#558: Ann Miura-Ko — The Path from Shyness to World-Class Debater and Investor (Repost)

Ann Miura-Ko — The Path from Shyness to World-Class Debater and Investor | Brought to you by 80,000 Hours http://80000hours.org/tim free career advice for high impact and doing good in the world, Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, and GiveWell.org http://givewell.org/ charity research and effective giving. “The main difference was that I was willing to outwork and outdo every competitor who walked in through that door.” — Ann Miura-Ko Ann Miura-Ko (@annimaniac https://twitter.com/annimaniac) has been called “the most powerful woman in startups” by Forbes and is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford. The child of a rocket scientist at NASA, Ann is a Palo Alto native and has been steeped in technology startups from when she was a teenager. Prior to co-founding Floodgate http://floodgate.com/, she worked at Charles River Ventures https://www.crv.com/ and McKinsey and Company https://www.mckinsey.com/. Some of Ann’s investments include Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, JoyRun, TaskRabbit, and Modcloth. Due to the success of her investments, she was on the 2017 Midas List of top 100 venture capitalists https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/04/18/midas-2017-worlds-best-venture-capitalists/#5871cd704020. Ann is known for her debate skills (she placed first in the National Tournament of Champions and second in the State of California in high school) and was part of a five-person team at Yale that competed in the Robocup Competition http://www.robocup.org/ in Paris, France. She has a BSEE from Yale and a PhD from Stanford in math modeling of computer security. She lives with her husband, three kids, and one spoiled dog. Her interests are piano, robots, and gastronomy. Please enjoy! This episode originally aired in 2018. You can find the show notes here: https://tim.blog/2018/08/02/ann-miura-ko/ * This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by 80,000 Hours http://80000hours.org/tim! You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That’s 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. They add up and are one of your biggest opportunities, if not the biggest opportunity, to make a positive impact on the world. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical advice I’ve seen and heard come from 80,000 Hours http://80000hours.org/tim, a nonprofit co-founded by Will MacAskill, an Oxford philosopher and a popular past guest on this podcast. If you’re looking to make a big change to your direction, address pressing global problems from your current job, or if you’re just starting out or maybe starting a new chapter and not sure which path to pursue, 80,000 Hours http://80000hours.org/tim can help. Join their free newsletter http://80000hours.org/tim, and they’ll send you an in-depth guide for free http://80000hours.org/tim that will help you identify which global problems are most pressing and where you can have the biggest impact personally. It will also help you get new ideas for high impact careers or directions that help tackle these issues. * This episode is also brought to you by GiveWell.org https://www.givewell.org/! For over ten years, GiveWell.org https://www.givewell.org/ has helped donors find the charities and projects that save and improve lives most per dollar. GiveWell spends over 20,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations and only recommends a few of the highest-impact, evidence-backed charities they’ve found. In total, more than 50,000 people have used GiveWell to donate as effectively as possible. This year, support the charities that save and improve lives most, with GiveWell https://www.givewell.org/. Any of my listeners who become new GiveWell donors will have their first donation matched up to $250 https://www.givewell.org/ when you go to GiveWell.org https://www.givewell.org/ and select “PODCAST” and “Tim Ferriss” at checkout. * For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Ann Miura-Ko?

  No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 80,000 Hours. You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. They add up and are one of your biggest opportunities, if not the biggest opportunity, to make a positive impact on the world. In other words, if you want to make the best use of your 80,000 hours until we wrap up this show called Life, where should you start? Where should you focus? It can be really hard and, quite frankly, pretty stressful to try and figure out. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical advice I've seen and heard come from 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit co-founded by Will McCaskill, an Oxford philosopher

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  and a popular past guest on this podcast. Will is perhaps best known as being the co-founder of the Effective Altruism Movement, which has gained a lot of steam and a lot of popular coverage in the last handful of years. 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help you find a career or path for tackling one of the world's most pressing problems. If you're looking to make a big change to your direction, mid-career, say, address pressing global problems for your current job, or if you're just starting out or maybe starting a new chapter and not sure which path to pursue, 80,000 Hours can help. Join their free newsletter and they'll send you an in-depth guide that will help you identify

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  which global problems are most pressing, where you can have the biggest impact personally, and it will also help you get new ideas for high-impact careers or directions that help tackle these issues. They also have a job board with 800-plus opportunities to work on these problems and offer one-on-one advice to help you switch paths if that's what you choose to do. And you can check out their excellent 80,000 Hours podcast, which has in-depth conversations with experts about how to best tackle pressing global problems and really try to find that needle in the haystack. There's so many things to choose from. How do you pick the right high-leverage problem for you to focus on helping solve? My team has raved, for instance, about the interview with Ezra Klein. That's number 94. And you can subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.

• 2:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's the 80,000 Hours podcast. If you join the newsletter now as an extra bonus, they'll mail you, yes, physically mail you, a free book about impactful careers such as Will MacAskill's Doing Good Better. You can sign up at 80000hours.org/tim. That's 8-0-0-0-hours, H-O-U-R-S.org/tim. Check it out. I really encourage you to check out this site, even if you have no plans to change your career, if you're just curious about picking high-leverage targets in life to improve the world. So I will also say it one more time because it's noteworthy. They're nonprofit and everything they provide is free. That takes a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of dedication

• 3:20Tim Ferriss?

  and a lot of people, a lot of hours on their part. The podcast, the newsletter, even their one-on-one advice, all free. So check it out. 80000hours.org/tim. 80000hours.org/tim. Take a look.

• 3:39Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by GiveWell. I love these guys. Donating money to help other people is wonderful, but how can you be confident that your donations are actually doing things? Are they improving or saving lives effectively? It can be really hard to parse. You could do weeks of research to find the charities that are out there, what programs they run, what their admin overhead is, how effective, blah, blah, blah, on and on. It can take forever. I know from experience. Doing the research is really hard. Or you could simply visit givewell.org for a short vetted list of the charities they've found to be best, per dollar in donations, at saving or improving lives. GiveWell spends more than 20,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations and only recommends A few of the highest impact evidence-backed charities they've found.

• 4:23Tim Ferriss?

  They do all of this without any signup fees and without taking a cut of your tax deductible donation. GiveWell wants to empower as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about their donations, so GiveWell is free. I've recommended GiveWell.org for a while now, and donations from listeners of this podcast, that's you guys, amount now to roughly $483,399.27, so close to $500,000, which is incredible. So first and foremost, thanks to everyone who has donated. In total, more than 50,000 people have used GiveWell to donate as effectively as possible. And rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save tens of thousands of lives and improve the lives of millions more.

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  So, go right now to GiveWell.org, and when you make your first donation, your gift will be matched up to $250. This matching offer is good for as long as the funds last, so it's time-sensitive and is a great opportunity to multiply your impact, which is something I always look for. How can I get the maximum multiplicative effect out of my dollars that I give? To participate, just go to GiveWell.org, and when you get to checkout, pick Podcast and enter "Tim Ferriss Show." It's that simple. So one more time, get your first donation matched up to $250 at GiveWell.org. Be sure to select Podcast and "Tim Ferriss Show" at checkout. Hello, boys and girls.

• 5:47Tim Ferriss?

  This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. Hisashi-buri da ne. Every episode, it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of different types, and that term "world-class" is going to come up again in this episode, so you can pay attention to the context. And this particular conversation I have with me, Anne Mira Ko, who has been called, quote, "the most powerful woman in startups," end quote, by Forbes, and is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford. The child of a rocket scientist at NASA, that's a literal rocket scientist, Anne is a Palo Alto native and has been steeped in technology startups since she was a teenager. Prior to co-founding Floodgate, she worked at Charles River Ventures and McKinsey & Company.

• 6:30Tim Ferriss?

  Some of her investments include Lyft, IASD, I'm gonna screw these up, I know it, Zimerin, Refinery29, Joyrun, TaskRabbit, and ModCloth. Given the success of her many investments, she was on the 2017 Midas list of top 100 venture capitalists, and I just found out today, back on 2018, elbowing her way to the top to steal the crown from her partner, Mike Maples Jr. It's all good spirited Mike. Anne is known for so many other things, I'm gonna skip some of them because we're gonna touch on the seeds of her many, many accomplishments in perhaps some of the first few minutes of the conversation. She has a BSEE, I hope I'm getting that right, from Yale, and a PhD from Stanford in math

• 7:14Tim Ferriss?

  modeling of computer security. She lives with her husband, three kids, age 10, 8, and 6, very well spaced, and one spoiled dog. Anne, welcome to the show.

• 7:24Ann Miura-Ko?

  Thanks for having me.

• 7:27Tim Ferriss?

  So, there's so many places we could start, and I was hoping to humanize the ever intimidating Anne Murako, which I may only partially succeed at doing, but could we start with explaining why your brother used to introduce you, or how he used to introduce you onstage?

• 7:52Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so I had this brother, an older brother, by exactly two years, we were born on the same day. And he was one of these guys who's so confident, he knew that he wanted to stay cars and airplanes from the time that I could remember him existing. And he was always confident with friends, and he was also confident up onstage. And so, as any good Asian child would do, we played musical instruments, I played the piano, he played the violin, and we would always have to perform. And I was painfully, painfully shy.

• 8:36Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so, I would get up onstage, and I would refuse to speak, and my mother, knowing this... Wouldn't let this get in the way of our performing. She would send my brother up on stage to help announce whatever I was playing. And I have this real clear memory of being in junior high and having this happen. Uh, my brother got up on stage and said, you know, this is Anne Mira. She's going to be playing a Chopin nocturne. Um, and, and go. And, and, and I looked over and I remember thinking to myself, you know, like the, the, the mental dialogue that's happening in a teenager's mind. This is totally ridiculous.

• 9:19Ann Miura-Ko?

  And, and because I'm sitting there in front of a, a room full of people and I felt fine playing the piano, but I felt petrified speaking. And, and that's one of like the clearest memories that I have of my brother and me. And the difference that we had between the two of us.

• 9:37Tim Ferriss?

  Why were you so shy or nervous about speaking?

• 9:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  You know, I, I've always been an introvert. So I think it comes probably directly from that. Um, but I was also sort of, I was a strange child, I have to admit. I, I had a lot of different interests, but I love to do things by myself. Um, and, and so I just didn't, I wasn't really that interested in talking to other people. Um, like one of the, the first things my mom actually discovered about me when I was a little kid, when I was two, I only spoke Japanese. Um, and we were living in Michigan and I used to be this very hostile little child. And, um, I would walk by anyone speaking in English.

• 10:28Ann Miura-Ko?

  And in Japanese, I would say, I wish you would leave. So.

• 10:36Ann Miura-Ko?

  You know, and like, I can't even.

• 10:40Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 10:40Ann Miura-Ko?

  My poor mom, my poor mom. And so she was like, oh, we really should socialize and with people who speak English. And we're living in Michigan, so there's no shortage of these people.

• 10:51Tim Ferriss?

  Just to hit pause. Do you, do you still speak Japanese?

• 10:55Ann Miura-Ko?

  I do. So I speak Japanese to my parents.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  How do you say, I wish you, I wish you would leave, just for people who want to mutter that to people in the park, or wherever they might be is, do you recall, or how, how, how might you have said that as a kid? Do you have any idea?

• 11:11Ann Miura-Ko?

  I think I might have said, let me think about it. 私たちの家から出てほしいな.

• 11:21Tim Ferriss?

  That is aggressive. That's really aggressive.

• 11:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah. You know, I was like, you're not welcome in this house.

• 11:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 11:30Ann Miura-Ko?

  Or it was like, it was, I think probably more likely, it was うるさいな.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right, right. Oh, wow. That's even worse. Yeah.

• 11:39Ann Miura-Ko?

  Right. And so, but it was always.

• 11:41Tim Ferriss?

  うるさいな is like something that, like a drunk dad says.

• 11:45Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 11:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  It's kind of like, shut up.

• 11:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're really loud. You're really irritating.

• 11:51Ann Miura-Ko?

  But like, like a little intransigent two year old saying that to a grown up speaking English in her home.

• 11:58Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I don't want to take us too far off the rails, but we may come back to that. Okay. So we were talking about you being introverted and shy and weird. Yeah.

• 12:07Ann Miura-Ko?

  And it was one of these things that I think it really held me back. And I knew, I knew actually it was holding me back.

• 12:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  The strange part, though, was my mom was recently talking to me about this in a few years prior to that experience where I'm in junior high, I'm on stage.

• 12:29Ann Miura-Ko?

  I had actually done this other thing, which was, um, we had this summer school program where I, uh, I would go to local community college. It was Foothill College and all these schools around the area, when they let out for summer, uh, the students would go to this community college to take math classes and writing classes and whatnot. So a lot of elementary school students to high school students would be at Foothill College. And, um, and so my mom said, you have to pick two classes and one class was a math class, obviously. Um, and she said, you could pick your second class. And, uh, my brother picked a, a normal junior high school writing class and I was in fifth

• 13:14Ann Miura-Ko?

  grade at the time, so 10 years old, and I picked a negotiations class. And, and it was not in the summer school program. It was an adult class.

• 13:26Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you pick that?

• 13:28Ann Miura-Ko?

