PubMatic $PUBM CEO Rajeev Goel - hidden infrastructure of digital advertising

Rajeev Goel is the co-founder and CEO of PubMatic (NASDAQ: PUBM), a sell-side advertising platform that processes over 780 billion ad impressions daily. In this episode of World of DaaS, Rajeev and Auren discuss: Building private cloud infrastructure for ad techProcessing 780 billion daily ad impressionsThe rise of retail media networksPolitical advertising in Connected TV Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, a...

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

• 0:02Auren Hoffman?

  Hello, fellow data nerds. Welcome to World of DAS. I'm your host, Orin Hoffman, CEO of Incubate and GP of Flex Capital. Discover more episodes, get weekly data as a service news, original content, articles on data and more at worldofdaas.com. That's worldofdaas.com. Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Rajeev Goyal. Rajeev is the co-founder and CEO of Pubmatic. Pubmatic is an independent technology company that helps advertisers monetize their content. Sometimes they call them an SSP. Pubmatic processes 680 billion ads every single day and they trade under PUBM on NASDAQ. And Rajeev and I have been longtime friends. So Rajeev,

• 0:47Auren Hoffman?

  welcome to World of DAS.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Thanks, Orin. Great to be with you. And actually, I got breaking news. It's 780 billion ads a day. So we've grown a little bit since.

• 0:54Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, my God. 780 billion. That's a lot. That's a lot of ads every day.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  It's a lot of ads. It generates a lot of data. So we'll get into that.

• 1:01Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of like data, like what is some of like the non-obvious data that somebody who's listening to this, maybe is a lot deep in ad tech, wouldn't be like, oh, wow, that's really interesting.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So I mean, there's obviously consumer data, right? So data about the consumer that's looking at content. There's data about the website or the app or the streaming show that they're looking at. And then there's a lot of advertiser data, right? So we collect sometimes 10, 15, 20 different advertiser bids for each ad, right? And so we can see who bid, who won the auction.

• 1:36Auren Hoffman?

  Because you're representing the ad seller, which is usually the publisher. And there's usually another company that's representing the ad buyer. And so you know the buyer's names when the bids come in?

• 1:48Speaker 01

  You're exactly right. So we represent the content creator. And really, our purpose in life is to help content creators. Generate more revenue so they can reinvest back into content creation. Right. And over a lifetime, we've generated billions of dollars for our content creator publisher customers. These are some of the largest publishers in the world. And so, correct, we run that auction on behalf of the seller. We collect these advertiser bids. And so we can see who's the advertiser, what price point they're bidding at. We can see who lost an auction. We can give them guidance on how they should bid better next time in order to win. So there's all of this data about the consumer, but also the content and the entire ad generation ad running process.

• 2:29Auren Hoffman?

  And so you actually see if you have like 20 bids coming in, you'll see like one bid came in from Procter and Gamble. Another bid came in from Colgate, another bid came in from General Motors, and you actually know the name of the advertisers?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  That's correct. Yes. So we can see all of that. We can see what kind of brand, you know, in the case of a Procter and Gamble, right? They've got many brands under that.

• 2:46Auren Hoffman?

  Okay, so it's coming in from Crest, not even just Procter and Gamble.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Correct. Yeah, that's exactly right. We can see the price point that they're bidding. You're right.

• 2:53Auren Hoffman?

  Okay. And then you're processing 680 billion ads a day, which I actually didn't even realize. So like, because how's it work? Because like even at a dollar CPM, that means you would be processing like 780 million dollars a day.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, which we're not, right? And by the way, with that 780 billion ad impressions through that auction that I just described, our platform generates 15 petabytes of data on a daily basis. So that's petabyte with a P as in Peter. So this is a lot of data, right? And we'll get into that, right, that we need to process. But the win rate is not 100%. So that's the answer mathematically to your question.

• 3:32Auren Hoffman?

  So a lot of ads go unsold?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Some ads will go unsold. Let's say the publisher has a price floor and they say, hey, I don't want to accept anything less than eight bucks. So it might go unsold. You know, if you watch TV, you see house ads, right? Sometimes, right? You see they're advertising a show or you get like on YouTube TV, you get a moment of zen where it's just, you know, I don't know, an apple pie baking or something like that. So that happens. And then also. There are oftentimes multiple sell-side platforms that are working on the same ad impression. So a publisher might work with us, they might work with our competitors. Google, for instance, is a large player in the ecosystem. And so we may bring back the winning bid, but we may not bring back the winning bid. So that fill rate is key.

• 4:12Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, so a publisher might be working with multiple providers at the same time to help them optimize something?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's why our infrastructure efficiency is so important, because we need to process all of these ad impressions, but we may not monetize all of them until we need to make sure that our infrastructure is as low cost as possible, which I know we'll get into.

• 4:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Infrastructure is interesting. Like, whereas like, most companies, their stuff is all on like AWS, or GCP, or Azure, or something like that. Even have like your own metal, right?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So what we did, when we started PubMatic in 2006, the whole hyperscaler ecosystem didn't exist, right? It's about the same time that AWS launched. And obviously, they were years ahead of everybody else. So this whole space was nascent.

• 5:00Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. And you and I started our companies, like, I remember, we started like, LiveRamp in that time. And like, we actually had our own metal, too. Like, this is like, pre-AWS back then. I remember like, going to like, rack our servers.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So we think it's a huge differentiator. We own the networking equipment. We own tens of thousands of servers. And then, of course, we own the software. And this is running in 12 data centers around the world, because programmatic ad transactions, they're very specific and very high performance. So you've got about 150 milliseconds to show the ad to the user. And if the user's coming from, let's say, Tokyo versus San Francisco versus London, I need to actually process the ads close to the user, right? If you just do the math on speed of light, and moving data back and forth, you can't do it all in one location. So you've got to be close to the user. There's all of that data that I mentioned, the 15 petabytes. And so you couldn't do that in the public cloud. You still can't do it very well today. It's either very hard to do, or it's very expensive,

• 5:56Speaker 01

  right? So I think your listeners will know that if you try to move data out of your cloud provider, they charge you a massive fee, right? And, you know, it's always coming down and changing and whatnot. But when you're generating 15 petabytes of data, and you want to be able to analyze it and provide up-to-the-minute reporting to your customers, you would need to collect all of that data in one location. And so we built our own private cloud. People thought we were crazy. But I think what's interesting is that more and more people are moving out of the public cloud. If you look at the stock market performance of private cloud infra providers like Equinix or Iron Mountain or Digital Realty, you can see that they're growing fast. And I think it has to do with control and cost.

