places where you say, well, none of our competitors are doing it, but we should still do it. Because getting that critical mass and scale really matters. And so that's another time. And, and so that would be, I don't think that's probably the, the matcha company, right? That that's probably like, doesn't need so, but those are the, the lessons you look at. But it's not blitzscaling for its own sake. That's one of the mistakes that people make when they go blitzscaling. Oh, we're doing it to blitzscaling. And no, no, you blitzscale as a set of strategic techniques in response to a market and a response to competition.

• 2:27:40Steven Bartlett?

  And in the case of matcha, there is a role of brand being the moat a little bit.

• 2:27:45Speaker 00

  Yes. And so that may be irrelevant. That may be the relevant thing of why it's a Glengarry. In the case, I haven't looked at the market at all, but a Glengarry, Gerland Ross market, a first prize Cadillac, second prize steak eyes. Maybe that's because of brand establishment, which case you have to be number one.

• 2:28:01Steven Bartlett?

  And on that point that I asked earlier about, if you're the prime minister of the UK, you'd start enabling some of our companies in the UK to like have more capital. Give them access to capital. Do you think, one of my fears is that AI is such a big opportunity. It's going to revolutionize everything and it's basically going to be owned by America and China. It's one of my fears is like, fears as someone that lives in the UK, that we're gonna, your economy is gonna, in the US is going to have such a huge upswing in productivity.

• 2:28:30Speaker 00

  So good news for you is I happen to know that 10 Downing Street is paying attention to this issue because I had meetings with them this week on that. There's things that they will be announcing, which I can't pre-announce.

• 2:28:40Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:28:40Speaker 00

  Right? But they know this is important and they're working on it.

• 2:28:44Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:28:46Speaker 00

  And they're consulting, you know, people.

• 2:28:48Steven Bartlett?

  Good. Yeah, that's what gives me hope.

• 2:28:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:28:52Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. What's the most important thing we haven't talked about for entrepreneurs that we should have talked about?

• 2:28:56Speaker 00

  I'll give two.

• 2:29:00Speaker 00

  The first is,

• 2:29:04Speaker 00

  and they're related. The first is, look, just because you don't have 100% chances of succeeding, doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Right? So, like when I said earlier, when we were talking about, like, look, when I started LinkedIn, I thought we had a most 20, 25% chance of being successful. That's fine. Right? So, in matter of fact, what you should be doing is aligning the fact that there is risks in what you're doing with the reason why you'll have less competition, while you have a higher runway before the competition intensifies. Because part of it is, if you have a theory, like we talked about this in LinkedIn, about why other people see that there is, like, they think there's a 0% chance you succeed,

• 2:29:49Speaker 00

  and you think there's a 20, 25% chance you succeed, that's precisely, that risk window is your opportunity. Right? So, think of risk not as terrifying, think of risk as potential opportunity. That's one. And we've talked about threads of it, but thinking of it as opportunity. Right? Because you see something other people don't see. You see the risks, but you have an idea for why that risk is something that you may be able to win on, and they won't. Right? So with LinkedIn, that was, hey, I have an idea about how the network will grow, even though it's not valuable until there's a million people in the network.

• 2:30:29Speaker 00

  Right? That's where that risk becomes an opportunity. Right? So, the second one, also around risk, is,

• 2:30:40Speaker 00

  Have a plan B. Have plans B. Understand that you have an idea and you risk you're playing it. And if it's not working out, how do you pivot? Don't think, oh, the whole thing is going all in. And I'm just gonna be roadkill if it doesn't work. No, no, that's the whole point of the reason I have this framework of A B Z planning, which is in the startup view, which is, by the way, startup view is advice they give entrepreneurs shrunk to advice to individuals. Right? Every single chapter applies to entrepreneurs and their companies. Right? And like the A B Z planning is, don't just have a plan A where like, oh, if it doesn't work, I'm dead. You're like, well, that's a bad strategy. Like, sometimes you'll do it. Sometimes it's the only thing I have. I love this plan A. It's the only thing I have.