  And, um, I picked it because I remember the book was Getting to Yes. And my mom looked at me and she said, why did you pick this class? And I said, it's because they're teaching you how to get to yes. And I want to know how to get to yes. And I have this incredible experience, this call, uh, this community college of having a, a class with, I imagine they were probably 30 to 50 year old adults taking this class. And they were probably the most patient, wonderful people. And, you know, we had this, uh, this experience where you had certain supplies that you were

• 14:11Ann Miura-Ko?

  given on pieces of paper and then you had to negotiate. You're on Mars and you had to negotiate supply lines and whatnot and create a real society. Um, and in the simulation, they're taking seriously a 10 year old kid who's negotiating for supplies. And I, I remember taking that experience and feeling like, you know, I was taken seriously in that environment, but it was a great experience because it was a small class. It was like 20 people. And in that setting, I felt okay speaking up. But then onstage, I didn't still. And so it was sort of these small steps that felt

• 14:53Ann Miura-Ko?

  like I was getting closer and closer to realizing, oh, I need to actually be able to speak up. I need to be able to say things in front of a large audience. And so there was this desire to face my fears.

• 15:07Tim Ferriss?

  So what was the next step after that? How did you go about facing the fear of speaking onstage?

• 15:13Ann Miura-Ko?

  So in in high school, I get to high school and as every high school freshman's doing, they're looking for different activities to to participate in. And I decided to dive into speech and debate. And speech and debate at this time at Palo Alto High School was not a very big activity. There were probably about 20 students on the team. And I I found that I I really enjoyed it. And it was a really great group of students. And then not only from Palo Alto High School, but from the local community. And I just fell

• 15:55Ann Miura-Ko?

  in love with the idea that you could really seriously get up in front of a an audience and and talk about really important issues, even as a high school student. And so I dove into that activity. And I was frankly terrible at it. I think freshman sophomore year, I didn't win any tournaments, didn't even come close. And that was that was sort of the way, though, I I decided I could face that fear.

• 16:26Tim Ferriss?

  What did you what kept you going? I mean, there's the the answer that or perhaps potential answer you you gave just a moment ago, which is you really enjoyed it and you loved it. But what did you love about it? What what did you enjoy so much that you were able to persist through failures over those first two years?

• 16:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, the first thing is just the people. Yeah, I reflect actually on the people that I met in speech and debate and they're doing incredible things. We have, just in my, my year alone, not in my team, but in my local community, professors, you know, ones at Harvard in government, ones in philosophy, University of Colorado. One woman is now on, on the, the morning show on NPR. We have several venture capitalists. It was just a really interesting group of people, all in, all in the same age group, who wanted to talk about really interesting things.

• 17:32Ann Miura-Ko?

  I also found that the actual activity itself was something, it challenged me in a way that I hadn't been challenged before. So I was really good at math and science and those things really came naturally to me. But getting up on stage and speaking was not something that was natural to me. But the piece that I did love that came very naturally was competition. And I'm, I've always been this way.

• 18:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. No, I'm just chuckling because yeah, I can, I would agree with that.

• 18:07Ann Miura-Ko?

  Right. I love, I love competition. You, you put in points on anything and I want more. I want to, I want more than the next person. And, and I remember the coaches that we had, we, we didn't have teachers at our school who were able to coach. And so we had to go across the street to Stanford and find students who were willing to coach. And these, these kids were, you know, 18 to 21 years old. So they would pump us up by saying, hey, if you can get someone to cry in cross-examination, I'll buy you a slice of pizza.

• 18:50Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so, you know, things like that were extraordinarily motivating. And if you feel like... You know, logic and arguments could get you a step further. It was just something that even though I wasn't good at it at the time, I just loved it. And I felt like if I could just do one more tournament, I'd become even better at it. And, and you would see that, right? And so that, that's the thing that I loved.

• 19:17Tim Ferriss?

  So, do you have any memory? This seems like a very, very specific example that you gave of the crying in the pizza. Did that actually happen? Did you succeed at making someone cry in cross examination for a slice of pizza? Or is, was that just something that came?

• 19:35Ann Miura-Ko?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Please, please describe that. Yeah.

• 19:39Ann Miura-Ko?

  I feel like I'm not succeeding in my desire to humanize me and make myself seem like a less of a dragon lady, but.

• 19:45Tim Ferriss?

  We'll get there. We'll get there. But this, I want to hear, I want to hear this story. So.

• 19:52Ann Miura-Ko?

  There's several stories. So there were points in time where I remember people would cry in that they would crumble in the middle of cross examination and run out of the room crying. And my coach would see that and proudly bring me a slice of pizza after. This happened multiple times. This wasn't a single tournament. It was, and, and there were moments where I got, they had courtesy points too. So it wasn't just about winning. It was also whether you were courteous during that. And there were, there were rounds where I got zero courtesy points. And, and my coaches, you know, they would say, they would ask why we got zero courtesy

• 20:34Ann Miura-Ko?

  points, just to really understand if we were just being mean. But a lot of times it was just because we were, you know, and I was particularly tenacious in cross examination. And, and even at the point where I had the person stumped, I would just keep going. I would keep going, keep going at it. Um, and so it was, I remember at least, you know, four or five occasions where, where someone cried and, and left the room before the round was over.

• 21:05Tim Ferriss?

  So this, this was like the Cobra Kai of debating, like the bad team from the Karate Kid.

• 21:13Ann Miura-Ko?

  It's my, uh, my, my six-year-old at one point, right before kindergarten said, "Hey mama, I can make people cry just with my words." And it was like a really proud moment for me. And then I had to, I had to course correct and, and, and talk to him about that, but.

• 21:33Tim Ferriss?

  Now, uh, for someone who is wondering what I omitted from the bio that I had in front of me, you had two years of not doing well. And then in the bio, we have, "She placed first in the national tournament of champions and second in the state of California in high school." And it goes on. I'll, I'll mention one more thing. "She was part of a five-person team at Yale that competed in the RoboCup competition in Paris, France." All right. But let's focus on the debating. So how did you go from sort of miss, flub, whiff, not succeeding in debating, to getting good at debating?

• 22:12Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, this is where I think it's the love of the game has to.

• 22:19Tim Ferriss?

  Were your parents supportive through all of these, these, these early trials and tribulations?

• 22:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  No, no. So you have to, you have to remember, you know, I come from very traditional Japanese parents who really want me to get into a great university. And my mom, at one point, right after sophomore year, looks at my record. And my parents were incredibly supportive. They would go and judge these tournaments every single weekend, spend so much time doing it, driving us all over the state. And, and my, my parents pulled me aside and said, you know, "This isn't working. You have a losing record in this activity that you're doing, and you appear to be doubling down on your time with respect to this. And

• 23:05Ann Miura-Ko?

  if you want to get into a good college, you have to, you have to perform well in whatever you're doing." You know, just, it's not just about effort. You have to have results. And I remember my mom said to me, I've heard fencing is a great way to get into an Ivy League.

• 23:26Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I remember looking at her and I was like, how, how is it possible that she's my mother? She clearly does not know anything about my athletic abilities if she's suggesting that I move into fencing at this moment. Um, and so I said to them, point taken. Give me the summer and I'm going to, to just work on it. I'm gonna, and this was back before the internet. So I, working on it meant I was at Stanford Green Library, reading philosophy books and reading articles about the,

• 24:06Ann Miura-Ko?

  I think they have 12 topics, 12 possible topics that they're going to pull from for the next year. And I just studied those topics. I lived in the library and then I emerged that year to start competing. And when they announced that first topic, I knew that topic cold. And then I could write my cases really quickly. I had already done all this research and I remember going into my very, very first round. And, and had this deal with my parents.

• 24:46Ann Miura-Ko?

  If I didn't win one of my first two tournaments, or at least place, then I would quit. And I had this distinct impression walking into my very first round of debate that fall. And feeling as I looked across at my opponent, that there was no way that they could have out-prepared me. And so I knew that whatever they, they said, I would have five arguments against.

• 25:20Ann Miura-Ko?

  And it was this incredible knowledge that that it's not that you can be lucky and turn your luck around, you actually make your own luck. And for me, that was a profound lesson because I placed in that tournament and I placed in the next tournament and it was like that, it just never stopped after that. And I had a losing record all through my freshman sophomore year and it's like I turned it around junior year very suddenly. And the main difference was that I was willing to outwork and outdo every competitor who walked in through that door.

• 25:58Tim Ferriss?

  For people who don't know the format, and I'll be honest, I've been surrounded by, not surrounded by, but certainly in the same universities and so on where debate teams existed, but I've never seen a debate competition. What, what is, what is the format?

• 26:19Ann Miura-Ko?

  So it's, it's a bunch of nerdy kids dressed in suits, holding briefcases. And then maybe that's changed, but that's what it was back then. And then you have a resolution that's been announced nationwide. And that resolution is generally has some philosophical elements to, this is also Lincoln Douglas style of debate. And you have

• 26:47Tim Ferriss?

  What does that mean, if you don't mind me?

• 26:49Ann Miura-Ko?

  So, so it's one person against one person. So it's individual. And it's value based. And so you're really debating philosophy. So, um, an example of one debate that we did, the principle of majority rule ought to be valued above the principle of minority rights, or resolved that education is a privilege and not a right. So, so all of these debates are really surrounding, not a specific policy, but it has some application in the real world. And what you're trying to debate is a philosophical underpinning behind that statement. And what

• 27:34Ann Miura-Ko?

  I loved about debate was you were actually forced to debate both sides. So you had to have cases ready for both the affirmative and the negative. So pro the resolution and against the resolution. And the format is the affirmative goes up and talks about this resolution and says all the reasons that that they support it. And then there's a short cross examination where the negative then cross examines the affirmative, asks questions of the affirmative. Then the negative gets up and talks about all the reasons that they're against the resolution. And then goes point by point against all of the arguments that the affirmative made

• 28:19Ann Miura-Ko?

  and talks about why they're wrong. And then there's another cross examination of the affirmative against the negative. And then the affirmative gets up for a rebuttal, negative gets up for a rebuttal, and then the affirmative does closing arguments. That's sort of shorter and shorter speeches towards the end.

• 28:37Tim Ferriss?

  And how is the outcome determined? What are the the parameters?

• 28:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so so it really depends on the tournament.

• 28:47Tim Ferriss?

  Aside from courtesy.

• 28:49Ann Miura-Ko?

  Courtesy points. It's all about courtesy. There's two different types of tournaments, actually, when when I was debating. One was where you had parent judges. And that, I would say, really, the the style of speaking, your flair really would come into play, your sense of humor, wasn't really just the line by line arguments. There was also places where you would go where college students were the judges or experienced coaches were the judges. And that's where really the line by line logic becomes much more important than just the style of your debate.

• 29:31Ann Miura-Ko?

  So it really depends on your audience, and you had to read the audience correctly.

• 29:35Tim Ferriss?

  And did they just then say, I I choose A or B? Or do they have to rank like sort of Olympic style, one to 10 in some fashion?

• 29:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  So you only have two debaters that you're you're judging, and you vote for one of them. And and in some of the rounds, you have just a single judge. And then in another, in the the breakout rounds, the semifinals, you you might have a panel of judges. And they they can't confer, they're just sort of voting individually on who wins.

• 30:14Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. You get the idea. Right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all in one

• 30:57Tim Ferriss?

  formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 31:35Tim Ferriss?

  You may be at a point now with debate and argument that you've reached the unconscious competency phase in the sense that in skill acquisition, one framework that one could use to think about skill acquisition is you go from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence, then unconscious competence. So I don't know if this question is going to be a good one, but I'll try it anyway. For people who want to get better at debating and structuring arguments.

• 32:08Tim Ferriss?

  And so on. Are there any books or approaches or resources, anything, exercises that you would suggest?

• 32:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  Well, Getting to Yes.

• 32:18Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 32:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  I thought was always really good. Uh, I actually found the philosophical uh texts to be extraordinarily informative. So, anything where you have that Socratic method in a book, I found really uh a great way of learning how people debate the greatest philosophers, Aristotle and Socrates. Even, you know, when you get into more modern um literature around justice, you have people like John Rawls writing. Uh, that that is actually a dialogue and a real logical debate.

• 32:59Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I I always found those examples to be really great to read how people argue philosophical constructs. Uh, you know, presidential debates, to be honest, in politics aren't real debates because it's two ships passing in the night. And you don't have real conflict between people. Um, I've also found like the British parliamentary system, if you've ever had the chance to see that on, I think sometimes it's on C-SPAN. Uh, that's actually an interesting um observation of a real world debate as well because they will actually engage in dialogue around policy and it's not just ad hominem attacks.

• 33:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  Um, though I I find those sort of real world examples much more powerful than someone going sort of point by point in teaching you how to debate. Because I think the how is much more around, how do you engage in the idea? How do you read and research both sides of an argument? And what do you believe on both sides? And so, you know, one way to do that would actually to take a fairly controversial topic and then actually read, read a lot of literature on both sides of the argument. And then understand where actually the conflict happens. You know, are there definitions that people don't agree on?

• 34:27Ann Miura-Ko?

  Are there, are there nuances that, that people haven't thought about? Are they, are they real, is there a real conflict or are they two ships passing in the night? I think you could do that with even the gun control debate, or you could do that with immigration, or you could do that with abortion and really understand both sides of an argument. And that, that's, that's the way to engage in the process of debate, I believe.

