Uncapped #9 | Qasar Younis from Applied Intuition

I had a blast sitting down with Qasar Younis, Co-Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a company that’s on a mission to accelerate the world’s adoption of safe and intelligent machines. The company builds software that makes it faster, safer, and easier to bring autonomous systems to market. Last valued at $6B, Applied Intuition has raised a total of $602M since its inception in 2017 and plays a critical role in both the commercial and defense sectors. Previously, Qasar was a Partner and COO of Y Combinator, the renowned startup accelerator that has invested in companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Stripe, among others. Prior to Y Combinator, Qasar founded a technology firm, which was later acquired by Google, and worked as an automotive engineer at General Motors and Bosch. Younis has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Kettering University (formerly known as General Motors Institute) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. We covered: Radical pragmatism Roots of the automotive industry Complexities of being dual use Fostering an intrinsically contrarian culture Evolving with your work --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:31) Psychology of starting a company (17:04) Love for the automotive industry (22:54) Autonomous vehicle landscape (25:45) Deep partnership with customers (28:49) Complexities of being dual use (34:44) Culture being intrinsically contrarian (40:01) Gen AI and humanoid robotics (42:28) More noise than signal in investing (44:14) Evolving with your work (47:43) Companies working is a state in time --- Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So number one, I love the car business in a way that I've never loved, you know, any other like beyond a business.

• 0:06Jack Altman?

  Why do you love it so much?

• 0:07Speaker 00

  I mean, I came to the US and GM money. So there's an emotional, you know, component there. Like my uncle was a General Motors engineer. He bought us the tickets that we came to America on and then supported us.

• 0:17Jack Altman?

  All right. Thanks a bunch for doing this. You're one of the CEOs that I look up to the most, but there's no content about you online.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Wow, I'm deeply flattered.

• 0:26Jack Altman?

  When I started this, I was like, I've gotta get you. Oh, yeah, he'll, every single one, right to him. So I want to start with, when you began working on this company, you were at a place where you had already started a company that was like probably really hard. You know, you went to Google and then you were like the COO at YC and you had this comfortable, good job. You already knew that starting a company is pretty brutal, kind of sucks. And you started one anyway, which is very different than like a 22 year old starting a company who's just like bright eyed and doesn't know how hard it is. But you decided to. So can you talk about what was the psychology for you when you began working on the company, knowing that you could have, you could have gone and ran a VC firm? You could have gone and been a COO at a public company, probably like you had a bunch of options. Why'd you do it?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. First thing is, I didn't quite know because the first company I had was three years, but it was like this, I did it full time for a while, then did it part time, et cetera. And it was like going to fail. It was in Chicago, it kind of failed quietly and literally didn't know anybody. I mean, my co-founders from that company know us, but like we didn't raise a dollar. It was just, you know, you're, it's like a tree falls in the forest. If a company dies without raising money and no one even knew it existed, was it really a company? Then the second one was 10 months when it was acquired by Google and it was a good outcome for us financially. We were like three poor, you know, kids. And so it wasn't, you didn't have the grind. 10 months is nothing. You blink and you're 10 months is done. So partly I didn't know, but I knew just from the YC experience

• 1:52Speaker 00

  that there were a lot of smart founders that went out and did all the right things and still failed. And so I think for me on a YC, even going to YC originally, the way that I got into YC was, as an employee was my co-founder here, Peter Ludwig and I, we're thinking of doing a robotaxi company. And I'd met some of these Sequoia partners and they were like, we don't think it's a good business. And so I was like, oh shit, you know, you take that advice. But one of my superpowers is I take feedback. Like that is like I listen and I really reevaluate. My preconceived notion and all the way to when I started my career in automotive. You know, I was knee deep in automotive and I moved over to Silicon Valley software extremely pragmatically.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  And you know, we say often all of our values can be reduced to radical pragmatism. The way you're radically pragmatic in any of these, let's say inflection point decisions is having a clear eyed understanding of what is what you're good at, what the market is saying to you about the thing you're gonna do. And then where they could be wrong possibly. So when the Sequoia guy says specifically one person said, we'll give you the money to you and Peter do a robotaxi company, but I don't think it's a good business. To me, it was like, okay, I gotta really listen to that feedback. And I went to PG's Pargram's house and said, oh, what do you think? And he said, well, you should consider joining Y C. And my wife at the time was pregnant with our son and he's like, don't start a family and this startup at the same time. And I also listened to that advice.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  And then in terms of the true inflection point of leaving Y C, which is leaving Google was a tough decision because I was, it was a great job and it was the first time to be in. Also, people forget what Google like today, people at Google, like what 14, 15 years later is very different than Google at that time. At that time, you know, Nvidia was near bankruptcy. Apple had come out with this MacBook Air. Wasn't Apple today and Steve Jobs is still alive.

• 3:44Jack Altman?

  Yeah, Google felt really strong then.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  It was the apex predator. Who else was there? Facebook was under a thousand people. 2010, Facebook was a tiny company, relatively speaking, it was a small company. And so it's like Google is the company to work at. And there was really no number two. Everyone was trying to work at Google and everything. So, but it wasn't that hard to leave because I think I've never emotionally felt that I wanted to be an employee forever. Like that, that was a part of it. Also, working with Paul and working with Sam, these are like, you know, I'm not that smart, but I'm smart enough to know that these people are exceptional. And so like getting the exposure to those people, I think was really important and like made the transition. Leaving Y C was actually the more difficult decision because there's a reason that you said. Fundamentally, I think it came down to.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  I I always felt, one, I already thought of leave, like, you know, my view was go in, learn a bench and try to do this third company. And then like, I enjoyed the work. And then that was actually what made it more difficult, but really was like, am I an investor or am I a founder?

• 4:43Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  And that clear delineation is investors are lone wolf, you know, they're they're great, they're great investors are kind of like thoughtful, academic, independent, contrarian to some, you know, to maybe even to a fault. Those are like really great investors look like. And then the the best founders are actually super opinionated and they're almost like, difficult.

• 5:08Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  And I think I'm more difficult today to be with than any time in my in my career. And I'm seeing the manifestation of who I really am.

• 5:16Jack Altman?

  Yeah, it's an unfortunate thing that I think a lot of the great founders happen to be very disagreeable. I happen to be like a very agreeable person, which I think, you know, it makes your life easy. But I think to build, you know, really iconic companies, a lot of times you need to be willing to just do a lot of stuff that's uncomfortable and tell people their work's not good enough, or you don't care if, you know, other people want to do it this way or doing it that way.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  And I think like, you know, that I would say my two, you know, many faults, but two kind of glaring faults in my, you know, disposition of my is, one is, I do work a lot, almost to a degree, which is, you know, I I used to say all the time, I want to be the person that works more than anybody you've ever met. So I'm creating that identity.