• 2:31:23Speaker 00

  And the only way to do it is to go all in and, uh, it doesn't work, I'm dead. Okay. That's very scary. Right? Um, when I do entrepreneurship, I have plans B. I have a plan Z. Right? I, I, I have thought through not every, cause you can't think through everything, but maneuverability and how to measure, am I on track or not? Am I, am I increasing my probability of success or not? Am I increasing my ability to get to the moon or not? And, and be doing risk management, smart risk, take smart risks. That's the thing. Right?

• 2:31:57Steven Bartlett?

  How do you know when to quit? And I'm saying this in a professional context as well as an entrepreneurship context.

• 2:32:02Speaker 00

  So when I get around to advising companies I've invested in or friends that now's time to quit or now's time to sell. You try to sell, of course, but sometimes if you can't sell, that means quit. Right? Is your new plans, your new plans A are much worse than your previous plans A.

• 2:32:23Steven Bartlett?

  Your new plan A is much worse.

• 2:32:25Speaker 00

  Cause you pivoted.

• 2:32:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:26Speaker 00

  Right? And your new plan A is a much worse plan than your plan A. That's when you get to your plan Z is like, plan Z is I quit. Right?

• 2:32:35Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so you've you've tried something else that's also messed up.

• 2:32:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:32:38Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:32:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:32:39Steven Bartlett?

  And in a professional context, when how do you know to quit when to quit the job?

• 2:32:44Speaker 00

  Well, it could be you have a much better plan A, right? Like, like, okay, this plan A, that's okay. And then, by the way, this is the part of the difference that I tell people between should I found a company or should I join one? It's like, well, one of the problems you have as a founder is you can't really quit. You're you're you're with the business, all right? It's very dishonorable to quit before, you know, the business gets to whatever its its designee is. Now, sometimes you're fired, fine, but you're, you know, as a founder, you're like, people have come in and joined us because of me being here and doing this, and I'm here until the business gets to a point where it's it's a massive growing concern. Now, once the company is public, you can go do something, or once the company is sold, you can go do something.

• 2:33:27Speaker 00

  Or once the company is like profitable and really strong, you can go do something. But you're there until then as a founder. As an employee, you're signing up for what I'm the alliance I call a tour of duty, which is I am I've I'm signed up to make a big difference in the company, but I'm not here till the end. And so as your employee, you can go, look, have I delivered against my tour of duty? Great. And at that point, a better opportunity comes along. So, you know, Matt Kohler, who, you know, now lives here in London as a, you know, partner at Benchmark. Like, I recruited him out of McKinsey and LinkedIn. Three years in, he comes to me and says, hey, I've been offered this this opportunity at Facebook. I'm like, look, Matt, I love working with you. You're a close friend of mine, etc., etc. You should take that job at Facebook.

• 2:34:13Speaker 00

  That is the right next step for you, right? And because we're close and so forth, I think he probably wouldn't have taken the job if I hadn't said, but like, LinkedIn resembles my brain. I want people doing their best work, their best opportunities. And Facebook gave him a great opportunity.

• 2:34:26Steven Bartlett?

  What's really interesting about the LinkedIn story? I've got the deck in front of me here from August twenty two thousand and four.

• 2:34:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:34:35Speaker 00

  That's our Greylock Series B deck.

• 2:34:38Steven Bartlett?

  And what's pretty remarkable.

• 2:34:40Speaker 00

  And whether or not Matt Kohler helped me create that deck.

• 2:34:42Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, did he?

• 2:34:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:34:44Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, it's a it's a pretty good deck for a series, series B, especially back then. It's very simple, I'd have to say.

• 2:34:49Speaker 00

  Simple is good.

• 2:34:51Steven Bartlett?

  Very, very simple.