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  And if we're, if we're reflecting back on your Cobra Kai training for slices of pizza, I'd be really curious to know if there are any particular approaches or questions or playbooks that you find very useful in a heated argument. And I'll give you some hypotheticals, right? Let's, let's say that you are on stage at an event and you are doing a Q and A with the audience and you have someone who ends up being really hostile or attacks you, or it could be someone on stage, you're just having a contentious debate of some type.

• 35:34Tim Ferriss?

  I find it fascinating to see how people, even with no real logical advantage, shut down opponents. And I'm not saying that's you in this case, but for instance, whatever people may think of our, of our dear current President of the United States, I do find it fascinating how effective he has been at saying, check your facts, right? And, and it just throws enough imbalance into the dynamic where someone's like, wait a second, maybe I did miss one piece of due diligence, that they're on their heels and it opens up a window. And creates sort of a, an illusion of them being stymied that is really advantageous. I'm like, wow, I mean, it's, it's kind of gross on one level, but it's also kind of brilliant.

• 36:20Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Tim Ferriss?

  And I also have a lot of lawyers in my family. And so one thing that they'll do, not to say they all love arguing, but a lot of them do. And you'll, you'll say something and they will go, so let me just get this straight. You're, so I understand you're, you're saying that X and they'll kind of take your argument and like inch, they'll inch it a little closer to absurdity, but just subtly enough that you'll say, yeah, that's about right. And they'll say, okay, so really what you mean is X, right? And they start to edge you over before they even counter with an argument to make you contradict yourself or kind of seem ridiculous. And then it's, they just have to kind of finish you off. But I've never taken, I've never taken debate. And, but

• 37:06Tim Ferriss?

  I do find this really practical and really interesting. So it's a long-winded way of introing. But yeah, like, so what are your, what are your thoughts on any of that?

• 37:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  So it's funny, my, my husband has said to me in the past, and this is a lesson that I continue to try to learn and relearn, is that life is not a debate.

• 37:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 37:31Ann Miura-Ko?

  And, and you know what he's saying? And it's funny, he was a debater as well, in college and in high school. And we joke that I would still have beaten him in high school if we had actually gone head to head. But, but I think it's a really important point that life isn't about winning the argument. And, and he's also said to me in the past, you know, it's not, it's not about being right. And I think that's so true. And it's something that I'm always trying to really practice in life. And I think it's, the debater in me makes it really hard.

• 38:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  The, the things that you're pointing out are,

• 38:22Ann Miura-Ko?

  what's important about it is that people have a tendency to have an inner dialogue where they're, they're right. And instead of really listening to the other person, they're coming up with the next argument that proves that person wrong. And so, so if you go back to what I really loved about debate and what I felt like I got out of it, it was actually this ability to see both sides of an argument. To really delve into a topic and understand why the, the side that I actually naturally believed could actually be flipped on its head. And, and that was a really important skill to develop.

• 39:06Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I think that was so much more important to develop than the skill to argue for my side. Because I think in the world today, what we don't see enough of is empathy for people you might even disagree with. And we get stuck in our version of truth and what is right. And we aren't truth seekers anymore as a result. We're truth winners.

• 39:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's very true. Yeah, very true.

• 39:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  And, and that, that's a piece that really makes me sad is that, you know, when people are like, oh, this debate skill is so great to have because now you can like, ram people with your ideas. And, and I've never seen a situation where you shouted people down and convinced them you were right. And I, I've seen situations where by developing true empathy for the other side, you actually create bridges and you create commonality and you create situations where you can actually work together. And, um, and I think that's the piece I would take away from my debate experience. I would say actually making the person cry in cross-examination probably

• 40:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  is not the skill that I should be using in real life, although maybe sometimes I do.

• 40:29Tim Ferriss?

  Just when you're teaching your son the black magic.

• 40:36Tim Ferriss?

  I should point out, just so people don't think I'm completely drinking the Kool-Aid of the bloodlust of this potential sport, although I do find it very, very fascinating as an insight into some parts of human nature. But the book you mentioned, Getting to Yes, which is a byproduct of the Harvard Negotiation Project, as I recall, is not a book about proving you're right, it's a book about getting outcomes.

• 41:03Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yes.

• 41:04Tim Ferriss?

  And there is another book, which I believe was co-authored by one of the co-authors of Getting to Yes, called Getting Past No, which I also really, really like. And it is about, well, both of these books, any book really on negotiation, is about achieving a very particular outcome, or arriving at a desired result as opposed to proving that you're right. So I just want to underscore that, because there is a very real-world difference, as you already noted, between, say, debate and negotiation. I mean, the toolkits are

• 41:47Tim Ferriss?

  very similar, perhaps, in some respects, but in debate, you're not going to have to think about, I wouldn't imagine, something like the BATNA that they talk about in Getting to Yes, your best alternative to negotiated agreement, like walkaway power, or what your options are. You don't necessarily have to go through that thought process, but when you step into the real world, you're not just trying to prove that you're right, you're trying to get someone to concede something and agree to a certain set of terms, or a price, or whatever it might be. Or amicably trying to break up with someone, or get together with someone, or have a divorce, or whatever it might be, you're really trying to manifest

• 42:28Tim Ferriss?

  some type of outcome, or damage control. It's really, really different from being a truth winner.

• 42:36Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the world-class term that I mentioned in the intro, and I've used a little bit of foreshadowing, saying that I suspected it might come up a little bit later. So in doing, in doing homework for this conversation, I read, and I don't think this is a misquote, but that your dad, even when I think you were going to be photocopying in the dean's office, would remind you to be world-class.

• 43:13Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 43:14Tim Ferriss?

  And he would ask you if you turned in a calculus assignment, is that a world-class effort?

• 43:19Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Tim Ferriss?

  Could you talk a little bit more about this? And that's not, that wasn't my experience growing up. My parents certainly encouraged me to do a good job, but tell us a little bit more about your dad in this particular case and, and how that was used.

• 43:41Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so my, my dad grew up in Tokyo, right at the tail end of World War II. And so one of his earliest memories actually is just planes coming across Tokyo and the firebombs. And he escaped to the countryside and, and then came back to Tokyo for high school. His father passed away when he was in college and he literally tutored kids. One, one guy was like the prime minister's son until, so that he could make enough cash to support his family. He had three other siblings.

• 44:24Ann Miura-Ko?

  And he was one of these incredible academics. And so he was at the top of his class in one of the famous high schools in Tokyo, went to Tokyo University, was also then went to Toshiba, which at the time was one of these great companies to work for. And then he ran into a friend who, who told him, he was, he was also a friend who was one of the top at his high school, who said, hey, there's great opportunities in America. And this, this person had gone off to Princeton and gone his PhD. And was at that time, working in one of the, the great labs in IBM.

• 45:09Ann Miura-Ko?

  And was also becoming a professor and, and my dad. Uh, decided that he also wanted to go to the US and he was the eldest son. And so having a, a mother who's a widow and three siblings. Uh, he had to take care of them until he had saved up enough. All of his siblings were married and his mom had the courage to say, you know what? You can go, you can go to the US. So this is sort of the backdrop for who my dad is. He, he comes to the United States without speaking very much English. Gets a PhD in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering.

• 45:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  And then is in LA ultimately, uh, as a postdoc and an associate professor. Uh, my mom comes to marry him. And they are the only, uh, family members living in the United States. So really no support. Um, so my dad eventually makes his way out to NASA at Moffett Field. And, and I, my memories of him, he was very engaged on the academics, but. He would wake up at five in the morning and go to work and he'd bring back reams of paper and would continue working late into the night. Uh, he loved what he did. And so when he turned to me.

• 46:30Ann Miura-Ko?

  On anything I ever did from the time I was a small, small child. Um, I would be writing something. And if the handwriting wasn't neat enough, he would say, hey, is this world class? And I remember thinking to myself, you know. Four or five year old, yeah, this is world.

• 46:51Ann Miura-Ko?

  But he would always push. He would always say, is this really, you know, the best that a five-year-old could ever do? And it was a constant message. And the the story you're pointing to is one when I was in in college, after living through a lifetime of this, is this world-class question? I had a a moment where I was starting my my financial aid package included, you know, ten hours of work-study. And I had the opportunity to to work in the office of the dean of engineering. And what was really funny to me at the time is since I'm leaving to go to my first day of work,

• 47:37Ann Miura-Ko?

  I called my parents and my my dad gets on the phone. He said, make sure you do a world-class job. And I thought my dad thought I was like really doing something important in the office. And in fact, I was just photocopying. And I said to my dad, I'm photocopying and filing. There's no such thing as world-class there. And he said, well, I'd still think about it. And so I get to the office and I am actually just photocopying and filing. And I remember standing in front of this photocopy machine with a stack of papers, thinking to myself, what is world-class in this situation? And I decided it was really crisp copies where you couldn't tell that it was a photocopy.

• 48:20Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so I remember really trying to make, you know, the the color match and everything was straight. And I spent a lot of time on the details. And when I was filing things, I didn't just handwrite it. I got a label writer and I I made sure it was printed out on labels.

• 48:42Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I really tried to do everything as as well as I possibly could. And I remember I was getting donuts and I would like make sure I got the the fresh donuts instead of the ones that had been standing out in the basket for a while. So every step of the way, it was, what can I do to make this experience for the dean or for his executive assistant, a delight moment?

• 49:12Ann Miura-Ko?

  And it was a real lesson for me because it was a case of real ownership. I felt so much ownership of the job I was doing, even though from the outside, I think most people would have thought it was just sort of a grunt job. Um, and I think that's sort of again, when I come back to, you don't just get luck. You, you make, you, you create these opportunities for yourself. Um, to me was, was a real, well, real learning experience.

• 49:44Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. Right. I mean, you're, you're, you're looking at the potential precursors of luck and trying to set the conditions, even though they might not always produce luck. The, the, you can increase the likelihood of it happening, which I think is a perfect segue to discussion about spring breaks. Don't worry, this isn't, isn't going anywhere tricky. This isn't going anywhere tricky. Uh, this relates to shadowing. I'll just, that'll be my cue, which might bring you back. So.

• 50:21Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Where, where to lead into this? Uh, you were giving a, a man a tour around Yale.

• 50:29Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Tim Ferriss?

  Who is this man? Why were you giving him a tour? What happened? And I actually don't know all the detail. I just, I found two lines in a past interview and I was like, you know what? I want to dig into this because I don't, there's more to this story. I know it.

• 50:44Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah. So I'm like, I, I'm a, I'm a junior at the time at Yale and doing this office work. And the dean of engineering was this, this, this older gentleman, um, Alan Bromley. And he had no idea who I was. I'd been working in this office for, I think, two years, but he barely knew my name. But he was, he was just like this great, he'd worked under George Bush senior. He was, he was a legendary physicist. Um, and I really looked up to this man. And so one day he, he pokes his head out of the office and the executive assistant was out and he said, who are you?

• 51:29Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I said, I'm Anne Mira, I'm your, I'm your student assistant in this office. And he said, oh, I've heard of you. I need you to go and give this, this friend of mine a tour of the engineering facilities. And he's like, I know you'll do a good job. Sarah's told me you're great. And so I, I take this gentleman and I take him on a fairly thorough tour of the engineering facilities. And we just had a great conversation and he, it started off with, you know, where, where are you from? And I said, I was from Palo Alto and it turns out this guy is also from Palo Alto. And we're just sort of talking about Palo Alto and, and the buildings that

• 52:14Ann Miura-Ko?

  are around us and my growing up back in Palo Alto. And in the middle of it, he said, hey, you know, what are you doing for spring break? And it just so happened, I was gonna go back home and visit my family. And he said, well, that's great because I'm wondering if you want to come and shadow me and see what I do for a living. And in my complete self-centered moment of being a, you know, junior, I hadn't asked this guy what he did for a living. And so I said, well, what do you do for a living? And he said, I'm the CEO of Hewlett Packard.

• 53:00Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I remember thinking to myself, I am such a moron. And, and I said, I think that would be amazing to be able to shadow you for a couple of weeks during spring break. And so this man Lou Platt invites me to just shadow him in 1997.

• 53:21Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I am going around, literally, you know, he, he didn't have a driver. He was, this was really just the, the Hewlett and Packard era of CEOs. He drove himself around in a Ford Focus. I remember this. We'd go, go to different meetings and he took me around. And one of the days, actually, uh, Bill Gates came to make an announcement about .net um, with Hewlett Packard. And so it was an incredible event that happened. I got to sit backstage and see everything that was happening. And Lou Platt that invited the photographer to come in and actually take

• 54:05Ann Miura-Ko?

  a picture of me talking to Lou. And I didn't really think about it, but after the fact, I get back to my dorm and Lou Platt has sent me a thank you letter saying, thanks for coming to visit. I thought you would enjoy these photographs. And there's two photographs in there. I've framed them in my office now. One is a picture of me sitting on a, on a seat, talking to Lou. And then the second picture is Bill Gates, sitting exactly in that spot that I was sitting in, talking to Lou Platt. And, you know, to me, like mentorship

• 54:46Ann Miura-Ko?

  means so many different things. I've had so many different examples of mentors, but to a, a junior in college, who, who literally is a nobody. Um, he was such an incredible example of mentorship. He never asked for my resume. He never asked for my GPA. He just sort of took this girl and said, you know what? You have, you have something and I, I see it and I'm going to show you something even greater. And um, to me, that is such, it was such a gift. It was so incredible because I, I hadn't even

• 55:30Ann Miura-Ko?

  thought about my own personal potential ever. No one had ever described anything to me. And I came back from that with my mind completely blown. I met Anne Livermore, who was an executive, and I'd never seen a female executive in my entire life. And here's someone who I could look at and, and see, and I can see that people around her respect her. Um, it was just a, it's a, it's a life-changing moment. And it comes from that first, you know, comment from Dean Bromley, who says, "I've heard of you. I heard you do a great job." Um, and that's where the opportunities opened up.

