Felicis founder Aydin Senkut: why moats are dead and alive

Aydin Senkut is the founder and managing partner of Felicis, the venture firm he started in 2006, with over $4B under management and early bets on Shopify, Notion, Canva, and Adyen. He was Google's first product manager and has been on the Forbes Midas list of top investors for 13 years running. In this episode of Summation, Aydin and Auren discuss: Why the best platform companies came from Ottawa, Sydney, and Amsterdam and not Silicon ValleyHow capital became a commodity and people are the o...

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Our odds are like less than 1%. That's when I get really excited. I'm like, let's get to work. One of the things that gives me my alpha or my edge is that I'm always trying to look at things with a new lens and a new perspective. What is something that other people are not seeing that I can see? My coach made a statement, if you want to be a good leader, you have to talk a lot less.

• 0:22Auren Hoffman?

  Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Aiden Senkut. Aiden is the founder and managing partner of Felicis, the venture firm that he started back in 2006. I think that's 20 years ago. Oh my gosh, we're getting old. That's now one of the most successful early-stage funds around with early bets in Shopify, Notion, Canva, Adyen and more. They've got over $4 billion under management. Before that, he was Google's very first product manager, BD, all rolled into one. He's been on the Forbes Midas list of top investors 13 years running. And even more importantly, we've been friends for a long time. Aiden was also an early backer of LiveRamp and Brightroll. Aiden, welcome to Summation.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  Thank you, Orin. It's so exciting to be here with you.

• 1:06Auren Hoffman?

  You're like super early of like Shopify, Notion, Canva, all these like amazing companies. They look obvious now, but was there like some sort of pattern there or they're all like an N of one?

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Out of the four companies, Shopify, Canva and Adyen have some similarities in the sense that all four of them were platform companies, but the three out of the four, the three that I mentioned, started outside of Silicon Valley, actually even outside of US. And as such, they were underestimated. People thought you can't build a great platform company in Ottawa or Sydney or Amsterdam. But the founders were just as strong and also incredibly motivated to do something great. I would say all four companies mentioned, including Notion, have become great platforms. And what they basically pursued, the potential of that market was so large

• 1:59Speaker 00

  that it essentially, with their right execution, made them extremely exciting companies. Like Canva went after creativity that was not really accessible, was really expensive and difficult to learn with Adobe. Adyen fixed the payment problem that there were a lot of global issues that even Google and Facebook couldn't fix. And Shopify went after commerce platform in a way to kind of blend and invent a future platform that could deal with both brick and mortar stores as well as online stores. And Notion essentially kind of took the consumer database concept and turned it into kind of like a next-gen productivity company, which if you basically think about Microsoft Office products or all other products,

• 2:42Speaker 00

  they were not really designed to deal with, you know, all kinds of new iterations of consumer stuff. So I think all of them basically became really important. And the way that I think about it is they were all platforms that either like every person in the world or every business in the world would care and use as a product.

• 2:59Auren Hoffman?

  Have you think of these companies that are built in these, outside of Silicon Valley, outside of New York, maybe outside of a few other geographies that we expect companies to be in Stockholm, Tel Aviv? There's a few other kind of like big nexus of places. You're talking about these companies that were outside of those. Is that like a feature or a bug that these companies are based outside of those kind of like core nexus areas?

• 3:23Speaker 00

  I mean, look, I think what we are finding more and more is that the talent is truly universal. It was not evenly distributed, but there are some advantages being in these geographies. For instance, these companies can find great talent and the talent is not going anywhere else. That actually the people that work in these companies are happy where they are. Versus in Silicon Valley, like every month, every week, there's a hot shiny new company. You're competing with Google and Meta and other large companies. It becomes very expensive and very difficult to retain talent. There is also kind of an underrated element, and I would say it's a little bit like the motivation. The underestimated people tend to have this really strong motivation to do a really good job.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  And they're kind of isolated from, oh, I have to be in like X, I have to be in all these social media platforms. And they just focus on the job on hand. So there is certain like differences between the companies that are outside of Silicon Valley, even outside of US. There is definitely talent there, but I also seen the motivation to be a large factor. So for instance, what most people don't know, Canva's first engineering team came from, you know, half Google and half Meta, and they both came from products that were canceled. So the engineers were very motivated to show that they can do a good job. Shopify, I mean, Toby wanted to start his own store. None of the products out there did the job and he was very motivated to kind of like show the world that a great product can be built.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Adyen, I mean, the founders collectively had 100 years of payment experience. They were solving problems that nobody has solved and they're like, if we were to start the ideal payment company, this is how we would build it. And again, each one of them took advantage of their backgrounds and what made them really great and applied it to a very large problem that was very worthy of solving.

• 5:10Auren Hoffman?

  It seems like the vast majority of like super ambitious tech-related people that I know that are French or German or something like that, end up moving to the Bay Area. They don't actually stay in France or Germany to start a company. So like, is it like an anti-correlation if they stay and start a company there? Or like, how do you think about that? Because there's so many, like, if you just look at the number of like super talented French people that are in like the San Francisco, it's like, it's off the charts, right? It's just like all these super talented people decided to pick up and go to San Francisco. Like, how do you, how do you think about that? Like, they could just move too?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  I don't think there is a rule, just because you have majority or a trend. I don't think like correlation is causation. But I will tell you that there are some countries, and I know this as an angel investor in French companies, where the legal system and like everything else makes it like 10 times more difficult to be an entrepreneur. So I'm not super surprised. Some of these countries where the founders overwhelmingly come to Silicon Valley, where it's a lot easier to start a company and you have an ecosystem. But we also have founders that are very proudly and fiercely loyal to their home background or home base. Like, and Aiden in Berlin is one of those. I would think that Canva is a global company, but also very proudly Australian.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  I know, you know, Shopify, even though the founder is from Germany, I know that the Canadian roots and, you know, really helped them and made a difference for them. So I think you can see, you know, the argument on both sides. And I do know that founders that come here, like we have founders that came here all the way from Switzerland, from Slovenia, from other locations, and they're like, this is incredible. And they are building amazing companies here as well. It's just that, you know, for some companies that decide to stay local, they have great advantages for that. And it's going to serve them well. And for founders that are courageous and brave enough to come here, there are different benefits to be gained from being here in kind of like the center of the huge AI wave and many other technological waves.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  I mean, you go up and down Silicon Valley, as you all know, since you lived here, almost all of the major waves like kind of got started here and it's very deep. So there are still benefits to being here, but it is not a monopoly.

• 7:29Auren Hoffman?

  What do you think is a founder trait that most venture capitalists overvalue?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  I mean, how about I start with what's undervalued? And to me, one of the things that is undervalued is this growth mindset and two factors. So one is the growth mindset, which is even the very best founders having the intellectual humility to say, you know what? We might need to reset our priors. What I thought was true could be different. Or as things change in the market, to be very fast to adapt and say, you know what? You know, here is where actually things are going and I'm not going to get stuck to my original beliefs or to my original thinking. I'm always going to like check it against like reality and I'm going to be very fast and iterating.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Like even if I have the right ideas, even if I have the mission that don't change, the way that is executed and implemented, it's always like, is what has changed today that would basically, I have to take into consideration when implementing like what I'm doing? Instrumentation is a second thing. I know so many great founders that talk about a great vision, but I think being able to measure what matters is equally important. Because a lot of times like founders will talk about something and then you'll have a board meeting or investment update meeting, and I'm like, what are you measuring right now? How do you know like you're getting close to that vision? And some founders like have such an acute way of like, this is what matters. That's what I'm measuring. Like I have a great example from Google. You know, like early on, we're like, index size really matters.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  And we found out that customer response to anything, this is now, remember, this is 30 years ago. If the result showed up in like milliseconds was great. If it basically like a second or later, there was like a 10x negative reaction, even though the difference was very minimal. So they understood that this was one of the most important things that mattered. And then we immediately like perfected it. So on the other side, there are equally talented founders with an equally strong mission and idea. But then they are so in love with that, that they are refusing to reset their priors. They're refusing to adapt or reinvent themselves if something is changing in the market. And then the other thing that I think is really important is

• 9:44Speaker 00

  if you don't know how to measure the real progress and you're looking at more vanity metrics that make things look good, it feels good. Oh my God, look at that. Like, I have so many more people to follow versus like, hey, is that really important to the product? How deep is actually the usage? Like, I might other have 100 users, 1000 users that can't get out of the product every day. So doing the unscalable things, measuring the things that are really hard to get right, even though maybe they don't feel that great to measure in the beginning, because there is still a lot of work to do. That's, I think, the difference between same promise, same talent. But I think there are a group of founders that are obsessed with like, hey, I'm going to do this the hardest possible way and I'm always going to be open to reset my priors and others.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Like, no, I love my idea and that's the only way it can happen. And I'm gonna, you know, stick to my guns, which if things are changing fast in the market, is not always the most positive outcome.

• 10:39Auren Hoffman?

  How do you like suss out that a founder has growth mindset in the limited time you have with the founders before you invest?

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I think there are leading questions. So for instance, you can ask them. You know, when there is new information or as the product is developing, what is the rate of change that they're making? Like, how how long does it take between new versions of the product? From idea to every time, you know, that they change something, they iterate. Is it like days? Is it weeks? Is it months? You also ask them, did anything change? Or, you know, like if something drastically changes, how would they react to it? And what you want to know is they're very open minded and they're also very open minded and already thinking about what are the kind of things that can potentially threaten what they're doing, what could be a risk even before it becomes a risk.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  All of these things are kind of precursor, early indications that they're almost already ready for something to surprise them. But despite that, they're not going to be surprised and they'll be very fast to either iterate very quickly or reset their priors very quickly. And then you just ask them about their life story. And what you're basically like looking for is like a situation where they expected one thing, something completely different happened, and they still adapted and make something work. And it is not that difficult to ask worst questions to get at if there is at least one good example of that in their background.

• 12:03Auren Hoffman?

  Okay, yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And you like, I would, I would classify you as like being much more of a generalist. And then there's people who are much more like specialist thesis driven investors. How do you think about like having advantage as a generalist?

• 12:22Speaker 00

  In general, as a generalist, what I like about that is it essentially still gives you access to all the different markets. Being a generalist doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. It's not like we're essentially boiling the ocean and we're trying to invest in every single company. Being a generalist means I'm open minded as to where the greatest opportunities are. It's going to take me a little bit more work, but I'm always going to go chase those big waves. Being a specialist means we think there is only like this one area that truly is really great, that is most meaningful right now. And the danger with that is twofold. Number one, that can change. Remember, like, we were in an era where like it was all about the internet, then it was

• 13:05Speaker 00

  all about mobile, then it was all about SaaS and software. And as soon as AI started writing programs, software world has changed. And if you're like, hey, I'm only willing to invest in software, all of a sudden now like you need to kind of reset your priors. Another good example-

• 13:21Auren Hoffman?

  Right, in the 90s, there are all these like telecom guys. And I think the only one of those that were able to make that transition was Vinod Khosla. Like, all the rest of them like left the business.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  And another good example is consumer. I mean, when I first met you, like, and I graduated from Google, Google was a consumer company and I started looking at consumer companies. But then I also realized, while some of the greatest companies created our consumer companies, the odds of having a successful consumer company was going down, right? Like, the ratio of the very successful consumer companies versus how many people are in that. So I'm like, look, as much as I love consumer, I need to keep moving away from that because the waves have moved and my odds of finding a really great company is better in X, Y, and Z, whatever that is, right? And that shifted, it shifted to infra and, you know, like, obviously AI is super hot right now, but even that, we're playing a lot of different ways.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  And we're looking at things like defense and energy as well. So I think it is very, one of the things that I love about being generalist, it basically says that no matter what happens in the world, you know, you're, you're, and again, it's related to growth mindset. I'm, I'm willing to reset my priors, but I'm only going to go after the biggest waves. And, you know, the founders that I think are most likely to do incredible things in those waves. The last thing that I will add, being a specialist, on the one hand is an advantage, but people then underrate the disadvantage that comes with it is that when you're a specialist, you're essentially focusing everything you know in that and not learning from any other areas. And then you are so deeply rooted that sometimes when a new company comes in into that, your

• 14:57Speaker 00

  first reaction is they can't really do it like that. Versus as a generalist, you cannot just be an optimist, but because you're not a specialist, you don't have these deep rooted opinions of what's right and what's wrong. So when somebody comes with a crazy idea, like when you're like data as a service or data matters the most, I think that's a really important fact because what people miss about the AI, AI is like the oil refinery of 100 years ago and the oil of now is data. And data is equally important as AI. And so there are these like small things and sometimes outsiders can be much more open minded about something that is wildly crazy, but if it works, it can be really big. And that's one of the things that I consider is a generalist advantage.

• 15:42Auren Hoffman?

  If you just take like a wider view of like, give us, give us a sense of like the state of the venture capital industry right now.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  I mean, there were a bunch of things to consider. One is I have never seen revenue growth the way that I'm seeing now, like, and it's not just AI. I mean, there are a bunch of ancillary industries, like where it's like energy, defense. And where I'm going with this is that when you and I first met, companies are like, well, I have a million dollars revenue and next year is going to be 2 million and the year after is going to be 4 million. And you do the math-

• 16:13Auren Hoffman?

  That was amazing.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  And that sounded amazing back then. And now, you do the math, it's like, oh, my God, it's going to take like 15 years to get to a billion of revenue, maybe more, if I'm doing my math right. And now we have companies that are like, look, I don't really have realized revenues, but I have one contract alone that would get me like a billion within three years or less, maybe two years or less. Or, and, and if that scales, I have a bunch of other things that I can get to billions of revenue. So I'm like, I don't think we've ever been in a state where you can get to a billion or billions of revenue this quickly. And I know one of the things people talk about is like, when we're going to have a billion dollar company with a single founder, I think what matters more for venture is

• 16:58Speaker 00

  how fast can you get to that extreme growth? And it used to be like six years to billion. Now we're like two years to a billion, like a year to billion, maybe like six months to a billion. That to me is more important because the velocity of that growth is the biggest predictor of like, how successful the company is going to be and how big it's going to get. So I feel like the other thing that's a little bit different is there is so much capital in the venture capital industry right now. Capital is truly become a commodity, but what matters even more in this kind of AI craze is people. I think the most underrated aspect of venture capital is still about people, right? Everybody thinks, oh, AI, like AI is going to replace people, this industry is going to completely reinvent it.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  I think certain areas have been made better by the, you know, smart use of AI. However, however, it's still very much a people business. Founders are still taking checks from people and not AI, not from robots. AI might make that decision a little bit easier and make the process better, but at the end, it's still a people business and it's a trust business. So when you understand that it's a different angle and that is very difficult to replace with AI. And the last aspect, we can get into more detail, is the exits have changed. Now you have fewer exits, but the exits that are happening are so much bigger. And yes, the regular old school exits are taking a lot longer, but when you have companies

• 18:24Speaker 00

  that get to scale so quickly, the way we mentioned, and they occupy a strategic address, like they have strategic value, like some of the new exits that happen, like Open Router, and we're seeing these companies that didn't have a lot of traction, but what they built was so important, companies with, you know, a lot of great success in a hurry are like, this is absolutely strategic to us. We're not going to wait to build this. We're just going to buy and acquire a company.

• 18:52Auren Hoffman?

  You have probably all these companies you invested in relatively early and you've got opportunities later to sell some of that position. It's, it's still private, but it's fairly liquid. The company's doing well. It's, let's say, over a billion dollar valuation. How do you evaluate this for yourself, for your LPs? You have a relationship with these companies. So how do you think through that decision?

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Honestly, I think that decision is not that different than making the investment decision in the first place, kind of a new investment. First of all, when you're making the later decision of whether you want to sell some of your investment or stock at one of these later rounds, one of the things that's really important to us is to be fully aligned with the founders. Like, it's very important that what we do is not a net negative to our founders, but in reality, like, it's essentially a risk reward calculation. What do we think is the company's propensity to grow from here? And is that underestimated? Are we still extremely bullish versus, you know, like the run that is happening now? I mean, one of the reasons why we're investing in these companies, and if you ask, hey, what

• 20:01Speaker 00

  do you think is the most like, you know, underrated, underrated aspect of venture capital? Sometimes the companies that are really great, you're like, it can't grow any bigger than that. Like when Shopify went public was like 2.5 billion dollar valuation and now it's like 150 billion, Google went public, 20 billion dollar valuation became a five, you know, four, five trillion dollar company. So the companies that once they have like true leadership and they have totally mastered an area, essentially the growth keeps compounding and the compounding is beautiful. The numbers get bigger and bigger. So the question that we ask ourselves at this given point, are we more confident that the growth is going to continue, maybe even accelerate? Or do we feel that there are certain factors that- Somehow, the growth of the company is not going to be at the same speed and

• 20:46Speaker 00

  there are going to be more risk and there are a lot more headwinds. And if that's the case, and then for whatever reason, there is a disagreement and somebody thinks, nope, you know, we're still bullish and we're bearish. And if the company and the founders are supportive, there's been a few instances where it might even help. For instance, you know, an investor is only willing to come in if they can get enough shares in the company. And the company like green lights and say, we're absolutely comfortable. If you wanted to take some money off the table, then no problem. Like when all the stars align like that, I think it's okay to do it. But at the end, the primary calculation is, again, how do we think are the future prospects in terms of the growth continuing or accelerating? Or do we feel there are a lot more headwinds? And the opposite is going to happen and the growth is going to decelerate.

• 21:30Auren Hoffman?

  Sometimes when I think of like successful people, I like to think of them either as like outsiders or insiders. And like, if I look at your, your career early, like you clearly started as an outsider, you know, came from Turkey, you know, showed up in Silicon Valley, probably not knowing a lot of people. Now, I would say maybe you're a little bit more of an insider. Like, how do you still think like an outsider, even though you're more of an insider?

• 21:54Speaker 00

  I think first, never underestimate the outsiders. And second thing, I think, once you're an outsider, I don't think that changes. Like, just because I've been doing it 20 years and I'm a lot more on the inside and spend a lot more time. I still think that my thinking is still one of an outsider. I think it's a little bit like people that have like lived through the Great Depression or lived through great difficulty, like they will never stop talking about it. And for me, it's because I had this very interesting life story where I was always in the minority. And I always had to live in foreign places, you know, foreign cultures. I was like an only child, like I never like had people around me.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  So it was kind of like a little bit more of a medal of survival that, you know, my not success, but even like the ability to go to the next day depended on adapting to my background and or to my surroundings. So what I would say is that is one of the things that gives me my alpha or my edge is that because of that, I'm always trying to look at things with a new lens and a new perspective, not from an insider, but from like what can go wildly right? Or what is something that other people are not seeing that I can see? Or I'll even give you another more concrete example. Um, this used to be something that actually scared me. I'm like, wow, I'm competing against these specialists, these experts.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  They are subject experts, or they did this PhD in this, or they run a whole division and does this. But you know what happens? When you have that much expertise, you are so rooted in what you have learned and spent years and years mastering that when a crazy idea comes in, your first reaction is it can't work. Or you're gonna go find 10 things that are wrong with it. And you're gonna say, I could do it like 10 times better. As an outsider, I don't have that luxury. So first thing is, in order to really be able to make a good investment, I need to understand at a fundamental kind of like fifth grade student level, what's gonna make the company really great? I don't have the luxury of mastering it at the PhD level. But what that means is now I really truly have to find out and tease

• 24:03Speaker 00

  what is truly great about this company? What is timelessly incredible and great about this company? And that's how I'm gonna make my investment decision. So I feel like it's something that has always served me well.

• 24:15Auren Hoffman?

  The firm's interesting, like back, like when you first started, it was kind of like, almost like angel investing, right? You're kind of like angel investing here and there. And then you like had like a, like a little pool of capital, which was essentially just like a little bit more formal version of angel investing. And now it's kind of like morphed into this like much bigger institution. Like, that, that doesn't happen that often. It doesn't usually happen in that way. So what, what did you get right? Or what did you maybe not realize even at the time that you got right?

• 24:47Speaker 00

  I mean, I think there are a couple of things. First of all, I was extremely motivated. I was all in. Um, I understand now when we talk about some founders like, wow, like I had a conversation and the founder, you listen to them and you're like, wow, like nothing is gonna stop these people. For me, I think it's almost all the great things that I've been in, in my life. I've been underestimated, like I almost didn't make it to the Google interview. I didn't make it to my first Silicon Graphics interview. Like, people are like, you're not an engineer, you're not this, you're not that. And then you basically like burn the bridges and you have no option but to prove them that, no, actually, I can do this. And it also forces you to think differently about it. I mean, being all in is one thing.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  I think one of the important things for me, I always thought about, hey, like, what is a long-term strategy? And that's why it was important to be a generalist. Like, I basically chose growth mindset. And I'm like, the best way to apply growth mindset in my mind was to be a journalist because I could kind of see that just because like at the time, Google was really successful and I knew what like things were working. I'm like, what I know about technology is things change really fast. So I always had the drive like to say, you know what? Like, no matter how much things change, if I have the best growth mindset or I'm the fastest to learn and adapt rapidly, you know, that's going to help and that's going to create the longevity in what I do. I feel like I do something that I truly love, that's something that gives me longevity, the growth mindset.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  I think the second thing is you gotta be an original and you have to come up with something that is not out there yet. When I started, one of the things that I saw, based on my own experience at Google too, capital was not as plentiful as it is today and people did not really care about founders. They're like, listen, we're giving you capital, like you should be grateful we're giving you capital. You know, like do a good job and all of that. And I'm like, no, like these founders are putting their life into it. I mean, you're a serial founder, you know how it is. You're taking a risk, you're putting your name and neck on the line. And this is why I've always feel very strongly about the founders and I relate to them. And I wanted to build a venture firm where it's really about the founders and making them unbreakable. And so I'm like, look, no VC ever talks about it.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  And you know, even though they say they love these founders, they're not really doing something to show that they really care in a very specific way. And that became our rallying cry and that became really important because our firm is not just yet another venture firm out there, but we have basically excelled in telling people, you should trust us. Because for instance, we are the only and I think still the first and probably the only venture firm that still, you know, votes our shares with the founders. Imagine if I tell you, Orin, please trust me. Or I say, Orin, you should trust me because we are actually citing a legal proxy that we're not gonna vote against you. That is not BS, like we're making a statement, right?

• 27:44Auren Hoffman?

  At Flex Capital, we, we copied that from you. So we actually do that as well because we, when you, when you invested at us, we appreciated that so much that when we started our firm, we decided, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna borrow this from Felicis and we're gonna vote, we're gonna let the founders vote our shares too.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Amazing. Well, I'm really glad that you're doing that. And I think the other thing we do is, you know, we also back to founders. And there were, there's been many founders when there, there was a setback, you know, the board kind of moved against them. And we're like, look, one of the things for that is because it's very stressful and lonely to be a founder. And so, you know, we'll also spend, you know, money from our pockets to support them. Um, and hence came the founder pledge and over a hundred founders took it. But the long story is, it's very lonely to be a founder. I think it's very important, you know, to be an original and unconventional and back them. And so all of these things kind of compound. And then the last thing is, to me, it wasn't about like getting one investment right and getting an exit.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  I, I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to show that the strategy really worked and scaled. And then you can consistently get great results, right? Like, I think Jeff Bezos had the saying is that I don't care like if something goes right once or even 10 times, but if it's going right 100 times in a row, it shows me that, okay. Like now it's probably a little bit less of a chance and something is definitely working right. So I was pretty obsessed with not just getting it right a little bit. And that's where the all-in comes in, is that I really wanted to get it right over time, over many different instances, over every permutation. So when somebody said, oh, I don't know about your strategy, I don't know about your thesis, it sounds like it worked in this one case, but in these other cases, it didn't really produce results.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  And I think one of the things that I'm very proud of is our strategy. When you look at it, essentially like every geo we targeted like has a success, every stage has a success, every sector we targeted has a great success in it. That tells me that we definitely were able to find something that essentially works across all the different permutations. So that tells me that we, you know, we hit on something that is scalable and it matters over time.

• 29:55Auren Hoffman?

  I've maybe known you for 23, 24 years. If I had to say what your superpower is, obviously you have many, many great traits. But if I, tell me, tell me where you think I'm wrong here. I would say you're absolutely relentless. Like you are just like completely, you will just keep driving after. If there's like an entrepreneur who's starting something in like the random place around the world, you'll go fly there and you'll just show up at the guy's home or something. Like, you're just relentless to get the deal. Like, I, I don't need, I don't know if that's accurate or if other people around you would say that, but that would be my belief of, if I had to say what your true superpower is.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Well, thank you, Orin. First of all, I really appreciate you saying that. I think it is that because it is also the sign of how badly you want something. I think you're also hitting on a very important aspect because one of the things that is different today is, I mean, there was just so much money out there for founders. One of the things that the founders really wanna see is how strong is your conviction as an investor? Would I hire you as an employee? How badly do you want this deal? And to be honest with you, again, this is like being an outsider and being underrated. You know, like a lot of these things, we're like, oh, my God, nobody like even thinks we have a prayer of getting in like our odds are like less than 1%. But you know what? Like, that's when I get really excited. I'm like, let's get to work.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Let's make 1%, 3%, and then 5 and 10. And next thing you know, maybe it's 50/50. I think the only reason you can do that is if you truly love what you do. And it is like a really important element of like that relentlessness. I think like we hope to find it in our founders too, but it is definitely a secret sauce. I mean, it made a big difference and I appreciate you bringing it up.

• 31:41Auren Hoffman?

  To me, you're clearly good at being an investor. Like, right away, it was pretty obvious. What surprised me is that, which was also part of what you have to do to build a firm, you're also really good at raising money. You're really good at like working with LPs. Like, as someone who we're about to raise our third fund, like, what can we learn from you of how to raise money from LPs?

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Correlation is not always causation. I do have to tell you that the relentless aspect actually really came in to play. Like, the first yes came after 50 no's and we were raising a $41 million fund. I even had 12 exits and I was explaining my strategy and majority of people like, that's just crazy. Like, you're bending or breaking all the venture rules. There is no way you can be successful. This is again like the outsider angle coming in. Outsiders bend or break the rules a little bit and conventional people or what I call like the orthodoxy is like, hey, you know what? That's never gonna work. But then all the greatest things in the world happened because somebody came up with a crazy idea and then shown the world.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  No, actually, it can really work. I mean, look, I will tell you the two things that I think really important. Even though we did end up raising the money, I didn't realize how much of a narrative gap there was between what I was trying to say and what the LPs really cared about. Like, it was almost like a translation was missing. I kept telling them what I thought, oh, my God, like, we're gonna do this and this is why you should believe in us. This is why Feliz is great. But then I was doing it in a kitchen sink style, which I tend to do. Sometimes a relentlessness can cause you like, hey, I'm so excited about these 20 things. Are you not excited about these 20 things? And they're like, no, actually, we just wanna hear the one thing and you didn't really say it yet.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  So it took me a couple of years to understand that translation gap. But I will tell you a second thing, which is I have this philosophy of always like hacking, like, I'm like, wow, like, if it's gonna be this much of a translation gap between what I'm trying to say or I'm having tough time to understand the LPs. And my first reaction is, why don't I have somebody from LPs in my team? If this is so important, because when you think about it, we always talk about the founders, but we don't talk enough about the LPs and they're a very opaque bunch. They kind of also are very tribal and there are certain things that they care about. So I would say that I was one of the very first venture firms, even though I was tiny

• 34:12Speaker 00

  and have a very small team, I deliberately went and picked one of our LPs who used to work with me. And I'm like, you know what? Can you please be on our side of the table? Because even if I figured out the translation, it's still not the same thing because you being from having this experience, they're gonna look at you and they're immediately gonna trust you. They know you, you know, they know you know like how they're thinking. And I can try so much and spend so, so long to say, oh, like, now I get that this matters and I'm gonna say it in this way. It was just different. So I just went to the hack of like, I can either spend another 10 years understanding, like 10 more things I need to figure out,

• 34:56Speaker 00

  or I can just hire that one person that in one instance is gonna get me that benefit, basically.

• 35:03Auren Hoffman?

  Well, that makes sense. A little bit of a non sequitur, but you're also blessed with an amazing spouse who I also know. What's the venture capital secret to a good marriage?

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Venture cap, well, if you put the venture capital angle, I cannot tell you the number of friends that are divorced in venture capital. One of my goals is also like, can I stay with my one better half for as long as I can? I mean, look, to be, to be vulnerable here, I was very, I mean, I was talking about it actually with Sonia. One of the things that I was really lucky about that she also happens to be my best friend. Like, I genuinely love spending time with her. Like, I'm never bored. Like, we love doing so many things together. We learn a lot of things together. Like, we're on Duolingo learning, get, you know, a new language. We, you know, started doing water sports and pickup wakeboarding. We started golf together and we're equally bad.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  And you're like, oh, like, I'm a schlep, but you're also a schlep. I don't feel alone, you know, in golf at least. So I would say that that is a really good foundation. But there are two or three things that are really unique. One, you gotta be willing to have really good communication and be vulnerable at times. I think the second thing is, every relationship, like, by the way, this is true in venture capital too. You're gonna find a great founder and a great company and they're gonna have a really tough moment. And you kind of have a choice at that tough moment. Either you can give up, like, hey, you know what? Like, I wanna give up. Like, I don't wanna be part of this. Or you can say, you know what? Things are tough and I'm gonna double down. I'm actually not gonna give up and I'm, I'm, I'm gonna deal with this and I'm gonna figure out

• 36:37Speaker 00

  a way to make it work better. And I do see sometimes people, people just give up and maybe they're right to give up. But I do know that from my own parents who've been married for 52 years, there were at least three instances where I'm like, okay, my mom is leaving my dad and she did not. And they're married for 52 years for, I don't know, hopefully for the right reasons. So I feel like one of those things is if you truly love your significant other, you know, in tough times, like, you gotta be there and you gotta show up and you gotta not give up. And we try to practice that in venture capital as well, which is kind of a signature aspect of how we operate.

• 37:15Auren Hoffman?

  Maybe I have a second kind of superpower that you have, which is like, you're fairly good about like recognizing like the positive of somebody. Like, lots of people have all these negatives, right? But like, there's, but also people are spiky, right? They have these like also big positives as well. And maybe you're like, maybe in a good way, you kind of like are willing to discount the negatives to, to like focus a little bit more on the positives.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Indeed. I think that's another important thing. I don't know how I developed that filter, but I do have a filter that gets irrationally excited about the positive. That happens with founders as well. And I just hone on that and I'm like, oh, my God, like, can't you see like how exciting this is? And I immediately like disregard all the negative things and the risk and the toughness that comes with all the little other like negative things or like that nag at you, but honestly, it's, it is serving well. So thank you for identifying that.

• 38:15Auren Hoffman?

  You've seen like all these founders go through lots of things and some of them have had just like wild success. What have you, what have you noticed in different types of people when they get like, let's say, suddenly insanely rich? Like, how, how, how have you seen different people change for the better, for the worse, et cetera?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  I mean, it happens a lot in Silicon Valley. I, I think maybe a good place to start is you would expect me to say, oh, so many people, when this happens, they change so quickly. Both at Google as well as some of the founders I backed, one of the first surprises is how little has changed. Like, I know many friends at Google still drive the same car, still do the same. Because what really makes them happy, what gives them purpose, is what they do and they're friends and you know what I mean? Like, you don't really need, I mean, you need a minimum amount of money to be comfortable in living and not worry about paying the rent and affording the food, but once kind of like basic needs are kind of covered,

• 39:20Speaker 00

  I, I would say like, yes, it would be really nice to have extreme experiences, but other than that, what people really want is purpose and what they do matters and, you know, be around people where they have genuine connection. So what was very surprising to me is how little people change that I would expect them to change a lot more. And for the people that change, I think that also tells you something. And there is nothing wrong with it, right? Like, I cannot judge people, like, there are certain things, like, oh, my God, I cannot do this and do that. All, all credit to them, but to me, what always like makes me curious is about the people that don't change and what gives them that long-term excitement and the passion for either their relationships, their friendships

• 40:03Speaker 00

  or what they're doing. I'm like, nope, like, I think that's the thing. Like, actually, I was gonna mention it to you for the relationship. You know, they famously asked Mark Zuckerberg, well, you know, do you wanna sell your company to Yahoo? It was like, well, if I sold my company to Yahoo, next day I would start it again. So why would I sell it? I'm like, why would I not commit to my relationship if I basically, my relationship went down? I would go and like propose to Sonia again. So I don't have to like do anything. I just have to keep what I have and like, you know, make sure that I'm doing justice. So.