• 6:35Auren Hoffman?

  Because it's much more of a fixed cost when you have a private cloud. And so for some people, fixed cost is a problem because they have a lot of variable nature and stuff like that, or they might be really big in December and really low in May. And so it doesn't make sense to have a fixed cost that's out there. But obviously, a fixed cost, if you're utilizing it at 80, 90%, is going to be much cheaper.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's probably the sweet spot, actually, for most companies. Once they reach a certain level of scale is have fixed cost infrastructure that you own that does the vast majority of your work.

• 7:09Auren Hoffman?

  And then have the variable for the rest. Yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Because remember, the hyperscalers, they're making 30 to 40% margins, right?

• 7:16Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. It's amazing to me how big their margins are. Like, every time they publish it, I'm like, wow, why am I on this thing? Like, I would like their margins to be like 10% or something.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  It's exactly right. So, once you get to a certain scale, then your fixed cost starts to amortize, right? You need a network operating center, you need a team of infra engineers and whatnot. But you don't need to keep adding to that linearly as you scale up, right? And so you can get a huge amount of leverage. I mean, the other thing is these public hyperscalers, I mean, they are working on like a three to four-year capex kind of cycle, right? But we found that actually, you can let hardware run five, six, seven, eight years.

• 7:51Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. And if it dies, it dies, like, whatever.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  It dies, it dies. Yeah, exactly. So you build in an extra 2% of capacity because some stuff's going to be dying all the time, and it works great.

• 8:02Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, interesting. Are people like calling you up, like other CEOs and other types of, like, calling them, like, hey, I want to do this? Because I mentioned, like, if you did it from the beginning, like you did, and you kind of had to, you had no choice back then because there was no cloud. It's one thing, but if you're like moving to that, it could be a huge monumental shift.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the biggest thing is it's a mindset shift. And part of that is, I think the hyperscalers are the ones that put out case studies all the time. There isn't case studies the other way, right? Which is like, hey, I went to private cloud and like, look at the benefits, right? Like, I'm not putting out that case study. So yeah, we do get that question a lot and we're happy to talk to folks. I think the other mindset shift that you have to have is you need to continuously be looking at, how do you optimize your infrastructure? So we have engineering teams that are looking to see, okay, which database queries are consuming the most amount of processing time? What applications or processes are consuming the most amount of memory? And we just look at that, you know, you just stack rank and say, okay, what are the 10 biggest memory hogs? And then you figure out, well, how can I rewrite that application or that component and reduce it?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I think when you're in public cloud, you have less of a need to do that because somebody will say, hey, we need more compute and you'll say yes. And like, you're on that treadmill.

• 9:14Auren Hoffman?

  When I remember when we're running our own metal, the types of people we hired were very different. Like the DevOps people we hired, they were like very super crazily organized. And I remember the guy who was like running our team, he almost had like a military. He could have been like the general of like our army or something. He was like amazing at just like, because everything had to be like, okay, tightly. I remember moving from one data center to another and everything had to be like very, very tightly controlled and tightly organized. And it was very different than the traditional quote unquote DevOps person who we have at our company now, who's like on AWS.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. I mean, I think the reality is when you have your own infrastructure, there's a limiter, which is to deploy new hardware, it can take three to six months. Right? And so that creates, I think, a great paradigm.

• 10:05Auren Hoffman?

  And you have to think.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is then if an engineer is like, hey, I want to do X, but I'm out of resources. You say, okay, well, I can buy you more, it'll be ready in six months. Or you can figure out how to make something else more efficient. And then you can use that freed up capacity. And so then you get really good at like, oh, hey, that guy's application is not very efficient. Let me help him fix it. And now I can take over that freed up capacity. And I think that's a good mindset to have as a company around efficiency.

• 10:32Auren Hoffman?

  Do you have a sense of like, if you just think of like the average company out there? Are they at like 90% efficiency or they at 10% efficiency? There seems like there's always a lot to be squeezed out of all these things.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I mean, we have over a decade now, every year we get 10 to 20% more efficient on our infrastructure. And we have a relentless focus on this because it's like it's our

• 10:55Auren Hoffman?

  Every year, you're 10 to 20%.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Every year. So if you look at our investor materials, there's a chart that basically shows the cost of processing ad impressions for us. And there's just this big downward line as we've brought it down, you know, that compounding is obviously very powerful. So I would wager that there's 50% gains to be had inside of many companies from an efficiency perspective.

• 11:18Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I had three different companies in the last year where they were trying to cut costs and one, they're just trying to like even in their channel, like reduce, let's say their AWS bill, maybe their AWS bill was X hundred thousand dollars a month. And in all the cases, they were able to reduce it by like half. So they really tried to focus on it. And then one of the scenarios, like they had a problem because they had signed up for, let's say, a $4 million cost for AWS. And then they're like, okay, what do we do? We like partner with another company and put the costs together? It's like, yeah, et cetera.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  I think a lot of companies never thought about this until interest rates spiked after COVID, right? Because we were in, especially a Silicon Valley type of company.

• 12:01Auren Hoffman?