• 5:59Jack Altman?

  You were always that way?

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:00Jack Altman?

  Even before this company?

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I was grew up poor. So it's like a deep in my like, you know, I don't say this is like some sort of like back patting, but I had to always do shit myself, paid myself undergrad. And as my parents are just, you know, they didn't have the abilities and the means to provide. So I had to do that. And then same thing with grad school. So so it's always been on my own back. And, you know, always in the relative sense, like Arnold Schwarzenegger saying where he says, no one's really doing it themselves. They're doing it with the help of other people. But in the sense of You know, that sense, but but going back to that inflection point of choosing to leave YC. One is, so, working all the time, that actually made people uncomfortable. At Google, it made people uncomfortable, less so at YC, because you're kind of, you're around a bunch of ex-CEOs and founders, and they all work like all the time.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  But at Google, I remember people asking, like, why do you work so much? And I was like, oh, I guess there's like the wrong way of doing that. And the second thing is having really strong opinions. And I just can't let things go. If I think something is being done wrong, I will, you know, take my deep breaths, and I just, I just can't not say, I think that's the wrong strategy. And I think when you're not the boss, that is very difficult to work with somebody like that.

• 7:10Jack Altman?

  Did you think about it as like, you were at a point in your career where you were like, it was your last moment to like, pick a path? And you were still kind of a stem cell, you could have gone and been an investor, you could have been a founder, but was there like a function in your mind of like, I need to make my choice now, like, for good, basically?

• 7:26Speaker 00

  I think that, you know, you're, basically, your mid-30s are a very important point in your career, because you're old enough to basically get whatever job, or you have enough experience to know like, what you're good at and what the market wants. But you're also now at the point, you're, you got 20 years ahead of you, where you can really, that's the year, you know, the way that I think about life, and I've talked about this inside of Applied, is, you kind of get like these post-it notes. Each post-it note is five years. So how many of those do you get?

• 7:55Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Six?

• 7:56Jack Altman?

  Yeah, maybe. Eight, maybe, if you're lucky.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  You gotta write what you're gonna do, so, you know, Google was one of them, Y Combinator was one of them, Harvard Business School, and automotive engineer.

• 8:06Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  I'm running, like, I'm already four post-its out.

• 8:09Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Right? I'm already four post-its out, and that's after you're an adult.

• 8:12Jack Altman?

  Yeah, and ideally, if you do, you know, work that really matters, one of those post-its is gonna be a 15-year post-it.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:18Jack Altman?

  And so then you really don't get that many.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  You really don't get that many.

• 8:21Jack Altman?

  It's funny, I'm 35, and I just did this, you know, starting, you know, being an investor after having been a founder.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:26Jack Altman?

  And I had a lot of these similar background thoughts, because I do think that there's this mid-career moment where you know enough, and you're in a situation where you can kind of set yourself up in different ways, but you still have a lot in front of you, and, yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so at that time, when I decided to, between deciding to leave YC, and actually leaving YC was like a four or five-month period, where I told Paul and Jessica, hey, I'm going, which was at August of 16. My last day was December 31st, 16. I had that time, and their view was like, hey, Maybe you don't want to start a company, maybe you don't want to leave. You know, the way the Y C works is the next batch starts in January. So it's like, oh, this is already rolling, so think about it. In that time, the real first was like funds actually reaching out and saying, hey, do you want to work at a fund? And I think just because I'm a rational person, it was like, okay, let me talk. Is there something there? And ultimately, like, it was never going to be, you know, Andreessen Horowitz Unis. It's not going to be Kleiner Perkins Unis or whatever, you know, Coastal Unis or whatever the firm is.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  And and also I had a good gig at Y C. So it's like, why would I step into a parallel kind of thing? So that didn't quite make sense. It was like, oh, start a fund or start a company. And I really explored those things. The thing that ultimately tipped me, Peter, my co-founder, having an idea that actually really. And then it wasn't a fifty, it wasn't like a definitely this is the right thing. Now.

• 9:43Jack Altman?

  Yeah, but at the time it was like a seventy thirty call or something.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Fifty one forty nine.

• 9:47Jack Altman?

  That close.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, super, super close, super, super.

• 9:50Jack Altman?

  Oh, start this company and start a fund.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, super, super close. And I think like, like, like in hindsight, the narrative is going to be very easy. Like, I was an automotive engineer and I'm do software and, you know, A I for vehicle intelligence, like machines, cars, trucks, tanks. It seems so obvious, but at the time it's not like that.

• 10:07Jack Altman?

  It's funny because you probably could have started a fund, you would have made some killer investments and then you'd tell a story in that parallel universe about how it was always obvious and it's always what you should have done.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 10:15Jack Altman?

  How much?

• 10:16Speaker 00

  So your brain just rationalizes the reality. But I can tell you the empirical thing that I knew, the thing that I do know is fundamentals. I enjoy this more than anything I've done.

• 10:25Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  And I, you know, like next year will be extremely difficult to watch. I say this, like, this job has been easier than working at Y C, working at Google, working at Bosch.

• 10:34Jack Altman?

  Even at the beginning?

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:37Jack Altman?

  Wow.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Because for me, the thing that bothers me the most, and you have to kind of really know yourself, and this I know about myself, is the people I'm with, that's the dominant thing. If I have tension with the people I'm with and I have like, you know, we're not in, you know, in sync and harmonious. I have, you know, that just grinds my gears.

• 10:56Jack Altman?

  You also have much more control over everything as a CEO than as a VC. That's one of the biggest things I've noticed.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  One hundred percent.

• 11:02Jack Altman?

  Flipping is I used to have control over everything and now I don't.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:05Jack Altman?

  And which is okay, but that's like a huge difference. And so if you're.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  But the control comes with the cost.

• 11:10Jack Altman?

  Of course.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Nothing is free.

• 11:12Jack Altman?

  Of course.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  So now you have the responsibility that comes with it, which is, did you hire the right people? Are you picking the right, you know, you're making decisions every day, which are always in the gray zone. And one of the key hallmarks of Applied that we just, we talked about it just today earlier at a staff meeting. It's like decisiveness, decisiveness, decisiveness. You've got to make decisions as a leader without all the information. And then, by the way, they got to be right.

• 11:34Jack Altman?

  Yep. A lot of times when someone like, I feel like when people start their.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  And that's a hard piece of advice, though.

• 11:39Jack Altman?

  It's very hard. Yeah. When, when people start their companies in their early twenties, let's say, versus their mid thirties. Oftentimes, I think the story is, you know, in their early twenties, there was a lot of iteration. There was a lot of wandering in the woods and on the fourth thing, boom, they realized that Airbnb was a thing. And, you know, the cereal and whatever.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:59Jack Altman?