• 2:34:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:34:53Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that really struck out to me is on this page here, which is the sort of opening, I guess, vision, mission statement, whatever you want to call it, is it's find and contact the people you need through the people you already trust. And what's quite remarkable, although this was written 20 years ago, this is still very much what LinkedIn is about.

• 2:35:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:35:10Steven Bartlett?

  And usually when I see these decks, they start as, I don't know, hot or not.

• 2:35:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:35:14Steven Bartlett?

  And now it's like Facebook and Instagram.

• 2:35:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:35:16Steven Bartlett?

  Whereas this is still so close to what the vision was.

• 2:35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, it's also my third company. I had SocialNet, I had PayPal. PayPal pivoted a lot. Right. And so I had a good sense of both how to be long term and short term when I started LinkedIn.

• 2:35:31Steven Bartlett?

  And what is the key to being long term in this regard?

• 2:35:33Speaker 00

  Well, you know, what is the, you're going to transform the industry. Oh, and what do you mean by key?

• 2:35:40Steven Bartlett?

  As in like, if you're trying to build a long term company from the outset.

• 2:35:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:35:45Steven Bartlett?

  What are you thinking about?

• 2:35:46Speaker 00

  Well, you're thinking about like, if I'm successful at landing on the beach, at expanding into the market, how is it that I'm going to be a industry transforming company? Like, what's the thing that changes millions of customers' lives, you know?

• 2:36:04Speaker 00

  Or if it's an enterprise company, you know, whatever, like lots of companies within multiple industries, how am I an essential part of how they change the way they live, they work, they do business?

• 2:36:17Steven Bartlett?

  And what do you think of LinkedIn today? Because people use it in such a surprising way. I mean, people are building their personal brands on it. It's like a social network.

• 2:36:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I knew that was all going to be from from before this deck. I knew that was possible. I have a probability for it. Now, what what things surprised me? People build dating services on top of it.

• 2:36:35Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 2:36:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:36:37Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I'm in a relationship, so maybe I haven't seen it, but.

• 2:36:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, but they're like, well, some people want to be dating people who have professional, like my dating set is I want people who have good CVs. Okay. I don't want LinkedIn to ever build that business. Fine, if you're going to go build that business.

• 2:36:54Speaker 00

  No problem. Right. I mean, and like, for example, like one of the, like, this was, I think. A few months after we raised money from Greylock on this stack, one of the surprising uses is like I'd never envisioned this use case to looking for a job. An engineer wanted to move to Denver from Silicon Valley. And so I was like, didn't know what companies to look at. So this engineer went to LinkedIn and searched for profiles like his. Then looked at what companies those people worked at, then decided which companies to go look for jobs at.

• 2:37:34Speaker 00

  It was brilliant. Like it's a very good way of saying, hey, I'm looking, I'm interested in going and working here. What kinds of companies that are interesting employ people like me?

• 2:37:46Steven Bartlett?

  Are you still interested in building companies in terms of like being a CEO and founder again?

• 2:37:52Speaker 00

  Well, so I co-founded Inflection.

• 2:37:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:54Speaker 00

  So I'm definitely doing the co-founding thing, right?

• 2:37:59Speaker 00

  And, you know, I anticipate that will happen again. But will I be the CEO? It's not impossible, but it's kind of like, because I have these amazing people like Mustafa Suleyman, who are the CEO that I can be the co-founder with.

• 2:38:16Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 2:38:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I think that's the season of life I'm in.

• 2:38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:38:22Steven Bartlett?

  I don't want to be a CEO anymore, which is unfortunate because I'm in podcast, I have a CEO. I was one, but I just think there's an element of self-awareness, which I think has really is. And for me, the older I've gotten, the more I'm orientating everything towards being happy.

• 2:38:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:38:35Steven Bartlett?

  And for me, it's, it's hard to be a CEO and as happy as I, and free as I want to be. So.