  Free money, yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're in this free money era and it was like growth at all costs. And so it was not seen as cool to put engineering resources on efficiency optimization. And that obviously has changed quite a bit. And so I think that's good. And we've seen the growth rates in the hyperscalers come down. But now, of course, they're going back up due to AI and other use cases.

• 12:20Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Now you're in an interesting position because you see both sides of the digital advertising market. And there's been many things talking about these publishers and how hard it is to be a publisher. So like, what do you think a publisher is most worried about right now? What are the big opportunities there?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think a very significant challenge for publishers today, a couple of them. One is, how is generative AI going to affect their traffic? Right? So obviously, a lot of publishers get traffic. From search engines like Google.

• 12:50Auren Hoffman?

  Cause if you just want an answer, you just get the answer.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. And if you think about your own Google experience over the years, right? I mean, Google was new, right? I remember when Google first put ads on search results and it was controversial, right? Like, and they had to shade them in yellow and all that stuff, right? This is like well over a decade ago. But it used to be that Google would always send you to the website. Then you started to do like weather or sports scores and it would just give you the answer. Now with Gen AI, it's keeping you inside of that ecosystem even more. So that's concern number one is just, hey, like, what's going to happen with my traffic? And the volume of users. Number two, I think is as third party cookies go away. What's the state of the relationship, the depth of the relationship? That the publisher has with the consumer? And will the consumer share some piece of identity like an email address or a cell phone number?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Right? So is there that deep of a relationship between the consumer and the publisher?

• 13:44Auren Hoffman?

  And if you're just going to publisher from a search result, probably not. Like you may have never heard that, but if you have like a deep relationship with that publisher, I'm always going to ESP add because I have this deep relationship with them. Then yeah, sure, I'll provide that information.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And that data is really important in terms of driving monetization of the traffic. Right? So what we see is that when the user's identity is known versus a third party cookie, the monetization is three X higher. And when there's a cookie versus no cookie and cookie is anonymous, third party cookie is anonymous. So we know it's this device, but we don't know that it's Orin or Reju. But when you have that versus no cookie, it's another three X in terms of monetization.

• 14:22Auren Hoffman?

  Those are just like, they have to get more modern because there are certain, if you go to like a publisher, like a Google or a Facebook or LinkedIn or something like that, you'll always be logged in. They're more modern, always be, but it's like, every time I go to United Airlines, like I have to like re-log in or something like it doesn't. So they have to get themselves a little bit more modern, even though I have a relationship with United Airlines.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think we could talk about commerce media. I think that's a really high growth, interesting opportunity as a CTV. But you're exactly right that I think publishers need to evolve their user experience to give the user a reason to engage and create that login, right? So you probably have seen a lot of publishers in the last couple of years. They've put up registration walls. So it's like, hey, you only get two or three free articles a month until you log in, even if you're not paying. You think about gaming, gaming is a big sector online. Casual games, I think, are at risk because you don't log in for a casual game. So more and more games are moving to things like, hey, we remember states, right? That's a reason to log in, points, coins, you know, you unlock the sword, you know, something like that, because they want to incentivize you to build that relationship.

• 15:28Auren Hoffman?

  It is annoying to have to like re-log in to everything. And there's been this talk, like, there'll be this network of publishers and you kind of log into one and you can get access or you can pay for somewhere and you can get access. But it just doesn't seem like that's come together. It doesn't seem like the ESPN and whatever, like, the New York Times have come together so I can like have one type of login or something like that. Do you think that will ever happen? Or do you think these are just like pipe fantasies that people have been talking about for the last 20 years?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems today like it's more like a pipe fantasy, I would say. I don't want to say it'll never happen, but I think you're exactly right that that whole user experience is kind of ripe for redefinition. But we've seen over and over again that when a bunch of people have to work together and create and implement a common standard, like, it's just really, really hard to do.

• 16:18Auren Hoffman?

  And by the way, like, the more they don't work together, the better it is for, like, the big guys, like the Googles of the world, right?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yeah, right, exactly. So the Googles of the world or the other big metas and whatnot, they benefit, right? Because they're like, hey, we're scale and we're simple all at the same time. And so, of course, some of these guys own big browsers. So in your response, there, Warren, is the question of, like, are they incented in the browser to make this simple for the user or not, right? So I'll let you decide on that, but I think that's an important question.

• 16:46Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, in some ways, you could be in that position because, like, you'll be on, like, many, many different publishers. You could have, like, a common login there in some sort of way that you work together and you share, but it's just too hard to coordinate all these guys?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  It's really hard to coordinate. And then you get into every country now, states have different privacy regulations, states in the US, right? So you got GDPR in Europe, Australia has their own set of rules. So you've got to abide by all of those rules. If you're the software provider that's doing this and you have some issue in your software, then you're a target for regulators. So there's a lot of reasons why it's difficult, let's say as an investment opportunity, although I agree with you that it would be great from a consumer perspective to be able to have such a simple standard in place.

• 17:33Auren Hoffman?

  Now, in the US in 2024, there was, obviously, we had this election and there's a lot of political advertising that happened. How did that distort the advertising market? How did that affect the advertising market? And what'd you learn from that event?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was huge compared to 2020, right? I mean, every presidential election, the ad spend amount goes up.

• 17:55Auren Hoffman?

  And also, like, the linear TV actually went down. So the money moved from linear TV, finally, it's finally like reducing in the political world to like CTV, I presume, right? Like, those dollars just went almost like one for one over to CTV.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So more and more election spend, more and more digital, because that's where consumers are. And in this election cycle, it was a lot less linear and a lot more streaming or CTV. In fact, what we saw is that on our platform, the vast majority of political ad budgets were spent via streaming, CTV. And part of that is, we built some new technology. So we created a generative AI tool to classify ads more precisely. So oftentimes, large publishers, they don't accept political advertising because they're worried about issues that are controversial, let's say abortion or certain candidates that will alienate part of their user base. Now, a tax policy bill or something like that,

• 18:52Speaker 01

  a local regulation may be fine, right? Less controversial. But gun rights, abortions, those things can upset people. And so we built a generative AI tool that would trap every political ad that's coming in.