• 56:13Tim Ferriss?

  "You're the, you're the woman responsible for my fresh doughnuts and crisp photocopies. I've heard good things."

• 56:19Ann Miura-Ko?

  Exactly.

• 56:21Tim Ferriss?

  It's the little things.

• 56:22Ann Miura-Ko?

  And typed up filing labels.

• 56:24Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I should note, we don't have to go too deep into this, but in a way, you were perfectly primed for doing a good job with your photocopying and labeling after spending, was it summers in Kanazawa in the stationery store? Am I making that up?

• 56:42Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, no, my first job was literally helping my, my uncle and grandmother sell office supplies in Kanazawa, Japan, at our store, Taikido.

• 56:55Tim Ferriss?

  Taikido. Oh, man, Kanazawa is just such, I'd never been to Kanazawa. For those people who don't know, I used to live in Japan a long time. My first time out of the US was a year in Japan as an exchange student, which is a whole separate story, but uh, never made it to Kanazawa until a few years ago. It's gorgeous and it's not that far away from Tokyo at all, but such a, such a cute. Spot with so much to offer. What did you think? I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 57:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, it's it's actually incredible because it's one of the few cities in Japan that was protected by historians of the US. It did not get bombed in World War II because of some of the historic elements of the city. So it's almost like a smaller version of Kyoto and it has a historic Japanese garden called Kenno Kuen.

• 57:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Kenno Kuen is unbelievable, unbelievable.

• 57:48Ann Miura-Ko?

  Unbelievable. So it's it's like, and I summers I would spend maybe like two blocks away from Kenno Kuen. So it was an incredible set of summers. But yes, I I used to man the cashier register at the the office supply store. So I know my pens and notebooks and stamps like nobody's business.

• 58:07Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any favorite go to? Don't worry, I'm not going to spend too much time on this. But do you have any favorite notebooks or pens or items of those types that you use today?

• 58:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, yeah, totally. So on pens, I love the Juusep 04.

• 58:25Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell Juusep?

• 58:27Ann Miura-Ko?

  Juice up.

• 58:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Juice up, okay.

• 58:30Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, Juice up 04. You can get them on Amazon. They're super thin pens.

• 58:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, four, that's like point four millimeter or something?

• 58:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 58:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, okay.

• 58:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah. And then for notebooks, it's the Nuna. It's N U U N A. Some European brand, but but I like any notebook that has the dot matrix on it. And those, the the paper quality is really great.

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  I see dot matrix. It's not it's not it's not like graph paper, but there is, there are perpendicular lines that are dotted.

• 59:04Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yes, yes. I'm very particular.

• 59:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Ann Miura-Ko?

  I could go on and on.

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  It appeals to the Dungeons and Dragons nerd in me. Anything that resembles graph papers. So the Juusep 04 and the Nuna. Definitely anything European sounding with a repeating vowel. I'll pay 40% more for.

• 59:22Ann Miura-Ko?

  Exactly. Maybe, maybe 100%.

• 59:25Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe 100%.

• 59:28Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned that you have these photographs in your office. I'm curious, you're sitting in your office right now?

• 59:32Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So what else? I'm sure you have photographs of your family, but outside of kind of the usual suspects. Is there, what are other items that you have in your office that are important to you?

• 59:44Ann Miura-Ko?

  Uh, let's see, I have the original Lyft pink mustache. It used to go in the front of the cars.

• 59:55Ann Miura-Ko?

  Which I love. I have also a picture and a set of laser etched metal plates that students gave to me. That have sort of a word graph of all of the words that they thought they could, they, they ascribed to me.

• 1:00:20Tim Ferriss?

  Students of what? What, what was the context for these students interacting with you? And, and what are some of the words?

• 1:00:26Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so I had, um, I teach at Stanford. So after my PhD, what I realized was I, I loved teaching more than anything else. And so I stayed in contact with Tina Selig and Tom Byers over at Stanford, who run the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. And they've given me the opportunity to teach a few different classes. But the one that I got these metal plates and the photograph from was the class of 2013 Mayfield Fellows Group. And they have words like thunder lizard, badass,

• 1:01:09Ann Miura-Ko?

  inspiring, um, mother.

• 1:01:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  So, um, you know, it's just really fun to see sort of what words they thought.

• 1:01:21Tim Ferriss?

  What were you, what were you teaching these Mayfield Fellows?

• 1:01:25Ann Miura-Ko?

  Uh, so we were teaching them basic concepts behind leadership and entrepreneurship. And it's sort of the first exposure that they get as juniors and seniors into really, you know, startup ecosystem. What does venture capital do within that ecosystem?

• 1:01:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  What are the tough choices that you have to make as a leader within these types of organizations? What does growth look like in these types of organizations? So it's just sort of a startup 101, but what I love about it is it's only 12 students and it goes for nine months.

• 1:02:05Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:02:05Ann Miura-Ko?

  So if you get to be involved in it, you get to really know some of the students. And I've been mentoring students and sometimes teaching some of these classes since 2008. And you get this whole arc of the career path of young people. And, and I really love it. I think it's just sort of, you get to see, you know, students who start off as seniors. And then they start their career, they might go to grad school. Um, then they go back and get a job, then they have, uh, they get married. And then I think one is now about to have a kid.

• 1:02:48Ann Miura-Ko?

  Uh, so you just sort of see this whole arc. Um, and it's just about 10 years, 20 years behind where I was. And so I get, I get to see this incredible progress that these students make over time. So it's, it's something that I love.

• 1:03:04Tim Ferriss?

  Anne Murico, mother of Thunder Lizards, AKA mother of dragons. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna come back to Thunder Lizard because there's a whole lot wrapped around that. But

• 1:03:15Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I'm going to try to keep my brain somewhat focused here. Is there a reading list for that class? Or, uh, do you recall anything that was on a recommended or required reading list for that class?

• 1:03:31Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so we actually teach a, I'm starting a class today at Stanford, uh, for the new spring quarter. And in this class, what we're teaching is what I would call intelligent growth. It's a little bit different than Mayfield Fellows. Uh, but my hypothesis, my belief is that just like fake news in politics, there's actually something that we would call fake growth.

• 1:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  Lots of it.

• 1:04:00Ann Miura-Ko?

  We've worshipped at the altar of growth for about five to 10 years now. And what I've seen is that

• 1:04:08Tim Ferriss?

  And this is startup growth specifically?

• 1:04:11Ann Miura-Ko?

  Specifically within startups, there is so much that we see that is fake. And, and no one has ascribed actual adjectives to growth until now. And so the class that I'm teaching to engineering students at Stanford is around what is actually intelligent growth. And so you asked about the reading for it. It's all around some of these case studies that we've seen. A great example of that to me is Qualtrics. We're going to have Ryan Smith, who's the CEO of Qualtrics, come in and speak. And I think

• 1:04:52Ann Miura-Ko?

  he's a great example because I think he was at $50 million in revenues before he raised a dime of venture capital money. And so as a result, he's going to own an incredible piece of his company when it exits, and it will. And so I love the capital efficiency with which he built his business. I also think, you know, one of my companies, Lyft, is a great example of having that kind of discipline early on and not just, not just wasting venture capital dollars in the early days when they didn't have product market fit. So they spent two and a half years working on this platform called Zimride, knowing

• 1:05:36Ann Miura-Ko?

  that they had to get to density in riders. And Zimride was just, it was a platform where you could find carpooling arrangements. It was being sold to universities and companies. But we couldn't get enough density to get transactions really moving fast. And it was two and a half years before they launched Lyft. And in the first six weeks, you could start to see that there was real traction there. And it was only after they, they knew what they were doing with Lyft, that they went and raised a large round with Founders Fund, and then an even larger round with Andreessen Horowitz. And, and that, that

• 1:06:20Ann Miura-Ko?

  story of really, really hacking value before you go out and hack growth is something that I don't see often enough in, in Silicon Valley. So it's something that I'm, I'm continuing to seek. And I love to see companies, especially outside of Silicon Valley, that, that do that. And that's When we come back to hunting for thunder lizards, that's what I'm looking for.

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  When you mention the case studies, do you have written case studies that you're using much like, I don't know if Stanford uses these, but much like the Harvard Business School case studies, which are these kind of three-ring binder,

• 1:06:56Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Tim Ferriss?

  five to 10-page cases that are published? You use those?

• 1:07:01Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, we use, so the ones that we focused on, there's a Harvard Business case on Floodgate that you can purchase off of the Harvard Business Review website.

• 1:07:13Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so anyone can purchase these. You don't have to be a student. And I just, yeah, I don't want to interrupt, but keep going because the format of these case studies is really interesting to me. And as an undergrad senior, when I took Ed Shou's class in High-Tech Entrepreneurship, which is how I met Mike Maples Jr., who's going to be a recurring character shortly, I remember how useful they were. So that's,

• 1:07:37Tim Ferriss?

  that's the only interjection. Sorry to interrupt.

• 1:07:39Ann Miura-Ko?

  No, exactly. So we, we use that case study for Qualtrics. There is one on Floodgate. So if you go to the Harvard Business Review site, you can actually just search for Floodgate or Qualtrics and it'll come up. And they're somewhere between, you know, $5 and $15. They're pretty easy to buy and download.

• 1:08:00Ann Miura-Ko?

  But I think those two in particular are quite valuable. We have then also just people coming in and speaking about some of the things that they've learned and how to grow that business from zero to one, and then one to X. And people like Michael Siebel, who is now a partner at Y Combinator, but also was part of Justin TV and SocialCam. We have Stephanie Schatz, who was the fearless leader on the sales side for Zimerin. She had 18 straight quarters of beating the stretch target.

• 1:08:39Ann Miura-Ko?

  So you could only imagine how incredible she is as a sales leader, taking a company from zero to $50 million in revenues. So we have a lot of different types of people, whether they're CEOs or CROs or venture investors coming in to talk about the kinds of trade offs they had to make and how they decipher growth to make sure that they have the real kind and not just kind that they're buying.

• 1:09:10Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Just to elaborate on that for people who may not be in the startup world, if for instance, you're sitting in on an incubator Investor Day and you see 12 companies in a row that have 20% month-on-month growth with very similar looking charts, there's a possibility that they have been inflating or manufacturing their numbers with paid acquisition to raise funding or do any number of things. And it's really easy to, it's relatively easy to spot once you know the symptoms, but there are, and then there are, I suppose as Richard Feynman would say, the physicist, you must be sure not to trick yourself or fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

• 1:09:54Tim Ferriss?

  You can also get very caught up with what you might consider vanity metrics. But let me take a step back and just ask, well, before I ask, people definitely take a look at the case studies for both Harvard and if you search Stanford GSB, which is the business school, case studies, you'll also find a website with these profiles of companies and not just companies, but decisions they had to face generally where you can determine for yourself what you would do in a given situation, then read about what they did, whether it's MongoDB, I'm looking at this Stanford GSB site in the case studies right now, Sonos and so on. How did you?

• 1:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  Go to investing. How did you first be become exposed to say venture capital? What did you think you were going to do in college? When you were in college, junior year, what do you thought, what do you expect you were going to do when you grew up?

• 1:10:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, I actually had multiple different paths. I started off when we were talking about my brother describing this kid who knew he wanted to work with cars or airplanes from the get go. And guess what he's doing right now? He's in Germany, working with race cars. So, you know, and I was the complete opposite. I, I think when I was four, I wanted to be a farmer. Then somewhere along the lines, I really wanted to be a doctor. And I, I wanted to be a doctor for a fairly long period of time where in, you know, freshman year summer, I took organic chemistry. It was in this pre-med track.

• 1:11:29Ann Miura-Ko?

  I think sophomore year summer, you take the MCATs if you're pretty sure you want to go to medical school. And that summer I was with my best friend who also really wanted to go to medical school. And she is right now studying leukemia. She's a doctor at UCSF. So she's, she's clearly gone down that path and doubled down on it. But I remember going to study for the MCATs with her and I, I turned to the side and I looked at her and I had this sudden realization, which was that, and this is two days before we're taking the MCATs. I said, hey, Kathy, I hate hospitals.

• 1:12:15Ann Miura-Ko?

  I don't like actually being around sick people. I also don't love it when people are always complaining to me. And, and I think that might get in the way of me being a doctor. And she looked at me like I was an alien and she said, why are you saying this right now? We're about to take the MCATs and we need to go study for it at Kaplan.

• 1:12:41Ann Miura-Ko?

  And but you know, I was just constantly observing her and she is just this incredible human being and she continues to be. Uh, but this realization of wow, like the actual job of being a doctor may not be something that I actually enjoy was really a hard realization when you've been all in for this long. And so, but it was, it was a realization that I really had to face and I knew, I knew my gut that I was doing it because it was a really great path. It was a path where I knew what the next step was. I knew what next class I had to take. I knew the next exam I had to take. Then there was applications, then there was school, and then there was residency and fellowship.