• 2:38:40Speaker 00

  Then, then, then you need to build the network and skills by which you're working with other people who are the CEOs.

• 2:38:48Steven Bartlett?

  That's basically what I do now. So the companies that I've described, the software business, the media company we have here, there's people that are designed and built and much better CEOs than me.

• 2:38:56Speaker 00

  What do you, do you care about legacy?

• 2:39:00Speaker 00

  Only because I care of an impact. Um, so I don't like, I, I care that I, I've actually made a big difference to the ongoing story of humanity. Um, but I don't care that, I mean, look, it's nice. I like, I certainly don't mind that people go, oh, Reid Hoffman did these amazing things. Uh, it feels good, but I care much more about the substance. Like, did I do really good things? That was I a very positive name? Now, I'm, I'm not, I'm not indicating I have no ego. You know, the, the appreciation of having done that, that feels good. But I don't do it for the appreciation. I do it for the thing.

• 2:39:38Steven Bartlett?

  So do you make decisions based on legacy at all?

• 2:39:42Speaker 00

  Only by impact.

• 2:39:46Steven Bartlett?

  Did you, did you decide not to have children?

• 2:39:49Speaker 00

  Uh, we did. Um, and it was a joint decision, of course. And I think it was partially that we realize we're, um, you know, we're godparents to a number of children. We actually, there's three kids here in London that, that we're godparents to. Right? And, uh, you know, there's all kinds of delights in being a godparent, which is, you know, you show up and spend an evening and get to participate in, in the kids' lives. And then, you know, when it's like, oh, time to change the diaper.

• 2:40:17Steven Bartlett?

  And it both. Are there any unchecked boxes in your life?

• 2:40:22Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm sure there are.

• 2:40:23Steven Bartlett?

  Um. Any major ones?

• 2:40:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um.

• 2:40:29Speaker 00

  If you'd asked me, um, what book, uh, I was gonna first write when I was an undergraduate, was a book on friendship. I still wanna write that book. I, I've been taking notes for 30 years.

• 2:40:40Steven Bartlett?

  On friendship?

• 2:40:40Speaker 00

  On friendship, yep.

• 2:40:43Steven Bartlett?

  What would that book be about?

• 2:40:44Speaker 00

  Friendship.

• 2:40:45Steven Bartlett?

  But specifically, what part of friendship?

• 2:40:46Speaker 00

  Why, why, everything. Look, there's so few books on friendship. You go into a bookstore and you say, where is your, uh, your section on relationships? And they, every bookstore will go, oh, over here. Right? Relationship with Capillari, romantic relationship. Say, okay, where's your section on friendship?

• 2:41:08Speaker 00

  No section on friendship. Do you have a book on friendship? The answer is, maybe we have one.

• 2:41:16Steven Bartlett?

  Your assistant, we spoke to your assistant ahead of this conversation today, and she said that friendship and connection is a major part of your focus at the moment.

• 2:41:23Speaker 00

  Yes, always, but it always has been. Now, you're doing intense things with startups. Part of the reason I actually think you should work with friends, you should hire friends, this is kind of a little bit, you know, counter common wisdom, is because you want to be spending your time with friends. And that does add difficulties, right? But you want to spend your time with your friends. That's really good.

• 2:41:47Steven Bartlett?

  Are you still friends with Peter Thiel?

• 2:41:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:41:50Steven Bartlett?

  You have a lot of disagreements in terms of politics.

• 2:41:52Speaker 00

  And intense disagreements on politics.

• 2:41:53Steven Bartlett?

  But you still are able to be friends?

• 2:41:55Speaker 00

  But we also met with, you know, as undergraduates, you know, in a, like, I knew he was extremely right and he knew I was left. You know, I've become much more business oriented than I was as undergraduates, and he's become much more libertarian. But, you know, disagreements is a good thing. Can be a good thing.

• 2:42:23Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for.

• 2:42:27Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:42:28Steven Bartlett?