• 19:04Auren Hoffman?

  So some of these guys, like me, who had a blanket, no political ads, and they say, "Actually, we're okay with like 50% of the political ads. It's just the other 50% we don't want." And then you'll help classify, so at least they can get the revenues from the 50%.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we could classify, what was the ad about? And from a political perspective, is it a candidate ad? Okay, is it a federal candidate? Is it a local candidate? Is it a negative sentiment or a positive sentiment, right? Some publishers would say, "Hey, as long as it's a positive sentiment, it's about..." What this candidate can do versus about why that candidate over there is bad.

• 19:35Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, interesting because the negative ad, people might be mad about them putting like a falsehood or something like that or whatever.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's a negative sentiment, right? So it opened up a lot of incremental revenue, actually over 250 new publishers and streamers opened up inventory for political advertising on our platform as a result. And so we saw great results.

• 19:55Auren Hoffman?

  And then there's just a dial that they could put like, oh, okay, this dial or this dial. And then based on that dial, you run the ads there?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So we would classify everything. And then there's these kind of sentiment dials. And they could say, okay, these types of issues I'm okay with. These ones I'm not. Trump, yes. Trump, no. Kamala Harris, yes. Kamala Harris, no. Whatever your preference is.

• 20:14Auren Hoffman?

  I assume if they allow Harris to have to allow Trump or vice versa, right? Or no?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Well, I won't call them out, but you get some publishers that are on the left side of the political spectrum and some that are on the right. And so they may not want opposing advertising views.

• 20:26Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, but then like, why would you want it if you're the opposite candidate to put it there or something?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Well, you're exactly right, but what we also see with political ads is the spend comes so quickly and the volume is so high that it basically crowds out other types of advertisers. So there's a lot of other.

• 20:42Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, as soon as CPMs around like October 1st or just spike in CTV. It's like, it doesn't make sense for any other advertiser to advertise at that point. You might as well wait or do it before that, right? I don't know if that's correct.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  No, I would say there's kind of two types of other advertisers besides the political. One is take like an insurance company, right? They don't need to advertise in Q4. It's not holiday specific. So they will actually pull back on budget in this environment. And then you have others that are, hey, they're doing 50, 60% of their revenue in Q4, right? It's the holidays, so they need to be there.

• 21:15Auren Hoffman?

  Right, because the Q4 ad rates are already heavier than normal. They're already spiky and now you have the election. So someone who's doing like conquesting for new customers for Christmas, like their tax, I assume are going to have to go up because of all that like extra spend that came in, or maybe they move out of CTV into typical banner or in-feed ads or something where the candidates aren't in.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  You know, you look for the opportunities, but some of it is, hey, you're just going to pay more. And so that's there. You got to compete. And I think the political guys are a bit unique in that. They're highly incented not to leave any money in the bank.

• 21:49Auren Hoffman?

  Right, yeah, of course.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  I remember when I was a marketer, it's like if you don't bring back the leads and you have marketing budget left, like you failed, right? So you better spend it and then hit your revenue targets. So it's a tricky one, but I think every brand kind of decides for themselves, like how do they want to play that? I think one positive was there was an expectation that the election outcome would not be known as quickly as it was known. And so I think some advertisers were planning to hold back even through November, just given the expectation of the climate, and that didn't play out, which was good.

• 22:20Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, interesting. Now, in 2025 will be a very low year for, at least in the US, for political advertising. I assume political advertising is not even that big outside the US. So it'd be a very low year for political advertising. Does that like just bring the market back to normal? Or does that like depress the market in some sort of way?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I don't think it depresses it. I mean, it kind of brings it back to normal. Obviously, there's local elections and state and things like that. So they're a fraction of the volume of the presidential cycle. So there'll be some money there, but it'll be a lot less.

• 22:51Auren Hoffman?

  It's an odd year anyways, it's just not that many. Or you have like the governor's race in like New Jersey and Virginia in 2025 and maybe like the New York City mayor's race. You just don't have a lot of big races.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And with respect to other countries around the world, every country has their own regulations, right? So some ban political advertising outright, others are more permissive. US is probably not unique, but it's on the more open side of things, right? Where unlimited money can kind of come in, unlimited money can be used. You know, there's some guardrails, but there's not a lot of guardrails around political advertising. So you see a lot of it here in the US.

• 23:28Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. And then is there anything else like we learned from this kind of like interesting spike? Whether it's like on, we learned about the CTV systems or anything else that came out of that?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think live events is a growing opportunity around CTV.

• 23:43Auren Hoffman?

  So it's like the Tyson fight?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. Tyson fight's a good example. We powered ads for the cricket, the TC20 Cricket World Cup. That was over the summer. So we partnered with Disney Hotstar on that out of India. So these live events are really tough because you get this surge in traffic. Typically, it's very hard for a publisher, whoever's got the rights to that event, to forecast accurately in advance, right? Like, how many users are there going to be? That comes. So if you're trying to sell that upfront, let's say you're expecting 30 million consumers, you might get 50 million, you might get 20. So you're only going to sell 10 or 20 upfront. In that moment, the spike happens within seconds, let's say, when the game starts, or it's going into overtime. Then you need to have systems in place. And

• 24:27Speaker 01

  sometimes those things can flag the traffic as fraudulent, right? They'll say, hey, all of a sudden, I'm getting these concurrent requests for ads that are numbering in the millions or hundreds of millions. Like, it must be fraud, so I'm going to shut it down. So there's a lot of plumbing, a lot of infrastructure work that has to happen. And so we're very much at the forefront of driving that.

• 24:46Auren Hoffman?