• 1:13:25Ann Miura-Ko?

  And it just felt like a really predictable thing to do. But the actual work at the end of the day was not something I was going to love or enjoy. And that was really disturbing to me. And so I really screeched off of that path. And I had, and it was hard because I had actually taken all of the requirements except for biology. And the pre-med requirements did not actually overlap very much with electrical engineering. So I'd taken a lot of extra classes to make it a possibility, but realized also it wasn't for me. And that's where I was sort of in this state of not knowing what I wanted to be.

• 1:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  And could I pause for one second?

• 1:14:07Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Tim Ferriss?

  So what you just described illustrates a, a degree of self-awareness, but also decision-making that I think is, is rather uncommon in the sense that I know a lot of people who have gone on to become doctors or lawyers or fill in the blank that has a lot of prerequisite training and schooling because of say succumbing to this sunk cost fallacy, like, oh God, I've put in so much time, even though I have this intuitive feeling, I'm not going to like it, I really should do it. And what was the conversation or the background that allowed you to step off of that path?

• 1:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  And not to beat the like Asian kid drum too hard, but, but let's be real, right? I mean, you're also, I mean, that's, that would be a very admirable, well-respected.

• 1:15:06Tim Ferriss?

  Happy to share at a dinner party with friends type of path for your parents, I would assume.

• 1:15:11Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:12Tim Ferriss?

  So all the more uncommon that you would step off of that track. How is that, how is that the case? Why, why, why were you different?

• 1:15:21Ann Miura-Ko?

  So I think it goes back to actually the moment in debate where I, I, my mom is telling me, um, you should, you should do fencing instead of debate. There was this realization of, oh, my parents really love me, but they don't know me. And they, they don't actually, no one really knows me in terms of my capabilities and what I feel like I can get done. No one knows that better than I do. And, um, and it was, it was an important lesson for me because one other fact that

• 1:16:02Ann Miura-Ko?

  I didn't mention is that in, as a kid, there was no sign that I was special, except for, you know, these weird characteristics where I would go learn negotiations. Um, but I failed the IQ test multiple times and the school district insisted I was not gifted or talented. My mom had to fight for me to be part of this gifted and talented program. Um, as a two-year-old, after I, I was really hostile to people who spoke English. My mom stuck me in, tried to put me into preschool to socialize me, but I, um, ended

• 1:16:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  up biting the person who was interviewing me. For, for preschool slot and they put me in special education. And, um, and I was, I was one of those kids who got picked up in a short yellow bus from our house and taken to a state-run program for, for, for special children. And, and I think for a long time, my mom wasn't really sure what I was, but she just decided to be all in on the fact that I was gifted and talented, even if I wasn't. And she was really worried that I was, I was one of these special children. And, and, and so I had sort of an environment around me way before Yale where

• 1:17:34Ann Miura-Ko?

  I knew what I was capable of, even if the test scores showed that I wasn't.

• 1:17:41Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I knew that, I knew what I was capable of, even if my parents didn't see it in me. And I think there's sort of this, this moment in time that people need to have where, where you realize that there's no test for human potential. There's no recognition for that. It's something that you have to find inside of yourself. And I think for me, you know, that, that one of those tests was actually going back to, am I, am I going to be a great doctor? And if I revisit this question that my dad had always asked me, can you be world class?

• 1:18:22Ann Miura-Ko?

  I knew I couldn't because I looked at Kathy and she was going to be world class because she loved, she loved helping people and she loved helping people from that kind of caretaking perspective, which is not where I was going to be world class. But I felt like there was something in me where I could be great at something. That just wasn't it.

• 1:18:50Tim Ferriss?

  And how did, you have, you have all of this technical training by this point. You have the chemistry, but you certainly also have the, uh, let's see here, at that point, the electrical engineering, probably.

• 1:19:02Tim Ferriss?

  How does finance and investing or startups, I don't know which came first, enter the picture?

• 1:19:09Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah. So having grown up in Palo Alto, I was actually exposed to a lot of startups as a, even as a kid, my, I used to babysit for a serial entrepreneur and he was always tinkering around in his garage. And I remember thinking to myself, oh, he, he works for himself, which is very, very cool. I also, um, on my debate team, um, was Lisa Brennan Jobs, who I didn't really realize she was the daughter of Steve Jobs until I was in her house. Um, and we were, we were talking about debate. I was, I was a senior at the time and I was helping her through learning the, the ropes of speech and debate. And Steve Jobs sort of appeared out of nowhere. And I remember thinking to myself, what, what is Steve Jobs

• 1:19:54Ann Miura-Ko?

  doing in this house?

• 1:19:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so, you know, it was just sort of, it was all around. And, and so venture capital was something that actually a friend of mine had brought up when I was still struggling with this notion of what should I be? And he was a real finance guy. And he said, you know, you're, you're really good at technology and you're now interested in business because of this exposure to Lou Platt. You know, have you ever thought of venture capital? And I remember kind of reading about it and having heard a little bit about it growing up, um, looking into it and realizing, oh, you have like all, all this work experience you need to have. I, I talked to a couple of former Yalies who were venture capitalists

• 1:20:39Ann Miura-Ko?

  and, and sort of had that in my, in the, the back of my head. Um, and so, you know, I went off to work at McKinsey as a consultant for three years. And then in, in the process of trying to figure out what to do next, I, I met a venture capitalist by the name of Ted Dintersmith. And in that interview with him, we spoke about, not about technology, not about the research I'd done or my work experience, but he wanted to know what books I was reading. He wanted to know about the music that I loved. And in that period,

• 1:21:17Ann Miura-Ko?

  I was really into modern American literature. So I was really into EL Doctoro. And, uh, there are, there are a few books that I just absolutely loved. And we talked about that for a little while. And then when we turned to music, I've played piano, classical piano since I was four. And he, he and I talked about the, the classical musicians that I really loved. And he happened to be an English Lit major, along with being a physics major. So he, he loved books as much as I did, maybe even more. And then he was an opera nut. And so we had all these things that we could talk about. And two

• 1:21:59Ann Miura-Ko?

  hours into that conversation, never having touched upon, um, technology, he then basically said, how would you like to come work with me? And I was living out in Palo Alto at the time. This is an opportunity in Boston. And I remember not, not even hesitating, knowing that I wanted to work with this, this person, this human being sitting across the table from me. I jumped at that opportunity and it wasn't, it wasn't the fact that was in venture capital, but rather I really wanted the chance to be working around someone like Ted Dintor Smith at that time.

• 1:22:38Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about that interview for a second. So that I think would strike some people as a very unusual interviewing style.

• 1:22:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yes.

• 1:22:49Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think in retrospect, and maybe you know, that he had already decided you were fully capable of doing the job, therefore didn't have to check that box and just wanted to make sure that he could work with you and spend time with you? Was it that he was using that interview to sell you so that when he made the offer, you would say yes? What do you think was going through his mind before, during, or after, or I suppose before and during that conversation?

• 1:23:12Ann Miura-Ko?

  You know, I think Ted is a very unique human being in that when I, I used to have this perception that networking was work in a room and like you shake a lot of hands and hold a lot of babies and you learn a few names and you move on. I learned from Ted that networking is actually a deep curiosity about the human being who's sitting across the table from you. So I don't think he necessarily had that kind of purpose in mind, but that he was just really interested in what I was interested in.

• 1:23:51Ann Miura-Ko?

  And we happened to find commonality and he was trying to understand how my mind worked and what I was interested in. And I, I've taken that as a real lesson because I love the way he would network. He, he learned so much about people in that process and.

• 1:24:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  And that's how he ministered to his entrepreneurs. He also was capable of providing advice at the right time because he really knew those people. And so for me, I felt like it was a really unique interview. It stood out from all the interviews I've ever had. But I think he was learning more about me than most other technical interviews could have gotten to. And then, you know, his other partners, I think Easor Armani gave me sort of more of a case study and could dive into that.

• 1:24:55Ann Miura-Ko?

  But Ted always had a deep curiosity about the human being and not necessarily just the skills.

• 1:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  What else did you learn from him or in that position, in that job?

• 1:25:13Ann Miura-Ko?

  I thought that Ted was also an incredible first principles thinker. So my second day of work at CRV was 9/11.

• 1:25:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:25:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so it was, you went from kind of a bad economy to a horrible, black hole economy. And so it was a really terrible time for venture. And they had just raised this $1.4 billion fund. And so that's, I mean, for venture, that's a huge amount of money. And it's a huge accomplishment to convince so many investors to invest in your venture capital firm at that amount. But then Ted took the time to actually start to do analysis with me on how much capital had gone into venture capital at that moment. And then the exits had stopped. There were no more IPOs.

• 1:26:08Ann Miura-Ko?

  No one was acquiring companies. The economy just came to a screeching halt. And he decided, along with the other partners in this firm, to give back most of the money. So they reduced their fund from $1.2 billion to $450 million.

• 1:26:28Ann Miura-Ko?

  And the reason why that's so interesting and impressive is that the way a venture capital firm makes money, the way you have any salary or the operating money that you have for the firm is a direct percentage of the fund that you raise. And so by shrinking the size of the fund, you're shrinking the size of the management fees that you get pretty dramatically.

• 1:26:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure. Very dramatically. I mean, for people who don't know, I mean, you hear very often, it's not always the case, but in venture capital, two and 20, two and 20, and that means 2% management fee based on the sort of assets under management, meaning that particular fund, and then 20% of the upside for people who don't know.

• 1:27:12Ann Miura-Ko?

  Right. And so they decided to give back those management fees. And to me, that was really, really impressive because you're facing down a really terrible economy. Not only are you shrinking the size of your fund to reflect that, you're also shrinking the size of your management fees and you're taking that blow. And so things like that, I learned, I learned also, you know, how to shepherd companies through that kind of difficult time and how to be a true partner to an entrepreneur. And so, you know, I think it was a really important lesson to learn because I would argue, most people haven't

• 1:27:56Ann Miura-Ko?

  seen real cycles. People seem to think 2008 was a real significant dip in the economy. But anyone who lives through 2001 knows that 2008 was a blip compared to a real downturn. And because we've had a, you know, raging bull market for such a long time, that memory and that knowledge of having survived, you know, 2001 as a crisis period is something that I hold with me, really in my war chest. I know how to get through that kind of time period, and I don't think a lot of people do.

• 1:28:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it makes me think of a lot of what I heard in Silicon Valley, still here, you know, before moving to Austin, which, which makes me think of, I'm going to paraphrase this, but it's a quote from Sir John Templeton, I think it is, which is the most expensive words in investing are, this time it's different. And it has been quite the bull run. You mentioned first principles thinking. What are, I want, I want to tie that into something you mentioned related to your class, tough choices for leaders. What are some of the toughest choices for leaders, I suppose, in this context? CEOs or high level execs, co-founders of companies?

• 1:29:18Tim Ferriss?

  What are, what are some of the, the toughest decisions that nonetheless seem to come up fairly commonly?

• 1:29:24Ann Miura-Ko?

  I think the most difficult thing for a startup founder, CEO, leader, is that, especially when you're, you, you witness multiple phase changes in a business. And so if you imagine you're going from absolutely nothing to something, that's what I call the zero to one phase. You're searching for product market fit. You're trying to find the best customers. You're trying to find where your 10x advantage is truly valued. That's a very different business process and truth seeking than when you're going from

• 1:30:09Ann Miura-Ko?

  one to X, which is now that I know what my value proposition is, I'm going to add to that, but I'm also going to pull on some of these growth levers. The, the fundamental job of a VP of marketing who is in that zero to one phase

• 1:30:26Ann Miura-Ko?

  Changes dramatically in one to X. It it changes dramatically for the the salesperson in zero to one to one to X. And you go through this incredible Bermuda Triangle where you have to navigate that change. And so so what I what I see challenging for for startup founders is actually being comfortable with your fundamental job shifting from every three months, you would have a massive shift in what you need to focus on and how you need to develop. And I think, you know, a a company is a multi-dimensional

• 1:31:08Ann Miura-Ko?

  thing. And and in Silicon Valley, we spend so much time thinking about product and product market fit that we forget that there's this huge emphasis you might want to place on the fact that a company is also an organization. A company is also a category that you're building. A company is also a business model. You know, a company is also a team. And so it's it's it's the skill set actually to balance all of those things. And knowing when you've you you fundamentally need to change out the talent in your team. Uh, the knowing when you actually need to let go of a product.

• 1:31:52Ann Miura-Ko?

  Um, and knowing actually, to me, this is probably the hardest piece. Knowing the difference between a winning strategy versus a strategy not to lose.

• 1:32:07Tim Ferriss?

  Could you elaborate on that, please?

• 1:32:10Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so to me, a strategy not to lose is is a lot of different things. It's to not to lose to a competitor, not to lose talent. Uh, a strategy not to uh lose out on revenue. So it's all these fears that you have of captured ground or uh, the fact that you might have someone take over something that you're you want to do. A competitor who's breathing down your neck. Versus a strategy for winning is about where do you double down on? What do you do to capture ground, to be aggressive, uh, to play offense and not defense?

• 1:32:52Ann Miura-Ko?

  To me, there is a huge difference between that strategy of I'm going to win in this market versus I'm not going to lose. And not losing often involves a lot of hedging. And when you feel that urge to hedge, you need to focus and you need to be offensive.