  And then a lot of times when people are later in their careers, it's like they saw the whole movie. And I think you did see the whole movie.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 12:05Jack Altman?

  How important.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Y C was huge in that.

• 12:07Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  You just see the, you see a play again and again and again.

• 12:09Jack Altman?

  And you knew, you, you knew how a company was built, but you also knew what this market and this product would be because of how you grew up. And so I'm guessing part of what got you fifty one, forty nine and the direction of starting Applied was that you felt pretty confident that there was a real business to build here.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. And Peter, my co-founder, I mean, we have a tremendous relationship. And I think, you know, our parents live a quarter mile from each other in Michigan.

• 12:30Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Which is kind of.

• 12:31Jack Altman?

  So the foundation was just crazy strong on both of those fronts.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  And we shared values. I think, I think like you, and as you get older, you start to realize like, these are my people. They're not my people. Like you, that, that starts, starts happening as well. And like my people, broadly speaking, are, you know, Michigan people, they're Sunnyvale people. It's less the, you know, I would say the, like, I could never do a consumer company. It's just not, we're kind of like Detroit guys and we kind of, you know, we grew up in factories. I've literally worked for many, many years in factories, go to the General Motors Institute. It's just a very different, and it's not obvious when you talk to me.

• 13:02Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  I'm just a Silicon Valley guy. Why you seem work at Google like that's not you would say what are you talking about?

• 13:06Jack Altman?

  But that's not where you came from.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's how it came from. Right. And so wherever Silicon Valley is being an immigrant, that's very Silicon, being an engineer, that's very Silicon Valley. But the other things are not, which is like being very Midwest. And that way, like the Mark Andreessen's and you know, we get along a lot. He's similarly from the Midwest, Peter similarly from the Midwest. And there you can sense some of those tray and you can sense some of these these values. But just in terms of, again, back to that inflection point. For me, where where where where, you know, the Peter thing kind of goes over the other personal things going over, it's not obvious, but once you're in it, then it was like, oh, this is my thing. Like, I can just make all these decisions. And you're saying, you know, in the early or the early phases more difficult than the later phases. I think it's been similar. There's different sets of problems.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  One thing is true is now, again, hindsight, I think my skill set is just way better being a founder. Product design, engineering, those are your bread and butter of being a product company. Running an organization, you know, I had that experience. So, yeah, now it seems like it was the right idea.

• 14:07Jack Altman?

  How much has the movie played out similarly compared to, you know, what you thought it would be on day one?

• 14:14Speaker 00

  I think shockingly to like to what our plan is. I mean, we we so unlike other folks, maybe 20 year old founders, we like enumerated, like there's this great Napoleon line, which is like, he talks about how people think he's a great field marshal that is when he's in war in his memoirs, he writes that he was in battle, that he would make these decisions. He's like, no, no, I just studied the battlefield way better than anybody else. And I just thought through the permutations of if then this will happen. And we did a lot of that. So we're like, we're going to start this thing. And if this works out, the other competitors are going to react this way or in-house teams are going to do this. And then we're going to do that. Like, and then the crazy thing is like.

• 14:54Jack Altman?

  You're like you just thought harder than other people almost.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, one of my first engineering managers had this thing, we were working at a Flint V6, V6 engine plant in Flint, Michigan. And he had this sign above his desk which said, "No problem can withstand the constant onslaught of thought." And like 25 years later, you know, I think about that like every second day. And so there is like, and I don't know if that's right or wrong.

• 15:17Jack Altman?

  Well, it's funny because, you know, the, you know, every plan is good until, you know, it meets reality or whatever. It's actually like a very different lens on that, which is, one is like, you know, think about it, but not until you get out into the real world will you know. And this is actually saying, no, think about it hard, and if you think hard enough, then you'll know.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, and if you have enough experience, this is experience matters. Why not being 20 and being the 30 year old is better because you can just look at other companies. Like, again, it's going back to that whole thing of like, being very clairvoyant about what you're good at, what you're not good at, how the market is going to naturally react to some product like this in the market.

• 15:51Jack Altman?

  Do you have as much of a vision on the next 10 years right now as you did on the first 10 years when you started? Or do you have less clarity today than you did then for some reason?

• 16:00Speaker 00

  I would say more now, mainly because when we were starting, there was a lack of confidence that it would actually do that. The business would open, and just for everybody to get on the same page of what our business is, we have three, you know, rough areas. We have engineering tools, we have operating system, and we have autonomy. So we do this thing, and that is just like, there is a company, Microsoft had the same thing, 1975 to 1982, they were a tooling company, then they got an operating systems, and they got an application like Office and stuff like that. Today's Microsoft is very different, so we're really talking about Microsoft from 75 to, let's say, 95, or something like that, or 2000. But then they're all in PCs, we're all in cars, and trucks, and tanks, and jets. But it's the same concept.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  You have software that you, you know, tools and software and applications that sit on top of these, you know, pieces of hardware, that somebody else has manufactured, somebody else is making. And so. You know, that you could already see that's being informed like that's not, we're not coming up with this as a student of history. You know, that absolutely plays into our strategy.

• 17:04Jack Altman?

  Where are we right now in just like the landscape with auto in general and automotive?

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know when this will come out, but it's tariff season right now. And, uh, you know, the car business, so number one, I love, I love the car business in, in the, in a way that I've never loved, you know, any other like business, beyond a business.

• 17:22Jack Altman?

  Why do you love it so much?

• 17:24Speaker 00

  I grew, I mean, I came to the US and GM money, um, so there's an emotional, you know, component there like my uncle was a General Motors engineer. He bought us the tickets that we came to the America on and then supported us. And then I went to the General Motors Institute and it paid for my college and I worked at General Motors and I worked at Bosch, both in, in, in the US and in Japan. And then I spent some time in Germany as a student and so I just know the industry.

• 17:45Jack Altman?

  Do you love like the cars or the people or the engineering or is it the whole thing?

• 17:49Speaker 00

  The whole thing. I like the cars and the engineering that goes into the car. So, you know, like there are not a thousand YouTube channels on, you know, databases. There are a thousand YouTube channels on cars and every sub-brand of car has their car, their Subaru car clubs and there's, you know, Civic, like everything that you can think of. There's, you know, Jeeps, people who go out and, you know, off-roading. So it's just, it's a giant.

• 18:09Jack Altman?

  Are you more likely to go deep on like a really cool engine or like a supercar?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Both. I mean, great engines are in supercars.

• 18:17Jack Altman?

  Okay.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  So, I mean, I, I absolutely like.

• 18:19Jack Altman?

  But you like the whole thing?

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like the whole thing. I mean, I can tell you the history of the Ford Mustang or the Porsche nine eleven. I can tell you the difference between a G two, three RS versus a GT two RS and, you know.