  And the question that's been left for you is a very interesting one.

• 2:42:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:42:32Steven Bartlett?

  What are the two things you want your life partner to know about you that they do not know or do not understand about you yet?

• 2:42:43Speaker 00

  That's an interesting thing. It's an interesting, if someone has an answer to that question, it suggests that they're not being a particularly good life partner. I think I have been and will continue to be a good life partner, so I actually don't have an answer to that question.

• 2:43:01Steven Bartlett?

  What's her name, Michelle?

• 2:43:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:43:03Steven Bartlett?

  Does she misunderstand you in any way?

• 2:43:09Speaker 00

  I don't know if it's a misunderstanding because we put a lot of energy into understanding each other. I mean, like, for example, we've seen marriage counselors together and not because we're going, we're like fighting about something. It's because helping, having a third party help you understand the other person well is like actually in fact a very good thing. Find someone who's really good and do that.

• 2:43:30Steven Bartlett?

  I do that with my partner.

• 2:43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's great. You should do it. It shouldn't be because we're arguing. It should be because we are putting lots of energy into understanding each other.

• 2:43:42Steven Bartlett?

  I still think there's things about my partner that she doesn't understand about me. Or misunderstands about me and I misunderstand about her.

• 2:43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. And by the way, I can point out things that I have learned about her. Like, for example, like the local community is what really matters to her, right? I didn't really understand that 10 years ago. Now I understand that.

• 2:44:07Speaker 00

  I'm sure she has those kind of similar things about me. But like the moment it occurs to me that there's something she doesn't understand about me, it comes up at a dinner, you know, not too many weeks in the future. Because that's part of how we come to our dinners, right? We come to our dinners is if one of us is like, you know, I had this thought. We want to have those dinners.

• 2:44:32Steven Bartlett?

  So founders you're investing in that are in a stable, solid relationship before they start the startup?

• 2:44:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:44:39Steven Bartlett?

  And then they go on this crazy intense journey. Do you ever give them advice on relationships and how to manage that? Because I have so many founders come to me and they're like, I think she's going to break up with me or he's going to break up with me because I'm just, I'm absent in my head, in person.

• 2:44:54Speaker 00

  You try to have a really good relationship. You try to be as, like, I think you should, in friendship and in relationships, you should try to identify the things in yourself that the other person may find challenging and you should bring them up in advance. Right? That is a very good way to build deep, quality friendships and relationships. So, for example, in startups, Michelle knew that about me. So when we had planned our wedding, and then we were doing a small, you know, thing with, you know, just basically a justice to the peace and so forth. We planned our wedding and it was very early days of LinkedIn. And I came back home and I said, we really need to delay it.

• 2:45:41Speaker 00

  Right? And we delayed it a couple of weeks. Right? It was like, we really need to delay. I'm doing this thing at LinkedIn right now. We're going to have it. I, I don't have time for that. And Michelle didn't go, ah, she went, okay. Let's make it work. Because I'd been clear with her about what the startup journey was like. Right? I had experience with it before. And now sometimes like we didn't know it before, but like, look, I'm really committed to this. And I, it's really important to me that I do that. Well, that should be kind of life partner things.

• 2:46:08Steven Bartlett?

  Did you let her down a lot?

• 2:46:10Speaker 00

  Uh, I hope not.

• 2:46:12Steven Bartlett?

  In terms of making a plan, making a date?

• 2:46:14Speaker 00

  Oh, we, we had, we had multiple plans that got blown up, right?

• 2:46:20Steven Bartlett?

  And what about the dealing with the stress when you come home? Something I've always struggled with is if work is stressful, when I come home, I can be absent. And then you have to transition to this mode of partner. But my head is still thinking, oh my God, cash flow this or whatever.