• 1:33:13Tim Ferriss?

  What, what, in what ways might that hedging manifest? What would be examples you've seen or hypotheticals of the symptoms of a defensive strategy in the form of hedging?

• 1:33:27Ann Miura-Ko?

  Great question. It might manifest itself in I am going to go after two very different customer segments. One is large enterprises, the other is small, medium businesses. And the reason why that's really hedging is you have two completely different ways of selling to those organizations. And you're afraid to pick one because maybe you have some revenue in both.

• 1:33:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:33:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  But in that situation, by not choosing to focus on one group or the other, you're probably A, shortchanging your team because you don't have a specialized team to go after that opportunity. You're shortchanging your business model because you aren't pricing your product correctly. And you're shortchanging the opportunity because probably your product isn't optimized for that customer set. Your, your customer service isn't optimized for that product set. And your team is ultimately confused because you're heading into completely different conditions and directions. And so I, I believe that, you know, that that's one of the most common ways that I see

• 1:34:41Ann Miura-Ko?

  people involved in a strategy of not losing instead of we're here to win it.

• 1:34:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, all of those things you mentioned also contribute to lighting money on fire, right? I mean, that, that split focus just.

• 1:34:55Ann Miura-Ko?

  The bonfire.

• 1:34:57Tim Ferriss?

  The bonfire of funding or cash flow, depending on where it comes from. The, this is really important and you know this, but I want to underscore it for people listening and give a few other examples that might be worth, people might enjoy exploring. So this. Winning versus not losing distinction seems really subtle, but you can get an intuitive feel for it in a few different ways. One is, there's actually a, I think it's a three-part mini-series podcast called "The Making of Oprah," and it talks about the rise of Oprah. I know this seems like an odd segue. Oprah impresses the hell out of me in a million

• 1:35:41Tim Ferriss?

  different ways, and after you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. But she would constantly tell her team, many of whom wanted to respond to, say, Donahue, who was the 800-pound gorilla at the time, like, "We need to race our own race," in the sense that if you're on a thoroughbred horse and you're in a race, you need to focus on your race. You can't be looking side to side at the competitors, the racers next to you, or you get yourself into a lot of trouble, or you get really injured. And the second is, if people want to Google "Dan Gable on aggression," there's a short video I put on my blog that hits this point exactly. And I'm giving examples from different disciplines

• 1:36:23Tim Ferriss?

  because it is cross-disciplinary. It's not just investing in startups. Dan Gable is the most legendary wrestling coach, certainly of the last, I would say, 100 years in the United States. Also, won a gold medal in the 1972 Munich Olympics without having a single point scored on him. That just does not happen. And this video will show you a lecture that he's giving one of his athletes after his athlete tied. And he said, "You lost to him twice before. You just didn't want to lose." He said, "You never win that way. You gotta tie." And that's exactly why you gotta tie. And the difference is just

• 1:37:04Tim Ferriss?

  so powerful, it's worth, I just thought, taking a second to underscore it, because I think it's really a critical distinction that you brought up.

• 1:37:15Ann Miura-Ko?

  It's also, like, I think about it, I love to ski, and I had this instructor once, I was complaining about going through powder, and I was, I was saying how it really hurt my thighs. He was like, "My thighs are burning." And he looks at me, he said, "'Cause you're not leaning forward." And and like the minute you lean forward, suddenly you're just gliding. And it's scary in that moment when you lean forward because you feel like you're gonna fall. And yet it gives you so much more control and it gives you so much, it's so much less effort, counterintuitively.

• 1:37:57Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:37:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  And that to me is like the perfect example of, oh, like you have to actually have a little bit of aggressiveness in order to have the win.

• 1:38:10Tim Ferriss?

  I think you are are well suited in that respect. How did, how did you meet the, how did you meet the man who so famously tries to trick, not trick, that sounds too strong, who so commonly will say something like, well, I'm just a southern boy, maybe you could slow down and explain that one more time, which by the way, if you ever hear anything like that, like really stop and pay attention because you're, you are about to be tricked or misdirected. I've actually borrowed that and I use that for Long Island a lot. I'm like, you know, I'm just a slow Long Island boy. Take a second, maybe you can explain that to me again. How did you meet Mike Maples Jr.?

• 1:38:53Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so this actually happened in one of the classes that I was teaching at Stanford. He was, he was one of the mentors for a bunch of teams. So we had all these teams who were creating business plans for, for their own version of a startup company. And we had incredible mentors to each of these teams. We had, I think, someone who was the former CEO of VeriSign. We had, I think Diane Green might have been a mentor to one of the teams.

• 1:39:22Tim Ferriss?

  Can you explain to folks who Diane Green is for those who don't know?

• 1:39:25Ann Miura-Ko?

  Diane Green is now the head of Google Cloud. She was also the CEO of VMware.

• 1:39:31Tim Ferriss?

  Big deal, big, big deal.

• 1:39:32Ann Miura-Ko?

  So, big deal, big deal. And what we, what we did was we would team up some of these entrepreneurs or people in Silicon Valley with a student team, and Mike was one of them. And for, for people who know Mike, he's just this charming. Guy, boy from Oklahoma, he calls himself sometimes a washed up enterprise VC and or washed up enterprise entrepreneur. But he's not. And so he came to our class and he was mentoring this team, but he was actually being too nice. And so this team was having like all sorts of weird issues.

• 1:40:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  They were fighting and they came to my office hours and one of them started to cry. And

• 1:40:22Tim Ferriss?

  Spotting a theme here within proximity of

• 1:40:24Ann Miura-Ko?

  Right, I did not make this team member cry. It was they were making each other cry. And so I was just kind of, I was really, I was kind of mad at Mike because part of the, the, the role of the mentor is to help shepherd them through these tough points. And he was just kind of checked out on that front. And, and I emailed him and he said, oh yeah, my team's doing great. And I said, well, I kind of beg to differ. Uh, they were just in my office and one of them started to cry and they're fighting. And right now, if they don't pull it together, they're really going to fail the class. And he just wrote me this message that said, well, I think they're going to get an A plus.

• 1:41:09Ann Miura-Ko?

  And, and so I said, well, so far not tracking. And, and so we just sort of had this friendly banter and actually the team does turn it around and they ended up getting an A plus in the class.

• 1:41:22Tim Ferriss?

  And Now, did Mike intervene or did he just throw some turtle shells on a desk and like divine his way to that outcome?

• 1:41:28Ann Miura-Ko?

  I, I'm not really sure, but I, I actually take full credit for the turnaround because had I not pointed it out to Mike, then the team would have just imploded. And, and so, um,

• 1:41:42Ann Miura-Ko?

  So based on that interaction, you know, a few years later, I was starting to get to a point in my PhD where I was thinking of starting my own company. And I had started my PhD in computer security exactly because I knew that it didn't matter when I graduated, there would be a computer security problem out there. And I would be, I wouldn't be at risk of market timing. And it was sort of a perfect opportunity because just as I was going through my research, it was from 2003 to 2007 at this point, we had transformed from this world of where security used to be a bunch of vandalism problems

• 1:42:27Ann Miura-Ko?

  to now there were companies involved and like real money was being involved and so real crime was being created here. And then towards the end, there was really like nation-state warfare starting to happen. And so my, my research was really in risk management of computer security. And I knew that this was becoming a huge issue. And so I started to think, I'm going to make a company.

• 1:42:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so at that moment, I turned to some of my advisors and my advisors were nice enough to say, hey, if you're thinking about starting a company, you've been in the ivory towers for literally four years. So you should get out of the classroom and go check out some angel investors.

• 1:43:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  And then Mike was one of the first people I turned to and I asked him if I could see his deal flow. And he was nice enough to say, sure, why don't you just come in and take a look at my deal flow on Wednesdays. And so we would sit next to each other and look at companies. And

• 1:43:34Tim Ferriss?

  Deal flow means the, the sort of top of the funnel companies that he's considering potentially investing in?

• 1:43:41Ann Miura-Ko?

  Right. They would come in and pitch for between 30 minutes and an hour. And then at the end of that, I, I think it was, you know, March of 2008, he calls me as I'm actually going up to Tahoe to ski. He calls me to say, hey, Anne, I have this great idea.

• 1:44:03Ann Miura-Ko?

  I just raised my first fund. It's $35 million. And I think that you should drop out of your PhD program and join me. And it's not the venture-backed startup that you've been thinking about, but it's now a backed venture startup. Let's go.

• 1:44:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I like that.

• 1:44:28Tim Ferriss?

  That's really good. Now, was that an immediate yes? Or was it a let me sleep on it?

• 1:44:32Ann Miura-Ko?

  I actually thought he was crazy because first of all,

• 1:44:39Ann Miura-Ko?

  you know, I was literally, again, I was a nobody. I'm a PhD candidate. I didn't even have my degree at Stanford. So there's like all these business school students. There's great, you know, angel investors milling around. The major question was like, why does this guy think that I would actually be a good investor? And then the second piece was there weren't a ton of venture capital firms that were being started up. So even when I went back to people who were my mentors, some of them said, why would you go to a no-name VC? Why won't you go and be an associate at, you know, Kleiner Perkins or Excel or, you know, Sequoia?

• 1:45:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I didn't really have a good answer.

• 1:45:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and just to set the stage for folks who don't know maybe the recent history in Silicon Valley. At the time that Mike had proposed this to you, sort of micro-cap venture capital was barely a thing, right? I mean, it's, it's, there are a lot of funds of all sorts of different sizes now, but at the time, this was very unusual.

• 1:45:48Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah. And so it was, you know, at this point in, when we get to 2018, there's probably, you know, 30 funds being pitched a week to a limited partner who invest into these venture capital firms. But back then, there was very, very few. And so it was really a question of is this the smart thing to do? And I think this is sort of where, you know, when you turn to an entrepreneur, this is the feeling that they get. What I sensed was there was actually a major change afoot. All of the students around me at Stanford didn't need $5 million to start a company, and that's what venture capital was offering to startups at that point.

• 1:46:33Ann Miura-Ko?

  They would say, I will buy 50% of your company for $5 million.

• 1:46:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right. It was predicated on the entry costs being very high in some respects.

• 1:46:42Ann Miura-Ko?

  Very, very high.

• 1:46:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  And like at that point, you know, we suddenly have open source software. We really have what's starting to look like cloud computing. We have all the shared resources. So even though I was helping to run servers in the closet at my grad school in our lab, that was starting to become something that we didn't need. There was actually, you know, services that you can use where you could rent services. And so to me, there was a dramatic change that was happening. And so you had to change the financing environment. And so I felt like I could see something that everyone else didn't see that Mike was also seeing. And he used to say 500,000 is the new 5 million.

• 1:47:29Ann Miura-Ko?

  And then the second piece for me was this guy, Mike Maples, had a skill set I had never seen before. I may maybe in like one or two other people in my entire lifetime. But he was this incredible marketer. And I used to believe you either built things or you sold things. Everything else just seemed like an extraneous skill set to have. But Mike. Was incredible at storytelling and positioning and and and strategy like real strategy for how do you create a new category and how do you build that category and how

• 1:48:13Ann Miura-Ko?

  do you create the king of that category? And as an engineer, I hadn't thought about what you do after you build the product. And so this magic of category creation to me was something that almost felt like magic. And so I looked at Mike and I thought, I really need to learn from this person. And and not only is it a great skill set that I'm learning from, he is also genuinely one of the best human beings that that I've ever encountered. And so it was just sort of this magical combination of someone whose values really aligned with me and how I wanted to build a firm and the things that I wanted to do with that and

• 1:48:58Ann Miura-Ko?

  how I wanted to treat entrepreneurs and and a person who was a mad genius. And so that combination to me was irresistible. And so a couple of months into it, I said, sign me up.

• 1:49:11Tim Ferriss?

  Couple of months, all right. So question number one, just for for people who are wondering, and I know a lot of people, you seem very good at avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. And this is so, so, so key, this cognitive bias. When you were looking at the quitting of the PhD program, did you, I don't know how it works at Stanford, but did you realize you could kind of, you didn't have to quit?

• 1:49:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  I did not quit. So so that first year and a half of my life was in at Floodgate was crazy because at that point, I joined Floodgate and I have an 18 month old child, my daughter Abby. And then I, you know, I think it was four or five months into it, I am pregnant with my second child. I've promised my mother, as any good Asian daughter would, that I will finish this PhD if it's the last thing I do. So I'm waking up at like four o'clock in the morning, doing research until, you know, seven, when she wa- my daughter wakes up, then taking her to daycare,

• 1:50:20Ann Miura-Ko?

  and then working from like eight thirty to six thirty at floodgate, and then coming back, doing dinner, and then working on my PhD again, rinse and repeat. And then I got pregnant with my second child a few months into that, and then um decided I was gonna defend my PhD. They set the date for six weeks after I gave birth to my son. And so, you know, I I not only did my first set of investments, but also had gave birth to a child, cared for another one, and uh managed to stay married and finish this PhD all between two thousand eight and two thousand

• 1:51:05Ann Miura-Ko?

  nine. And so, you know, to me, like, that's like the most creative and probably productive period of my life ever, and probably will be, but but also showed me that I can actually do a lot of things that everyone around me was like, why would you do all of those things at the same time?

• 1:51:27Tim Ferriss?

  How does, how does, this is gonna seem like a non sequitur, kind of is, but uh how does, how does your mom say your name? Because Anne is sort of an unusual first name.

• 1:51:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  Oh, no, but that's not my first name. My first name is Reiko.

• 1:51:42Tim Ferriss?

  Reiko?

• 1:51:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah. So how does my mom say? She's like, Reiko!

• 1:51:46Tim Ferriss?

  Reiko-chan. Reiko-chan sugoi ne. I can barely, that's another word everybody should look up and learn. S U G O I. Sugoi na. And that just means sort of awesome, impressive, a whole, a whole sort of things. Because I can barely manage to brush my teeth and shower on a daily basis. And yet you're doing all these things simultaneously. I have to pause at this point just to try to fill out the, the, some of the, the colors of who Reiko-chan Emirako is. What have you struggled with?

• 1:52:28Tim Ferriss?

  Like, have you had any dark, really, it doesn't have to be dark, but difficult times, dark times that you could tell us about? And where you, where you really struggled? Or is that not part of your sort of lexicon?

• 1:52:43Ann Miura-Ko?

  No, I think we, we all have struggles, right? So I think even in this moment of like the PhD and caring for my kids and caring for myself and my husband, my family and all, and trying to do a good job at work, like things slip, right? And, and I, I struggle with this still today. And this is where the darkness comes in is like, am I doing anything well? Like, am I a good mother? Am I, you know, I, I didn't, I wasn't, today, my, my six-year-old is on a field trip and he asked me, why is it that you never get to come on a field trip?

• 1:53:23Ann Miura-Ko?

  Like, those are all these moments where you wonder, like, am I failing at being a parent? Or, you know, I, I not able to get to the dishes and my, I had a moment where my, my front door neighbor is actually a Japanese woman, a nosey Japanese woman. And she went up to, she went up to my mother and she said, you know, your family is so strange. I always see the husband doing the dishes, but never the wife, never the wife.

• 1:53:54Tim Ferriss?

  That is the most nosey Japanese neighbor thing to say ever.

• 1:53:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  It's something like I spent two days like in that in that front window doing dishes. And at some point I was like, oh, screw this. But but it's like, you know, it is this constant battle of how do I figure out what my priority is so that I have like minimum viable, you know, progress on some fronts and then the thing that really matters, I'm going to make massive progress on. And so so that that's where the darkness creeps in. I think, you know, for me, my my really loser moments have been things like,

• 1:54:40Ann Miura-Ko?

  you know, early on, I just described to you early how there were tests that always said like I wasn't that smart. There were, you know, lots of examples where I wasn't good at a lot of different things that other people found very normal. Like I was horrible at standardized tests. Only until I got to like senior year or junior year in high school, did I finally figure it out like there's so many places where so many people said distinctly average, maybe not even that smart. And and I think for me, it's been learning to tune out the naysayers

• 1:55:21Ann Miura-Ko?

  and knowing that there are certainly a lot of things I'm not going to be good at. But there are things that I can actually be great at. A really good example that actually is my PhD. I remember when I got to my PhD at Stanford and I'm starting. First of all, like I took a math class and there were high school or college freshmen in this class. And it felt like the math teacher was speaking Greek and the freshmen are flying through this material because they're like little kid geniuses. And I remember thinking to myself, well, clearly I should not be getting a PhD in math.

• 1:56:03Ann Miura-Ko?

  And thank goodness, this is in operations research. Then I had this second experience where the professor, a new professor, came in across the hall from me. His name was Ramesh Johari. And he was my age because I had taken five years off to start my PhD. He was literally my age and he was incredible. He could remember things about different papers and theorems and how they were proved from like years past, compare and contrast them. He just knew things that I struggled to remember. And I remember looking at him and being in one of his seminars and thinking to myself,

• 1:56:47Ann Miura-Ko?

  that is world class as an academic. And I'm, I'm okay at it, but I would have moments where I was like, I'm, I'm actually not even good at it. And then I would go to a conference and like when you, when you compare yourself against the world of PhD students, then obvi- then you start to develop a little bit more confidence. Then you go back to Stanford and you see what world class is. And, and I was thinking to myself, this isn't the path. And there's a, there's a place where I actually can use the skillsets that I do have, where I can be really good at the things that I'm doing. And so if you, if, if I, if I, I'm sitting here saying, you know, I was always good at everything that I did. That's just not true.

• 1:57:29Ann Miura-Ko?

  There are so many moments where I realized, it's like being a doctor. I said, I would not be good at being a doctor. I would not be great at being an academic. I would not be great at a lot of different things. Just knowing and having the self-awareness of where I would double down is, I think, what, what I was good at. And so, so it makes the, this emergent life where I was going from one track to another. I was going to be a doctor and then I went to McKinsey and then I went to VC and then I went to get a PhD and then I went back to VC.

• 1:58:10Ann Miura-Ko?

  This is all self-discovery rather than a stated path that I had career planned for a long time.

• 1:58:18Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it strikes me also that, and maybe I'm trying to create narrative where there isn't one or a connection, but it seems reasonable that Mike's superpower, or one of his abilities to help create categories and then sort of mint kings within a given category, is actually a different species of something that you're also good at, which is kind of a Jack Welchian in a sense. And that is you're looking at the different paths you could take. And if you can't be, say, number one or number two in that thing, it just gets rolled out. And you're asking this world-class question over and over again. And one way is to find something

• 1:59:03Tim Ferriss?

  where you can dominate and really be world-class. And the other is to create an entirely new category, in a sense. So it seems like you and Mike are very complementary in that way and have that shared programming. I've heard people describe you as an investor, one of your strengths is being technical, which I suppose seems self-evident, given your background. But how would your colleagues, how would, how would Mike, let's say, describe your, if I asked him, what are Anne's superpowers as an investor? There are a lot of investors out there. What is, what is Anne's superpower or set of superpowers? What would he say?

• 1:59:46Ann Miura-Ko?

  I think for me, the superpowers I have are a few-fold. So one is because of the technical capabilities that I have, when someone is describing particularly anything that has to do with math, and luckily for me, right now, math is having this incredible resurgence in artificial intelligence and in cryptocurrency.

• 2:00:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  I I can get that piece. I can get that piece better than I would say probably ninety nine percent of the investors out there. And so if I get a math paper, that's something that I love to dig into. And that technical insight is something that I think I'm better at than most other investors out there. And then from there, I can also start to piece together what that company will look like around that technology. And so it's not just I'm looking for great R and D projects, but ones that are ripe to be big D and little

• 2:00:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  R. And and I think that's a superpower, especially at the very early stage. So one of the companies that I invested in back in two thousand ten, Ayasty, they've gone over a hundred million dollars in financing at this point. And I found them when they were, they didn't even have a business plan. They had four math papers that they sent to me. And and so to me, that that's something that I I double down on. And it's a it's a part of the types of investments that I like to do. That's very different from, you know, the task grab, it's refinery twenty nine and lift that I've done in the past

• 2:01:37Ann Miura-Ko?

  as well. I think the other superpower that is a little bit less evident is more evident as I'm working with people is I feel like I have a pretty good sixth sense about the people dynamics within an organization. So I can tell when there's actually infighting happening. I can sense when executive is starting to disengage. And those are things that that I work on with a lot of the CEOs that I work with. And then the the last piece that I think I I'm really love to engage in is the fundamental data behind the business.

• 2:02:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  And so I love looking at the cohort analysis and really engaging on data, because that's that's a piece of the puzzle that I feel like I'm also good at encoding, unencoding.

• 2:02:30Tim Ferriss?

  What are you looking for now? And what are thunder lizards? We mentioned hunting thunder lizards earlier, and I promised I would come back to it. So maybe we define that first. And perhaps you could tell us.

• 2:02:45Tim Ferriss?

  What you're looking for at the moment?

• 2:02:49Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, so, so a thunder lizard is inspired by Godzilla. It's a term that Mike, my partner, used to always tell the story, which is that we are inspired by entrepreneurs who are like Godzilla. And so, what is Godzilla like? He's born from radioactive atomic eggs. So the DNA of that entrepreneur is already fundamentally different. And then he swims across the Pacific Ocean and depending on if you're Mike or me, he lands in either the Bay Area or Tokyo and starts to wreak havoc and eats trains and automobiles and buildings.

• 2:03:34Ann Miura-Ko?

  And then proceeds to crush that, that industry and creates disruption and then build something out of that. And, and so, you know, that, that idea of disruption is something that, that I always liked that imagery of like the journey across the Pacific Ocean, born from something fundamentally different and then really starting to turn things over. Um, and so, so when we say, okay, what are we looking for right now in terms of where do we think the new thunder lizards will exist? There's sort of two different areas. It comes back to the math that, that I'm really interested in.

• 2:04:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  One is, I do think that artificial intelligence is about to disrupt a lot of different types of enterprise software. Um, I think that enterprise software still sucks. And if we're going to be able to really transform the way, um,

• 2:04:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  A business is actually operated. We have to take these, the software that just basically records data and spits it back out to you into something that's actually more intelligent, that tells you something that you didn't know, that gives you superpowers. And, and I think that we're going to see more and more of that in the industry. And so as an example, like baseline examples, why do we spend millions of dollars on Oracle or NetSuite when the, the CFO still has to make a budget for next year? Why doesn't that financial planning just automatically, automatically generate itself

• 2:05:19Ann Miura-Ko?

  based on all the history that it knows, plus all the data from the external world? So I think things like that, we're going to start to see happen more and more. I also think, you know, fundamentally, the scientific method may also be dead. Like we list, used to have the scientific method is developed in a time where we didn't have enough data and data was actually the fundamental bottleneck in scientific research. Well, that's just not the case anymore. And so why is it that we form a hypothesis, then look at the data and then come to a conclusion? We should have all of the data, then have a, an analysis of that, that leads us to

• 2:06:02Ann Miura-Ko?

  a hypothesis or a belief system that we fundamentally test further. So I think these massive changes are coming and, and you see it even in, in cryptocurrency. There's also really philosophical, interesting debates happening around, well, you have this massive pull towards centralization, whether it's in AI and ML where you have to have all of that data in one place in order to really train.

• 2:06:29Tim Ferriss?

  ML being machine learning.

• 2:06:30Ann Miura-Ko?

  Machine learning. Or in cloud computing, you're also putting it up into the data, into more data centers.

• 2:06:40Ann Miura-Ko?

  In cryptocurrency, we believe that there's going to be more decentralized software. And so how do you reconcile those two types of systems? I think there's lots of really interesting themes that are just at the start of being discovered. I'm really excited about what's going to happen with autonomous vehicles and the technology that's going to be required to make that a reality. And so all of those areas, I think, are just fascinating. And so it feels like a period of real intellectual abundance

• 2:07:20Ann Miura-Ko?

  and that we're headed into a period of real great creative energy.

• 2:07:26Tim Ferriss?

  End of time where a lot of your philosophical training and reading will be put into practice in the real world, right? Where we have, if you look at the, people can look up the trolley scenario or that is typically thought of as a thought exercise. But if you're programming, not to take us too off on a tangent, but if you're programming for autonomous vehicles and there's some type of act of God, a hailstorm, a huge boulder falls in the middle of the street and the car has to swerve left and hit two school kids or swerve right and hit five geriatrics, how does it make the decision? What is the logic embedded into that machine?

• 2:08:09Tim Ferriss?

  It's, it's really, it takes a lot of these philosophy 101 thought exercises and translates them very directly into the real world with real consequences. It is, it is a fascinating time.

• 2:08:26Ann Miura-Ko?

  And how much, it's also like, how much do you want to know, right? So in deep learning, it's actually very difficult to know what's happened inside of this black box. And, and so there's more of a demand for, let's know what's actually happening this, inside of this black box, especially if lives are at risk or billions of dollars are at risk and we need to be able to audit these, these algorithms. I think there's real, real interest in new technologies now that we can actually audit and know what's going on inside the box. So that, you know, if the, the trolley example happens, we actually know how the machines will make their decisions. And so I think there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of opportunity,

• 2:09:09Ann Miura-Ko?

  but also a lot of thought that needs to go into how we want to regulate all of this.

• 2:09:15Tim Ferriss?

  Tricky, tricky, tricky. Yeah.

• 2:09:18Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's going to be, going to be exciting. Very, very interested to see how all these things coalesce, right? Also, you're looking at these gigantic companies, the Facebooks, Googles, the Fangs, right? That are more and more so converging onto the same territory. To see how that resolves, if it does in some fashion, is also really, really exciting to me. Or how something like Y Combinator, just to do a little bit of inside baseball, can say, "We are interested in this type of company," or "this particular aspect of engineering," or fill in the blank, and kind of steer the attention of thousands or tens of thousands

• 2:10:02Tim Ferriss?

  of would-be entrepreneurs into a particular sector, right? Or type of project is also just really interesting to think about from the ramifications five years down the line, right? But anyway, maybe...

• 2:10:16Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I think we have so many incredible societal problems that need to be solved, and I believe that the private sector is most capable of solving these problems, right? Whether it's energy, or health, or, you know, the fact that we have so much trash, how do we solve that? How do we get clean water to people? It's not just about the next social network, and how do we deliver better advertising to people, but, you know, the beauty of, of this type of entrepreneurship is that there

• 2:10:55Ann Miura-Ko?

  are huge societal problems that still need to be solved, that I think, you know, is a really exciting opportunity also to build great businesses around. And so I think that's, that's also what gets me up in the morning, and makes me believe that, that what we're doing is important work.