• 18:30Jack Altman?

  You know, all the players in the ecosystem.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  I just love it. I mean, that's why you go to GMI as a 16 year old. You're like, I love cars and where am I going to go to work on cars? I go to the General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan.

• 18:39Jack Altman?

  What was that like? What was the GMI like?

• 18:42Speaker 00

  So different than any.

• 18:44Jack Altman?

  Yeah, I have like no, I mean, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, but I have no frame of reference on this.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  So, so, um, it is a fascinating school. It was started a hundred years in 1919 when General Motors didn't have enough engineers. And they basically started the school in order to get more engineers. You can imagine if the Bay Area doesn't have enough AI engineers, for example, a company that's super. Flesh with Cash would start an AI Academy as an example, and then that just existed. The difference about GMI and other schools is you work half the time, you go to school half the time. Resonates with a poor kid like me because I can immediately start working. So you, and unlike other co-ops like at Waterloo and some other places, you have one company that's with you for those five years and then they pay you like, you know, at an increasing rate. And by the time you're in your 50 or you're a senior, you're making almost an engineer's salary and you're almost doing an engineer's work.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  And since it exists for a hundred years, it's a very, you know, well-oiled machine. Like you don't go in and they're like, what's an intern? They're like, when you leave on a Friday, there's a chance there's a GMI kid on Monday from the opposite section coming in, picking up your work. So there's continuity. So it's, it's a very industry, they call it the West Point of automotive. It is the, it is really an industry school.

• 19:53Jack Altman?

  Does this exist in other industries in the same way?

• 19:55Speaker 00

  West Point exists and I, like, you know, part of me wanted to go to West Point. I just love that regimented, you know, structure as well. It just spoke to me. But yeah, so when you go into that world, you can imagine the guys who are at GMI, and it's almost all men. It was, there was a desire to make it like a gender balanced school. It's like literally like 90% men. And, and it's in Flint, Michigan, and you have to do this corporate co-op. So it already filtered like a very particular type of person. And so.

• 20:28Jack Altman?

  You started at 16?

• 20:29Speaker 00

  You started at 18, you started at 18, but I started working at General Motors at 18.

• 20:32Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Which is kind of a crazy thing, you know, but you become an adult real fast. And the biggest thing that you learn is, oh, what happens in the office is super different than what you're learning. I would, I'd learn like fluid dynamics. You, you learned thermo. You're like, well, I don't use thermo at work. At work, it's like people are trying to get promoted in a project and this like, you know, Pontiac that's going to get launched as Corvette program. And you're like, oh, this is like super different. And that was also very like telling and informative to me. But the, the macro point is, when Peter and I started this company, we thought. We, like, other people must know the car business. It's such a giant business. They live in Silicon Valley. Tesla's right there. And they just don't. And like, eight years into the business, like, very few people actually understand the car business.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  And then as we got into defense, and then we got into construction and mining and trucking, you just realize that these ecosystems are actually quite far from each other. Defense has become a bit closer to Silicon Valley because of a couple of, you know, strong companies like Androl and Palantir and stuff. But generally speaking, they're still kind of different ecosystems. And I think one of the secrets that we had in getting that flywheel going is we understand the market so well. I mean, the joke we used to make is like, we forgot more about the car business than most, if the founder was to enter it. I mean, it's like, Peter's childhood, his father was a chief engineer on radar for one of the big suppliers and worked at General Motors. There's just no way to catch up to that kind of, yeah. He's like, every, he's like, every dinner he had growing up, every, every male, adult male in Peter's family worked in the car business. Wow. As an engineer.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  So when you go to barbecues, you have, every dinner, you talk about this supplier, Takata's going under, what's having TW, TRWs getting bought by ZF, and what does ZF do, ZF does, you know, like, you just, all this stuff. It's kind of like, if you grew up in Cupertino. Yeah. And, but, you know, Silicon Valley's in the center of the universe. Fast forward to like, 2075, Silicon Valley's just another thing. But you grow up and then everybody works in the business. Yeah. And it's not a cool business, it's just everybody works in it. Yeah. And then, by the way, in the car business, because it's also consumer. Totally. So, you know, you sit in cars, people rent, you know, I worked on a 69 Mustang on, over a summer, you rebuild the engine. So when you do that kind of stuff, it's like, it's like, true passion. Like, I remember I'd meet people who'd come from like, Kansas, and they were like, I was like, oh, you know, why'd you move to Warren? And they're like, oh, to work at GM. And you're like, what? You moved across country?

• 22:44Speaker 00

  I'm just here because I want, you know. There's like, this is my dream. And then that's when you meet people in the Bay Area who are like, moved across the world to work in the Bay Area. But there's some people who are just born here, and to them, that's a little more strange. Totally.

• 22:54Jack Altman?

  So like where are we in like with cars today, obviously, like there's a ton of intelligence that's being added, obviously in San Francisco, you can feel it, you can also just see it, you know, if you buy a new car, you can feel that they are updating quickly. What's like the landscape and the latest?

• 23:09Speaker 00

  I think generally cars are still pretty dumb. I mean, if you look at a parking lot, there's just not a lot of intelligence. Most cars are still a mechanical, electrical system. They'll have some connection to your phone. They're mostly dumb. And our vision of the future is every moving machine will be intelligent. That is the world that we see.

• 23:27Jack Altman?

  Self-driving is like just one small part of that whole thing.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Part of the intelligence.

• 23:31Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  It's a part of that intelligence, but it's not the whole thing.

• 23:34Jack Altman?

  Yeah. What are the other big parts of the, I don't know if you think of it as like, you know, different pillars of it, but like, obviously, mobility is a big part of it.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  The in-cabin experience. So if you're in a tank, if you're in a fighter jet, there's already a lot of work in order to make the warfighter more efficient in their executing tasks, but that integration can be way tighter. And I think defense in the future, right now, defense is still typically one person with one machine or a small group of people with one machine. And I think in the future, it's the opposite, where it's one person with lots of machines. And that's like, you see the early versions of that through swarms of drones, but I think that is going to be prevalent and kind of the future. And so the machines are the ones that can be at risk rather than the human operator.

• 24:16Jack Altman?

  Is that like you're prompting a swarm that can now do swarm-level things? Is that kind of what you mean?

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 24:21Jack Altman?

  Got it.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  And but the human is still relevant in making ultimately a lot of those decisions, especially when you're talking about taking lives.

• 24:28Jack Altman?