• 2:46:32Speaker 00

  Well, occasionally that's one of the things that Michelle go like, you know, I think you're not being fully present. Right? Like, that's one of the, one of the kind of, as it were, key words between us. I think you're not being fully present. And that's the stop thinking about whatever else you're doing and focus. Okay. And I'm, yes, we've had that conversation more times than I can probably remember and count.

• 2:46:55Steven Bartlett?

  And is it easy just to?

• 2:46:57Speaker 00

  Uh, you learn to.

• 2:46:58Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 2:46:59Speaker 00

  Yes, you learn to. Cause as you, as you like, you have the, okay. What does that mean? Take those other things, push them off the table. Focus. Or by the way, occasionally you go, you're right. I'm really sorry. I'm just so distracted by this right now. Would you mind if I fuck, like I'm fully present tomorrow?

• 2:47:21Steven Bartlett?

  Because a lot of founders would gaslight their partner there and say, you don't understand, you don't get it. I'm doing this for you. This is for us.

• 2:47:27Speaker 00

  Look.

• 2:47:28Steven Bartlett?

  You hate my work.

• 2:47:29Speaker 00

  Well, if you're having that conversation, if the person doesn't, look, the two people need to believe in each other in what they're doing. If the person doesn't believe in you and what you're doing, right, you have a long-term problem.

• 2:47:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And I guess the communication is the very heart of that, right?

• 2:47:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:47:48Steven Bartlett?

  Reid, we are all very excited for your next book, which you said is coming out in January.

• 2:47:53Speaker 00

  January, yeah, end of January.

• 2:47:54Steven Bartlett?

  It's a book called Super Agency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future, co-written with Greg Beato?

• 2:48:00Speaker 00

  Beato.

• 2:48:01Steven Bartlett?

  Beato. What could possibly go right with our AI future?

• 2:48:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:48:06Steven Bartlett?

  An optimistic take about AI?

• 2:48:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:48:10Steven Bartlett?

  Why should someone and who should read that book?

• 2:48:13Speaker 00

  So, anyone who believes, as I do, the only way that you can possibly get to an optimistic future is envisioning what some of the things are and head towards it. But you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid failure, by trying to avoid pessimism. Anyone who says, okay, it's important for me to understand that perspective about AI, they should read Super Agency. We have a book blurb from Yuval Harari, which says, this is a brilliant, positive vision of the future. I disagree with some of its main arguments, and everyone should read it.

• 2:48:52Steven Bartlett?

  That's refreshing. Yes. I'll link it below for anyone that wants to preorder it. But I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your books, which are iconic because they've shaped the thinking of founders across the world. And even if you're not a founder, the startup review is for everybody, regardless of what you're doing. It helps you navigate both building a business, but also just your career generally. And also Masters of Scale, which is an iconic podcast that many of us listen to here, where you sit down with some of the greatest founders of all time and understand how they've scaled and built their companies. It's a podcast that I know Jack is a massive fan of and one of the first podcasts they ever got listening to as well. Highly recommend it. I also have the book there, and I'll link all of this stuff below. Ree, thank you. It's a pleasure. I look forward to the next one.

• 2:49:33Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much. It's been such an honour and I, so wonderful speaking to someone that has such diverse, contrarian at times, opinions, but is willing to stand by them irrespective of whether they are believed or accepted or politically correct with the dominant narrative at the moment. And that comes from having such a wealth of experience, but being fundamentally well-intentioned, I think. So, thank you, Ree, for the time. I really appreciate it. It's an honour to get to meet you. Thank you. And thanks for creating LinkedIn. I fucking love LinkedIn. I think they sponsor this podcast. Oh, awesome. I didn't even know that. Oh, really? They do, yeah. So, thank you so much, Ree. Appreciate it.

• 2:50:15Steven Bartlett?

  Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it, you'll know, I ask the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So, you've got every guest we've ever had, their question, and on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version two updated

• 2:50:56Steven Bartlett?

  conversation cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com. They've sold out twice instantaneously. So, if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly.