The Future You Avoid Is Riskier Than the One You Face with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

The future is something we create, not just something that happens. To guide progress toward real good, we need bold, optimistic visions of what society can become. Reid Hoffman makes the case for better science fiction - stories that don’t just entertain, but illuminate the futures we can strive for. As a serial entrepreneur and cofounder of LinkedIn, Reid brings a unique perspective on how storytelling shapes technology, society, and innovation. He argues that imagining optimistic futures is essential if we want to create them. In this episode, we also explore how technology like AI is changing the way our brains work and how our faculties will evolve, why humanity has shifted from focusing on external threats to internal ones, and how optimism isn’t blind faith—it’s a clear-eyed strategy for shaping a better world. This is... A Bit of Optimism. Check out Reid’s new book here: https://www.superagency.ai/ SUPERAGENCY: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm going down that rabbit hole. What science fiction do we need these days, Reed? So the thing that was really magical for me, but process, you know, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even to some degree, the early 90s, was a notion that what we're creating with technology, what we're creating as the possible human future. Yep. Can be amazing. Like this, the sense of the world could be much better for all human beings. Not to say without big challenges and navigations and issues, but it could be. And you don't have to be as simplistic as like the Jetsons. Um, but it's just kind of a sense of what are the,

• 0:44Speaker 00

  what does the path ahead look like?

• 0:46Simon Sinek?

  There are only a handful of entrepreneurs who it's safe to say that their companies change the way we do things. Reid Hoffman is one of those entrepreneurs and LinkedIn is one of those companies. There was a time when posting our resumes online would get us fired. Now being on LinkedIn is just how we work. His mentality of giving power back to the people has permeated every aspect of Reed's life. Even his full embrace of AI and what it can do for humanity, which he writes about in his book, Super Agency. But it was our conversation about idealism, the need for it and what happened to it that really inspired me.

• 1:31Simon Sinek?

  This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:40Simon Sinek?

  What did you want to be when you were a kid?

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Oh, that's interesting. The different phases. Um, it was, um, I'd say the first thought was probably a science fiction author. Um, because I was reading a lot of science fiction.

• 1:58Simon Sinek?

  How, how old are you now approximately?

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Uh, I am like, my birthday was two days ago, so I'm 58 and two days.

• 2:05Simon Sinek?

  Oh, happy birthday.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Thank you. And then I started realizing that you wanted to kind of, uh, contribute to making the world better. So then I had this kind of. Plan, and I think it's a very science fiction enhanced plan that I and a group of friends would all get into positions by which we could influence the world to try to make it more peaceful, less warlike, more compassionate. You know, kind of key, what we think of as essential human virtues.

• 2:38Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  And then realized that, oh, and, and, and this is, this will be a very weird thing that I've never ever said before on a public camera. My theory, now this is again, a 12 year old's theory.

• 2:51Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Uh, is, was like, oh, and the right way to do that will be to become the director of the CIA. And then when I was talking about that with my dad, he bought a book for me called The Crimes of the US Intelligence Agencies.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  And I was reading through it, I'm, oh, assassinations, oh, it's like, I was like, okay, scratch that plan. And then after that, I didn't have a plan for a long time. Um, I guess through universities, it was try to contribute to public intellectual discourse. Which what I mean is, is who are we and who should we be as individuals and as groups? Um, and you know, I thought maybe being an academic would be a path to that. So there was a, there was a number of years where I thought I'd become a philosophy professor. Uh, and then, uh, I realized that the, that the kind of the scholarship canon of the academic humanities was more about scholarship and less about

• 3:50Speaker 00

  the kind of the evolution of the human condition about the participation and the improvement of society. I was like, okay, I don't want to do that.

• 3:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Fortunately, I'd gone through Stanford, so I unders was acquitted in it. What is this software entrepreneurship thing? That could be interesting. And that's, you know, how I ended up on my modern path.

• 4:07Simon Sinek?

  And, and the rest, as they say, is history.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:10Simon Sinek?

  What I think is so interesting is I asked you, what did you want to be when you grew up? Like when, what, what did you want to be when you were a little kid? And you said, my plan was.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:19Simon Sinek?

  Those are not the same question.

• 4:24Simon Sinek?

  Like, I wanted to be an astronaut. There was no plan for that. It was just the idea of it was so magical and fantastical.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  I don't think I have ever had a, a thing that it wasn't a plan. Like, all the way back to five. Like, so, like, that's the way I am, like, the, the way that Reid answers that question.

• 4:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Is that way, right? It's like, you say, okay. What do you want to be? You want to be an astronaut? Okay. What do you need to do in order to become an astronaut?

• 4:56Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Like, okay, I need to understand physics. I need to have a certain kind of physical capability. I need to be within certain kinds of, of programs in order to do it. You know, etc., etc. And then that would start being like, like, you know, like, like, at least components of thinking.

• 5:11Simon Sinek?

  Right, right.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  If not action.

• 5:13Simon Sinek?

  The, the, but you, the one fantasy you had, I guess, was to be a science fiction author.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 5:20Simon Sinek?

  What was the reason you wanted to be a science fiction author?

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Well, it was participating in the dialogue. I mean, the thing that I loved about science fiction as a child.

• 5:28Simon Sinek?

  No five-year-old or 12-year-old says, I want to participate in the dialogue.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. No, no. Look, I, I, I, I was, I was, well, I may not have said that sentence, but that was what the intent was.

• 5:41Simon Sinek?

  Mom, Dad, I would like to contribute to the discussion of the betterment of humankind through my works of science fiction.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Yes. Look, to give you a sense, I'll tell you a funny anecdote from 12. So I was actually intensely into fantasy role-playing games. I started when I was eight because my dad hired a babysitter who introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. And then was surprised by my, the next day when I was talking to him, I was like, could you go out on dates more often? Like, like, hire Michael, the babysitter, back.

• 6:15Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Like, every night's good, right? And. And so when I got to 12, I was talking to some of my friends at school and one of them said, "Hey, there's this fantasy role-playing game company called The Chaosium, which publishes a game called Runequest that is like the next block over from my house." And so I literally walked down there, walked into the office, and started trying to like get in the action because it was kind of like, like, "How do I participate in this making of fantasy role-playing games and doing stuff?" And I remember the really irritated look that the editor-in-chief was like,

• 6:56Speaker 00

  "Who the f-" like, "It's our customers, so we kind of can't kick them out brutally, but like, how the fuck do we get rid of this kid?" And so what he did, and it was only years later when I realized what that look meant.

• 7:08Simon Sinek?

  Right, right.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  It was like, at the time, it was like, "Hmm, I'm here." And he handed me a scenario pack, which is kind of what they give to the person who's leading the game adventure, the game master, dungeon master, do stuff. He said, "We're working on this. Go look at this and then come back." And I think he thought, "Okay, this kid will never come back." Because it's like, I've given the kid work. Being the obsessive kid that I was, this was, I think, Friday afternoon. I came back Monday afternoon with the entire thing like redlined. But like, I'd worked through it. I was like, "This part doesn't work. You need a character here." You know, because I just worked the entire weekend on this thing.

• 7:49Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  And I know, I did know, when I handed it to him, he was like, "Oh, God, that didn't work." And then I started looking at it and went, "I need to pay you for this." Because like, "I want to use this, so I'm going to write you a check." And so it was my actually first-ever job for payment, but it was that same kind of participate in the dialogue, be kind of part of what is being created. And that was the, you know, that's the reason why, like, that is a science fiction author, which I may still, at some point, try to get some science fiction created. I don't know if I will ever write any myself, but I may try to organize a project to create some of the kind of science fiction I think we need these days.

• 8:35Simon Sinek?

  Ooh, I was about to go to the next question. Some of the science fiction... that we need these days?

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:43Simon Sinek?

  Okay, I'm going down that rabbit hole.

• 8:48Simon Sinek?

  What science fiction do we need these days, Reed?

• 8:51Speaker 00

  So the thing that was really magical for us, for me, but for us, you know, in the, you know, the sixties, seventies, eighties, even to some degree, the early nineties, maybe even into the nineties, was a notion that what we're creating with technology, what we're creating as the possible human future.

• 9:13Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Can be amazing. Doesn't mean that there aren't real issues, you know, Terminator was made in the nineties or then some things to kind of navigate, but like this, the sense of the world could be much better for all human beings, not to say without big challenges and navigations and issues, but it could be. And you don't have to be as simplistic as like, you know, the Jetsons, but it's just kind of a, you know, kind of a sense of what are the, what does the path ahead look like? And right now, when you look at the majority of science fiction, especially of the, the video format, you know, movies and so the vast majority of that is dystopic.

• 9:58Simon Sinek?

  Yes.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  And the problem is you don't get a future, like you don't get a future that you want by avoiding the futures you don't want. It's a little bit like if I was planning on driving from San Francisco down to see you in LA, if I said, well, I first have to plan to avoid all possible traffic accidents, all possible potholes, all possible, I'll never get to LA. It's just, I won't get there. I won't even get on the car to go. And so you have to have like, this is the future that we're trying to get to. And of course you go, hey, it's raining a lot. I should drive a little slower. You know, there's a lot, you know, you adjust, but you have to have that. And we need that in science fiction. We need that, that kind of sense of imagination of.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Of goodness. And matter of fact, in 2019, because I had been talking to the Creative Artists Agency about this, you know, some of my friends there, Richard Lovett and others had asked me to come and and give a talk at the end of their talent summary. And I basically was like, you know, it's up to you guys to start stop harming our the imagination of our human futures.

• 11:01Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  And I get it that the most natural drama is man versus machine where the evil machine is basically almost, you know, is beaten by the man. But like, you know, it's man versus machine. It's like, look, how we get to this entire modern life of all of the things that we love about modern life is, by the way, through the creation of machines.

• 11:23Simon Sinek?

  Right. Okay. Two, two thoughts come to mind, two completely different paths. I'm going to go down one. I'll come back and go down the other. Okay. Two rabbit holes. One, is the whole discussion about AI right now, the science fiction, is the discussion of AI, the imagining the future, what could be the idealism, some of the scariness as well, because it's dominating every conversation, every conference, you know, for good, for good reasons and annoying reasons. But is that this, the, the, the, the science fiction discourse of the day?

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Most of it. Most of it is because it's much easier to imagine how things go wrong than how they go right. And so.

• 12:11Simon Sinek?

  But those, those that are investing in, in AI, you know, have no dystopian anything. It's all utopian. And is it, can we trust that their science fiction views of the future are the ones that should inspire us? Or should, should we be cynical, given their, their conflicts of interest?

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Well, I would say, call it 85% trust, 15% cynicism. Right. So is the fact that, you know, the facts, the people at OpenAI and Anthropic and Google and Microsoft are all actually, in fact, people like you and I care about what happens with, you know, their friends and family, their communities, all the rest that cares about like what happens in terms of the progress of the elevation of human welfare? Absolutely. Yes. And so.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  You know, the kind of the simplistic, you know, what is kind of classic, mostly lefty populist story, which is, oh, because of profit, they're gonna like ruin the whole human race. I just, it's literally a deep misunderstandings in both human nature, in the nature of corporations, and how people work together, in the nature of like, for example, even when you're a completely full-blooded capitalist, you're like, well, actually, in fact, ruining humanity would be bad, not just for me, but for my business. So it's kind of like, it's this question on, like, the intense and so forth, the good. Now, the reason why the 15% holdback is blind spots.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  And part of where it's useful for, for people who have, you know, concerns is to say, well, I think there's a blind spot here, and there's something you, we should do something about it. Now, the most often blind spot is, well, we're driving to LA, and we don't know what the danger is ahead, so we should go five miles an hour. And you're like, well, that's not gonna work, because other people are not gonna go five miles an hour, not other companies, not other countries, not other industries, et cetera, et cetera. So you, you have to say, no, no, we're gonna go at, at the kind of speed of traffic.

• 14:13Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  But we're gonna try to navigate it within going the speed of traffic.

• 14:17Simon Sinek?

  Okay, I, I, I'm gonna put on my cynical hat here. So you, you talk about the, the misunderstanding of capitalism, you know, that, you know, it's not good for business to destroy the planet, or to destroy the, the market.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:29Simon Sinek?

  You're talking about Adam Smith capitalism, which is, you know, which is, which is more long-term focused. It's what old-fashioned Goldman Sachs used to call long-term greed, right? And a strong argument can be made because of the way that capitalism has become more and more short-termist, more and more shareholder-focused, not customer or employee-focused, that we will do damage to the market, because by the time

• 15:05Simon Sinek?

  It's damaged, I'm out of here, right? And it just reminds me of Kodak.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 15:11Simon Sinek?

  Where Kodak in the 1970s invented the digital camera, suppressed the technology because they didn't want to cannibalize film sales and paper sales and chemical sales. And the thought of having to reinvent their company was like, ugh. And licensed their digital technology to Fuji and other Canon, other Japanese companies who sort of pioneered digital photography. And then eventually, digital photography takes over and basically bankrupts Kodak. And the executives who made those decisions, who had foresight, let's be honest, they knew the world was going to go digital. They weren't idiots.

• 15:52Simon Sinek?

  But at the end of the day, they bankrupted the company, but they were long gone and retired with their big fat bonuses for driving the stock price up for the 10 years that, you know, they were making money, making coin off of the license. So is it maybe 50 50, not 85 15?

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Well, but it would be, can we, look, the worst part is actually the one that I most often use for, where I think capitalism goes very wrong in human welfare, is unfortunately, the incentives in the medical industry. Which is the incentives in the medical industry are, we are all in cross, chronic desperate conditions and need to be paying for drugs and dialysis and everything else every week in order to sustain. And I think that's the classic where the economic incentives kind of align to, to, you know, bad for society.

• 16:43Simon Sinek?

  The wrong thing.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  The wrong thing. Because by the way, the, the collapse of Kodak is exactly the kind of thing where bad board of directors, bad management causes a company to collapse. And by the way, that does create chaos for the workers of Kodak, for the company town in Kodak.

• 17:00Simon Sinek?

  Destroyed Rochester.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Exactly. So real issues. But of the overall, they, the, the market actually still assumes and goes to places beyond those bad actors and the impact on, call it, society as a whole, humanity is not necessarily

• 17:17Simon Sinek?

  I see what you mean. So they made, they made bad decisions for the company.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:22Simon Sinek?

  They didn't necessarily make bad decisions for society writ large, you know, excluding the, the town in which they worked in.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  Yes. So, but that's also the reason why I go eighty-five, fifteen, because even with this kind of market dynamic.

• 17:34Simon Sinek?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  There is still things go wrong. Medical is the one I most often use, is the things that go wrong. Um, there's others too.

• 17:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  The one that's kind of the cause celebre for the last ten years is the advertising model. And actually, I think the advertising model gets far too much grief. Um, because when you go to, it's almost like a version of patronizing. You go to the vast majority of human beings and you say, would you rather pay for this thing or have it for free with someone else buying it for you so they can advertise to you? And most human beings go, yeah, I'd rather have it for free, please. And you go, well, you shouldn't want that. You're like.

• 18:12Simon Sinek?

  Well, I mean, I think Tim Cook summed it up, right? If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Look, and even if you do that, that, most people go, yeah, that's what I want. Thank you very much. Don't be patronizing to me. Right? Like, like, allow me to express my own preferences.

• 18:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. I, I was, I was in Europe and they have different rules there. And I logged on to Instagram and it offered me to pay for it and have no ads or have the ads. And as much as I hate the ad model, I hate, I know the system is listening to me. I know it's tracking me. The thought of spending seventy-nine dollars a year to use Instagram, I was like, yeah, no.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. See, look, and, and, and the, the most sympathetic I am to this point is to say, look, most, because there's enough people who don't want it, you have to kind of nudge them to force them to offer that as an option.

• 19:03Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Right? But by the way, of course, it's going to be premiumly priced, not because they just simply want to drag, to, to drive you to advertising. It's that the, well, look, actually, in fact, we're optimizing our entire business operations or hiring an ad for us and all the rest of the stuff. And if you're going to say, we're going to cut off part of our product from all of that, that's going to be an expensive subunit. So let's, let's charge for the subunit. So anyway, this is all a digression into the patterns and capitalism. The thing that I think is important, look, if there was no, you know, early this year, as you know, I, I, I published a book, Super Agency, to try to make the optimistic case for AI.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  And obviously, it's like the most optimistic book for AI that's out there, especially written by.

• 19:49Simon Sinek?

  Dare I say, dare I say, science fiction.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, um, a lens, a more pragmatic science fiction, yes. And, and, um, now, if there was, if, if, if, if there was no criticism, I would have put more criticism in it. Because it's not that I'm absent the criticism, it's just that the dialogue is so much like, AI is coming for your jobs and for your lives and for, you know, like, it's like, okay, like, that's science fiction, right? And it doesn't mean there aren't huge transformations, but the way they were talking about AI, part of what I was trying to remind people is, is the same way people talked about the printing press. Right? And so, well, but the times different, it's like, well, each time is indeed different. And this time might be different, it has a lot of differences.

• 20:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  But don't take the trivial of, I can think of something that go wrong and therefore, because this is like, for example, a classic thing that is discussed in this, and I'll get back to the, to the, how much do we trust the companies, but classic thing is precautionary principle. Which is, well, if something serious can go wrong, we should actually, in fact, try to totally minimize it. And if you're like, well, okay, you could die driving to LA. And if you say, well, I'm never going to get in the car until I know that I couldn't drive dying, you know, die driving to LA, then you're never going to get in the car.

• 21:09Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  So you have to have precautionary principles.

• 21:11Simon Sinek?

  But there's, there's, there's acceptable risks.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:15Simon Sinek?

  You know, you're not going to get in a car without brakes.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Yes, a hundred percent.

• 21:18Simon Sinek?

  We have our cars inspected for a reason.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:21Simon Sinek?

  And we want pilots to walk around the plane before we take off for a reason. You know, we understand that most accidents are pilot error, for example, but there's an acceptable level of risk.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and by the way, this is part of the reason why, you know, the earlier Biden executive order was something I supported and was doing. Because it's kind of like, hey, have red teams be investigating the risk, be doing stuff like it. That's good stuff to do. The companies actually are still all doing that. Because they went, yes, this is a good idea to do. We will do that. And so that's the reason why it's kind of like 85% positive.

• 21:57Simon Sinek?

  And yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  And there's one other thing.

• 21:59Simon Sinek?

  So here's, I have a question. I'd love to get your opinion about this, which is, and you know, you talked about how technology throughout history is disruptive and scary, and it does absolutely change the way our lives work. And I think we have to accept that depending on the technology, but some of those technologies change our, our brain. They change how we work. The Iliad was handed down through oral history. It's like, son, it's time I tell you the story of the Iliad. I'm like, you memorized 800 pages? Like, no, no, my dad told me, and now I'm gonna tell you. And like, and then when the printing press came out, the brain literally was like, I don't need to remember stuff anymore. And it just stopped remembering stuff. I remember

• 22:43Simon Sinek?

  just in my lifetime, I used to have a mind like a steel trap for phone numbers. You told me your phone number. I knew everybody's phone number, lists of phone numbers. And then I was one of the first people to get a Casio digital diary with 2K of memory. And I put all the phone numbers out of my head into the technology because I like technology. To this day, I know my phone number and my sister's phone number, and I can't remember anybody's phone number. Because my brain was like, you don't need it? I'm gonna turn that function off. Or the calculator? We just stopped being good at math, right? Like, I think most of us are okay letting go of some of our talents and gifts and outsourcing it to technology. The question I'm asking is

• 23:27Simon Sinek?

  what facilities, what faculties are we gonna lose because we're outsourcing to the AI? And my fear is that it's not just our memories. Maybe that's acceptable, but rather, there's gonna be a decline in, in, in human skills and other really important things, like ability to cope with stress and other things because we outsourced it to the machine. That's what I'm asking, which is what faculties are we gonna lose because of the technology?

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Well, the faculties are definitely gonna change, but let me give you an example that I've been telling a bunch of the, you know, educators, university people, because it's a very common thing to say, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're the day of the, you know, the GBD 5 launch. I'm not gonna write an essay. I'm just gonna have GBD 5 write the essay, and I'm gonna submit it, and I'm gonna have to think or suffer or, you know, stare at a blank page in order to do that.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  Actually, in fact, I actually think the, the, the, our capabilities for training human beings is going to go way up because what's going to happen is examination is all going to happen by AI and the examination will be like oral exams for PhDs, right? Like, like we all learn going through college, you know, to say, hey, I can predict the three to five questions that are likely to be on the exam. I'll prepare for those. I prepared just enough to be able to answer those within a three hour period and get a good grade. And that's my competence level.

• 24:50Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Now, what we're going to have in small end years, this might be three, right? Two, um, could be five, where literally the cost of examination is zero and literally you can start taking the examination whenever you want. You could take it on day two of the class and take it on day 17 as well and 23 and however you learn. And part of the reason why we reserve oral exams for PhDs is because it's the one that you have to, if you're really going to do it, you have to prep the whole area.

• 25:22Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Like you have to be A to Z on it. And so what I think is actually going to happen is we're going to be able to calibrate what we set as a human society.

• 25:32Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  For which skills do we want? How do we want those examined and how are people prepared? So I actually, I'm not a idiocracy believer here. I'm a, um, I'm a, no, no, this is our question of our choice about how we set this up. And actually, in fact, it's going to get a lot more rigorous.

• 25:51Simon Sinek?

  I think you make, I think you make a very good point with regards to school.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 25:56Simon Sinek?

  But let's now leave school.

• 26:00Simon Sinek?

  And the AI is writing the press release for me. It's writing the blog entry for me. It's writing my article for the newspaper. It's writing my book for me, you know, and very competently, I might add, when I was in school, I had to do the studying to demonstrate to the test that I knew it. But in the, in, once I go get a job, I'm not getting tested anymore. They only want me to do a good thing, like write, write a piece and that's it. That's my job to keep writing press releases or whatever. Um, so where is the learning? Where is the struggle? Where is the, the ability to, to hone your craft if you're actually never doing your craft?

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Well, what I think as opposed to the Like, like if you you compare a person A and person B competing and today's environment is, you know, person A and person B sit down on a blank page and have to craft what looks like a press release.

• 26:54Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  You know, press statement. And you're from scratch. That's no longer the, that's no longer the.

• 26:59Simon Sinek?

  That's no longer a thing.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  The thing. But then the question is, well, what does it look like? Because person A and person B are still going to be competing. You know, in our universe, and maybe it's the which way they prompt the AI better. Recognize a strategic game of the, of the, of the nature. Do things that are better evocations for, you know, the competitive game of.

• 27:25Simon Sinek?

  I don't know. The construction is a fair construction, right? Because I, school, it was me versus test.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:32Simon Sinek?

  You're talking about not, we're not always in competition, you know, we're in competition sometimes for promotion. We're in competition sometimes for the job, but sometimes I'm the guy. I'm the guy doing the thing. I'm, I'm, I'm the guy. There's no competition. So what do you do when there's no?

• 27:50Speaker 00

  But actually.

• 27:51Simon Sinek?

  The competition is in sense, a, a, a, a, a test, a measurement.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  Well, but our whole society is based on competition. There's competition for the job. There's competition for between companies, between products. There's competition for the promotion. That doesn't mean that necessarily each one is a directly easily measured one. But like, for example, you know, you don't go out, rant, walk down Main Street town and say, hey, Sarah, Bob, you're my PR press release writer, you know, come on, come, come do this. Because there's competition for the job.

• 28:22Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  And even though you say, well, but there's some jobs, there's less competition for like, maybe, you know, greeter at a restaurant. It still has to be on time, friendly, et cetera, et cetera, as ways of doing this. And by the way, of course, the whole landscape of jobs.

• 28:35Simon Sinek?

  So what you're suggesting is the metrics will be different. So, so the quality of the press release is no longer the thing by which I'm judging you as a PR person. Now I'm judging, are you showing up on time? Are you a good team player? Did you, did you get the, the, the data points from the client right?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Did you know what the strategy was?

• 28:52Simon Sinek?

  You know, the strategy is. So you're, you're, you're, you're arguing that the, it's still there, but the, the, the standards are different.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Exactly. Just like, for example, to take your idiot. The standard is no longer, do you remember the 800 pages?

• 29:05Simon Sinek?

  But tho- but those, those things are still there. Even if I have to do the work myself, I still have to be on time. I still have to understand the strategy. Where I'm, where I'm struggling, where I'm trying to wrap my head around this, right? And I swear I have an open mind to this. I'm not trying to force any, I don't, I don't have a particular bias, which is, and I've talked about this publicly before, which is, I know that I am smarter, a better problem solver, a better critical thinker, not because I have a book, but because I wrote a book, right? The awful slog of writing a book made me better at the things that I like to be good at.

• 29:49Simon Sinek?

  You know, critical thinking and the like, pattern recognition. And I could have asked the machine to write the book for me and it would have done a fairly decent job. But the outcome might have been excellent, but the process was missing. And you are as smart as you are, not simply because you were born smart, but when you built your company, you built it and you went through the hell of building it and the struggles and the setbacks and you stuck with it and the grit, which contributed to all of your intelligence, wisdom and perspective today.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:31Simon Sinek?

  And you wouldn't be as smart as you are now or have the perspectives you have now, had you not gone through the shit.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. And what I'm, what I'm saying is there will be similar kind of struggle and evolution.

• 30:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Right? Because, and, and the, the struggle changes. I mean, look at like accounting. You know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, accounting was very heavily like, I write down all the numbers in the books. I do all the advert, you know, the, the addition and all the rest. There's all that. Then when like spreadsheets came along, people said, oh my God, accountants are all going to be out to work. They're all going to like, they're no longer going to do this. Well, now accounting is strategic. It's like, no, no, I trust the, the, the computer system will.

• 31:12Simon Sinek?

  The math is fine.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  The math will do all that. And I'll, you know, if something doesn't look like, I'll go, where does this, why does this look wrong? Like what, what is leading this? Usually it's a data error.

• 31:21Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  And what you're doing is you're applying a different kind of thinking to it, right?

• 31:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  And I don't think that new, different kind of thinking. Is necessarily bad. I also don't think it's necessarily always better. I think it's a transformation. I do think that, for example, you know, the fact that we now, you know, this is like, again, like the calculator example, very few, or your phone number example, very few of us, like if you said, we're going to compete in a speed long division competition. You'd be sitting there going, okay, fuck, remember how to do this? Can't bring out, can't bring out my smartphone for this one.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  And, and so, you know, there are some losses, but with those losses come other, other gains.

• 32:08Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  And, and the, the intensity of the competitive moment of how we, and, and the reason I started with school is because school is how we kind of do the, the basic provisioning for entering into the competitive moments. The way that we do that is, I think, kind of up to us. And I, by the way, I have confidence, like, the reason I don't like go and write a lot about that and do that, I have confidence that we will over time work that out. Like that, that, and overtime is not like a long time.

• 32:35Simon Sinek?

  I mean, net, net, net, what you're saying, and I think accurately so, is we don't know.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  Yep, 100%.

• 32:41Simon Sinek?

  But what we do know is that nature pours imbalance in a vacuum and it'll find equilibrium. And just as, you know, technologists love to say, you know, 20 years ago, 80%, of the jobs today didn't exist. Well, so too, you know, all the people talking about all the job loss, yes, that will happen, or at least some degree of it will. However, 80% of the jobs 20 years from now don't exist now that we can't even imagine. It was only a couple of years ago that people said, the future is prompting and you're going to take, you're going to be a professional prompter. Well, that lasted like six months.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:16Simon Sinek?

  Because it turned out, didn't matter how good your prompts were, the machine got smarter.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:20Simon Sinek?

  So, we're already getting the predictions wrong about what the future of, of employment looks like.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  And this is the thing, this is part of the reason I wrote Super Agency. Most people go, you can't predict the future. Oh my God, terror, terror, terror. Because it's a little bit like,

• 33:33Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  if you said, hey, you're going to get in the airplane and you're not going to predict if it can land. You don't know if you can land. Ah, I'm not going to get in the airplane. Right? Of course. But the thing is, is this is what our actual whole life is. We just blind ourselves the more, most of it. That's the reason I use the drive to LA. It's like, can you guarantee that I can get to LA, you know, completely safely? Absolutely not.

• 33:56Simon Sinek?

  Zero.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Right? But it's like, okay, reasonable enough. And then the whole discussion becomes this, okay, well, what's the level of risk? Now, if I thought the level of risk was we're handing every five-year-old a trigger with an atom bomb, it'd be like, okay, that's a very bad idea.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Like, don't do that. And like, for example, if someone said, hey, I'm gonna take the AI system today, and I'm gonna run the, like, the, the, the nuclear defense system with it. You're like, yes, there have been bad movies about that, you know, Terminator, War Games. Don't do that. But that doesn't mean don't build AI. That doesn't mean, you know, like, you know, for example, like, Siddhartha Mukherjee and I are doing is like, how can we accelerate the cure of cancer? And oh, this reminded me of the, the note that I wanted to say earlier, just so people hear it. My optimism is not just a blind faith or a reasoned faith in the future. We have a line of sight to creating a medical assistant that's as

• 34:56Speaker 00

  good or better than current GPs, available to everyone who can access a smartphone on the planet that runs for less than $5 an hour.

• 35:06Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  The quality of human life elevation for that is immeasurable. It is so large that it just, it's, it's life-changing. So there are prizes that are worth paying, playing for here that are actually really important. And they're not just like abstractions about like, oh, good, we'll, we'll be able to code a lot better.

• 35:27Simon Sinek?

  Okay, this is the perfect segue to go back to the second rabbit hole that I was gonna go down about the changing nature of science fiction, as you, as you articulated, which it was very, very optimistic, and it became dystopian at some point. Why was science fiction so optimistic for so many years? And where are we getting the optimistic views of the future now, if not from science fiction?

• 35:56Speaker 00

  I think it was optimistic because...

• 36:00Speaker 00

  People allow themselves to simply be amazed by what technology can create. And I, I actually do think that some remembrance of that simple amazement is a very good thing. I mean, like, for example, one of the things that I say about, you know, ChatGPT and Copilot and Gemini and Claude is if you're encountering any serious decision in your life, you should always consult for a second opinion. It's a little different about a first opinion, it'd be a little bit more careful. But I've literally had, like, a friend of mine was at a hospital with his cousin where he was uncertain about what that hospital was telling the cousin.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Consulted G P D four and G P D four said, go to another hospital. Got to the other hospital and the people at that hospital said, it's a good thing you're here because two hours later you'd be dead. Right? And, and fix it because the first hospital is like, I'll take some antibiotics, you're fine. And it's like, um, and that second opinion is a hugely valuable thing. Um, and so I think that's where we kind of are already. And that, that's the simple amazement, the, oh my gosh, the, these really amazing things can happen. And by the way, how do we evolve as human beings? We're homo techne more than homo sapiens. We evolved through technology, not just things like this podcast or the glasses that you and I are wearing or, you know, these kind of things. But, you know, the books and all the rest, there's all kind of evolution through technology.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  So that's what I think is a thing that we kind of shifted off of. Now, in terms of the optimism today, I think that it's much harder because it's a little hard, like, it's a little harder to, to state that simple optimism without getting a lot of critique. And like people say, well, it's very nice and good for you to say, as a technologist inventing this, that's going to change the world. What about all the people who aren't inventing the technology? You just have to kind of go along with it. And you go, well.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Whether or not I do it or not, the technology is going to change and it's going to go through it. So I'm in it because I'm trying to shape it in a way that would be best for them and best for kind of our children and grandchildren, future generations and future societies and all the rest. But I do understand that kind of agency question, part of the reason why I called it super agency. But so it means that, that like, for example, I, I get tons and tons of, of, of critique that I'm not a, call it an intellectually honest optimist, which by the way I am, but like, I'm a commercial, I'm an investor, you know, I'm a, I'm a technologist, et cetera, because it, that's the kind of critique you run into. And so I don't really know where the sources

• 38:49Speaker 00

  of optimism come. And that's part of the reason, like, you know, in my normal life right now, I would be more focused on like, building the cancer drug cures than writing the book Super Agency. But I think that voice needs to be heard. I would be completely delighted when it's other people. And I do track the other, you know, the other, you know, kind of really great leading AI voices like Ethan Mulek and other people and try to support them and help them in terms of what they're doing because it's, it's, it's really important.

• 39:18Simon Sinek?

  Can I share a theory as to why I think we had more optimism in our science fiction then? And, and what happened to it? I think it's, I think it's the Cold War. I think because one of the, you know, great, great competitions exist on three tensions, I'll call them, I guess. There's an existential tension, life or death. There's an economic tension. Are we going to make money and be able to provide for ourselves, our economy, our families? And the third one is the philosophical one, that we have a philosophy, a, a, an ideology that we believe in and it, and we belong to this ideology and it gives us a sense of camaraderie

• 39:56Simon Sinek?

  and patriotism, but it also, it also connects us, right? And I would argue that our, our science fiction. In part was a reflection of our ideology that was competing against, at the time, Soviet-style communism. And so if you look at all our utopian versus dystopian science fiction, it was we all get along, we live in peace, there's prosperity, like we're accepting, we're including of people who are alien to us, literally in many cases. And there were conflicts along the way, but we want to include everybody else.

• 40:34Simon Sinek?

  And this was, and it was an exaggerated and tangible depiction of our values to remind us what we stand for as we stand in great competition against the thing that would challenge that idealism and/or that ideology. And idealism is the reflection of the ideology. And then with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we still had the economic competition versus everybody else. We still have the existential competition. We still would like to live in peace and we still have enemies. But I would argue that the ideological thing kind of just went away. And I think America in particular kind of forgot what it stood for because there was nothing challenging it. There was nothing standing in opposition.

• 41:19Simon Sinek?

  And so I think our science fiction became dystopian because now it was us versus ourselves. It was no longer us versus somebody else. And if you look at where we've ended up, it is largely us versus ourselves right now. The great competition in the United States against the United States is the United States. I think that an opposing ideology in the world, an ideology that is different to ours, would breed the need for people to tell stories of if we follow our ideologies, this is what the world will look like, to remind us that we stand for something great, something good, something worth fighting for, something worth dying for.

• 42:03Simon Sinek?

  And I think that's the reason our science fiction became dark.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it was less, it was more of a left to ourselves, the internal, like we are the thing versus, no, no, our ideology is this is a golden future that we're fighting for versus yours.

• 42:21Simon Sinek?

  Versus an external force that would stand in our way. And, you know, from too many years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there was no balance of power. So there was nothing to tell us that we were wrong, other than somebody like we fought up, we are, we now have factions inside our country telling ourselves that we are wrong. Where back in the day, we still fought like cats and dogs. We still had Republicans and Democrats. We had all of that nonsense. But at the end of the day, the external existential threat was worse than the internal one. Where today, the external existential threat is either misunderstood, not perceived, not recognized,

• 43:01Simon Sinek?

  or seen as less threatening than whatever's inside the country. And that's kind of how empires collapse, isn't it?

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I

• 43:13Simon Sinek?

  Usually acts of suicide, not homicide, or whatever the

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yes, uh

• 43:18Simon Sinek?

  The side is of

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Long decay.

• 43:22Simon Sinek?

  Superpower side.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, and you know, we've seen it Roman Empire, we've seen it the British Empire.

• 43:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, they're all the kind of the same. So I guess the, I guess what I'm positing, which is, should folks like you and me not preach? Should we not be preaching? I mean, I guess you and I already do. I guess I already asked and answered, which is, we are attempting to preach an idealistic vision of the future. You know, I work very hard to, to, to make my message available to anyone who wants to believe in it, regardless of somebody's politics. Because I believe it's available to anyone who is a human being, to, to live in the vision of the world that I imagine. And my work, though, may not, maybe not science fiction, is definitely idealistic.

• 44:15Simon Sinek?

  And so is it not the responsibility of, to your point, to, to, to those movies, to those filmmakers? Should, should, should we not start preaching again, an idealized future that's worth striving for?

• 44:30Simon Sinek?

  I guess, again, what's a rhetorical question, duh.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  Well, I think that's a moral requirement of good leadership. It's part of the reason why I talk to the various, you know, very smart, very well-meaning critics. And I also say, and here is the positive version, the elevation of humanity. And by the way, one of the subtle things of it is, we would like to, in human condition, I think, diminish how much is our condition is beating up the evil people. It's like, no, how do we, how do we elevate? Like, if, like, to some degree, if you're a good person, it's, it's how do we elevate people versus how do, like, like, like, it's the ordering, one or two. How do we elevate people? How do we prevent the bad people?

• 45:13Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  If you're a good person, that's the order. If you're a bad person, in part, it's the other order.

• 45:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Right?

• 45:19Simon Sinek?

  It's the. You still, you still need to be able to know what you, I think idealism is ethereal. It's hard to see, it's hard to imagine. An enemy is tangible and it's much easier to know what you stand for if you can see what you stand against.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:32Simon Sinek?

  And even, you know, Jobs back in the day, and I'm curious what you did at LinkedIn, but, you know, Jobs, he still had Big Blue and he still had, you know, Microsoft. And he, he still articulated an enemy that was standing in a, in the way of, of, of his idealism, but the idealism came first.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:50Simon Sinek?

  And so I'm curious what was, you know, when, when, when, as, as you were building LinkedIn, like, who, who was, who was standing in the way? What was the grand enemy standing in the way of the idealism that you promoted?

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Well, it probably were two things. One was kind of a social norm that was bad for society and bad for individuals, which was, no one should have a CV online, posted on, public posted online. This is like, it was like, no, you're, you're disloyal to your organization. And so therefore, you know, you shouldn't do that. And I was like, no, actually, in fact, that's better for the individual's opportunity. That's better for society, maximizing the opportunity of individuals and the creation of, of their best work. And it's a little bit more challenging for organizations because you can't just hold on to your people because no one knows who they are.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  That was part of the reason why they wanted that, that, that, that myth of if your CV is online, maybe you don't get the promotion or bonus, or, you know, maybe we fire you, etc. I mean, literally, very early days of LinkedIn was like, oh, should I want to be on LinkedIn because maybe I'll get fired for being on LinkedIn. It's like, and, you know, various, some companies like tried to ban people from being on LinkedIn. So there's that. And then there's the old industry.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  You know, the various, you know, like, monster.com and everything else for kind of job listings versus the way the world should be, which is when you have an opportunity, you should be reaching out to people.

• 47:22Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  That, that you have, and people can reach out to you too, but it should be both directions for, for kind of figuring that out. And, you know, it's funny, if, if with this conversation, if I were to phone my younger self and doing it, I probably would have, probably would have been better to phrase it more as a grand, as a grand enemy versus just an idealistic vision, which is more of what I was doing because it probably would have been more motivating to the cohesive collection of the group in order to do.

• 47:53Simon Sinek?

  This is the problem with, with enemies and negativity, right? Which is it's incredibly, it's incredibly powerful. You can rally people incredibly well, and I think that's part of the problem, which is you can rally people with negativity, but to what end?

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:07Simon Sinek?

  You know, and, and it's a short, it's, I mean, short-lived, it could be 20 years, but the point is that it's, it's got a, it's got a finite, it's got a finite end to it. Whereas having the idealism and viewing the enemy as simply the thing standing in the way of our ideals, which is why, to Jobs's credit, it was IBM, then it wasn't IBM, then it was Microsoft, and then it wasn't Microsoft. He kept replacing the thing that was standing in the way.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:31Simon Sinek?

  But it was never about IBM or Microsoft to begin with. It was always about the vision.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:36Simon Sinek?

  And so your idealism was ethereal, but if you were able to, because you're, you're, you're, it's quite a populist message, which is power to the people, right? Which is how dare the, how dare the corporation stand in the way of my, of my opportunity.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:51Simon Sinek?

  You know, and. Ironically, by allowing me opportunity and giving me some agency, there's that word again, the corporation will actually benefit because I'm sometimes proudly saying where I work. Or now, business can be done because, you know, I know, I wanted to just reach out to you to work with you, not because I'm trying to poach you.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:12Simon Sinek?

  And it actually has benefited the corporation in a magical twist of irony, as it always turns out to be that way.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 49:19Simon Sinek?

  Can I ask you a question that I don't understand? I mean, I kind of have a theory, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Why is it, and maybe this is not true, but I think it's true.