  Would that happen on a construction site that like one person is coordinating between, you know, a digger and an excavator?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  I think it'll happen. It's still far from that. It's still far from that. So you'd ask, what are the subcomponents? So one component is, you know, the thing that you just autonomy, the other component is interaction with the machine. The other component is literally just the guts of how to run software on these things. It's that seems so trivial to us, but these machines are typically built by lots of sub-companies that will assemble all these parts together into a truck. And they're so the typically the OEM, the original equipment manufacturer, the Skonyas of the biggest, or a trading group, biggest commercial trucking company in Europe, they're assembling parts, but some of those parts are getting from other folks. As we go into the future, those you're going to be defragging of those parts because it's partly

• 25:16Speaker 00

  an electrical powertrain and partly just because you're bringing all this compute that exists throughout the whole vehicle into a centralized compute. Once you have a beefy central compute, you can do a lot more things with it. You can interact with it. It can run, you know, models on it and suddenly it's more intelligent. And so then you can do more intelligent fleet management. You can do all of the things that you would kind of normally expect. Just think about it, just this dumb car or this dumb tank becoming more like your phone.

• 25:45Jack Altman?

  I remember when I was, you know, in the surprisingly early days of Lattice, but definitely as things, you know, progressed, our customers weren't just like, we just want some software. We have the whole plan. They were like, we also want help making the plan for how we're going to do performance management or whatever. And as I'm listening to you talk, I'm imagining that when you're talking to one of your customers, they're not just like, we know the spec, you give me the parts, I'm good to go, but are rather like, can you help me get into the future? And so I'm wondering out loud about like, what is your relationship like with these customers you work with? Because I'm guessing that

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Extremely deep.

• 26:19Jack Altman?

  You're thinking all day about what they could be doing that they might not have even thought about yet. And then you're like partnering with them in a different way.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  I mean, like in the, a lot of the word partner gets thrown around like basically.

• 26:30Jack Altman?

  But I can see it for this company.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like we, because we do the software side, they do the hardware side. And so they're bringing a set of expertise that we don't have. It's not in our, in our company. And so it is very much like, let's do product planning. So some of the people ask us, like late stage investors ask us, you know, how, you know, is it easy to replace you guys? Or what is it? It's like, no, we are as deep in these companies as you possibly can be.

• 26:54Jack Altman?

  I would guess some people on your team and some people on your customers' team feel like actual teammates.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's extremely intimate. You're working on just giant projects.

• 27:03Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  You know, when you're making a new truck. That is thousands of engineers that work together. Those are like, if you ever think how complex it is, just open the hood of your car. Every little screw has a team behind it. It has to make sure that that whole thing and that screw with that weight is.

• 27:20Jack Altman?

  It's crazy that we can make a car, honestly.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  It's unbelievable.

• 27:23Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  It's unbelievable. It's the most complex thing that humans make at scale.

• 27:27Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  We make rockets.

• 27:29Jack Altman?

  More than an iPhone, I guess, which is like the other big like, you know, thing that you always look at. I'm like, wow, I can't believe we have an iPhone, which I also can't believe.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, but an iPhone is like, I would say, you know, one tenth the complexity, maybe one fiftieth.

• 27:41Jack Altman?

  Totally.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Like, it's just so, like, you fly down the highway at seventy-five miles an hour and you don't think twice, like, this thing is gonna, like, the wheels are not gonna fall off.

• 27:48Jack Altman?

  What about employees? Like, is that another big thing that you have to educate people on? Because like, you know.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  A lot less.

• 27:53Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  The employees, because they're, they're, our employee base comes from really two big pools. It's the traditional Silicon Valley, Gen Sui, you know, engineer or AI software, you know, background, Stanford, Eeks, Berkeley, that's what they're, that's that, that group that we all know. Then there's a whole other group, which are like the automotive, defense, construction, mining, trucking folks, and they don't really know Silicon Valley. So you have to educate them, this group on how to work like Silicon Valley.

• 28:19Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  Directness, speed, efficiency, et cetera. And this group on, you know, safety criticality, on how these markets move, how these markets buy, like, what does a vehicle lifecycle look like? And it's not as hard as you would think, because you're just in it all day.

• 28:35Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Whereas an investor or a partner, you know, for them, software is gonna be anything. For investors, this is like a new area altogether.

• 28:42Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Because you have to, like, learn two categories, and it's learn software and AI, and then there's a learn, like, vehicle manufacturers.

• 28:47Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  And then there's a lot of errors.

• 28:49Jack Altman?

  Aside from cars, you also mentioned tanks, you mentioned the military. And so, obviously, like, there's like a big dual-use thing going on here where you're both in.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  We're a true dual-use company.

• 29:01Jack Altman?

  The government and, you know, commercial. And so, like, what is that like? How different is that? What, what, what does it require from you to build a dual-use company that's working with both arms? Like, the way you do business must be completely different, so.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  So just for everybody who does not in the business, just a little bit of education. You have companies like an Androl who is really working primarily in defense. And they might work in multiple countries and things like this and multiple, let's say, domains. But they are working primarily for a very specific vertical, which is the defense market. Company like us, we are working across a bunch of verticals. And the defense vertical is, will use the same products roughly that we have for the other verticals. But it's not only made for the defense vertical. The pros of that is you're essentially subsidizing these very expensive technologies through non-defense uses.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  And then you augment them for the, you know, there's, there are specific things that the defense ecosystem has. I think the future is more dual-use companies, to be very honest. I think Palantir is a great example, started as more of a defense-oriented company, does a lot more commercial work now. So I think that's, I think you're going to see more and more of that. You see a big boom in defense tech investing. I think the thing that a lot of people will recognize, once you get into the defense ecosystem, is there's limitations there too. It's not like this endless market with no competitors. I mean, there have, there's really mature competitors there, there's emergent competitors there. And then it's, the pot of money isn't as big as people think. They hear these big numbers like trillion dollars, but that money is used for labor, literally soldiers.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  That's used in, in supply chains and logistics, and then some is used for technology.

• 30:42Jack Altman?

  But there's like a lot more cars than tanks. You know, there's some like high-level numbers you could just look at and say like, okay, like it's not, the spending is humongous, obviously. But you're probably tapping into specific budgets.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  I mean, the automotive industry, global automotive industry is 3% of the world's GDPs. It is the biggest of the industrials. And the industrials is one of the biggest markets, period. And so when you add defense and construction, mining, all these other things, that's like five-ish some percent of the GDP. So for our, I think the magic trick that we're playing as a dual-use company is, how do you build things that can work across these different verticals?

• 31:16Speaker 00

  You know, without a lot of augmentation and then that makes everything cheaper. And that's a, you know, and that's kind of, and the companies have done this before, but our automotive suppliers before, our defense suppliers before, they'll overlap each, they'll make something for, you know, one type of vehicle and then they'll actually resell it for another type of vehicle.

• 31:32Jack Altman?