  It's interesting, because like, to me, I watched, like, Tyson Fight, and there weren't a lot of, like, interstitial CTV ads that happened, but there were a lot of, like, ads that were within the frame. Like, there was this big experience ad essentially on the ropes and stuff. And you can imagine in the scenarios where, whenever you watch, like, a soccer, most places call football, there might be no ads during the whole thing, but they have the ads around the thing you're constantly seeing. And I think we'll see more of that, where those get a little bit more programmatic, and you and I might see different ads.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yes. That would be very logical, right? I think the idea of everybody in the stadium and on TV sees the same ad that's around the outside of the field, like, makes zero sense, right?

• 25:32Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, obviously, in the stadium, it'd be hard to change it if you're in the stadium, but everybody watching it on their CTV platform, whatever it is, Netflix, or whatever the platform is, you should watch it, you should see an ad that's more relevant to you.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, oftentimes, if you're watching, like, an English Premier League match on TV here in the US, I mean, you're getting a British brand.

• 25:51Auren Hoffman?

  I see ads for things I've never even heard of, and I can't even buy, right?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  That you can't even buy.

• 25:55Auren Hoffman?

  It's like life insurance in the UK. I can't even buy that. Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it makes no sense, right? So I think that speaks to some of the challenges in digital advertising more broadly, which is fragmentation of media. And I think this really surged in the pandemic, which is, everybody went home, they bought more devices, right? Phones, laptops, computers. Those numbers were off the charts. And then streaming has exploded and so everybody is watching their content on their own terms and sporting events, shows, et cetera, that used to be a British show are now available around the world, right? Or US shows or Mexican, Latin American content is available. So people are watching whatever they want to watch, however they want to watch it on, whatever device they want to watch it on. And so from an advertiser perspective, if

• 26:40Speaker 01

  you compare that to a couple of decades ago, I mean, broadcast TV had 80% market share in its heyday, right? Something like that. Today, the largest is YouTube and YouTube is 10% of all TV viewing in the US. So it just shows you, right? Like how much fragmentation has happened. And so for an advertiser, it's a lot more opportunity, but a lot more challenge in terms of how do they get the right ad in front of the right consumer?

• 27:04Auren Hoffman?

  There's also been the surge of podcasts. In podcasts, it's almost old school where the ad is the same to everybody. It's like a sponsored ad based on like the reach of the program, like on Joe Rogan or Lex Friedman, like every single listener hears the exact same ad, which is like, almost like it was in like the 1980s and 1990s. It's kind of like going back to that. Could we see the podcast world evolve?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  I think we definitely will see the podcast world evolve where you should expect that you're going to get an ad that's specific to you, right? Based on, let's say you're listening to that podcast. I guess you could say watching too. There's a lot of video on these podcasts.

• 27:44Auren Hoffman?

  Sure, a lot of people watch podcasts, yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  So you're watching it on, let's say Spotify or something like that, right? So they know your location. They know, do you have a family plan or an individual plan?

• 27:52Auren Hoffman?

  They know your listening habits, yeah. You're a Taylor Swift fan or whatever.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. They know what else you're listening to, right? Are you listening to NPR? Or are you listening to whatever rock music or something like that? So I think there's a lot of opportunity to change those ads and customize those ads. The reality is, is that podcast advertising, it's not a huge market today. I mean, it's a couple billion dollars. CTV, 30, 40 billion dollars. Retail media, commerce media, that's 50 billion dollars. So I think people haven't been so focused on technological innovation in that podcast space. But I think as it grows, the same innovations that we're applying in CTV and retail media, et cetera, will come into the podcast.

• 28:35Auren Hoffman?

  And you mentioned earlier, like, cookies are going away. Of course, we've been like, kind of preparing for this for like, over 10 years now, for cookies to go away. And they've been slowly going away. You don't have cookies on iOS, on Apple, on a lot of mobile-related things. So, they have kind of gone away over time. What is, like, if you kind of walk us through the next few years, like, what does that new world look like?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and just a level set, right? So, cookies have been going away, exactly as you said, third-party cookies. And I think the challenge is that many users didn't know that cookies existed, and how they were being anonymously profiled. And I think about Cambridge Analytica as really the start of consumers becoming aware of how their data is being used on the internet, right? You can, I think, go back to that. And that was kind of the first mainstream thing that reached the press and reached consumers about how their data was being used. And consumers, of course, need to remember that they're getting free content, which is incredibly important and valuable. And so, I think that bargain kind of had been forgotten, right? Which is like, hey, the consumer shares data, and in return,

• 29:43Speaker 01

  they get free content, right? And we all know the history of Procter & Gamble and soap operas, right, from, I don't know, whatever, 50, 70 years ago. But I think a lot of consumers forgot about that kind of equation. And so, now what's happening is, consumers are being asked to explicitly consent to sharing their data. And so, they're being reminded of that value exchange. And so, we're right in the middle of the process of where the industry participants, like us, consumer rights representatives, regulators, big tech companies, we're all figuring out how this is going to work in the future, while we're supporting a nearly trillion-dollar digital advertising ecosystem. So, I think what's likely to happen is that,

• 30:22Speaker 01

  it's a little bit ironic, but consumers will be at the center where they're asked to consent, but in fact, they're asked to share more information about themselves than was the case in third-party cookies.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And CTV is a prime example, right? So there's been a huge growth in ad-supported streaming content, right? Consumers are saying, hey, I don't have the money to

• 30:43Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, even Netflix, so many people now do the ads.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. Now, you log into all of those services. So you're providing an email address, a credit card, your name, like all of this information.

• 30:54Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, they know your home, obviously, because that's where you're watching it.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And they know where you travel to, right? Because they see that, oh, you logged in from a hotel room in New York City, or whatever the case is, or you have a vacation home, or a friend's home, or whatever, you logged in, the same login. So they can see all of this information. They can see what kind of TV, right? Are you on the latest model 80-inch Samsung LG? Or are you on a

• 31:16Auren Hoffman?