• 49:32Simon Sinek?

  When a male entrepreneur has some sort of liquidity event, company goes public, he sells the company, whatever, and comes into generational wealth. If you ask them, what do you do now? They say, I'm an investor. Right? And so, now, I know they give to philanthropy, I know they do philanthropic works, but they define themselves as investors, which I find funny, because you've just made more money than you'll need ever, and now your goal is to make more money? And like, oh, you've got a fund now, oh, wonderful. Whereas when you talk to females who have some sort of liquidity event, where they have now generational wealth, and you ask them, what do you do? They say, I'm a philanthropist.

• 50:14Simon Sinek?

  And of course, they do investing, but they define themselves first as philanthropists. Why can't all people who sell a company or go public and come into more money than they'll ever need, why can't every single one of them define themselves as philanthropists first?

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Well, they certainly can. It's probably the-

• 50:33Simon Sinek?

  Why don't they? Why don't they?

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Like, it's not a pattern that I've observed perhaps as clearly as you.

• 50:45Simon Sinek?

  I could be wrong. It's an initial observation.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  But, you know, what I, my hypothesis would be in that, is that what's the fitness function by which you're awarded status by people around you? Which is part of the kind of competitive game.

• 51:05Simon Sinek?

  And men, it's money.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And for women, it's more like, do you care about society and community?

• 51:12Simon Sinek?

  You're a good person, right?

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Yes, you're a good person. So, like, that would be my hypothesis.

• 51:18Simon Sinek?

  I think that's right.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  And what I would hope-

• 51:23Speaker 00

  Is that everybody thinks of themselves as a philanth- as becoming a philanthropist. Because I think that the, and it isn't just if you made a bunch of money and now have more money than you know what you can possibly do within in human life. And, and by the way, with the reason why people continue to make money is for all kinds of reasons. Some of it's, you know, that's what they know how to do. Some of it's competitive, some of it's, that's what they think the meaning of their life is. Some of it's like, hey, I know how to to behave philanthropically with that money.

• 52:01Simon Sinek?

  But I think it goes back to our conversation about idealism and and the future, which is, which is, because I think it's it's an articulation of values, right?

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:10Simon Sinek?

  That the value that we that we are espousing, or at least, you know, embraced by men more than women, which is, you know, money is the metric. And even if you have already quote unquote won, you want everybody to know that you're still trying to make more. I wonder if this was the 1950s, if if that would be the same? Or is it this modern version of of our values that's become a little bit distorted and a little bit more materialistic? I don't know the answer. I'm just curious.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know either, although one of my, my high school history teachers' favorite expressions, which which I really have come to embrace is, things aren't like they used to be and never were. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a be a little cautious about the mythos.

• 53:01Simon Sinek?

  Right, because we like to, we like to idealize the past.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 53:04Simon Sinek?

  Romanticize it.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Yes. Now, but my earlier question is like, for example, when I was, I was thinking about how your question applies to me. And I would say.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  Like, I would say, I probably would have started with the word investor. But the reason I would have started with the word investor is probably not because I'm looking to, you know, kind of occupy that social status niche.

• 53:30Simon Sinek?

  Right, you're quite different.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, as much as, like, the philanthropy I do, I think of as investing. Like, investing in kind of humankind, investing in human potential. And a lot of the same mechanisms, like, does it have a scalable economic model? You know, that kind of stuff still applies.

• 53:49Simon Sinek?

  But it's a giving mentality versus a taking mentality.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, but even, like, for example, like, part of having been successful as an entrepreneur and successful as an investor, I'm now no longer interested in investing and putting a lot of time into things that, like, I put in a dollar and I make $10, and it's only the $10. I'll do it if it trips across it, because I know what to do with the $10 in terms of philanthropic investment. But I look at, like, what kinds of things actually make the world the more the more the way it should be. It's like, for example, Airbnb was the first investment that I pitched to Greylock. And part of it was, like, actually, in fact, this unlocks the world as it should be. Right, that's what's essential about this.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  And, of course, it's a great economic investment. But that's part of it. And, by the way, again, it's kind of a little de rigueur to kind of think about capitalism as bad amongst, you know, kind of, call it educated, you know, highly educated liberal circles. And it's like, no, actually, in fact, you know, to your earlier thing about Adam Smith, it's not just Adam Smith as the Wealth of Nations. It's Adam Smith as the Theory of Moral Sentiments. And that's actually extremely important to understand about what's going on here. And if you're not sophisticated about that, your critique is, you know, useless.

• 55:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, you're different than your peers. Like, you're different than a lot of other, sort of, founder, you know, unicorn founders. And I don't think you're a part of the longevity obsession, are you?

• 55:29Speaker 00

  No. Of course, we'd all like to live a few years.

• 55:32Simon Sinek?

  We'd all like to live long, happy lives, but, like, you're not, you don't fit that same profile. It's one of the things I really like about you, which is, you are much more yourself. You're very comfortable in who you are.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  Look, it gets back to that science fiction, right? It's like, what are we trying to do? What is the path of humanity? And how do we contribute?

• 55:54Simon Sinek?

  Can you just share one specific story of something that you were involved in that at some point throughout your career? It doesn't even matter if it's commercially successful or not. I'm just real curious. One thing that you were involved in that you absolutely loved being a part of this thing, this project, this event. And if everything in your life was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting. I like diversity, which is a problem with that, the answering your question, because multiple different things is a good thing. But so like just one thing again and again.

• 56:24Simon Sinek?

  One specific thing that you were part of, it doesn't matter about its commercial viability. But like, when you look back and you think about that experience, you're like, oh, amazing.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  You know, it's probably unlocking things where people have.

• 56:39Simon Sinek?

  Tell me a specific one.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  No, no, I'm just the pattern of it. It's like, part of the reason I'm answering it, taking me a few, like, you know, some, a minute or two to kind of, is there's many of them. And it's kind of like, the one is kind of a challenging question.

• 56:54Simon Sinek?

  Pick one, pick one of those.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, so.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  You know, part of, like, part of the thing that I love about, actually, I'll use being an investor, is that you are giving someone the shot to do that life's work that makes them, that is something epic.

• 57:24Simon Sinek?

  I get, I get it, but give me something specific. Like, maybe it was something that happened during the early days of LinkedIn. Or, you know, just, it can be absolutely anything, but like, when you look back, something specific. I hear you about the investing, but well, something specific that I can relive with you.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  Well, look, it's a little micro element, but it's a very micro on this.

• 57:50Simon Sinek?

  Go for it.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  For that thing. And we'll start with the basis of one of my frustrations with LinkedIn.