  Does your own work change as you now, you know, as you work with the military or whatever? Do, because you know, obviously you gotta know more about the government, you gotta know more people at the government. Like, what does that change for you? I'm also now curious after that to ask about like, what have you learned? What do you think about, you know, the tariff situation? What do you think about just like the overall like climate at the moment?

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I mean, I've said this many times where I'll repeat it, which is, you know, I think American tech companies, small and large, are for, maybe obligated is too strong of a word, but um, I think nothing comes out of obligated. Like, you're almost obligated to help the US government. If you're a citizen of this country, you get the benefits of being a citizen of this country. And you, it is such a privilege to say, well, I don't want to work with defense or the government. It's like, well, you are getting a lot of the upsides of being an American, right? So at some moral or ethical or mission foundation, we believe it's important for the company. And this is, you know, we started our defense work a year after we started the company. So it's not a recent proclamation. And it was less in vogue then. I think now it's no longer controversial, frankly speaking.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  So I think that, that, that as a, but the defense ecosystem is very different. How you, you know, allocate dollars, how you talk to the DOD. So we do all of that stuff, including all the way to, you know, having facility clearance, having cleared engineers, and cleared senior executives who can work on top secret things. You don't really have that in trucking. Like, it is, now, don't get me wrong, the trucking industry as an example, is very nationalistic, is very global, is very competitive. But it doesn't have the same connotations. Now, for other countries, actually, trucking and construction, mining and cars are like their defense industries. To Italy, Ferrari. Is a big deal, you know, to Hyundai, Hyundai to Korea is a big deal. Toyota to Japan is a big deal. Renault to France, right?

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Skania to Sweden. These are, I mean, not only there's like some emot- emotional thing about Renault and France. There's a jobs program involved. Well, in the valley, we forget this very thing that exists in defense and in construction. But in the valley, we just have the top part of the pyramid, which is kind of highly paid engineers and the support staff that that are around there. In these other industries, you have a giant, you know, workforce. So you got the executives and then the engineers and then you have a huge labor pool who builds this stuff, maintains this stuff, takes this stuff to the field. And so the, you know, when a factory opens up, that's three to 5,000 families who now have a way of living. So that we understand the defense context.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  You know, this senator wants this new plant in their, you know, state or their district. But actually it exists in all the commercial industries as well. Where a new factory goes is actually a big deal. And that's why you have these taxes. So for us, we've just had to become way more sophisticated about working with the government. It is its own complete, it's its own universe. It's very different.

• 34:28Jack Altman?

  I want to talk.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  For any founder listening, I wouldn't walk into the defense vertical like with some casualness. It is, it's, it's its own universe.

• 34:38Jack Altman?

  It's not like building a B two B SaaS app.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  No, it's, it's just a very, the way that things are bought is very, very different.

• 34:45Jack Altman?

  Yeah, actually, I want to talk now about like the company and culture and management as a company that is simultaneously deeply Silicon Valley and also deeply, you know, other parts of America. I remember during COVID that you stayed, I think, pretty much in person five days a week.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  We've been in person, person, as long as the government has allowed us, we have been in person.

• 35:08Jack Altman?

  I feel like, I think I remember you telling me once that like, the day you were allowed to get people back in with masks, you're back.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  We were back.

• 35:15Jack Altman?

  And like, everybody else was like, freaking out, you know, and, you know, going remote.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Because COVID is a conspiracy, no kidding.

• 35:23Jack Altman?

  Let's do conspiracy theories next. I would like to do that.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think.

• 35:27Jack Altman?

  But there was that, you know, you're down in Sunnyvale, it took me like five hours to get down here.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  This doesn't look like a. Look at what square footage you have. This is Sunnyvale.

• 35:35Jack Altman?

  Yeah, I mean, you, and you probably, I mean, now it's called do defense, but I bet you, knowing, you know, just the climate we've lived through, I bet you it didn't feel, you know, so great to be supporting defense at some point in Silicon Valley in history. So you've done a lot of these things, and so I guess I'm curious what the common threads on the culture have been to be a Silicon Valley company. That's also.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Like a little anti-Silicon Valley.

• 35:57Jack Altman?

  A little anti-Silicon Valley.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's the Sam Walton, you know, his great book Made in America, and he says one of the things, he's always swim against the stream, like just as, as an instinct swim against the stream. And so I think that's really, which is like, if everybody does the thing, it's, it's probably like priced out somehow. So if you're trying to build a company in San Francisco, you're priced out in the sense of there's other companies like you. There's not a lot of companies like in San, in Sunnyvale, but there's a lot of good engineers, everywhere from South San Jose all the way up to like, let's say, Burlingame. And we have, you know, a big double digit percentage of our workforce comes from San Francisco down in Caltrain. So I think that's a part of it, it's like, some of it's just skepticism of the mainstream, but really it's like, how do you carve your own path? And then we're very first principles thinking, so we just debated out.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Take, take the COVID example, I'll give you that, you know, it sounds like we had this clear view, the way we made that decision is, we had, I think it was four or five different meetings, the early applied people, the parents, the new grads, SF people. It was like this, like, we had, and they're all like, discussions of let's say, five to 15 people. And the discussion was, should we go fully remote, or should we go back in office, or should we do hybrid? And I, you know, I did the GitLab investment at YC, so I'm not against remote, like at some fundamental dogmatic, radical pragmatism. That's the, that's the name of the game. And so. That whole discussion can boil down to, we originally were like hybrid. Nobody wanted to be fully remote. That was across all the groups.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  The new grads, the parents, nobody wanted to be fully remote. So we're like a hybrid or full time at office. Within the hybrid group, we have customers coming on site all the time. We do interviews every day. So then we were like, logistically, how do we do interviews only Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Well, CTO comes from, you know, from Toyota. They're not going to tell you, they're just going to come to whatever one hour slot that they have available when they're in Silicon Valley. And so then we're like, well, and then we have offices everywhere else. We have on both sides of the time spectrum. On Munich, you know, when we do all hands, we have to do them at 2 P M. Because in Tokyo and Korea at 6 A M. And in Munich, it's 10, 11 P M. Depending on the time zone. And it's like, so you're really covering the full spectrum. It's like the three corners of the world, right? In terms of time zones.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  And, uh, and so all of that led to, okay, we're probably in office. And then it was like, well, we should probably in office as a consistent thing. If all these principles are true here, they're probably true in Germany, they're true in other places. So we made the decision, what we didn't do is, what did, was everyone else thinking? What's everyone else going to do? If there is a version of that, I mean, I say this like kind of tongue in cheek. We're like, whatever the big companies do, we should do the opposite of. It's like whatever Google does, we should like to do the opposite of that. And ironically, before Google was never remote, and then they were all remote.

• 38:39Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  And so we just were always flipped to that, you know? I think we would have been like, when we started the company, we very seriously considered being a remote company.

• 38:45Jack Altman?

  Yeah. How do you feel when you see things as a sort of like a, you know, intrinsic contrarian? How do you feel when you see the world come around to you? Does it make you uneasy or are you like, I told you so?

• 38:56Speaker 00

  You know, if there's a person that I'd love to emulate, if I could, it's Andy Grove. You know, I mean, we as a company and part of onboarding for managers, we read high output management.

• 39:06Jack Altman?

  I mean, that's like my favorite manager.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so you, you know, and then like we, you know, the joke I make to, again, like this is kind of weird. The joke I make is like, the engineers like wear the collar, wear a collared shirt. Because the norm is to not wear a collared shirt. So you almost, so I think you're contrarian almost just to. Push the principles that you pull so dearly that everyone should be casual or everyone should be formal. Like whatever it is, you're pushing it. And then in that, you know, in that, in that conflict is when you actually discover what the truth is. Without that conflict, you live in these assumptions. And then you don't know what the truth is because you might think something slightly different than me. So a core part of our culture is like just debate, debate, debate. Say what's on your mind, let's have that conversation. That doesn't mean it has to be disrespectful.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  It doesn't mean that it's a culture of constant yelling and, you know, you don't have to do that stuff. But I think there are like get along cultures and there are cultures that are actively pushing each other.

• 39:58Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  And we're definitely in that category.

• 40:01Jack Altman?

  Do you have any like contrarian beats you're on right now?

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Like, I mean, what's the most contrarian? I mean, yeah, I do, I mean, this is the macro stuff. I mean, because you macro being this month, this year, this time, you have the big, you know, a amount of investments going into broadly Gen AI, specifically in humanoid robotics. Look, right now in this, in this universe. I mean, I, I mean, I just think where's the business models? Because when you take applied intuition as an example, in 2016, 2017, lots of companies getting funded in autonomy. Billion dollar raises were the, were the craze. Autonomy was a hot, hot thing.

• 40:35Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  All the tech currents list everything, it was all autonomy, autonomy, autonomy. And now it's like self-driving is some like almost out of okay. It's coming back because the Waymos are starting to flood San Francisco. But I think like the point about humanoid robots or Gen AI companies, I think maybe they're really, I don't know if this is true. I truly said, I don't know if this is true, I could be completely wrong. Probably the really good ones are going to emerge in four or five years from now. Because you're just gonna, the ecosystem is going to learn a lot about the space. And then the most important thing to learn is what the business model is.

• 41:03Jack Altman?

  Right. I would think based on how you spend your time, you would think that we will end up with very smart humanoid robots though. So you believe in that product happening, you just don't believe that there's a good business there yet.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it just has to be found.

• 41:16Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  What, they might even exist, they might even exist in a company that's fairly funded right now. It just has to be discovered.

• 41:21Jack Altman?

  And is the reason you think that is because you're like, why should I build a humanoid? When I could have a caterpillar or I could have like a machine in a factory doing a purpose-built thing?

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. It's just first principles. Even though like it's, we had a, one of those Chinese unitary.

• 41:36Jack Altman?

  Like, why do I need a human shaped robot?

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Though it's so emotional, we had one of them in the office with the Chinese team here and they're showing their, you know, that's like really the whole company like gathers around, I mean hundreds of people, it's like a celebrity. We've, we've had Marc Andreessen walk down the hall, we've had Sam come and you'd have as many people than this, this, this, you know, humanoid robot. You can't discount that to fool you as an engineer or as a founder into thinking something is actually a good thing than it not. So just like step back and have that debate of like, what really is the thing here?

• 42:11Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  And I think for applied, we did that. We believe in autonomy. We built a horizontal business where you can give the tools to all these people to build and so then you're kind of abstracted away. So I think there's some version of that and companies, by the way, are trying to do the applied play in humanoids as well right now. So the ecosystem gets more, more, more sharp.

• 42:28Jack Altman?

  I feel like when I talk to people on like Wall Street, whether it's like at a hedge fund or like a Goldman or something. I feel sometimes surprised that actually public investors are, you'd think that they are short term minded and they're not, is my experience. And I think actually in some ways, I, I think there might be like a U shape where it's like early stage investors think very long term. Real like public investors think very long term and maybe it's like the growth investors that are like the most short term minded because they're just getting taught to think about like how long to liquidity and what's my mark going to be there?

• 43:02Speaker 00

  I think it's all over. I, I don't, I, I think the brain wants to find that pattern. I don't think there, I think there's a lot more noise than signal in there. I think I've, you know, I've certainly met seed, you know, folks who are like trying to flip their money by series C and are just looking at the markup because they want to get the next fund raised. So they're, you know, optimizing to invest in what is going to get marked up, which by the way, is not a bad strategy. Cause I know a specific investor who's, that's their strategy and done exceedingly well. Their view is just like, ride the hype.

• 43:32Jack Altman?

  Interesting.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Cause the hype is going to get funded again.

• 43:34Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  And then if you, it's the old classic question, what? Does a company make money or does money make a company?

• 43:41Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  The reality is if we're starting two humanoid robotics companies and I raise 3 million, you raise 250 million.

• 43:47Jack Altman?

  Yeah, that's better out of money.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  You're better out, you're gonna win. And everyone thinks you're gonna win.

• 43:51Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Employees think you're gonna win, your customers think you're gonna win, the target.

• 43:54Jack Altman?

  And then it's self fulfilling, that's right.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then so like, it's self fulfilling, absolutely. So I don't think there, I think I've met late stage investors that are like, you know, I can see that they're gonna dump on when the public, the company goes public, because they're just looking for that 20% bump, you know, return. And then you met like, you know, early stage investors that wanted to dump early stage. I don't think there's truth in it.

• 44:14Jack Altman?

  Do you think as the job's changing, it's making you change too? Like, do you think that doing this job changes who you are?

• 44:23Jack Altman?

  And the reason I'm asking is because I felt like in a lot of ways, I mean, I think whatever work would do changes in some ways, but I felt like there were so many things about, you know, Lash was not as big as Applied, but you know, there's hundreds of people and you know, you experienced a lot of those things and

• 44:38Jack Altman?

  I felt like it was very hard to not be, I think in much, in many more good ways than bad ways. It changes your psychology, your behavior, like it does update your software a little bit.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I'm not removed enough for myself to have that objective third party view. I'm sure I've changed without a doubt. And it's impossible not to, based on the, on the surroundings. But I can say, again, maybe it's like rationalization, you never know, I feel more myself today than I've ever felt.

• 45:07Jack Altman?

  That's great.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's like, I feel that's a huge privilege.

• 45:11Jack Altman?

  That's amazing.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:12Jack Altman?