  They're getting the TV information too, right?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So they can see all of that information, because they've got to deliver the media.

• 31:23Auren Hoffman?

  That so they know how expensive that TV is, that can give you a sense of this kind of user as well.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  And you've set up your household, right? So your kids have their own

• 31:31Auren Hoffman?

  Profiles.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  going, right? Your wife, whatever, your husband. So I think people should remember, like, hey, okay, cookies are going away. But actually, now they're being asked to share more information.

• 31:41Auren Hoffman?

  Of course, yeah, it's way more personalized now than it ever was.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think that's good, because at the end of the day, this is part of the reason why we exist, is I think for democracies, having free information that educates consumers, right? Whether it's political news, what's the government been up to? How are my taxpayer dollars being spent? What do I need to be thinking about in the next election? How do I improve my life as a consumer? Like, all of these things, having free content, health, exactly, these are all great things, right? I've got two kids, so I think about all the like, free educational resources that they use. It's not because these things are free, like, it's not that it costs no money for engineers to build them and distribute them, journalists, content creators. So advertising is really what funds

• 32:26Speaker 01

  this. And so I think it's great if consumers get more relevant ads, and they're able to decide who they share their information with and on what terms.

• 32:35Auren Hoffman?

  There are certain platforms where, to me, the ad is the content. Like you get really great ads and like on Instagram, I feel like the ads are quite good. And sometimes the content I'm getting from the ads is better than the content I get from the creators. And on X, on Twitter, I just found that the ads were so bad and so untargeted. And so I ended up, there was like an opportunity to pay to not get ads. I might as well just pay to not, because like, I didn't, I didn't want to see that because they were so bad. Whereas on Instagram, I wouldn't want to stop paying because I actually liked the ads. Yeah, the ads are actually really valuable. It actually helps me discover like cool stuff and new things to do or whatever. Like, they're actually really exciting and interesting and relevant to me.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Well, that's the beauty, I think, of a relevant ad, which is that it's like content.

• 33:24Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. I mean, someone's actually paying a lot of money to get in front of me. Therefore, you should be incented to show me something I really am interested in.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So, you know, imagine like you're in the market for a car. And if you get the right car offer, lease, and it's kind of the right price point, you're looking for an SUV versus a convertible or something like that. I mean, it's perfect, right? It's like really good content, which is like, okay, great. Like, I'm gonna click on this. I'm gonna learn more about the product and maybe I'll even sign up to have somebody call me so I can go in for a test drive. So I think relevant ads, consumers overwhelmingly prefer relevant ads for exactly the reasons that you mentioned.

• 34:02Auren Hoffman?

  And it's also exciting, like you discover something new and interesting and fun.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  That you wouldn't have searched for, right?

• 34:08Auren Hoffman?

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, just myself. So I'm going skiing in a couple of weeks and I was thinking about what I should get the kids for Christmas and whatnot. And I got an ad for heated gloves. And so I bought like three pairs of heated gloves, right? So I don't know, I spent like four or 500 bucks on that. And it was like, not an idea that I had thought of myself, but somehow it came to me at the right moment. And it's perfect. It's great. So it solved my Christmas gift problem. And it also solved the problem of like, kids with cold hands that want to go in early on the ski slopes.

• 34:38Auren Hoffman?

  Now, a lot of what people think about on ads, on especially on RTB side, is like these retargeted ads, where they went to a store, maybe they abandoned the shopping cart, maybe they bought something from the store. And then those ads kind of follow them around everywhere. Like, there's this certain clothing brand I bought from, and like, I see those ads everywhere I go now. Like, they just constantly want to, and I imagine like cookies, those will be harder and harder to make happen in the future.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think retargeting is definitely on its way out. I think part of the problem with retargeting is there was this waste, right? Where it's like, even when you bought the product, you would still get retargeted with that ad, right?

• 35:15Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Which made no sense.

• 35:16Auren Hoffman?

  Sometimes it makes sense. Like, I could buy from the clothing store again or something, so maybe it makes sense.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  You get the same product, like, chasing you around, and you're like, dude, I bought it.

• 35:23Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, the same product doesn't make a sense, yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Like, I bought it, so, like, we're all good. Look, commerce media in general is exploding, right? Which is companies that are in the retail transaction flow. So, think of somebody like a DoorDash or an Uber. It can be, of course, a retailer or a retail kind of service provider, like an Instacart. Also, travel companies, you mentioned United Airlines earlier, right? So, United is getting in on this. So, people that are around the transaction and have consumer first-party data, but they also have a canvas where consumers are coming to their properties and they have an ability to show ads.

• 35:59Auren Hoffman?

  They're all becoming ad networks. I mean, there's always a joke that everyone becomes an ad network. But yeah, you mentioned, like, United, Uber is definitely an ad network, Instacart is an ad network, Shopify.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Walmart and Amazon.

• 36:11Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, obviously Walmart and Amazon, those are massive.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Two of the largest, right?

• 36:14Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. But it seems like any place, like, I'm, like, going to shop, has, like, a whole huge, and then that ad business is very high margin. It's very, very lucrative for these guys. So, you rent a car and all of a sudden, you've got, like, all these ads coming in. I'm not even surprised, like, when I actually show up in the car, there's not a credit card ad in the car or something, right? Like, that's gonna be there pretty soon. Like, there's all these high-margin things to go. Sometimes even when you're flying on an airplane, the last, like, five minutes of the flight, you're hearing some pitch of the flight attendant trying to get you on the credit card and stuff.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  So, you're exactly right, that the margins here are massive. So, if you think about Amazon, they make more profit from their advertising business than they do from the retail itself.

• 36:58Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  And the retail itself is about 50x the size of the ad business. Maybe it's come down, yeah, in terms of revenue, maybe it's, like, 30x now. So, the margins on it are very high, right? Walmart is growing a huge business. We've announced partnerships with Instacart, with Klarna, very recently with Intuit, so about 50, 60 million.