• 2:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it is important work. I don't think that sort of collective interest and self-interest have to be misaligned, right? They're not mutually exclusive. You can solve, and there's a long history of solving public problems with private sector technologies and companies. And let me just ask, I know we've gone a little bit longer than expected, which I should have expected. Let me ask you just a few more questions, and then we'll wrap up with where people can find you and learn more about what you're up to. Besides getting to yes, are there any books that you've given a lot as gifts or reread a lot yourself?

• 2:12:04Ann Miura-Ko?

  Oh, gosh. For me, you know, right now, there is, there's a couple of books that I think are, are super interesting. So my mentor, Ted Dintner Smith, just wrote a book called What School Could Be. And this goes back to sort of education as a critical societal question. How do we fix education? And what he did was he went on a 50-state tour to look at schools and discover that the answers are actually already there. And our incredible

• 2:12:46Ann Miura-Ko?

  school teachers throughout our country are already finding solutions to teaching our kids the most important skills they need to have. And I think reading that book has not only given me hope, but also a desire to see real change in the public school education system. But I think that's a really important problem for all of us to actually engage in. And so that's one book that I would really push on to other people.

• 2:13:15Ann Miura-Ko?

  The other one that is completely on the opposite end of the spectrum, but it is a fiction book. It is by Khalid Hosseini, who also wrote Kite Runner. He wrote this book called A Thousand Splendid Suns. And probably one of the most beautiful books that I've read in a long time in terms of fiction writing. And I would encourage people to read it because it gives you a sense of Afghanistan's incredible history and the role women have played within that history. And I just loved that book because it just was eye-opening to me in a very different way. So two very different types of books, none of them like straightforward business books,

• 2:14:00Ann Miura-Ko?

  but ones that I think are meaningful for our society to read today.

• 2:14:04Tim Ferriss?

  What school could be in 1,000 splendid sons?

• 2:14:07Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:08Tim Ferriss?

  Is there any purchase of $100 or less? It's kind of arbitrary, right? But just not a Bugatti or something that has most positively impacted your life or positively impacted your life in recent memory?

• 2:14:21Ann Miura-Ko?

  $100 or less?

• 2:14:27Tim Ferriss?

  Nah, it could be. I mean, look, if it's like a foldable kayak that you got for 400, that's fine, too. But it could be, could be anything. Could be $2, could be free, could be any recent addition to your life.

• 2:14:38Ann Miura-Ko?

  Oh, my gosh. So it's actually a foldable chair. So I go to my daughter's soccer tournaments a lot, and there's this incredible foldable chair. I don't know what it's called. You can get it on Amazon, but it has this flip-over sunshade that goes over your head. And for any parent who has been at a swim tournament or anything, this is life-changing because oftentimes I'm just baking in the hot sun, and you can be anywhere and you have your own personal tent that like folds over your head. It's been, it's like saved me on multiple weekends. My husband bought two of them. I love it.

• 2:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Can you send me a link to that? And I'll put it in the show notes if, if you can track it down. So for people wondering, I'll put that in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast, and you can, you can find this miraculous foldable chair.

• 2:15:36Tim Ferriss?

  If you could have a giant billboard, anywhere with anything on it, so metaphorically speaking, getting a word, a quote, a message, a question, anything out to millions or billions of people, can't be an advertisement, what might you put on that billboard?

• 2:15:53Ann Miura-Ko?

  Wow, hmm, I wonder if it's like, not losing does not equal winning, sort of one of my, one of my themes these days.

• 2:16:04Tim Ferriss?

  I like that, yeah.

• 2:16:07Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I think actually, finding your world-class life is probably the other one that I would think about.

• 2:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  We'll give you two.

• 2:16:17Ann Miura-Ko?

  Find your work world-class life. And I think the reason for that is, to me, everyone is capable of that, and I think oftentimes we forget it. And, uh, and for every person, it's different. That's the beauty of humanity, so.

• 2:16:34Tim Ferriss?

  What do the characters for "neko" mean?

• 2:16:40Ann Miura-Ko?

  Oh, my gosh. So it means it's a small, round bell. And the reason for my parents naming me that was, they were originally gonna name me something more like, you know, really beautiful child, or, you know, genius child. And my mom, my mom took one look at me when I was born, and she's like, no, none of those. She said, "Your face was so perfectly round when you were born, it reminded me of this like, perfectly round bell."

• 2:17:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  And I'm like, Mom, like, all these other friends that I have, especially Chinese friends, that are like, super intelligent, like, world-class dominating dictator-for-life CEO child, you know? And I'm like, small bell child.

• 2:17:37Tim Ferriss?

  Lee Ko Chang. And where can people find you online, say hello, learn more about what you are up to?

• 2:17:48Ann Miura-Ko?

  I think professionally, the best place is to see my Twitter, which is Animaniac.

• 2:17:55Tim Ferriss?

  A N N.

• 2:17:57Ann Miura-Ko?

  I M A N I A C. Or on Instagram, it's A M I U R A. You'll see more of my life there.

• 2:18:08Tim Ferriss?

  A Miura.

• 2:18:10Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yes.

• 2:18:11Tim Ferriss?

  Three Bays? Is that what that means? Miura? Something like that, maybe.

• 2:18:15Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:16Tim Ferriss?

  Twitter, Twitter Animaniac, Instagram, A Miura, M I U R A. And best website?

• 2:18:26Ann Miura-Ko?

  Floodgate. It's floodgate.com.

• 2:18:30Tim Ferriss?

  Floodgate.com. Why Floodgate? What is a Floodgate? Or why, why is it called Floodgate? Yeah.

• 2:18:37Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah, because we think we're at the forefront of like the, the headwaters of, of innovation. And so, and, and, and it sounded, I don't know, kind of big and audacious.

• 2:18:54Tim Ferriss?

  Good enough reason.

• 2:18:57Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, audacious, audacious. Yes. Uh, audacious, aggressive, but still the mother of dragons. There is a nurturing mother like.

• 2:19:08Ann Miura-Ko?

  There is.

• 2:19:09Tim Ferriss?

  Den mother quality to Anne Miura.

• 2:19:12Ann Miura-Ko?

  I call myself like a mama bear, you know, I'll, I'm very protective, but also I'm going to push my kids and people around me to be the best they can be.

• 2:19:22Tim Ferriss?

  Just don't get, don't get in between the, the mother and the cub. Good guideline. And I will say for anybody who's wondering, what would it be like to just go sort of mano a mano with Anne? I would say, you know, you're one of the few people, I would put Sam Harris in this category where if you, if you are willing to engage in like a, a public debate with either. Review, you just have to make sure that you have practiced defending against having your face ripped off in like the most logical complimentary way possible. I'm just very impressed by you, Anne, and I've really wanted to have you on the show for a long time.

• 2:20:03Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm thrilled that you were willing to carve out a few hours to spend chatting and it's always fun chatting. We still have

• 2:20:12Ann Miura-Ko?

  It's always fun. Tim, you've been there from the very get go. You were you were the person behind my very first investment in TaskRabbit. So I have a lot to thank you for as well.

• 2:20:23Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the adventure shall continue and I will certainly I'm not as involved as I used to be in the tech scene, but I'll be cheering from the sidelines. Is there anything else that you'd like to say or suggest or mention any parting words before we wrap up?

• 2:20:41Ann Miura-Ko?

  Now, I hope that your audience enjoyed this and if they got anything out of it that they, if they want to contact me, I'm always open to more conversations. And I hope that some of my story shows that even if people tell you can't do something that you can.

• 2:21:02Tim Ferriss?

  Can indeed. Just got to spend the summer reading up on those 12 topics.

• 2:21:07Ann Miura-Ko?

  That's right.

• 2:21:07Tim Ferriss?

  You can't always out talent everyone, but if you out prepare them, you might as well have out talented them.

• 2:21:14Ann Miura-Ko?

  Maybe the billboard sign is effort matters.

• 2:21:17Tim Ferriss?

  Effort matters.

• 2:21:18Ann Miura-Ko?

  It really does.

• 2:21:18Tim Ferriss?

  It does. Well, Anne, thank you so much again. This is, this has been such a treat and a gift. And I look forward to hearing what people have to say on the on the interwebs and perhaps we'll do a round two in person. During during one of what was the name of the, was it the Tim Ferriss Wine Hour? What was?

• 2:21:42Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:45Ann Miura-Ko?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:46Tim Ferriss?

  At the offices.

• 2:21:48Ann Miura-Ko?

  They call it Ferris time. That's what Mike calls it. Ferris time.

• 2:21:53Tim Ferriss?

  Which was the, yeah, the little, little wine, a pair of teeth to smooth out the edges that we could describe that.

• 2:22:00Ann Miura-Ko?

  He just grabs, he just grabs a glass. He's like, I think it's Ferris hour.

• 2:22:06Tim Ferriss?

  I'll take it. I will take it. And, and I will talk to you soon. See you soon, I hope. And to everybody listening, you can find links to everything we discussed, the books, the fold-out chair, and much more, getting to yes and so on, in the show notes, as you can with all episodes at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before

• 2:22:50Tim Ferriss?

  the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email,

• 2:23:31Tim Ferriss?

  and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 80,000 hours. You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. They add up and are one of your biggest opportunities, if not the biggest opportunity, to make a positive impact on the world. In other words, you want to make the best use of your 80,000 hours. Until we wrap up this show called Life, where should you start? Where should you focus? It can be really hard, and quite frankly, pretty stressful, to try and figure out. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical advice I've seen and heard come from

• 2:24:15Tim Ferriss?

  80,000 Hours, a nonprofit co-founded by Will McCaskill, an Oxford philosopher and a popular past guest on this podcast. Will is perhaps best known as being the co-founder of the effective altruism movement, which has gained a lot of steam and a lot of popular coverage in the last handful of years. 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help you find a career or path for tackling one of the world's most pressing problems. If you're looking to make a big change to your direction, mid-career, say, address pressing global problems for your current job, or if you're just starting out, or maybe starting a new chapter and not sure which path to pursue, 80,000 Hours can help. Join their

• 2:24:58Tim Ferriss?

  free newsletter and they'll send you an in-depth guide that will help you identify which global problems are most pressing, where you can have the biggest impact personally, and it will also help you get new ideas for high-impact careers or directions that help tackle these issues. They also have a job board with 800-plus opportunities to work on these problems and offer one-on-one advice to help you switch paths, if that's what you choose to do. And you can check out their excellent 80,000 Hours podcast, which has in-depth conversations with experts about how to best tackle pressing global problems. And really try to find that needle in the haystack. There's so many things to choose from. How do you pick the right high-leverage problem for you to focus on helping solve? My team has raved, for instance,

• 2:25:41Tim Ferriss?

  about the interview with Ezra Klein. That's number 94. And you can subscribe wherever you find your podcasts. That's the 80,000 Hours podcast. If you join the newsletter now as an extra bonus, they'll mail you, yes, physically mail you, a free book about impactful careers, such as Will MacAskill's Doing Good Better. You can sign up at 80,000hours.org/tim. That's eight zero zero zero zero hours, H-O-U-R-S dot org slash tim. Check it out. I really encourage you to check out this site, even if you have no plans to change your career, if you're just curious about picking high-leverage targets in life to improve the world. So I will also say it one more time because no

• 2:26:25Tim Ferriss?

  Their nonprofit and everything they provide is free. That takes a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of dedication and a lot of people, a lot of hours on their part. Podcast, the newsletter, even their one-on-one advice, all free. So check it out. Eighty thousand hours.org slash Tim. Eighty thousand hours.org slash Tim. Take a look.

• 2:26:48Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by GiveWell. I love these guys. Donating money to help other people is wonderful, but how can you be confident that your donations are actually doing things? Are they improving or saving lives effectively? It can be really hard to parse. You could do weeks of research to find the charities that are out there, what programs they run, what their admin overhead is, how effective, blah, blah, blah, on and on. It can take forever. I know from experience, doing the research is really hard. Or you could simply visit give well.org for a short vetted list of the charities they've found to be best per dollar in donations at saving or improving lives. GiveWell spends more than 20,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations and only recommends a few of the highest impact, evidence-backed charities they've found.

• 2:27:31Tim Ferriss?

  They do all of this without any sign-up fees and without taking a cut of your tax-deductible donation. GiveWell wants to empower as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about their donations, so GiveWell is free. I've recommended give well.org for a while now and donations from listeners of this podcast, that's you guys, amount now to roughly 483,399.27, so close to $500,000, which is incredible. So first and foremost, thanks to everyone who has donated. In total, more than 50,000 people have used GiveWell to donate as effectively as possible. And rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save tens of thousands of lives and improve the lives of millions more.

• 2:28:12Tim Ferriss?

  So go right now to give well.org and when you make your first donation, your gift will be matched up to $250. This matching offer is good for as long as the funds last, so it's time-sensitive and is a great opportunity to multiply your impact, which is something I always look for. How can I get the maximum multiplicative effect out of my dollars that I give? To participate, just go to givewell.org and when you get to checkout, pick Podcast and enter Tim Ferriss Show. It's that simple. So one more time, get your first donation matched to $250 at givewell.org. Be sure to select Podcast and Tim Ferriss Show at checkout.