  If you can just like settle into yourself and still have a long way to go with the company. Yeah, maybe that's a good thing though.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  You're getting old. It's like you just come to peace with like, these are things I'm good at, these are things I'm not good at.

• 45:22Jack Altman?

  For me, I'm like, even just like having kids takes a little bit of the edge off of just like, I don't really care about a list of, there's a list of things that I used to care about that I don't care about anymore.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:30Jack Altman?

  And I guess there's just a lot of things about getting older that update that.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a, one thing that reminded me that is I, that I want to repeat, which is my last co-founder had this line where he said, about Michael Ma, and he said, um, no matter how successful you become as a founder or, you know, venture investor, whatever, if your kids don't like you, you're a failure.

• 45:50Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  And that just like, for me, I think. Ten years ago, that would have kind of made sense. It to me, it's like

• 45:57Jack Altman?

  Now you're like, that is so true.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  That's there's nothing more true than that.

• 46:00Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  So true that doesn't even belong in this conversation. And I want to interject in because I believe it's so absolutely true. Then the Gandhi line, what's truth? Truth is what stands the test of time.

• 46:08Jack Altman?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  So when we are, we will all die. When we're, hopefully we make it to eighty, ninety, we're laying in that bed. You're not going to think about this fucking podcast. You're not going to think about the fundraising.

• 46:19Jack Altman?

  This is a good podcast, though.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:21Jack Altman?

  Probably watch it one more time later.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  So what are you going to think about? You're going to think about your kids? You're going to think about, oh, I had a good working career. You know, I had a good relationship with my parents. Well, that's the thing you need to think about. And then everything else is kind of grays out. And so I think becoming more okay with the professional stuff and being like, hey, I'm going to always give direct feedback.

• 46:40Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Like, that's just going to be, I just cannot lower my bar. I ask on a weekly basis to my team, am I just being too, you know, pedantic? And one of the team members on our team is one of our engineering leads. He was sent a message, I was like, I don't know if I'm just being an asshole here. And I bet you just, and he goes, no, no. You are, your only role in this company is to maintain that bar. And we maintain that bar, everything else, all the products will get taken care of, all the but you listen to lower that bar, everyone becomes more mediocre. And so I think you as a founder, as not only, you know, you as starting a firm, but anybody out there who's starting thing, you have to kind of figure out like, as the company changes, are you becoming more of yourself or are you becoming less of yourself? Then you kind of ideally want to orient that to more of yourself.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  And then you become more comfortable and yeah. But it's not easy because I think your brain just rationalizes it. One thing is absolutely true is what's the parallel universe where applied intuition fails?

• 47:32Jack Altman?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  We raised ten, twenty million dollars, we never mind part of market fit. We might be partnering together with a venture fund, who knows?

• 47:38Jack Altman?

  That would have been great. I'm still, I would rather it work out than not. On the last note, on that topic, for founders, because obviously, you know, you saw a bunch at Y C, you've been doing your own very successful one now, you angel invest. What are the things that, you know, when you find yourself talking to a founder, what do you focus on most with helping people or advising right now?

• 48:02Speaker 00

  There's this book called Into Thin Air, which is about this faded Everest climb. And it was a journalist who wanted to just talk about Everest tourism. And he ends up being in this trip where 16 climbers ultimately died in a blizzard. It was the worst single camp incident. And in this blizzard, when he gets hit, he's coming down the mountain. And there is a Japanese climber and she's going up the mountain. And he sees base camp. He's like, I'm 100 yards. I just gotta make the tents and I'll live. And there's people who've fallen off. And all this is because everyone's lacking oxygen. So everyone's kind of in this delirious state. So he's going down the mountain towards the camp. This woman starts pulling on him and says, no, no, the camp is that way. And he's like, no, the camp is right there.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  And he goes, I looked in her eyes and you could see that she was gone. And I make a decision. Am I gonna die too? Or am I gonna leave her? Obviously left her, she dies. I meet founders all the time who are going up the wrong side of the mountain.

• 49:03Jack Altman?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  And you're just like, this company's not gonna work.

• 49:06Jack Altman?

  So what do you do?

• 49:07Speaker 00

  You tell them, but they can't because we're, we all have to believe that you're doing the right thing.

• 49:13Jack Altman?

  What's so hard about that is as a founder, so many people are telling you you're going up the wrong mountain. And even when you're going up the right mountain, there's gonna be people telling you that you're wrong.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  There's people telling you go the wrong mountain.

• 49:23Jack Altman?

  Yeah. Still, I think you might be still. It doesn't seem like, I can't tell if this is working or not.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  Who knows? Like, that's the thing, that's the thing is like, it's working. It's working is a state in time.

• 49:33Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  It's not a permanent state.

• 49:35Jack Altman?

  Yeah. And there's a lot of head fakes right now, but available with like a new paradigm and everything like that.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  And I think, I think, so I find myself often talking to founders and having that conversation. I think it's not easy to start a company. It's really, really hard to stop a company.

• 49:48Jack Altman?

  Yeah. Does it, do you then end up in a contentious conversation? Or is it usually just like, I disagree and moves on?

• 49:56Speaker 00

  I think you can only tell a founder. I mean, I'm almost always an investor in the company.

• 49:59Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  And I'm saying, hey, like, I'm not telling you because it's in my financial interest for you to stop this. I know you have 6 million in the bank. This isn't what it looks like.

• 50:08Jack Altman?

  Yep.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  And I think the crazy thing, you know, and there is a lesson to be taken away where applied, you know, again, there's a parallel universe that doesn't work, but it hasn't been hard.

• 50:17Jack Altman?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like the, it's been pulled out of you the whole time.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:21Jack Altman?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:22Jack Altman?

  Actually, this is something to YC's credit that I really, I mean, there's many things to YC's credit, but this point I give to them strongly, which is they will tell founders pretty directly if this isn't working. And I think a lot of investors aren't willing to have those kinds of conversations with founders because we've gotten to a place where everybody knows that, you know, screw, you know, screw the haters.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  Like Castor Eunice is maintaining a list of the people who passed on the company and when it crosses a hundred billion.

• 50:45Jack Altman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, at our next podcast, that's what we're going to do is we're going to go through in a few years.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  But I can tell, just again, to on the VC side, it's very hard if you're looking at a series A company and you're passing, you don't know if it's, you're making the right decision.

• 50:59Jack Altman?

  Yeah, probably not.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  So why, why, how are you like, you're like, I'm not going to invest, but you might actually be on the right thing.

• 51:05Jack Altman?

  For sure.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:05Jack Altman?

  100%. It is very hard. All right. Well, I got a lot of your time here. This was awesome. I really appreciated it. Thanks for.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  It went by in a flash.

• 51:12Jack Altman?

  It was fast.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:13Jack Altman?

  Thanks a bunch.