• 37:16Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah. Intuit, great, well, great example.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Small businesses, right? Yeah, exactly. So, people are looking to monetize the data that they have, and it's scaling. I think there's a lot of challenge and opportunity around it, which is, yes, everybody wants to become a retail media network, but I don't think advertisers... Can buy across thousands of these things, right? Like, it just gets too fragmented, too difficult. So we're actually playing a key role, working with agencies and advertisers to aggregate a lot of this inventory and make it viable at scale across a lot of these retail media networks.

• 37:47Auren Hoffman?

  Now, question for you to, like, there's obviously like Google and Meta and et cetera, some of these like very large companies out there. Then you have like all these other random companies that are in like the ad tech ecosystem, but you've got like two that are just like massive in terms of market cap, right? You've got AppLovin, which is like over a hundred billion market cap. You've got the Trade Desk, which is like over 65 billion market cap. Like, why are those two done so well? Like, obviously, they've got great CEOs and they've got other things, but like, I would have never have thought, I've known both of those guys for a long time, I would have never have thought they would have been able to build a business this big on what they're doing. What are they doing right?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think each of their cases, it's a little bit unique, but they've established, I think, category leadership in the sectors that they're in. And the tailwinds in the sector are such that just compounding growth year after year, they've been able to demonstrate that, establish that leadership, and therefore, I think investors are paying for their companies well into the future. So in the case of Trade Desk, right, they've obviously consolidated and established leadership as the largest independent demand site platform. I think they've gone head to head with Google and shown that, hey, we Trade Desk are, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but more objective, more transparent, we're independent because we don't own media, we're not on multiple sides of the transaction.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  In the case of AppLovin, they really take an ownership of app monetization, and most recently, they've combined that with this commerce media trend that we've just been talking about. And so that's really supercharged their growth. And so you're seeing in the case of AppLovin, I mean, just fantastic growth with really high margins and kind of seeing that compound. And I think there's a lot of tailwinds behind mobile app consumption and behind commerce media. And so I think investors are paying well into the future for those assets.

• 39:42Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, certainly well in the future. I think AppLovin is like 100 times PE. Trade Desk is probably 200 times PE or something. So they definitely are like believing in like the long-term kind of growth story. It's kind of like nowadays, Google's and stuff like they don't trade that high in terms of a PE multiple and stuff. Maybe they did back like long-term in the day, but now these guys are almost like the tech companies of lore or something.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Obviously, for companies like Google, it's much harder to grow faster than the rate of the market growth, right?

• 40:14Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Just given their scale and their size, and also the fact that they're under heavy regulatory scrutiny around the world, whereas companies like AppLovin and Trade Desk, obviously different companies, different scale, different size. So they're not under that scrutiny.

• 40:28Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, the average person's never even heard of them. I doubt like my wife or people I know, just the average smart person has ever heard of AppLovin or the Trade Desk. But they all have heard of Google and Meta.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. We announced a partnership with AppLovin, maybe just a couple of months ago, where we're a certified bidder into their platform. So it's opening up a lot of new mobile app inventory for us, which we're really excited about. So we're excited about our partnership with them. And Trade Desk, of course, is a big DSP buyer on our platform that's integrated in bidding and buying across the inventory that we present.

• 41:00Auren Hoffman?

  Now, speaking of being a public company, you guys went public in 2020, about four years ago or so. How's that changed like the way you run the company and stuff?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  I think there's a few advantages to going public. Increased visibility and credibility. It's helped us attract high-profile partners and clients.

• 41:16Auren Hoffman?

  I imagine like when you sell and you say, I'm a public company and people know that you're a public company, there's just like more of like a belief you'll be around and there's more of a, it's probably like a little bit easier to sell into a company. It gives you some credibility points, right?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that's exactly right. So we're selling to the world's largest brands and publishers, and the established incumbents are companies like Google and Meta, right? And so we're going into them and saying, hey, we're a stable, safe place for you to build your ad business over the next decade. And if you're public, I think it's a lot easier to tell that story, particularly in our case, where we're very capital efficient, we're profitable, cash flow positive for many, many years. I think 10 years in a row of profitability, something similar for being cash flow positive. So we can go to those big brands, those big publishers, those big content creators, incredibly give them an alternative where I think if we were private, they would say, well, I mean, they're telling us a good story, but we don't really know what's under the hood

• 42:15Speaker 01

  in terms of the financials. So it's safer to just go with the big guys, right? And so I think that's been a huge advantage for us. And then, you know, I think for our employees and our investors, obviously they have opportunity to monetize. I mean, we're 18 years into the business and so they all, you know, deserve a return.

• 42:32Auren Hoffman?

  So nowadays, there's plenty of ways to do secondaries and give employees ways and other investors ways to do that, right? You have companies like Stripe that have had multiple rounds of things that have happened over the years. So there are other ways to do it without being public, right?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I think that is true. I think that gets a lot of attention. The reality though is, is that it's a subset of companies that have that kind of demand, where they can do those secondaries, right?

• 42:57Auren Hoffman?

  Yes, Stripe, Databricks, there's a small number, yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  It's not five companies, but it's not 500, right? And so you read about that a lot and it's like, oh, it seems like every company is doing that. But in reality, it's very few companies, right? And so I think it's a good way to return liquidity and, you know, some return on time for all of our employees and investors.

• 43:18Auren Hoffman?

  But being public is annoying, right? Like, I mean, you have to have all these calls and then you say something about coffee and then some investors sue you because like coffee somehow affected your stock price or something like that. Or you just talked about buying some gloves or something. All of a sudden it's like some lawsuit comes. There are like annoying things about it.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  It's definitely a shift of priorities, right? So you've got to spend time communicating your story to investors. There is more, let's say, process, legal overhead, right?

• 43:46Auren Hoffman?