• 57:55Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  So my basis of frustration with LinkedIn is, is the vast majority of people approach being connected to other people on LinkedIn as, as kind of, oh, this is how, this is how I navigate. This is, this is for me. Years back, I was having a conversation with a friend and serial entrepreneur, Paul English. And we were sitting around, very early days in LinkedIn, six years in or seven years in, and he's the first person who, on an unaided basis, reflected to me what I think of LinkedIn and what I was trying, which is like, when I connect with someone on LinkedIn, it's because I am giving them a gift of how can I potentially help you by connecting with you with other people in my network? Right? Like, it's, it's

• 58:40Speaker 00

  making it easier for me to help you in our journey through life and work together. And, and Paul was the first person outside of LinkedIn who said, oh, I love LinkedIn because of this. Right? And I was like, yes. And, you know, and since then, there've been five more. But, you know, like, like, that was a, that was the, you see the, what I'm trying to create for making us more collaborative, cooperative, you know, like, life is a team sport. It's, it's how I help other people, how I give it as a gift. You see that. And that was, you know, maybe that was a version of feeling seen.

• 59:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Tell me an early, specific, happy childhood memory. Something specific I can relive with you. Not like we went to my grandparents every weekend. Something, one specific event that I can relive with you.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Well, okay, this, this one seems a little, little funny. But as a seven-year-old beating my grandfather in chess.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 59:40Simon Sinek?

  Say more.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Well, so like.

• 59:42Simon Sinek?

  You think of one particular, one particular instance?

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Well, it was the first time.

• 59:46Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so the first time you beat your grandfather in chess, tell me about it.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  Well, so he was playing chess with me and it was a like each time, you know, from like five to seven.

• 59:55Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Like, you know, he'd win, he'd win, he'd win. I was trying to figure out how could he be doing this? Like, why can't I do this? And then it helped me start figuring out what, how the world worked and what was going on and what the pieces were and, and, and that kind of thing. And that was that the, it was kind of the epiphany of suddenly seeing, ah, this is how this works. It wasn't so much like, ah, I beat grandpa as much as it was like, ah, I can now see the world as it is. I can see more about what's going on and I can navigate it and participate in it.

• 1:00:36Simon Sinek?

  This entire conversation.

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  The words I would have used as a seven year old.

• 1:00:40Simon Sinek?

  No, no, no, of course. As a seven, it's like, as a seven year old, it's like, hi, I beat your grandpa.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:00:45Simon Sinek?

  No, I, I get that. The,

• 1:00:49Simon Sinek?

  I mean, this whole conversation, you're everything you talk about. It's about that undying, striving to understand how it works for the benefit of others.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. And inclusive of myself. I don't think of others as not including myself.

• 1:01:06Simon Sinek?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. It's, it's, it's, it's a selfish selflessness all at once.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:01:11Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, totally. And, you know, you, you talk about sort of you, you, you, the plan about adding to the discourse, which is, you know, I'm going to write this stuff so that people can understand how the world works, so that people can take it in for the benefit. And, and even the, the LinkedIn realization, which is here's how human beings should work. And if you do it this way as an act of giving, rather than act of taking, we all win. And the original philosophy of LinkedIn, which is if you allow people to display where they work and put their CVs up on the world, no, no, no, this is how the world should work. And even your AI discussion, which is this, this unbelievable striving to understand how the world actually works for the benefit of everybody.

• 1:01:54Simon Sinek?

  And you, and even the way you describe your investing, you know, which is if I can figure out how something works, you said, it's not how much can I get from it? That's, that's sometimes the, the sort of the lucky strike extra. But rather, if we get this right, how much will you get from this? And I don't mean financially.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, and also, the person's life work is not just for them. That's one of the things is that your life work is not just for you.

• 1:02:22Simon Sinek?

  Life work is not just for them, yes.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  It's for, it's for us.

• 1:02:26Simon Sinek?

  And that's my rub, the people who define themselves as, as investors versus philanthropists, which is whether, you know, just going on the definition of the words, which is my life's pursuit is now for accumulation for myself, you know, versus my life's pursuit is to figure out how to way to give it all away, or at least make it so that others benefit more than me because I've, I've had my, I've had my luck. It's a mindset rather than an activity because all philanthropists invest and all investors give away, give away money, I hope.

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:57Simon Sinek?

  You know, but it's, it's, it's the hierarchy. It's the order. And you talked about that hierarchy and that order in others, in other circumstances. The order matters.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:03:07Simon Sinek?

  And I think this is one of my favorite things about you, which is why I think you're so different from almost all the founder leaders who sort of occupy that unicorn space, which is you are unabashedly in it for others.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And there's, there's a few others, you know, Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, there's a few others, but yes.

• 1:03:28Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, I'm not saying you're unique, but you are, but it, but it's a small group where you are unabashedly.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Simon Sinek?

  It's the unabashed.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Well, it's the way we should be.

• 1:03:40Simon Sinek?

  It's the way we should be. And that is, shouldn't be the work of science fiction. It should be real, real. It should be science fact, just fact, fact.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Fact, yes.

• 1:03:51Simon Sinek?

  You know, but I am so glad you exist. I'm so glad you're putting your visions in the world. And I really hope that the world that you imagine is the world that we build.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Well, that's, that's part of the reason why, you know, I do this work, you do that work. And what's we're hoping for?

• 1:04:09Simon Sinek?

  So good. Thanks for coming on. What a joy.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  Always a joy. I look forward to the next. I look forward to a meal in person, too.

• 1:04:15Simon Sinek?

  I know, we have to do that. I have, I forgot. We like to ask every one of our guests, just curious, if you have some sort of life hack, some sort of shortcut, some sort of thing that you figured out that helps you be more effective, efficient, or productive as a, as a, as a person?

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, here's very apropos, our current, our current,

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  our current conversation and current moment is anytime I'm saw, I'm working on a new problem or kind of a new thought.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Part of what I do is I think about what's the position of human expertise that would most inform what I'm doing. And then I prompt AI model of your choice with, with this position of human expertise, give me, you know, analyze this problem for me, or give me a solution, or something else. And it accelerates how you kind of go through this. And I do this just, you know, kind of constantly. And like, for example, you know, one of the ones I'm, I'm planning on doing recently is, you know, a friend of mine was kind of trying to say, I should take the enneagrams, you know, and personality types more seriously. And I'm

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  going to go throw out a set of prompts and ideas into probably GPT-5 now, and say, and say, learn this and see, do I think this is a useful pattern for understanding how we, we, you know, we kind of work together, we travel together, we live together, etc. And, and you know, and that's, that's, that's, that's the hack.

• 1:05:51Simon Sinek?

  I mean, it's, it's a good use of the tech.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Simon Sinek?

  Reid, such a pleasure, truly such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  Likewise. I look forward to the next.

• 1:06:01Simon Sinek?

  A bit of optimism is brought to you by The Optimism Company and is lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius and Devin Johnson. If I was able to give you any kind of insight, or some inspiration, or made you smile, please subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts for more. And if you're trying to get answers to a problem at work, or want to advance a dream, maybe I can help. Simply go to simoncinek.com. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.