We the Builders Podcast l From LiveRamp ($RAMP) to NQB8: Auren Hoffman’s Founder Journey

This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the We the Builders podcast. We The Builders: https://twitter.com/WeThe_Builders Host Suffiyan Malik: https://twitter.com/suffiyanmalikk Substack: https://wethebuilders.us --------------------------------------------------- This week I sat down with Auren Hoffman founder, builder, prolific investor, and one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley. Today’s episode features Auren Hoffman founder of LiveRamp ($RAMP), Flex Capita...

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is a rebroadcast of the We the Builders podcast.

• 0:03Auren Hoffman?

  We had a theory at the time that one of the most valuable commodities was going to be data.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  The world's most valuable commodity, the resource in question, personal data.

• 0:14Auren Hoffman?

  And that people were going to buy more data because they're going to be getting much more data oriented. It was going to become easier for them to buy data. You know, fast forward today, there are more companies buying data today than there were back then. OpenAI buys a lot of data, Anthropic buys a lot of data, Google spent a lot of money on the Reddit data.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  And OpenAI paid New York Times?

• 0:32Auren Hoffman?

  They did, and I think there was something for the data, but probably it was a bribe to get them to say nice things about them. Twenty million dollars for like incredible press about you, that's, that's a good deal.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Have you come up with a new theory about the next 10 years?

• 0:49Auren Hoffman?

  The one thing I'm more confident on in the world of AI is that things like community of people is going to become even more important. Watching your football game with friends is so much better than watching a football game alone.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Arun, welcome to the show.

• 1:11Auren Hoffman?

  Happy to be here.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Thank you for taking out the time.

• 1:13Auren Hoffman?

  Of course.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  You hosted the Orkesh a while back and you guys were debating whether, you know, you should do guest bios. I am heavily inclined towards doing guest bios.

• 1:23Auren Hoffman?

  You are?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  I am.

• 1:24Auren Hoffman?

  Why?

• 1:26Speaker 02

  I think, so I'm trying to come up with the archetype of successful founders. And I think their personal journeys matter because you can use those stories to inspire the next generation of builders. And also it helps you sort of draw a pattern about what happened in their early life. Or what was a transformational experience that shaped them? I find it interesting.

• 1:49Auren Hoffman?

  It's interesting, but do you actually think that there's an archetype?

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I, I think if I collect enough stories, I might be able to come up with one.

• 1:58Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, my guess is there isn't.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  You're oh, your guess, your guess is that there uh each of them looks different is.

• 2:04Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, each success is a success in its own way.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:08Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and that, you know, if you had a map out, I don't know, the three hundred traits that matter. In an entrepreneur, maybe there's one trait that's somewhat common, which might be persistence. And then the next trait might be twenty five percent of them have, and then start dropping from there. Yeah, I I don't, I don't know that there's like super common traits that they have.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Well, we'll still get into it.

• 2:36Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Uh, so tell me more about where did you grow up and um what did your parents do? Were they entrepreneurs? How did you catch that bug?

• 2:43Auren Hoffman?

  No, not really. No, my parents were like kind of, you know, we always had money troubles growing up. Um, and so grew up in random suburb in New York. And um, and so, you know, probably so money was like something we like thought about. And then, but I was always inspired by like entrepreneurial stories, growing up and started a business. In um, in junior high school, which ended up being like, you know, for at least that era, very somewhat successful. And then start another business in ninth grade, which ended up paying my, my, for my college.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Who, who were like the entrepreneurs at the time that inspired you and how did you discover them?

• 3:25Auren Hoffman?

  Um, you know, at the time, it was, you often they had these like kids magazines in like in elementary school and junior high school and high school and uh and they would often like profile some kid. And it's usually some kid who end up like getting like, you know, all these, you know, is able to get all these computer games for free because he built a business or something. And so those were kind of somewhat inspiring. Um, and I actually got into like baseball cards, but not, I didn't get into baseball cards because I was into baseball. I got into baseball cards because I thought like it was might be fun money. I got into baseball because I got into baseball cards. Um, and then later started like a household chore company, kind of like a temp firm for, for uh high school students.

• 4:08Auren Hoffman?

  And that made enough money to pay for most of my college.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Did you, um, do you think in hindsight, college was beneficial?

• 4:17Auren Hoffman?

  I think college was super fun and I learned a lot about myself in college. Yeah, so uh I mean it was. Did I learn a lot in the classroom? I I wouldn't say I learned a lot in the classroom. But I made some really great friendships. I had a lot of fun. I learned a lot about myself. I changed a lot in college as well, like a lot of people do. Uh now, could I have learned that doing going to the military, doing many other things, probably or getting a job, you know, potentially? Would have been a slightly different experience. Colleges are very carefree. And then for me, it was very carefree because I didn't have to get a job my first three years because I had I was able to pay for it. Uh through my work and so I didn't I didn't actually have to work, so I could actually have fun. I could.

• 5:01Auren Hoffman?

  Drink beer, I could do other things you're supposed to do in college. And so um yeah, and it was it was. It was great. And I never cared about my grades, which was also great. Um so I think for people care about their grades. I got a C minus on one of my math classes. Um and I used to think I was pretty good at math and I was mostly just like drinking and not caring about it. Uh but still became, you know, still became an engineer, uh even in spite of that.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  What kind of engineering could you?

• 5:31Auren Hoffman?

  I did what was then called industrial engineering and operations research. Today, they might call like data science or something. And um and uh so it's mostly math, statistics, probability, uh some some software. Um but you had to do like all the core engineering stuff.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  At at the time, electrical or computer science would have been more popular. To take up, right? So what was the decision that went into choosing that?

• 5:58Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it was was well, I didn't really know that much about computers when I was in high school.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 6:04Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I didn't have a computer um and um couldn't we couldn't afford one. So I mean, I used like the computers in the school for like desktop publishing and things like that. And I was like. You know, the for the school, high school newspaper and things, but I never I never knew anything about programming or. Anything like that. And so I didn't I didn't kind of come in thinking I would want to do something with computers. I just liked math. And um I liked a lot of other subjects like history and stuff, but I thought those were pretty easy to teach yourself, but. The things like engineering, physics, things like that, I thought were more difficult for me to teach myself.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  So those four years were exploration time for you? In any way.

• 6:46Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, and end up, we end up, I end up running out of money at the end of my junior year. I misbudgeted junior year of college. So I started an internet company because that's what I knew to do to pay for my last year of college.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Wha- what was that company?

• 7:01Auren Hoffman?

  We, uh, we did consulting, um, so we basically built like corporate intranets. And, um, and then it would end up being successful enough to pay for my last year of college and do a few other things with it. And it was really cool. I started with a buddy of mine.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Was, um, entrepreneurship always driven from the need to make money for you in the early days?

• 7:25Auren Hoffman?

  I don't, I don't really think so. I think it was, because I, I think there's lots of better ways to make money per se. I think it was more, you know, there are certain types of personalities are less employable. Um, so I worked at a frozen yogurt store, um, after eighth grade, the summer after eighth grade. And, um, and I thought I was the most, uh, best employee of the frozen yogurt store. I was very high on myself. You know, I was by far the youngest person.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Did they also take that?

• 7:55Auren Hoffman?

  Well, um, so then there was a point where they decided to, um, uh, promote some people to become assistant manager. And I wasn't one of the people promoted and I quit because of it. Because I was confident that I was the best person and should have been promoted. So, yeah, there are just people who are just not always that situated, you know, suited to be a good employee.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Why do you think you weren't promoted?

• 8:20Auren Hoffman?

  Well, I was by far the youngest and the, the, the owner of the store, who was a relatively young guy, a very nice guy. He sat me down. He said, look, I, uh, you know, if I promote you, other people are going to quit because you can't really be their boss. Because you're like three years younger than them. And by the way, I was, even though I was 14, I probably looked like I was 12 or 11. Um, and so, you know, this is just like not, you know, it just wouldn't work, which, you know, he's probably right. But, uh, I was like, well, I'm, I'm the most qualified. I'm the best. I do all the job. I make yogurt really well. I got in, I get, I had, I was the only one who was, who was entrusted to a key to the store. So I'd come in early. I would set everything up and everything. So I was like, you're entrusting me with the key. You're not even trusting your assistant managers with the key.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Do you think, uh, age and experience matter?

• 9:08Auren Hoffman?

  Experience is certainly helpful.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:11Auren Hoffman?

  But it also could. Have you unlearned things that aren't that helpful? Um, and, um, and experienced people have often some sort of entitlement. You know, they don't want to do certain things that are hard to do, or they don't want to work certain hours. They don't want to do other types of stuff.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  They've already done it.

• 9:30Auren Hoffman?

  Right? I've already done that. I don't want to do that again. Right? Um, and so, uh, so sometimes they can be really valuable. But also sometimes they can be, it's over, their, their skills are overrated. And if things are changing fast, their skills are very overrated.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  I'll come back to this, the, the hiding and identifying talent part, because I think, um, I was talking to Rafi, and he mentioned you've been exceptional at succession planning.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  And I, I want to understand what, what that takes.

• 10:01Auren Hoffman?

  I wouldn't say I'm exceptional at any of those types of things. Um, so, yeah, I, I.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  E- even reading your blog post on spinouts, like actually helped me understand you. I think you're, um, uh, you're being humble about it, but you, you have been good at knowing when to pass on the torch to, uh, people who might be more suited to doing.

• 10:21Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, certain types of people are, uh, one of the things, if you find some, if you just happen to find someone who's an exceptional person.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:30Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, you, it would be good for you to try to work with that person as long as you can. Uh, and so I think a lot of times, especially exceptional people who you found, you know, because you found them, probably means they're younger and somewhat undiscovered.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 10:49Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and over time, if you work with them, other people will realize they're exceptional, and other people also want to work with those people. And so the way to, um, work with that person for longer is to make sure, usually exceptional people are optimizing for growth, and they want to grow faster. And so you want to make sure that this exceptional person is, is increasing in their growth. And if you can help them do that, then they'll stay with you for as long as they're growing very fast. Um, and, uh, and so one of the ways that you can do that is by giving them more responsibility. That usually is a way to accelerate your growth, is by increasing the rate of the, the chance that you're going to fail.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:31Auren Hoffman?

  So if you join. You know, McKinsey as a twenty-three-year-old, like, your chance of failing is is is close to zero. It's rounding down to zero, right? They've set up all the guardrails to make sure you can't really fail. So it's going to be harder to grow in a situation like that, even if you're an exceptional person. You're gonna have to really do a whole bunch of things, because part of growth is trying things that are hard, where your chance of success isn't super high. And so you want to be able to give people more responsibility over time, so they have a relatively high rate of failure. And you don't want to have, like, a ninety-eight percent chance of failure or something,

• 12:12Auren Hoffman?

  but somewhere between, let's say, a third to two-thirds chance of failure is like the optimal point.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  This is for exceptional talent within a company? Or just any young talent?

• 12:23Auren Hoffman?

  Anyone who wants to optimize for growth, which I think should be most people.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:27Auren Hoffman?

  But anyone who wants to optimize for growth needs to have a relatively high failure rate.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Two-thirds. How did you come up with that number?

• 12:37Auren Hoffman?

  I think somewhere between one-third and two-thirds is like the right, you know, in that bound is a good. It's always hard to know what the failure rate is, like, priority, right? But most jobs is probably like under ten percent. So it's it's usually you're not putting someone in a position where they're gonna have like a massively high failure rate or something, right? Most jobs are like the opposite. They give you way more scaffolding. They do lots of other things. They they make it really hard. You know, there's lots of bureaucracy. There's lots of other types of things that are out there. So you, if you can just give somebody a little bit more, um, a little more autonomy, but also just a little bit more, uh, uh, area where they can work under, area under the curve

• 13:22Auren Hoffman?

  that they can work under that they weren't having before.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  That's super interesting.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  With Ben, and you wrote a blog post that you debated this with Ben Kasten on your podcast, the what you know matters more now. And then you wrote that blog post about four or five years ago, if I'm not wrong. But you were thinking in the podcast, maybe you should update your sort of take on it. I think it's been a year since you hosted him. Have you changed your mind on it in the age of AI?

• 13:56Auren Hoffman?

  So just like if we take a step back, so there's this trope like who you know matters more than what you know, right? And people have been saying this all the time. Even when I was a kid, people would say this all the time. It's not what you know, it's who you know.

• 14:10Auren Hoffman?

  And I think that was true in the 20th century. Actually, don't think that was really true in the 1500s. I think it was what you knew was really important and to survive and to thrive, etc. And then at some point, it did become who you know. And if you think of the jobs that were the most important jobs in like the 1980s, they were kind of the who you know jobs. And the permanent job in the 1980s was the investment banker. And the investment banker is essentially a who you know job. They basically put two what you knows together and they take

• 14:52Auren Hoffman?

  a vague on the transaction. So that is what investment. And then you have lots of other types of who you knows, the real estate broker, or anybody like that was was often a who you know that's out there. At some point, the preeminent jobs became what you know jobs. And so the investment banker morphed into, you know, the hedge fund manager or something. And the hedge fund manager was definitely much more of a what you know than a who you know. Now, both are important. Both, no one would say what you know is not important, otherwise you don't need to go to school at all, right? Um, and who you know are important. The question is, what, where should one focus? What should they focus on?

• 15:37Auren Hoffman?

  Um, et cetera. And so at some point, let's say some point in the early two thousands, it switched. And what you knows, I believe, became more important than who you knows. Partially because it was much more easy to discover the what you knows. So it used to be the what you knows were hidden, and then the internet came and it was easier to figure out who was the preeminent. Um, you know, uh, petroleum engineer or something, right? And then you can go find that person and they can make more money and they weren't. And so they started the what you knows, the salaries of the what you know started rising pretty dramatically. Um, and even just engineers started getting paid more, right? You have all these other kind of scenarios.

• 16:19Auren Hoffman?

  Where, um, you know, we see today, the AI engineers getting paid all this stuff, right? These are clearly what you knows. They may not know anybody. Um, and, um, but, but they're getting paid a lot because of what they know. Uh, so then there's a question of like, will AI change this? Because AI is good at what you knows. Um, and then, you know, so Ben had a belief that maybe AI is going to change this. I haven't thought about it enough to really know whether it is, I, I would say if I had evaluated today. I would say it's still better to be a what you know than a who you know. But it's hard to know 10 years from now.

• 17:02Auren Hoffman?

  And like everything in AI, it's really hard to know anything. So I changed my mind about everything AI related almost every week. Uh, so it's very hard to know, um, all these types of things. By the way, it's who you knows is still important and it's obviously still important in your life.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:19Auren Hoffman?

  Um, I know my neighbor. And because I know my neighbor, I get invited over to dinner and it's very nice. And if I didn't know my neighbor, I wouldn't get invited over and I wouldn't have good interactions with them and their family. So like that is very important for my life that I know them. And if I didn't know them, I wouldn't have this great, you know, interaction with them. So who you know is really important and you know.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  In social and professional.

• 17:47Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, in any type of, if you just want to talk about whatever, any type of fulfillment, it is always important. But in your career, I, I think it is less important than it was in the 20th century.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  What category would you put the venture capital job in?

• 18:05Auren Hoffman?

  I would say the venture capital job is probably largely a what you know, uh, uh, uh, who you know job, not a what you know job.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  I- is it what investment banking was back in the eighties?

• 18:17Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  In a way.

• 18:18Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's probably right. And then, you know, if you think of the venture capitalist versus the private equity person, well, the private equity people on average make at least 10 times as much as the venture capitalist, maybe, maybe 50 times more or something on average than the venture capitalist. And so, um, and they're definitely much more of a what you know than a who you know. So just go.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  So the investment banking hedge fund sort of

• 18:50Speaker 02

  an- analogies now like in the venture capitalist, private equity.

• 18:54Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  That's how it's.

• 18:56Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, if you're a very good connector.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:00Auren Hoffman?

  It probably doesn't help you that much to be a private equity person. I mean, maybe still on fundraising it does, but it probably doesn't help you that much actually get returns.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:09Auren Hoffman?

  Whereas in venture capital actually will help you get returns.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Right. So it's just some jobs are still who you know.

• 19:16Auren Hoffman?

  Sure, for sure. Absolutely. Um, and obviously there's still investment bankers, there's still real estate agents, there's still, you know, lots of other things. But who you know is still important almost every job.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Oh, every job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:27Auren Hoffman?

  Still important.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 19:28Auren Hoffman?

  It's just question of the relative importance. Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. When was the earliest you changed your mind about it? Because you, you started off doing businesses in eighth or ninth grade, right? And you're hearing in this entire time that who you know is like extremely important and in that era probably still is.

• 19:46Auren Hoffman?

  Well, I don't know that I really ever thought about it.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:50Auren Hoffman?

  Right. I didn't really ever think about any of these types of things and lots like lots of people give you lots of advice when you're growing up. And when you're a kid, you usually think most of it is, you know, dumb or or whatever. You don't really listen or or you know, you're not really. Cause it's some funny daddy older person that's giving this advice.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  It takes seriously.

• 20:09Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. So you don't really know. By the way, when I was a kid, like I didn't know what a venture capitalist was or something, right? You know, you you don't know these types of things until later on.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  On that, ever since college, um, how did you choose what ideas to pursue? Or what businesses to work on, put all your energy towards?

• 20:30Auren Hoffman?

  There's no rhyme or reason. I mean, sometimes I think people focus on things that are just interesting to them at the moment. Um, it's not always like some sort of deep analysis of what, you know, or and and certainly not an optimization function. Of what one should do.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Some people think very long and hard about it and and and sometimes those, it's not that they're intentionally thinking about starting a company, right? But uh, how do you, if you have optionality, you know, how do you, how do you evaluate? What is something that you should go all in on?

• 21:08Auren Hoffman?

  Well, sometimes people wanna go just do do it like they just want this to be a reality. And it doesn't have to be that big, right? It's like, what do you do in your life? Where do you go to dinner? Right? Um, you know, you have, cause you have thousands of options where you go to dinner, but you're like, I just want, you know, a burger tonight or whatever, right?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:27Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and then I wanna try this new burger place or, you know, whatever it is. So it's it's a, you know, people make decisions for lots of different reasons. And if you over optimize everything, like it just becomes very, very hard uh, to go do. You don't, as you progress in your career, you, it is important that you think about it a little bit more. Because as you progress in your career, you have many more options.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:55Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and so you don't wanna end up in like a local maxima where you're just doing the thing because it's presenting itself to you and it looks decent.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Uh, that's a interesting analogy. So you're, you're tying fulfillment in a way to like what you pursue.

• 22:12Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, I don't think you should be pursuing things that don't fulfill you.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Right, of course.

• 22:17Auren Hoffman?

  And so you have a lot of different opportunities and some of those things might be fulfilling you spiritually. Sometimes you're trying to do things that are better for society. Some of the times there's there's more personal reasons for doing or more selfish reasons. Usually there's some selfish reason, right, for doing it. And and so you have to weigh those types of things. But if you weigh it too much, you're just not going to do anything interesting. So sometimes it's just good to just get started.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Right. I I agree. So whatever that obsession might be, even if it's seemingly not the biggest thing you might work on in that moment, it doesn't matter. You just follow it because it fulfills you.

• 22:53Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's very hard to know.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:56Auren Hoffman?

  It's very hard to know what to do, but it's like no one's life is optimized. No one is optimizing for anything. If you actually like, look at people, like, no one's actually optimizing for any one.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  No, and hindsight becomes easier to map out, but in the moment, nobody is, right?

• 23:09Auren Hoffman?

  Even in hindsight, you can't really map it out. Like, so no, no one is actually optimizing for for anything.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  You're right. Nobody's optimizing for it. Yeah, yeah.

• 23:17Auren Hoffman?

  Like, you think Elon Musk is optimizing for, like, taking over the world, but he spends like half of his time playing video games. Like, like, he literally is like, because he's like, and that relaxes him. It makes him happy. You know, whatever, like, you would never play all these video games if that's all you want to do, but like people are complex people. So even like the most ambitious person you could think of, somebody like Elon Musk, like they're complex people. They have social lives. They do other things. They they like to have fun. They like to hang out with their friends. They're not like, no, no one is an optimization machine.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that makes sense. Okay, so given that, you know, later on in your career, you get more optionality and you do have to be more mindful of the choice you choices you make. How, walk me through the founding of SafeCraft. Because at that time, you would have had probably more opportunities on the table, given the decent exit for LiveRamp.

• 24:16Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think you just, you know, sometimes you just end up doing something. You don't even know why.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 24:21Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, so I, I don't, I don't think that's just like, you're just working on something. It's kind of fun. You're working with some good people. You get into it. It's just one front of another. I don't think people always are like super intentional about everything they do. And the question is just like, are you enjoying it? So is it fun at the moment? I think too many people, yeah, if you, if you think of, um, and I don't know if our, our audience can see this here, but there's kind of a, um, there, there, there, there's kind of two different curves you can think about. So there's one curve where you start at the, at the short term. So this, this would be time over here.

• 25:02Auren Hoffman?

  So there's one curve where you start at the short term and then you're long term. And so a lot of people, what they do in their life is they optimize for the midterm.

• 25:11Auren Hoffman?

  They do everything possible to optimize for a midterm. So this is like, I don't really want to be a lawyer, but I'll go to law school. Right? Um, this would be someone and, you know, while that would give me some optionality and I could, even though I don't really love the law, I'd go do it. And I don't, I don't like it. I don't really love all these things, et cetera. So there's a lot of people who are doing things. They think they're optimizing for longer, but they're really optimizing for the midterm.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Midterm, yeah.

• 25:38Auren Hoffman?

  And they are doing what they're supposed, they think they're supposed to be doing, which is like the marshmallow test. They're delaying gratification and not having a good time and not enjoying the short term. That, I think, is not a good strategy for one's career or one's life. Uh, it's very important that one actually has a good time and they like the short term. The short term is very important. And in some ways, they should do everything possible to under-optimize the midterm. So they should like the short term and then they should have some sort of eye on the long term. So the curve really should look more like a U where you're really optimizing for the short term.

• 26:19Auren Hoffman?

  You're not really sure what the midterm is, and then you have some sort of sense of the, of the long term. So instead of going to You know, law school, you, um, you know, you decide to start a commune in the middle of Africa or something, you know, whatever.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Bruce, that's something you that interested you.

• 26:37Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, you know, whatever. You're like, I'm gonna start a communist commune or something, whatever. Like, you know, whatever it is that you're gonna go do, um, and I'm gonna have fun. And you learn a lot through that and that like helps you end up, you know, doing something else over there. You're just doing, doing what everyone else doing, doing things you don't think are good, but just look good to other people, um, is, I think, problematic. And of course, we're all humans, so we all, we all spend a lot of time doing things that we, for the benefit of what we think others will perceive us at.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:07Auren Hoffman?

  So that is what humans do, but you wanna have as little of that as possible.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  So it's like, either make short-term decisions or with some sense of long-term, but never midterm decisions.

• 27:18Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, midterm decisions are generally bad. And, and, you know, and the classic person who's ambitious is generally making mostly midterm decisions.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  What's another example where, you know, you're making the short-term decision because it satisfies some immediate, you know?

• 27:35Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, it could be when you're deciding what to do. You have a few different options and one of us is like, well, I'm gonna work with some really great people who I love working with.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:43Auren Hoffman?

  Um, I don't really know where it's gonna go and, um, they're not paying me as much or, you know, whatever. But, um, it doesn't look as good as my resume, but like, that, that is, you know, probably a better decision. Like, I'm gonna learn from them. It's interesting. It's fun.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  You're gonna have more fun because of that.

• 28:01Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. There's something that might come from that.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:04Auren Hoffman?

  Type of thing.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  As long as you're not miserable, something will come of it.

• 28:07Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, and, and obviously, like, you're probably not gonna be miserable on any of the options.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:12Auren Hoffman?

  So, I mean, people are usually like, they usually, like, today, work is usually pretty good for most people, especially people who are like relatively ambitious, smart people. Like, you're gonna get a job that is like, you know, fine.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Pays decently.

• 28:26Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, and, and also like, you know, with decent people and good colleagues. And so, you know, it's, so it's really a question on the margin of like, am I gonna have more fun over here? Am I gonna do something that's interesting? Am I gonna, are they gonna push me more? Are they gonna, you know, if I wanna work hard, are they gonna work hard, right? All these other types of things.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Oh, that's that's interesting. I'll take a picture of that graph and maybe post it on the screen.

• 28:49Auren Hoffman?

  Basically, I would say just don't don't do things just to build your resume.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:53Auren Hoffman?

  So these are just generally things like if you think if there's like and and that's really where probably the brand comes in. So shooing the brand like I I would have the brand be worth less in your head.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Interesting. Um. So SafeCraft was just short term project on that horizon or on that graph or you know, you were.

• 29:16Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, we we had a theory about the world. In some ways, that theory really didn't come out turn out to be true. Um. And you know, we started something and and then that led to fifty other things.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Can you tell the audience more about SafeCraft?

• 29:30Auren Hoffman?

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, SafeCraft is just a data company. It sells data about physical places. Um. And we had a theory at the time that um, I think I think when you're starting a business, it's important to have a theory about the world that uh, where the world is going, that not necessarily where most people, at least most smart people don't think is true. Uh. So when we did LiveRamp, our theory was the number of vendors, technology vendors that a company is I would have would be growing dramatically. And at the time, most people thought that was not going to be the case. Most there's all these slides, these logo slides of all the different vendors that people had, and everyone was predicting consolidation, consolidation, consolidation.

• 30:13Auren Hoffman?

  It's just too much. And we're thinking, no, it's going to grow another, at least another order of magnitude, maybe two more orders of magnitude. And because of that, you're going to need a way to integrate all these vendors. And uh, and so we got to do something that nobody else was doing because nobody believed in that vision. And then, you know, we got lucky, it turned or whatever, maybe not lucky, but our vision turned out to be correct.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:35Auren Hoffman?

  Um. In SafeCraft, we believe that uh, because the world was becoming much more data oriented. Uh, you had this rise of data scientists, you had all these other types of things that the the one of the most valuable commodities was going to be data. And that people were going to buy more data because they're going to become much more data oriented. It's going to become easier for them to buy data. Um. And at the time, there there wasn't a ton of companies buying raw data. And so we thought, okay, let's start a bunch of data companies. Let's invest in a bunch of data companies. That theory turned out not to really be that true. So I would say today, you know, fast forward today.

• 31:15Auren Hoffman?

  There are more companies buying data today than there were back then. So let's say more today than there were five years ago. But there's not that much more. So it really hasn't grown at the rate that I would have thought. Now, some people say, oh, you're still early and that could still happen. Maybe, maybe that will. I'm not sure. But I would say the bet we made turned out not to be correct.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  May turn out not to be correct.

• 31:39Auren Hoffman?

  It has, it has so far turned out not to be correct. And so I would have said, I would have thought by now it would have grown an order of magnitude.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:46Auren Hoffman?

  And it's grown very small, very slight. In some, in some industries, it's actually shrunk. So like the number of hedge funds. Yeah, I would say when we were starting, the, there was about a hundred hedge funds that were serious buyers of data. And today it's probably sixty. It's actually gone down.

• 32:08Auren Hoffman?

  So it's a, it's a, so, yeah, it's, it's some areas actually is worse.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  What is leading to the, to the, to the demand getting, yeah, going down, I guess?

• 32:21Auren Hoffman?

  I don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of different theories as to why. And on the hedge fund side, that, you know, they, it was just either too expensive or they weren't, you know, a lot, a lot of hedge funds suffered in general. So a lot, you know, some of those funds may have blown up. And then, you know, some of the ones that are doing extraordinarily well, maybe ate the others or something. Right? You have the classic ones that buy data like Renaissance and Citadel and Point seventy-two, right? And you have these other kind of guys that are out there. Those guys are still buying tons of data.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:51Auren Hoffman?

  But even some of the biggest hedge funds in the world, the Bridgewater's of the world, Bridgewater basically almost buys no data. So you have these like huge, huge funds that are hundreds of billions of dollars of AUM and basically don't buy anything. I mean, they, they buy like stuff you could put in Excel, but nothing serious.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  But the other side of this is that in the age of AI, you're almost, you know, at the right time.

• 33:18Auren Hoffman?

  Maybe, but the number of buyers is still small.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  It's like the biggest AI labs, that's.

• 33:22Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, OpenAI buys a lot of data, Anthropic buys a lot of data.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Meta.

• 33:27Auren Hoffman?

  Meta.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Buys entire companies.

• 33:29Auren Hoffman?

  I don't, I don't think Meta buys that much data. I mean, they buy some, but not, not given their scale yet. Maybe they'll start.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  They bought Scale AI.

• 33:36Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. So kind of for the data, maybe, right? So maybe, but I don't think so. I think they bought Scale AI for the people. Yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  You think it's not for the data?

• 33:45Auren Hoffman?

  I don't think so, because they're not, it's not like they're making no one, it's not like they're saying no one else could buy the data. Everyone can still buy Scale's data.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 33:53Auren Hoffman?

  Right? So if the data was that valuable, like, you know, they're, you know, so I, I don't, I don't know. So I, I don't think they're as big of a buyer as OpenAI, um, and they're obviously a much bigger company.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:05Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and I don't think they're, and, and then, you know, Google bought some data, you know, from Reddit or from some of these other places, but we will see. I guess there's not that many buyers there. There are some, um, and so I'm glad the number of buyers has gone up from these AI companies and some of these AI companies do spend a lot of money on data. Um, but also these AI companies might be very ephemeral and so they might be buying that data today, but don't need it next year. So this is not, might not be recurring revenue. Um, and, you know, Google s- uh, spent a lot of money on the Reddit data. That was a two-year deal.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:45Auren Hoffman?

  We will see when that deal comes up for renewal.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:48Auren Hoffman?

  What they're willing to spend on it. My guess is much, much, much less.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  And OpenAI paid New York Times.

• 34:54Auren Hoffman?

  They did?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:55Auren Hoffman?

  And I think there was something for the data, but probably it was a bribe to get them to say nice things about them. It was probably a very cheap way to get decent press. Uh, so I, I, in that case, I don't think the data is nearly that valuable, but the press might be way more valuable than that. So twenty million dollars for like incredible press about you, that's, that's a good deal. Uh, but so, so, oh, you know, New York Times is, is a, is a, is a journalistic endeavor.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:25Auren Hoffman?

  And, you know, you've got to pay for advertising and that's a good way to go do it. So I, I, my guess is that's the reason they did it. The New York Times, they're like, like, really? Like, that is really not that valuable.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Have you come up with a new theory about, uh, or are you in the process of, you know, coming up with a new theory about the next ten years?

• 35:44Auren Hoffman?

  In the world of AI. It's very hard to know what is going to become valuable and what is not. And what one should do and what one shouldn't. The one thing I'm more confident on in the world of AI is that some like things like community of people is going to become even more important. It's it's an area that is like an actually real personal connection, in person, personal connection, other types of personal connections where people really feel they have a community. It's gonna be an important thing, at least for some people. There'll be some people where like, maybe they get their community from the AI or something.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  I agree with you. It's maybe it's going to be like these two different ends of the spectrum where, you know, um, half the people have those AI meta friends which they're very happy with.

• 36:34Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Or the grok, you know, friends that they're very happy with. And the other half are like, we're going to completely detox. We're going to leave our.

• 36:41Auren Hoffman?

  Well, I don't know detox per se, because I.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Not detox, but they would want these moments, these weekends where they're fully present and, you know, they're.

• 36:49Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, and just like being with your family, having friends come over your house, you know, coming over for pizza.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:57Auren Hoffman?

  Um, here's one thing, like, people like to watch football game.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:01Auren Hoffman?

  But watching your football game with friends is so much better than watching a football game alone.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 37:06Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, it's just like, it's not even like, it's not even two times better. It's like, it's like two thousand times better.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:13Auren Hoffman?

  Right. Uh, and so, um, you know, it's just so these things are just, uh, things I think people just have to like kind of come to understand over time.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  These are probably deeply human things.

• 37:23Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're deeply human.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:25Auren Hoffman?

  Now, creating businesses around that are not always that easy to do. In many cases, communities are like bad businesses.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:32Auren Hoffman?

  To to do, it's not like, I don't know, like, your church is not necessarily like the best business in the world. I mean, in some cases, they are.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  It's a great business.

• 37:40Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, some cases they are. Um, but, um, uh, uh, but so, so the question is, I I'm spending much more time thinking about how do I do more stuff in community? Not because these are great businesses, but because I think it's really good for humanity.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Right. Is that part of, uh, dialogue?

• 38:04Auren Hoffman?

  I think there's lots of things that are part of all these things. So I think there's lots of different reasons for all these different things to exist. And you know, if you think of like going to church or something like community is a piece of the bundle. It's not the only piece of the bundle. In fact, some of these churches today, the community is actually not as big as it used to be. So a lot of like, a lot of these churches are really big today. You know, these churches, some of these churches are 30,000 plus people you show up. You might not know anybody at the church, right? So it is, you know, in some ways away, there's some spirituality.

• 38:46Auren Hoffman?

  It's an entertainment. There's other types of things now. There might be a side thing where you have a Bible study or a side group or something where you get. And, and you know, because community is really about repeated interactions with people. Over long periods of time, that is what builds community.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:05Auren Hoffman?

  Having a one time interaction with someone, it could be a start of something.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:10Auren Hoffman?

  But it doesn't build that community unless you're having like true repeated interactions.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  And then a church is that central place that repetitively brings people together.

• 39:20Auren Hoffman?

  Correct.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  And there's some excuse, it could be Bible reading or something else.

• 39:24Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Now, when you have a church of 200 people, you can know everybody and it can be multi generational. You know, everyone's kids, you know, people's parents, etc. But when you have a church of, you know, 20,000 people, then you have to have subgroups within that if you really want to build communities.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  You also have a community part to your podcast, right?

• 39:48Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. We have a group for data leaders.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Data leaders.

• 39:53Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Tell me the origin story of the podcast. When did you start and why?

• 39:59Auren Hoffman?

  You know, again, no good reason, just like to do it. And so, you know, and so so many things podcasts. So podcasts is not a it's for except for a very small number of people. It's not a good business.

• 40:13Auren Hoffman?

  And especially for, you know, our podcast called World of DAS, D A S. There's no business. In fact, we don't even take advertising, right? So it's not a business at all. It's just kind of like, well, I wanted to go do it. And I called it World of DAS because I want to justify to myself that I was doing this for business and not just for my own personal fun, which is really what I'm doing it for.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:35Auren Hoffman?

  And then, but because of that, you know, and so some of the podcasts is about data, not all of it. And because of that, we ended up building a community, which is separate from the podcast. Actually, that's really nothing to do with the podcast.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 40:47Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, which we call the World of DAS community.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's all also called the same, it has the same brand name.

• 40:53Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, same brand name.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:55Auren Hoffman?

  So we, you know, you can use some of the same staff to help do it or something, same domain. And that is a community of data leaders where, you know, you have a very small number of people who really care about data, really have very deep questions about data, want to interact and talk to other people about data, want to potentially do business with other people. So it's this community, mostly for CEOs or from like key executives. They pay a yearly fee to be part of the community. There's an event almost every week that is sometimes be very small, six people, eight people, kind of discussion about a very, very niche topic that only a very small number of people would actually care about.

• 41:39Auren Hoffman?

  And so people self-select in and then we get together as a group once a year and in person as well.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  And these other leaders, are they gathering around these niche topics like every month or so? Or is it like?

• 41:53Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, it's not. There's a, there's a coordinator. There's coordinators who coordinate these types of things. And so somebody will say, okay, I really want to talk about selling data to AI or something. How do you do it? How do you structure the deal? What do you do? You know, everyone knows this is like often a one-time deal. Can I make it more less than a one-time deal or other ways to structure it? Can I understand it better? Can I get some of the learnings out of it? Can I get whatever? So they, oh, like raise your hand if you want to talk about, okay, there's. Fifteen other people want to talk about this. Let's have some discussion and maybe just an hour. Okay, what's the best practices? What are you doing? It's could be like that. It could be anything. And it could even be about something about hiring or something that is a little bit more

• 42:38Auren Hoffman?

  across that many people would have a discussion on.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  So the podcast has been sort of successful. It has seventy thousand, you know, followers, subscribers on YouTube and it has it has grown. Even though it didn't start out as like, you know, a business.

• 42:54Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  What are some of the biggest sort of benefits you've seen now that it has grown more?

• 43:03Auren Hoffman?

  I don't know. I mean, it's just.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  It's still to be seen.

• 43:05Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's just fun. Yes. I mean, again, like I think people do things for lots of different reasons that are out there. And and sometimes people like continue do things they they don't need to continue to do. But in this case, like I every week I enjoy it and and what I do think people should do. So I think like everybody should do this, like they should actually write down like the core things that they're doing. And then maybe once a year or twice a year, like a look at those things and try to decide whether they should still do those things. And it could be like really big things like, do you still want to be married to this person or something, right? Do you still want to be in your job? Do you still want to live in your city where you're living in, etc. Right?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:47Auren Hoffman?

  And it's actually really nice when you say yes, right? And then you realize, oh, actually, I love being married to this person, right? Like, this is an incredible thing. Like, I love this thing. I like where I'm living. Like, this is really, this is a really, I love this job, right? It's like it's actually, it's like reaffirms.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:04Auren Hoffman?

  What you want to do. I think I think it's a helpful thing. And then it could be, could even be your views on topics or something. Have they changed my view on this? Obviously, and then and then and then other types of things like, do I still want to be part of this club? Or do I still want to do this thing? Or do I still want to play tennis every week with this guy or whatever it might be? Rather than just keep doing it because it's there. No, you can't. You can't reevaluate. Every day, like that would be insane.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:31Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and so, but once a year, twice a year.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Five, six key moments.

• 44:35Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe once a year is good enough.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I have another very close friend who does this and you're probably the only second or third person I've heard this from who does this.

• 44:45Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, really?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Very interesting. What are the, you've talked about community a lot. What's the secret to building a valuable and engaged community?

• 44:55Auren Hoffman?

  I don't really know.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  We're still figuring it out.

• 44:57Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think it's really hard uh to build. I mean, I think a community needs to be niche. So you need to have people that kind of believe something that is pretty rare. And that they are aligned around that belief. And that brings them together for some sort of thing. Uh, i- i- if you're going to have like a robot, again, maybe it's a different, but you need to have, and it's sometimes just a neighborhood community. Everyone who lives on this block, right?

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:28Auren Hoffman?

  Except for that one guy who we hate, but everyone else who lives on this block.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  There's around that one guy.

• 45:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then partially it's also, we hate the guy who lives, you know, in the corner because he yells at all of us every time we walk our dog. Right? So that's actually, it's like good to have some, it's good to have some enemies in a community.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:45Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, some common enemy. Um, and then it's uh, it's, it, then I think these, I think cultures are, communities are like somewhat related cultures. And cultures are important to be niche. Uh, like I think right now, a really great culture, if you want to start a company today, this is my advice to your, so I would start. Some sort of like thing that's going to appeal to like less than one percent of people, but really appeal them. So. He, my culture is my, my kind of culture idea, which I would never do, but this is my idea for someone else to go do is like. We wear suits to work. We're a tech company.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:22Auren Hoffman?

  We wear suits to work. We use Windows. We don't use Mac, right? Um, you know, we uh, we have formal kind of planning meetings or something, right? You know, whatever, like it's very, very formal. We clean our desks every day with Windex. Uh, that's out there, right? Uh, we do calisthenics in the morning or something like, you know, uh, just something like, like there's probably like.

• 46:49Auren Hoffman?

  Point five percent of people that would just love to work at that place.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:53Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, and what, what I think what most people start doing is they start making compromises in their community.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 47:00Auren Hoffman?

  Cause they wanna bring in extra people or they wanna go do things and that is really what kills it because they try to be like all things to all people.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's fair. A- a- as we were talking about community, um, I, you've written a other interesting blog on insiders versus outsiders. I, I read it the first time, um, he, you posted it, um, I think it's called Naval versus, uh, Nirav.

• 47:30Auren Hoffman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Right, um, can you share more for the audience who might not know?

• 47:35Auren Hoffman?

  Sure, I mean, I think there's, there's a question of, there's lots of ways to be successful and there's lots of different archetypes of people who are successful and some people are more the outsider and some people are more the insider. And some people are, are more the insider internally who wants to be the outsider, some people are the outsider internally who wants to be the insider, usually there's some sort of tension there.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:59Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and, uh, and then some people even can switch, it's hard, but some people switch between them. And so in this particular case, I talked about two people who I know, who I think highly of, one of which is more the consummate insider, one of which is more the consummate outsider. Um, and they've both been incredibly successful people. Um, in fact, they both kind of used to work together with one another and had some tension with one another and kind of discussed about through their, those two archetypes, what it is and what is, and then, and then kind of being true to yourself, what do you wanna be, who do you want, et cetera?

• 48:38Speaker 02

  So i- i- in their, in that blog post, you make an analysis on, you know, for potential outsiders, potential insiders, and as I was going through it, I came up with, you know, I was like, okay, there have been some updates to, to that, right? For example, the all-in podcast, uh, group.

• 48:54Auren Hoffman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Um, and you describe them as, uh, people who are in conflict at the time.

• 49:01Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Before David Sacks was in the administration, right? Um, they're, they're in conflict and, you know, they're, um, sort of insiders, but they also like debate that and.

• 49:11Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Their conflict with that, um. Updated analysis, are they now insiders?

• 49:17Auren Hoffman?

  I don't know, I haven't, I haven't thought about it enough, but I can tell you that, uh, so one of the people I talked about in the blog post is kind of is Mark Andreessen, who everyone will know of. And Mark was an outsider, uh, like he grew up in rural Wisconsin and, you know, kind of didn't really know anybody when he came to, kind of came to Silicon Valley. And then he quickly kind of got drawn in, um, after he was super successful at a young age, got drawn into the world and got on a bunch of boards, a very prestigious boards and, um, married into a very prestigious family, you know, did all these other types of things. And for a while, really, really became like, in some ways, the consummate insider.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:58Auren Hoffman?

  Join and, um, and then I think at some point, a few years ago, he decided that actually he wanted to be, because the insider, being an insider is a huge benefits, but also lack of freedom. You can't really do exactly what you want to do.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:17Auren Hoffman?

  And so, and he decided that the freedom to think and the freedom to do things was more important than the benefits. I, I don't know exactly how he made his decision there. Um, and so he, even though, you know, you would think, okay, he, you know, he's still super successful. He's still, um, and he still has a lot of insider advantages that, but, but I would put him in the outsider category now.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Still?

• 50:38Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. I would, I would say he, he, he became an insider and now he's, he's moved at least from a personality wise back into the outsider, uh, category. Now maybe like the second, it might be different or something.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:51Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, but I think he has evolved kind of back to, you know, whereas like somebody like Peter Thiel always kind of, always was the, trying to stay the outsider. If something was drawing him in too much, he would try to, he would try to move to make sure he would stay as much more, so he was probably much more true to that all the way through. Uh, and then other people are different. Now, of course, you still get insider benefits and you still get invited to like cool things.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:16Auren Hoffman?

  And you get, and then, and then, you know, but you have to decide sometimes when you have these benefits, like, well, that comes with some sort of, uh, way that you can't say the thing you want to say or do the thing you want to do, et cetera. And then you have to decide at some point, like if that's worth it.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Do you think that's why Peter Thiel has stayed away from, uh, being a proactive part of the government?

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Whereas a lot of his, you know, affiliates, associates are, you know, a part of the government now, at least this administration.

• 51:48Auren Hoffman?

  Well.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Is it to maintain that freedom?

• 51:50Auren Hoffman?

  Well, I think obviously if you're part of the government, you don't have as much freedom to do things. Yeah. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can't be an outsider, but it's harder to be effective if you work for the government. If you are an outsider. Um, and so I think it is important to know yourself. Um, but also super, super duper successful. Uh, people that are founders rarely are successful in government. Right? Um, the, the current president being the exception. Um, but kind of like you have to be the president, you know? Um, so it's, uh, it would be very rare to see somebody who could actually translate.

• 52:33Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, those skills into, so I, I think if you were a business person, you worked your way up to the top. And you understood how to play the game, you could be successful government. But if you are a founder. Um, it would be hard unless you were the top dog, uh, to, to be successful.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  That, that's fair. That's fair. There's, um. So the, there's another pair that, um, you didn't discuss at length in the, in the blog post, right? Love your, uh, take on Paul Graham versus Sam Altman. Do you think that was? They were outsiders as well?

• 53:10Auren Hoffman?

  Um, I would say they're, I don't know. The Sam one's harder to know. Um, but Paul Graham, I think is definitely an outsider and I think he, part of the reason he left Y C is to stay the outsider.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 53:25Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and so if he was more, right now, right, he's much more of an institution.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I was.

• 53:32Auren Hoffman?

  And there's only so much outsider you could be if you're running a bigger institution, right? Um, so I think he wanted more of the freedom to do what he wants to do. And, um, and that at some point that necessitated him leaving Y C as, as, as the CEO.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Is he now the chairperson of like?

• 53:51Auren Hoffman?

  It's always hard to understand how that works.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  We, we don't know. Um, but the chairperson or of a company is also an interesting role and you have that role now at Safecraft. When do you make the decision to, you know, take that role and what does that involve?

• 54:09Auren Hoffman?

  I don't know.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  What do you know from what you've executed?

• 54:15Auren Hoffman?

  What I know is you don't know. What I, what in, in the Safegraph case, there was an extremely talented guy who, who's been working for Safegraph for a long time, who I thought would, would do a better job as CEO than me.

• 54:30Auren Hoffman?

  And so

• 54:33Auren Hoffman?

  it was, it was still a decision I probably made way too late. So he's been CEO for, you know, at this tape being about a year. Uh, maybe we should have done that a year before or something. He's done an incredible job. He did. He's a great guy. He's very, very sharp. He works incredible hours. Now it's of course it's hard. You don't always have that person to go do it. So certainly hard to make that decision. If you don't like recruiting a CEO.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  That is hard.

• 55:00Auren Hoffman?

  Extremely hard and also often leads to failure.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:04Auren Hoffman?

  So, um, so in this case, it was, it was a much easier choice because there was, I knew, I knew who that person was.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  And ended up spending a few number of years at the company.

• 55:15Auren Hoffman?

  Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  So I, I guess promoting from within is probably the more.

• 55:23Auren Hoffman?

  I think more people should promote within just in general.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Right. I agree.

• 55:27Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. So, um, I don't, I think most people should not hire executives in their companies.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Is it cultural preservation?

• 55:35Auren Hoffman?

  No. I think that's helpful potentially, but, uh, cause obviously people look up to their culture cues, not down.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:43Auren Hoffman?

  So it's a lot easier to hire new people at the entry levels, um, for cultural preservation.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:49Auren Hoffman?

  But the, I think it's very hard to hire talented executives.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Downton and Hungryboat. Yeah.

• 55:59Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Like, like really great people that would want to work for your company. Like, why would they want to work for you?

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:05Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, and so it's much easier to work again, and kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, it's much easier to promote someone to above their ability in a way, right? And then maybe surround them with some executive coaches and other types of people. You could, you can rent great executives, but I wouldn't buy the executives.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  So how has your role evolved in this chair position a year and now, what do you spend most of your time on?

• 56:31Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, we, we, we run a holding company where we hold and we start different companies. Savegraph being one of the companies that we run and hold. Uh, but there are many, many other companies that we, uh, that we started and some cases we own a hundred percent on some cases we own. Um, a, a, a much tinier minority of, and we start new companies all the time as well. Um, and so part of what I do all day is, um, kind of help the companies that we started and then start new companies.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  The zero to one stage.

• 57:05Auren Hoffman?

  Zero to one. Yeah. On the starting. Yeah. And then, and then of course, you know, also I'm at Flex Capita. We do seed stage investing. So we do quite a lot of, uh, seed investing. We're now probably the biggest seed stage investor.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hundred checks a year or something, right?

• 57:20Auren Hoffman?

  Our goal, yeah, that, that's our goal. We're kind of on pace this year to do about eighty, um, eighty deals this year.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  That is incredible.

• 57:28Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and, and we write like three hundred to five hundred K checks. So relatively small dollar size. Um, and but high volume into a lot of different deals and.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Is there a thesis for the fund or just?

• 57:41Auren Hoffman?

  Thesis is great founders.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 57:43Auren Hoffman?

  That's the thesis. Yeah. So it's finding great founders and letting them convince us about where the technology is going.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  What insight they have.

• 57:52Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Cause again, we're, because we're so early, we're investing for fifteen years down the road. It's very hard to know about the future. And so they are convincing us about the future. Here's where we think the future is. And if we love the founder, we want to be along for the ride.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes sense. Um, so I, I guess like all the spin outs that have come out of Savegraph are part of this holding company now.

• 58:15Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, the spin outs are, and then we start new things.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  And you start new things. That is super fascinating how it's become an incubator. I, I didn't realize there was a whole, a holding company and that's what you're actively doing.

• 58:26Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. And the holding company is called NQBA or Incubate. Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  So that's what that is. I was wondering.

• 58:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Okay, that, that explains it. Um, super interesting. Um.

• 58:41Auren Hoffman?

  And and and the hardest part of any incubator is finding like super talented people to collaborate with.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  Is so is there like no dearth of ideas?

• 58:52Auren Hoffman?

  There is always dearth of ideas, right? It's always hard to come up with good ideas too, but it's finding the right person to collaborate with about that particular idea.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:02Auren Hoffman?

  Finding that founder mark founder market fit, someone who's also super excited.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:07Auren Hoffman?

  And who then takes their idea and makes it their own idea, et cetera.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Talent hunt is the hardest part.

• 59:14Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's really hard to find that kind of key.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:18Auren Hoffman?

  Person or people to really take that to the next level.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  I I was talking to a couple of my friends, one of them ran a deep tech venture studio fund sort of and one of them at ATPC and they incubate a lot, right? And I asked them, what's the biggest challenge? And there are probably thirty, you know, different range of challenges with recruiting, but the number one ended up being, you know, takes two, two and a half years to find the executive team founder. And the founder market fit, that's the hardest part, takes the longest and after conceiving and proving the idea, which is.

• 59:54Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, and obviously sometimes you have to prove it before you find the person, sometimes you have to prove it after. So these things are hard. But there there and there are some ideas that I've been working on for many, many years that I've been just waiting for the right person to come along and stuff.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  So do you like shell, another mentor of mine used to use this concept of shelving ideas. You you start, you know, ideating on something and with the resources you have and you check for interest. If there's no interest within the group that you're currently working with, you just put it on a shelf and you.

• 1:00:27Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, again, like some of the ideas also are not good.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  But that that too, yeah, that too.

• 1:00:32Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, but you but yeah, every at least once a week, I'm working on some very new thing. Spending a lot of time researching it and looking into it and sometimes quickly I think, okay, this isn't a good idea. Sometimes I'll say, okay, this is this is could be a good idea, but I'm never going to be involved in it. Um, and then and then sometimes it it ends up. Sometimes it's all you can think about.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  That is an incredible frequency, once a week.

• 1:00:57Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, at least some part of that week is spending time thinking about something new. And it could be after two hours deciding it's not good.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  This brings me to another framework you wrote about. You have very interesting, by the way, blog posts I would recommend to the listeners. A very interesting blog post on types of decision makers. Micro, micro time decision maker, short time, long time and big time.

• 1:01:23Auren Hoffman?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  I think I got it right.

• 1:01:25Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Big time you define as the philosophical Peter Thiel types, right? Or the Naval types. The long term, long or long time thinkers you describe as as people who are in strategy roles who take weeks to months to make a decision. Then short time you describe as probably CEOs who have to typically between, or at least that's part of the job. But you have between, you know, a few hours or minutes to make decisions. And then there's a micro time, which is, you know, the management layer, probably you're making a lot more decisions. Or you need very quick reflexes. It could be in the CEO role as well, but you need very quick reflexes.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  You sort of self identified into the short time bucket where, you know, you're really good at your zone of geniuses.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  The hours to, you know, minutes decision making. But ideation is usually probably more on the long time thinking. Would you consider that you're evolving or have evolved since?

• 1:02:31Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, I think it's very, I think it is different. I do think, first of all, people should think about where are they best at? In a timeframe. And so people, some people make decisions, it's not, some people could be good at all of them.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Auren Hoffman?

  But where are you better than others at? And if you think of, you know, this kind of like sub second decision making. Well, these are like really important for most professional athletes. It's really important for, you know, if you're a professional video game player. It's really important for certain, for like improv comedy, right?

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  If you're in the war zone.

• 1:03:08Auren Hoffman?

  Potentially, if you're in a war zone, it's really important. Yeah. Right. So if you're being shot at, it's probably quite important. Again, kind of like, like, like an athlete type of thing, right? And of course, younger people are usually better at sub second time decisions and you know, the, the, if you look at the actions per minute of a, of a, of a professional game player, like they're usually peak in the low twenties or something. Yeah. But so that that's an important thing. So I've always been in that case, like I've always been terrible at sub second decision making.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:46Auren Hoffman?

  I've always been bad, always knew I was bad, even like at a young age, like, just like, how did he know to pass the ball to that guy that quickly? Right. It just like, I just could never do it.

• 1:03:58Auren Hoffman?

  And now if I'm like analyzing game tape or something after a couple of hours, I could tell you the exact right person potentially to pass the ball to.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, but the fact that LeBron James could just do it in like, in a few nanoseconds is just an unbelievable skill.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  When he's in the arena. Yeah.

• 1:04:16Auren Hoffman?

  While, yeah. And he has, and he literally can analyze the 50 different options immediately and somehow pick like the optimal thing at the optimal rate with the optimal, like the optimal spin. I mean, it's, it's, it's crazy. So you have to understand the, the each different, each different thing on a time scale and understand where you're good at. And then some of you are just like super deep thinkers too. And they're incredible and they, you know, and they're great at, uh, you know, I'm, I'm really good at making decisions in like, let's say hours kind of timeframe. I can assess it. I don't need days. I don't need paralysis. I don't need committees.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:53Auren Hoffman?

  But, uh, but I probably don't make the decision in like, in like a couple of seconds either.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:59Auren Hoffman?

  So everyone is different.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  So where would you rank the?

• 1:05:03Auren Hoffman?

  I think most CEOs are probably in that place, right? So.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  The, oh, most CEOs are probably in that hours to days or.

• 1:05:12Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would say almost, almost all successful CEOs are probably in that, in that place.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  The, the micro, you know, very short time, sort of the decision making, the athlete mix, you think that can be learned through like, you know, reps and hours?

• 1:05:26Auren Hoffman?

  Well, I think probably all these things can be learned.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, but there's still, you still have some sort of, and again, that might, again, that might be changed, that's changed, but if you kind of do some sort of self eval when you're fourteen years old, you're probably, you're probably really good at some, you, you, you, you might be good at all of them, but you might, there might be one of them where you're absolutely excellented. And then it's really like, okay, like, okay, there, there's a certain number of careers that you should be doing based on that.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Have you, um, I, I'm guessing you do this with the employees you hire, this process is, in what roles they would succeed most in?

• 1:06:07Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, in some ways it don't, it don't, yeah, we, we don't have like a test.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Right, of course.

• 1:06:11Auren Hoffman?

  Um, that's out there, but I think it's important that people self-select in.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:15Auren Hoffman?

  And sometimes people will be like, oh, I really want to do this role. And then you're like.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Do you send them the blog post then?

• 1:06:21Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, probably I should, you know, okay. Uh, so I, I think a lot of people think of, think about themselves a little differently and they're not like doing a full, good assessment of their strengths.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:32Auren Hoffman?

  So you have to assess their strengths and based on your strengths, you should, that doesn't mean you can't do anything.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:37Auren Hoffman?

  Like you can still dabble in other things and do stuff and whatever, but like, I'm never, because I, I'm never going to be the guy who has the good witty reply to somebody in a debate.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:50Auren Hoffman?

  That's something where you need to think very, very quickly on your feet. That's not an area where I'm very good at. Um, and so probably shouldn't be putting my position where I'm on like.

• 1:07:01Auren Hoffman?

  You know, some sort of TV news debate show or something like I'm not gonna do as well.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Right, because then all the best responses are an afterthought before you're going to bed. It feels terrible.

• 1:07:14Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember when I used to be part of, I used to be part of a debate club and are you familiar with Model United Nations?

• 1:07:21Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  You're required to be really fast with your responses and be really witty, right? Because you're just modeling these debates where you're going after each other. And that's where I learned, I managed to win some sort of an award. But it was so much against the grain, so much preparation, so much becoming a completely different person to do that. I realized I'm not naturally good at this, this is.

• 1:07:41Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, again, like people can get okay at all these things and stuff like that. Like I would love to, I've never, I've never taken an improv comedy class, so I'd love to do it. I, I'm confident I would never be great at improv comedy. I'm not even funny, so that, that, that, that makes it hard right there. I'm pretty confident, but like maybe I can get to okay, could moderately okay. Now, the question is, should you do things really at all just to get to okay? Or should you focus on things where you're going from good to great? And you know, these are always the harder, harder things. So it might be fun to take an improv comedy class, but I don't have any, I don't have some sort of harboring

• 1:08:21Auren Hoffman?

  ideals that I would be ever great at it.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  That's interesting. Maybe, you know, maybe on one of our next dinners, we should have as an icebreaker, an improv comedy class.

• 1:08:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, again, yeah, these things could be hokey as well, so there, there, it's very hard to know.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Where would you rank ideation on this like time scale sort of standard that you use?

• 1:08:49Auren Hoffman?

  In some cases, it, it is quite good to be able to do it in the hours. Cause you can get a lot done. If you say, I'm gonna give myself an hour and you time box it. You actually can do a ton of stuff in that timeframe.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:09:06Auren Hoffman?

  And then you can go learn a lot and then you can make, yeah, and then you can, at the end of it, you can make a decision. What you really don't wanna do is spend like four years on something and then decide it's not good, right?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:09:17Auren Hoffman?

  Something, yeah. You know, and so this is like the PhD or something, maybe working on it. So if you're gonna do that, ideally, it's gonna be good, you want it to be good before you start working on it.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  That's fair. That's uh, that that that's actually a very good point. You wanna get to the truth faster than, you know?

• 1:09:36Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and most ideas are probably not good, so.

• 1:09:41Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Get rid of them.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  Another thing, actually, you talk about, was this uh, on the podcast to the mod? I don't remember, but you talk about learning more from uh, people who are a step or two below, right? And and you like meeting a lot of those people versus, you know, what most people optimize for is, you know, meeting more successful people than you.

• 1:10:02Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Uh, where that sort of insight come from?

• 1:10:07Auren Hoffman?

  Well, I think when you're meeting with, sometimes when you're meeting with people who are, you know, above the ladder, you are trying to go in to impress them. And therefore, you, if you wanna do a good job, you wanna teach them things.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:22Auren Hoffman?

  Right? And therefore, they might not be teaching you things, right?

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:27Auren Hoffman?

  Um, if you meet with someone too below you, they're going to be trying to impress you. So you're gonna learn a lot, and you don't have to impress them because they wanna meet with you anyway.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:38Auren Hoffman?

  So you're just generally, that's like a better trade. It seems like I'm gonna come out of a meeting learning a lot more than when I go meet with the CEO of General Motors, or say if I go into the media, General Motors is probably one, one or two rungs above me on the ladder or something, like I have to go try to impress her.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Auren Hoffman?

  Um.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  So you're doing most of the talking and?

• 1:11:00Auren Hoffman?

  Correct.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  And and that?

• 1:11:01Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, if you're doing most of the talking, you're not doing most of the learning.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. Okay, that that's a great way to put it.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  The um.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  So while interviewing Darkage, that was like, by the way, a really interesting interview. You mentioned that one of your friends has figured out, while we're talking about conversations, how to only have interesting conversations. I don't know if you remember who that friend is. Um, can you share what their strategy is?

• 1:11:33Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, I don't, I think the, the, it's somewhat of an antisocial thing. Right? Most people like don't have that many interesting conversations. And so if you are optimizing to have interesting conversations, you have to be willing to get out of social situations a lot, right?

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and so most of us don't, either don't have the, you know, for whatever reason, we haven't optimized our life to go do that. So I think you have to be willing to not do the typical things that most people have to do.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  They don't go to a happy hour, don't.

• 1:12:09Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, you know, the, the, even like Thanksgiving with your broader family, you're, you know, you may not be optimizing for having interesting conversations. So you might be optimized for community, you might be optimized for other types of things there. So I think there's different levels of optimization that go. But uh, it's hard to always have interesting conversations.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is there a conspiracy theory that you believe in or more, more recently?

• 1:12:33Auren Hoffman?

  I believe in a lot of conspiracy theories. Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  What is one that you believed in most recently?

• 1:12:41Auren Hoffman?

  I think there are, um,

• 1:12:47Auren Hoffman?

  I think most times when there is something that becomes popular, that there is a back channel conspiracy to make it popular. Like, I don't think things become popular by accident.

• 1:13:04Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and eventually those things might hit the zeitgeist or something. Like, we all value gold and, but I think at some point, there was this cabal of people who are like, we're all going to value gold and gold's really important. And let's start telling people that gold's really valuable.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:23Auren Hoffman?

  And like somehow those people were, and we don't know who those people are, but somehow those people changed the world. And of course, they probably said that because they had a bunch of gold.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Auren Hoffman?

  Right?

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and so I think in general, like any type of thing that becomes super popular, there is, again, sometimes there's an accident, but there's often a conspiracy to make it popular.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Bitcoin.

• 1:13:48Auren Hoffman?

  Sure. Yeah, yeah. I would tell you that that for sure.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is for sure.

• 1:13:52Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, for sure. Now, it doesn't mean it's not good.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Auren Hoffman?

  Conspiracy doesn't mean bad.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Auren Hoffman?

  Or something.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  It's a way to understand the world.

• 1:13:59Auren Hoffman?

  It's a way to understand the world.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and then, and then the other thing is that

• 1:14:06Auren Hoffman?

  if there's something that's happening

• 1:14:10Auren Hoffman?

  and there's some person or entity that is going, that is benefiting from that thing happening, they're often, they're involved, even if they want to make it seem like they're not.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Would it be oversimplistic to say, um, follow the money or follow, uh, follow the money trail if you want to figure out the incentives?

• 1:14:30Auren Hoffman?

  Sometimes.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I, I think it's very hard to say. Let's say someone is being nominated for a cabinet position. Um, and, um, well, uh, you want that position, but you weren't, you didn't get the nomination. Okay? Well, it wouldn't make, but you want to support your president or something, whatever. Okay. Well, it wouldn't make sense for you to be against the nomination.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:56Auren Hoffman?

  But if somebody else could be against it in a way, right? You're maybe clearly the number two or number three choice or something. So if that got killed, even though that is a member of your party or something, right?

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:09Auren Hoffman?

  So I often think that there's, there's conspiracies that happen. It's just like, who benefits from it?

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Auren Hoffman?

  And it's not always who's against it publicly is the one that benefits. They're often not. They're, they could be, they could be in cahoots or they could just be the patsy of the, the, the, the other entity that benefits.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  That is, that is true. So you have to dig like probably two, or look two, three layers deeper to.

• 1:15:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. And there's some conspiracy going on. Usually there's some trading or some other type of things like conspiracies happen all the time.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:41Auren Hoffman?

  It is is a very common thing and like, yeah, so I, you know, there's always this thing like, there are no conspiracies, like, no one could coordinate. It's like, that is just not true.

• 1:15:53Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, now, a lot of the things people say are conspiracies might not be true and those, those, you know, so there, there are these things like, there are these things that are like somewhat preposterous sometimes that people talk about or whatever, but, but there are conspiracies.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  Well, what's the most preposterous thing you've heard?

• 1:16:09Auren Hoffman?

  I, I never know, because sometimes these things are never, you know, you never really, and by, by the way, I haven't like always gone on the rattle to just prove it.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:17Auren Hoffman?

  Either, right? Like, hon- honestly, I have no idea if, if like, we actually landed on the moon or we faked the moon landing. Like, I just, I just believe that we landed on the moon.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:27Auren Hoffman?

  Because it's easier to do that. It just seems to be the simple thing to believe. I haven't gone down the rabbit hole of proving that we landed on the moon. I've never been to the moon.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:36Auren Hoffman?

  Um, so I just believe that we have, and it's just simple to live life that way.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:41Auren Hoffman?

  Um, there are plenty of people who don't believe it and think it's a big conspiracy.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Auren Hoffman?

  And, um, and so, yeah, and they might be right, honestly, and, but I've just never done the, I've never gone like first principles there.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:53Auren Hoffman?

  And you can't go to first principles on everything because you won't have time to do anything else.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  That is, that's.

• 1:16:58Auren Hoffman?

  So you have to believe the zeitgeist on most things and every once in a while you can go to first principles on something.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you choose what you want to go first principles on. Yeah, you mentioned that, um, reading fiction early on inspired you and, um, some of it was, or, or, I think you mentioned the movie The Right Stuff and, you know.

• 1:17:19Auren Hoffman?

  That's nonfiction.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Oh, that's nonfiction. Okay.

• 1:17:21Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  Is, is that, uh, is, is that about, like, that was about airplanes and?

• 1:17:27Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, astronauts.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  A- astronauts and, so that, that is interesting now that you brought up the landing on the moon topics.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Connect the dots. Uh, did that, uh, at any given point inspire you to, uh, maybe start a hardware company or, you know, do something more out there like a moonshot?

• 1:17:50Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, certainly, maybe I will. Yeah.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:17:54Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I don't know. Yeah.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Maybe it's one of the weekly ideas popping up.

• 1:17:58Auren Hoffman?

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, you have to play in your zone of competence too. So there are certain things that like you're just, you know, you would love to do or love to be involved in, but you're, you're just not going to be, you, you, you, you might not be the most successful person to go. So why are you the one to do it? You have to always be thinking, asking that question.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  How can you uniquely contribute to this? There is, um, so I hosted Doug Leoni for another one of these events that we did not record sadly. But, um, while doing research, I, um, um, I figured that he asked this question to founders. And, you know, he's, um, meeting them, um, he asked them about his, their siblings. And, um, what they admire most about them, because what he's looking for is like whatever they admire most in their siblings. That's probably something they lack in either themselves or something, you know, they, um, hope to get better at. And that tells a lot more about them. Do you have any such questions for when you're interviewing, when you're investing?

• 1:18:59Auren Hoffman?

  I, I, I'm, I, but I think that's a very interesting question. I think it will tell you a lot about somebody. Um, and I've heard that before. He's obviously a very, very sharp guy. Um,

• 1:19:13Auren Hoffman?

  I'm not sure that it's predictive of anything though. Like, you know, I, like, I actually think it's very interesting. And get you to learn somebody, something about somebody and like, it'd be probably a really good question to ask on like a second date or something. But like, I don't, I would really doubt it's predictive of any founders.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  So that's what I would think of.

• 1:19:34Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Um, and again, I don't, I don't like saying anything bad about Doug Leoni. He's like, he's a legend. He's amazing. He's like, he has track record, speech for himself. He's a way better investor than I am. Um,

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  We're just evaluating the question on its own.

• 1:19:48Auren Hoffman?

  I, I, my guess is he is successful in spite of that question. Or, you know, or maybe.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  He just likes it.

• 1:19:55Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Or, or maybe actually it's opposite. Maybe it isn't predictive of anything. But it makes people, they are thinking about themselves and that means they like him more. And he's more likely to win the deal because he asked the question.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  That is probably true.

• 1:20:08Auren Hoffman?

  That's probably more likely. He's probably not picking them because of their answer, but they're picking him because of the question. And that is probably, you know, because he's probably in a lot of competitive deals where like he has to, again, he has to get them to pick him.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:20:25Auren Hoffman?

  And so something like that is probably a very good like introspective, oh, I like this guy. He's asking interesting questions. Yeah. Uh, that, that type of thing. Again, most founders I think are so successful founder. I don't think there's many commonalities among successful founders.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  How we started, not many commonalities.

• 1:20:42Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. So I don't know that you would be able to learn that much there.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  So do you have a favorite question you ask when you're hiring or?

• 1:20:54Auren Hoffman?

  I, I, I don't know what's predictive. And I think when you're hiring or when you're, um, when you're investing in a company early stage like we do, the most important thing is to find, uh, it's kind of like, there's kind of two things you're trying to do. A, you're trying to weed out the things, people that are bad, right? And that wouldn't be good fits. Um, and you get better at that over time. Um, and then you're also trying to find this rare 10xer. And in my entire life, I've only hired a small number of 10xers. I've only invested in a small number of 10xers.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Which is most, most companies, most people, it's.

• 1:21:33Auren Hoffman?

  Sorry?

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I think most companies are like, like that. It's like only a few number of 10xers.

• 1:21:37Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's extremely rare that a 10xer will join your company. And so, and I can tell you pretty, uh, concretely today that I cannot identify the 10xer from the good person. Um, a, a priori. Uh, so obviously anyone you hire, anyone you invest in, you think is going to be good. You wouldn't hire someone who you think is not good, uh, right? But some small portion of those people turn out to be absolutely outstanding. And when I go back in time, I don't think I could have predicted that that person would have been the person who would have been absolutely outstanding. Of course I hired them, invested in them.

• 1:22:17Auren Hoffman?

  But, uh, and so I, I just think these are really, really hard to know, especially from interviews, limited interactions. Some of those you, I knew right away after working with them, like within, within a month, working with them that this was like an extraordinarily exceptional person. Uh, but, uh, in the interview process, now maybe I could have run a better interview process. Maybe there could be other things to do. It's possible.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Do you think a interview process is like a broken way to, to hire to? To invest to.

• 1:22:45Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, it's hard. It's hard to know what else you do. I mean, certainly the interview process is just one piece of it. I mean, resume is very important, right? So people look at resumes and I, I, I think the resume is incredibly important.

• 1:22:58Auren Hoffman?

  And.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Why do you think the resume is important?

• 1:23:01Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, I think you learn a lot about somebody from their resume. So it's certainly important. It makes it easier to weed out people. Right? And so you can have a pretty high like sense, okay, extremely high like how this person is not going to be successful in this role or in this thing based on their resume. Again, you might be wrong. There's, there's going to be the outlier.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  You're probably looking for their innate sort of qualities or abilities based on the roles they've done previously, right?

• 1:23:25Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Some of them could be transferable skills, some of them.

• 1:23:27Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. It's hard, but it's hard to know. And then, and then there might be other things like they put something out there like. You see someone posting, they're right, they're writing a blog or something, right? Like, well, that's probably pretty interesting. You probably learn about somebody by what they write about. Maybe you can see an interview with them. Maybe they're posting on X, right? So there's lots of other like, there, there's some work product that's out there that might be somewhat public. And you can access, yeah, some sort of proof of work that you can access, GitHub repo, whatever it is that you can access that gives you a sense of what they've done. Obviously you may have worked with them before.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Auren Hoffman?

  Right? But even there, I have hired people who I worked with before who were amazing. At my last company and I worked with them again and they were not good.

• 1:24:13Auren Hoffman?

  And sometimes they just were, maybe they weren't the right fit for that new culture.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Auren Hoffman?

  But sometimes they changed in their own life.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Auren Hoffman?

  Like before they were younger, they were hungry, they were ready. Now they were, now they are optimizing for different things.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:28Auren Hoffman?

  Or they, or people do change. I think people are very different.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  People do change.

• 1:24:31Auren Hoffman?

  People 10 years ago are very different from today. And it's very, very different person. You asked me about my high school, like it, that's a completely different person. That is not me.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:43Auren Hoffman?

  This person that, you know, me as a 16 year old is very, very different than me today. It's, it's completely, I'm like distantly related to that person. It's like my, it's not even my cousin. It might be like my second cousin or something like, I'm kind of like somewhat related, same family tree. But like, it's not me. It's a very different person. People change.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  I I agree, people, yeah, the people change and the rate of change is, I mean, depending on how much time you're spending with them, it's hard to tell like, you know.

• 1:25:14Auren Hoffman?

  That's right.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Auren Hoffman?

  When you're with them, it's hard to say.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, I, I was thinking about it a lot, the, the best determinant for that I've found is there's no way around actually seeing them work. Whether it's founders, you know, it's, it becomes clearer nine months to one year of being closer in close proximity to seeing them execute.

• 1:25:37Auren Hoffman?

  That's right. And obviously they're not just gonna like work with you forever, right? Before you hire them.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And same for people, like, you know, usually I found, you know, people who are struggling three months in and, you know, you're reevaluating your decision. You give them an extra, you know, you give them six, six months as I found the right amount of time and some people think it's too long. But that is when, you know, people start actually becoming very productive and you might not have predicted that this person would have, you know, uh, become at least a three or four extra, right? When they were three months into a role and, you know, it's something just changes six months in.

• 1:26:13Auren Hoffman?

  I haven't seen that happen very often, but it has happened.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  Uh, so it's very hard to tell, like, sometimes, uh, time is the only predictor, but you're right, like, in most cases.

• 1:26:22Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. And again, it might not, might not predict forever.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Auren Hoffman?

  Right? And, and also people's level of ambition changes over time.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Auren Hoffman?

  So there's lots of different things that just change for people.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Why do you think people's level of ambition changes?

• 1:26:36Auren Hoffman?

  Changes dramatically, I think, because a lot of people get satisfied. So their level of ambition changes because they're, they're actually satisfied. Or sometimes you think they seem ambitious, but then they have some sort of setback and then they don't need to keep going.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  They're ambitious but not persistent and it's hard to tell unless they're.

• 1:26:55Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're really not that ambitious because obviously, you know, so it's hard to, it's hard to understand. So sometimes you, they're actually weren't that ambitious in the first place, but you didn't really realize it. Um, and, um, but yeah, there, there are people like Elon Musk who are just have like a, a massive, unsatiable level of ambition. Uh, but a lot of people, they reach, they reach their level.

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, even when you ask, like, even you think of Larry Page, who started Google.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:27:24Auren Hoffman?

  You know.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  He wanted to sell for a million dollars.

• 1:27:26Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, but even whatever, but that's not, but, but even later, even, even, even, even, I mean, the last few years, like, what is Larry Page doing? Right? I mean, he's obviously a super smart guy, right? And then people, there's a famous interview, and he said, what, what are you going to do with your hundred billion dollars? He's like, I'd probably just give it to Elon, like, right? Like, he, he even realizes, like, he wants to enjoy himself, he has other types of things, like, I think that's normal, I don't think, you know, even, even someone who's been as successful as him, as smart as him.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Auren Hoffman?

  Like, his level of ambition is capped.

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:27:59Auren Hoffman?

  Even though he's one of the richest people in the world.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  It's very hard to tell what, what people's level of ambitions are, because.

• 1:28:04Auren Hoffman?

  It's very hard.

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  They might say something different, but you don't really know.

• 1:28:07Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, you start to realize when there's a lot of failures.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and then you could see them, if they're plowing through them, if they still want to go through them, etc., you start to see it a little bit. But there's, every time you hit a new, um, order magnitude of success, people start dropping off.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  Do you think that's a good way of, uh, training people, just, uh, early on, where they're allowed to fail more often, or they're in roles, or early, you know, the first three months, they're in roles where they just fail more often, and you can check for persistence?

• 1:28:38Auren Hoffman?

  Well, certainly, I think that's a way for them to grow faster, as we talked about earlier, so I thi- I think that will help them. I, I, I'm not sure, again, I'm not sure persistence and ambition are completely linked. Um, because some people are still persistent to reach a certain goal, but then, once they've reached that goal, they're no- they're, they're satisfied, and they don't need to reach the next goal.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:03Auren Hoffman?

  Right?

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:03Auren Hoffman?

  Like, some peo- person, some person wants, like, they want to just have a good life, with a white picket fence, and they want to have, you know, make sure that they have a good family, and thi- this is like the American dream.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:15Auren Hoffman?

  Right? Um, which is nothing, this is a great, great ambition. Yeah, great backyard.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Auren Hoffman?

  Good, good, you know, they're happy, and then they reach it, and they don't, they don't want anything more, and that is great, like, what, like, there's nothing needed there.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  And society wouldn't function if you didn't have, like, a good.

• 1:29:32Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, of course, so it's, it's, uh, and, and, you know, so, so, a lot of people, they reach a level of ambition, and then they, then they stop. Um, now, if someone said, I'll give you an extra. Extra two X on your salary, they would take it, of course, right? And they still will kind of compete in certain things in certain ways and want to get better. But it's it's different, like if they're they're not going to push through the setbacks, they're not going to risk it to do more, etc.

• 1:30:06Speaker 02

  It's it's interesting how human beings are very complex, as you

• 1:30:10Auren Hoffman?

  Correct.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  Earlier.

• 1:30:11Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Each of each is very unique, hard to predict.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  But I'll keep my thesis on trying to identify the archetype.

• 1:30:22Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, there might be ways to do it. There might be ways.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's also hard to know because every error might have a different type of successful person.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:31Auren Hoffman?

  So you might be predicting for the past. And, you know, most predictions are really good at predicting the past, even predicting the past is incredibly hard to do. So most people are terrible predicting the past, but like predicting the future is really hard.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  On that, we talked about your the predicting the future thing, but like I want to, it's been a very fascinating conversation.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  What are your favorite books?

• 1:31:00Auren Hoffman?

  I like a lot of books, but I I tend to read mostly nonfiction.

• 1:31:07Auren Hoffman?

  And I think they're books that make you think.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:31:10Auren Hoffman?

  But first of all, I think I've read too many books.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:31:13Auren Hoffman?

  So I wish I read fewer books in my life.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  Why do you say that?

• 1:31:18Auren Hoffman?

  I think a lot of them are as valuable, a lot of them are, they're just kind of, you're just feeling time.

• 1:31:29Auren Hoffman?

  With it, a lot of I could probably have learned it much quicker.

• 1:31:34Auren Hoffman?

  And I still haven't learned that lesson, you know, I'm I'm reading a book right now about William McKinley. Honestly, I really wish I I should just stop reading it like I probably could get like the Wikipedia article or you know what I probably know enough about it, you know.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Would have probably been enough.

• 1:31:50Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, or just a few other types of things. So like there are just certain so there are certain books that just it are enduring. So like one book I love is this book called Generations.

• 1:32:03Auren Hoffman?

  And I think it's by Strauss and Howe. I think it was written in the

• 1:32:09Auren Hoffman?

  nineties or something. It's really good. It's really touched about the art and I constantly am thinking about that book. So there's books that just stay with you and have like a way of a new way of you thinking about the world.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:32:21Auren Hoffman?

  Et cetera. And those those books are really good. And those books really kind of change the way you think, or they inspire you to do something. It could be it could be a biography, which does inspire you to go do something differently.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  What did Generations inspire you to go do?

• 1:32:35Auren Hoffman?

  Well, Generations really helped. It doesn't didn't inspire me, but it really helped me think about the world in a different way and general think about generational conflict in way that I I don't think I'd I read this book

• 1:32:47Auren Hoffman?

  twenty five years ago more. And just an incredible book of of and so I think there's a lot of books like that. Obviously, people are inspired by the Bible, right? So there's there's various, you know, there's a lot of inspiring stories. There's a lot of things to not do there as well, right? You don't want to be smitten down for doing something, you know. So there's a, you know, the Book of Job is like incredibly interesting story. So there's so many different stories there in the Bible that I think people you know, that that's a classic one that people go to. But there's a lot of different types of books that are out there.

• 1:33:26Auren Hoffman?

  And that I I think are worth reading. But there's also a lot of books that if you're a well-read person and you, you know, there's a point where I was probably consuming four or five books a month for many, many years at once. And about that point, it's just too much. You're not spending enough time with it. You're not thinking it through. Et cetera.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  What would, what are maybe two or three other books similar to Generations which you've,

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  which you think you would go reread, which you think about, which have had a profound impact, but.

• 1:34:03Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, speaking of Peter Kiel, like I think Zero to One is just a must read book. I think everybody should read that book. One of the reasons it's so good is it's so short. Right? And I think it's, it's very, you could read that on a cross-country flight and really grok it and understand it. It's extremely well-written, which is, we wouldn't expect, right? It's like, this is, why would you expect something like that? And so it's, it's very, it's, the concepts are very easy to understand from it. They're very complicated concepts. But they are explained in a very easy way.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  You have to spend time thinking after reading it or?

• 1:34:44Auren Hoffman?

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, that specific book I think is a must-read book and I think it's a must-read to reread. I think it's by far the best business book out there. And so again, like people wouldn't necessarily expect it.

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  I think you should reread it. That's your.

• 1:34:59Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I should reread it too, actually, now that I'm saying it. So I think it's a great, it's a very interesting. So it's, it's an example of a book which I think is, is going to be, it's, there are anecdotes in there which make it hard to be timeless. But the strategies of thinking about things is, is kind of like, you know, the people read like, The Effective Executive Still Today or something like that. Like there are some things that are still, you know, that will be timeless a hundred years from now. People will be reading it.

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  The Effective Executive is another timeless, like sort of non.

• 1:35:33Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, I don't know if it still is. So that, yeah, I can't remember. I read that book so long ago. But you know, you know, these Andy Grove books and stuff like that. You know, there, there's probably a lot of anecdotes in the Andy Grove books that are just kind of like so outdated or hard to grok today. If you're, if you're a 25-year-old or something, right? And my guess is at some point, because of there's all these anecdotes in the Zero to One book, that that might be true 50 years from now or something. But I think it'll still be the timeless book that people will read and it'll be rediscovered in many different languages, many different cultures. And it is such an important book. Another book I love is called Difficult Conversations. Have you ever heard that?

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  No, but I've heard of it. Yeah.

• 1:36:18Auren Hoffman?

  It's really good. Um, and this is a book I would actually listen to the audio.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:36:24Auren Hoffman?

  Right. So it's one of the few books. I think the audio is better than the, and what it does is it basically has difficult conversations and they play you through them. And the nice thing about the audio is you have different actors having the conversations.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  Oh, that sounds fun.

• 1:36:37Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Uh, and they're talking, and it could be, you know, I want to have a raise or, um, you know, you're having problems with your spouse. Or, uh, the neighbor's dog is barking or, you know, whatever the difficult conversation is, and they kind of play out the conversation and they play out the conversation in many different ways. One where it goes really bad, one where it can go a little better, one where it can go even better. Right. Um, and so they just, they replay out the conversation all the way through. So here's the scenario and here's what the conversation is. And that is a, uh, audiobook I think is worth re-listening to every few years as well.

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  Maybe that's the one, you know, we should listen to, um, with our partners.

• 1:37:19Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a good one to have with your partner, with your spouse.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:22Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and I gave it to my wife, uh, you know, before we got married. I, I've given it to most of the people I've hired over the years. I think it's very helpful to have like those, you know, it's a good framework.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Auren Hoffman?

  For thinking about it. And I, I, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's also very short.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Auren Hoffman?

  Too, which is very nice. So I think like there's a, the problem with these, some of these books is just, they're just too long. Probably the problem with this podcast right now, the probably, if anyone got to this point right now, they're probably like, what the, what the heck? Yeah. So these things are just like, they're just, it's so it's hard and you, you want to have the information as quick as possible to people.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Um, what, do you watch TV shows or?

• 1:38:01Auren Hoffman?

  Oh yeah, I love TV.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  What are some of, uh, your favorite shows that you've recently seen in the last five years, maybe? Is it just me or is the quality of TV going down? Good, like shows, just new good shows.

• 1:38:16Auren Hoffman?

  I would say it's not as good as it was. There was a peak.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Auren Hoffman?

  When that peak was a while ago, like twenty years ago or something. Yeah.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, we we keep still keep rewatching shows from a long time ago.

• 1:38:29Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:31Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, like The Wire is such a good show. Like, have you seen The Wire?

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 1:38:36Auren Hoffman?

  It's so good.

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  Uh, the West Wing I've seen, which is.

• 1:38:39Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, I haven't seen the West Wing. I haven't, you know, I never, I've only, I've seen several episodes, but I've never actually watched.

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it's it's pretty good.

• 1:38:47Auren Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Auren Hoffman?

  Um, but The Wire is like, is I think one of the best shows of all time.

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  What's it about?

• 1:38:54Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, it's about gangs in Baltimore.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:38:58Auren Hoffman?

  And other types of, and lots of other kind of complicated interactions in Baltimore.

• 1:39:03Speaker 02

  What era is this from?

• 1:39:04Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, probably twenty years ago, less than twenty years ago, in that, in kind of like two thousands, kind of two thousand ten kind of era. Um, but just a very, very well done show for in on every dimension. Uh, maybe for for, I think there's four seasons, five seasons or something.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 1:39:22Auren Hoffman?

  Um, and some people, there are certain seasons people think are terrible, but even those seasons I think are amazing.

• 1:39:27Speaker 02

  Uh, what are some of those?

• 1:39:29Auren Hoffman?

  There's this one where everyone, everyone says, don't watch this one season. It's not worth doing. It's like the middle. I forgot. It's a season three or something. And people are like, oh, this is terrible. But that, even that one, I thought, in fact, I actually love that particular season too. So.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  I see.

• 1:39:42Auren Hoffman?

  Uh, um, I I just think these things are just like really, it that it's a really good show. I mean, there's a lot of great shows that are out there. And I think shows you want to, there are shows you want to get lost in, but also shows you can learn about. Um, and stuff. I have been watching Severance. I I'm one season in. And I I I started watching and didn't think, I started, I watched the first episode and didn't get into it. And then I kind of came back to it.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:40:06Auren Hoffman?

  And so I would say of the new shows, this is the most like interesting one that's out there.

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  Number three.

• 1:40:16Auren Hoffman?

  Sorry?

• 1:40:16Speaker 02

  Number three from a mid era, maybe we've done twenty years ago and then we've done most recent. So maybe somewhere in the middle, maybe something from ten years ago.

• 1:40:24Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, another great show that's out there.

• 1:40:30Auren Hoffman?

  You know, there's, there's one that I think probably most of your audience have never seen, which I like. It's called The Honorable Woman.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  What's that about?

• 1:40:38Auren Hoffman?

  It's very complicated. It's kind of a spy thriller. And it's about a woman who's, who's in the House of Lords in the UK. And her father is an assassin, was assassinated and he was an Israeli arms dealer. And it's got the intrigue of MI6 and the Mossad and the CIA. And all in one, and it's kind of a very, very, the one season only.

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:41:11Auren Hoffman?

  You know, very good.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  Oh, these one season shows, I, they get you hooked and, and they're probably the ideal amount where they keep, you know, leave you wanting more.

• 1:41:23Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  Always.

• 1:41:24Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, and you know, if you watch a show, maybe it doesn't make sense because it kind of does like, it doesn't make sense as much to have a second season or so. They probably could have done it.

• 1:41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Auren Hoffman?

  But, and then, you know, if you ever see Occupied.

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  No, what's that about?

• 1:41:36Auren Hoffman?

  It's a Norwegian show. Very good. I'll give you a few of these, kind of like a little bit off the rails one. Occupied is a Norwegian show where the Russians are in cahoots with the EU and they occupy Norway because Norway is going green and it doesn't want to produce enough oil for the EU.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:41:57Auren Hoffman?

  And so Russia occupies it.

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  This sounds very interesting.

• 1:42:01Auren Hoffman?

  And it's fantastic. It's very well done. Again, like a little bit fantastical.

• 1:42:06Speaker 02

  But it's still, I think you can learn a lot from it.

• 1:42:08Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, really good. And then there's a, a French show called The Bureau. I like spy stuff, so the Bureau is an incredibly well done show about spy, spycraft. It's about the GGSE, which is like their version of the CIA. And and different operation. I got a little bit fantastical doing a few things that probably. Yeah, like the main character probably should have been killed a few times when he wasn't right. But.

• 1:42:39Speaker 02

  A little James Bond like.

• 1:42:41Auren Hoffman?

  A little bit. I mean, it's not as unrealistic as, you know, it's not a James Bond or Bourne Identity type of thing. But like he he's not gonna like win in a fight with people per se, but it dark. You know, they're they're different kind of and then there's and there's all these subplots of different people who are in the unit. Who are spying, who go undercover. There's one subplot of a of a woman who goes undercover in Tehran and. She pretends she's a earthquake engineer and stuff like that, but she's actually a spy and just like the whole subplot about her and being undercover. And around how she gets to Iran and what does she do is quite interesting.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  Let's I have a whole list and I'm sure like my listeners have a list now. Most of these shows like they probably might not have heard of because.

• 1:43:27Auren Hoffman?

  Well, that's good. Hopefully, hopefully these shows will get us some more viewership.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.

• 1:43:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:43:48Auren Hoffman?

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