  There's some like X millions of dollars that you spend that you wouldn't have been spending.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And your shareholder base changes, right? I mean, when you have, let's say, venture capital or private equity investors, they're very sophisticated, right? And maybe you have five or 10 of those on your cap table. So it's one thing to communicate to them. When you go public, your neighbor's grandmother might have stock in your company, right? And so it's a totally different challenge to communicate to that person. And obviously, the legal challenge, that sophistication of that investor is probably lower, maybe lower. And so you've got to do things in a different fashion. So yeah, I would say it's not without overhead. You also get a lot of levers, right? Like, it's the lowest cost of capital.

• 44:25Auren Hoffman?

  And borrowing too. It's easier to borrow.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, whether it's equity or debt. So back to our conversation about infrastructure, right? If you're not on public cloud, you're on private cloud.

• 44:33Auren Hoffman?

  Good point. Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  You need capital, right, to be able to build that.

• 44:36Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, you need to borrow $20 million. It's so much easier as a public company to do it. The comps are there.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So you have these new growth levers, right? You have the quarterly reporting cycle, which is a big kind of bully pulpit to put your message into the market. So you have these new levers, and I think you really have to just think about, how do I use these levers? And they come with some costs, but how do I use them to help me grow faster and achieve my objectives?

• 45:00Auren Hoffman?

  Because you hear from some people like, oh, it's not worth going public if we're not of market cap at least of X billion dollars or something like that. Like, what would you say to those CEOs?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, I think there is some truth to that, right? So investors spend time with the largest companies, by and large. There's no doubt about that. So people are going to do work on the mega cap companies.

• 45:21Auren Hoffman?

  Right. They can't even put $100 million into you, right? Because that would be too much.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, I had a conversation with the CEO of a $30 billion financial services company. And I was just talking to him about being a public company. He said, oh, the hardest part about being a $30 billion company is, nobody spends enough time on us.

• 45:38Auren Hoffman?

  Right, because some of these funds might need to put like billions of dollars to work.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And he's in a basket with like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, right? Which are in the hundreds of billions, right? So that is difficult. But at the same time, I would say, hey, when you go from being a private company, the number of investors that are relevant to you to going public, even if you're a small cap public company, there's a whole larger set of investors now, right?

• 46:04Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  The investment pool grows even though it's not as large as, let's say, a Nvidia is attracting. So I think it's great. I think the debt markets become a lot easier when you're public. We don't have any debt. We're a profitable company. In fact, we announced share repurchase program about a year and a half ago. And maybe two years ago, that that's going strong. But if you want to raise debt, I mean, you can raise debt literally in

• 46:27Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, so when you're buying infrastructure, you don't buy it with debt, you just buy it with your cash flow?

• 46:31Speaker 01

  We just buy it with our cash flow. Yeah.

• 46:33Auren Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:34Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  That's the most efficient form of capital, right?

• 46:36Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:37Auren Hoffman?

  Of course. Yeah. Now, you founded PubMatic with your brother. I think a lot of people have talked about doing something with their spouse, doing something with their sibling, et cetera. There's always like these pros and cons. What's been your experience?

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. And actually, this is our second or third company together. I guess our third. So our first one, Chipshot, you know, this is back in the late 90s, custom built off equipment direct over the web. And I remember, I mean, we were like in our early 20s and we shared a queue and like every once in a while we'd get like in an argument and then it would devolve, right? It'd be like, oh, well, when I was 12, you did this to me and then you did that to me, right? And so then Almer moved, he moved, my brother, he moved to India and he lived there for like eight or nine years. And I think that was actually really good. And we were running a company together as well there where because the time zone's 12 and a half hours apart, both people want to be very efficient, right? Because it's like it's somebody's breakfast and somebody's dinner.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  And so like you don't want to be on that call for very long. So kind of to be like very clear, concise and to the point. You know, he's moved back to the US a number of years ago, but I think that taught us to be focused and succinct in our communication, which has worked out well. I think the other lesson is you just have to be very clear on who's responsible for what. I think having kind of dual ownership of things can be confusing for everybody, you know, not only yourselves, but also for the rest of the team.

• 47:58Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, so I assume it's true of any founding team, not just siblings, right?

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. So just having that clarity of like who's responsible for what. So everybody knows who to talk to. Decision making is super clear. I think that is really important.

• 48:11Auren Hoffman?

  All right. This has been great. Last question we ask all of our guests. What conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's always this point about you got to find work-life balance, right? In a way that means life is different from work and it's a zero-sum game. And I totally disagree with that. I think if you want to be great at something, you have to be willing to do it way more than anybody else, right? It's just super rare that somebody is born with innate skill or talent, if at all. And even if they do have that, I don't think that's typically sufficient, right? So you've got to hone your craft.

• 48:41Auren Hoffman?

  It's not like LeBron James doesn't outwork everyone else. And he was clearly born with some amazing talent, but the way he becomes like the great, or Steph Curry, like he's out there every day just doing like crazy amount of work.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So you have to hone your craft, no matter what talent you're born with. And so I think it's best to focus on finding something that you really enjoy doing, because then work in your life become one and the same, right? You don't mind putting in the time because it's fun. And only when you put in the time can you truly become great at something. And I think your family can benefit from it too, right? They see that you're working hard at something. They see that you're passionate about it. And they see how you can integrate it into your family life. And I think there's a lot of great benefits that come from that.

• 49:25Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I love that. All right. Thank you, Rajeev Goyal, for joining us at World of DAS. I've been friends for a while. I follow you on LinkedIn. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you. This has been a ton of fun.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Thanks, Auren. Really enjoyed it. Super fun to catch up with you.

• 49:39Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 49:43Auren Hoffman?

  Thanks for listening. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe to World of DAS wherever you consume your podcasts, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and more. And please help us get discovered by leaving a review. And check out worldofdaas.com. That's worldofdaas.com. And of course, connect with me on Twitter, @Auren. That's A-U-R-E-N. Would absolutely love to hear from you.