• 40:33Auren Hoffman?

  Though I do have to say, okay, it's like, when, when you and I first, I think, for one of the very first times that like we were hanging out together, you're like, I'm gonna pick you up and you pick me, I mean, this sounds silly, but I was, I was in my twenties and you picked me up in a, in like a Lamborghini. And I thought it was so cool. I thought like, it's the first time I've ever been inside a Lamborghini.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  So one of your superpowers is an incredible attention to detail. I don't know if people know this about you, but you're the only person that has ever missed, ever sent me a happy birthday message the day before my birthday and I randomly get like 20-year-old or 18-year-old pictures of when we were together or some small detail. I feel like somewhere you have more detail than FBI or CIA on people you know, like, you know, like 19 years ago in like six months, like you told me this one thing and it never left me. So that's definitely at least one of your superpowers.

• 41:26Auren Hoffman?

  Well, look, I'm in the data business, so.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're in the data business. So on the Lamborghini thing, look, one of the things that's also like part of my personality is if I have like a Chance to experience something that's amazing, I'm like, the first thing I wanna do is share it with my friends and, you know, with my family. And I'm like, one of my things that I dreamt as a kid is like, oh, if I ever, you know, do something really well, I'm gonna go get a crazy car, like a manifestation of this thing is real, like, because otherwise, like, hey, Google went public. Yeah, Google went public. I don't know what else, like, nothing has changed in this one thing. But then I'm like, you have the experience. I'm like, oh, my God, like, you never had the experience, you only read a magazine article, I want you to experience this, and then tell me like, what you really think. I know you're not really

• 42:13Speaker 00

  a car person, but hopefully you still remember that it was, it was a little bit thrilling.

• 42:17Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, it was super cool. I remember just like, just, just, yeah, it was awesome. It was, it was, it was so cool. Uh, okay, that we're in this like world where like, do you think like, you know, we're in the world where like, someone could build a billion dollar company with one or just a couple of people and thousands of AI agents, like, how does that change the, the venture game?

• 42:39Speaker 00

  The way that we think about it is whether you think it's gonna happen in a few years or 10 years or never gonna happen, one thing is changing. So earlier in our conversation, we hit on something very important, which is how AI is changing for the first time, like, how fast you can get to a billion dollars of revenue and a lot faster. There is another element of it, like, if you basically ask me, Aiden, I, you're a data person, what is the leading precursor or the leading indicator that a company is going to be successful? And I would say the number one indicator that a company is gonna be successful is yield. How much effort goes into producing the next unit of output? So to me, like, the ultimate

• 43:21Speaker 00

  thing is if you can get to billion dollar revenues with just one person, or, I mean, we talk about valuation, I feel like maybe revenues is a better indication. It means that the product is so good, or you're so efficient in what you're doing, you have to put so little into making that company, like, pushing that company forward, right? Like, imagine you're a car with like, the perfect drag ratio, or you found the perfect renewable energy and like, you can literally like, limitlessly like, push something forward.

• 43:50Auren Hoffman?

  How do you like, measure that? Is that like, is that like, tax are declining over time or something? Or how are you measuring that?

• 43:57Speaker 00

  I think you basically just look at like, I mean, you can look at magic ratio. I mean, you, you can look at any, any indication or any stat where like, how much money do you have to spend in hiring people or spending in marketing and sales to generate the level of sales that you're at?

• 44:13Auren Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Like, let me give you an example. It doesn't even have to be one person. I think we try to use these extreme examples because it makes it like, super clear, like, one person company, like, you literally have nobody else. Even if it's like a 10 person company, where you're doing like, 500 people jobs, I think it's still pretty impressive is that, wow, like, we found a product that actually sells itself, or we somehow managed to leverage AI, where I don't have to spend all this money in advertising or marketing or whatever it is. Even if it's like, 20% there, 30% there, or even 10% there, that difference could be something big, because that's essentially money you can put back into the business. And it just makes you less dependent on outside capital as well.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  So it is the purest form of like, understanding, hey, this product is so good, or there is so much pull on the product versus you're trying to push it, push it to the customers. Um, it's a great indication of how good the product is or how good the product market fit is.

• 45:13Auren Hoffman?

  Now, I was talking to one of my friends who's founder, we're investors, and he's been at it for eight years. Company's doing super well. They're almost at a billion in revenue, doing great. Um, and he told me in those eight years, he's taken one, one week vacation. And he's just like, working insane. And I was, what are you, why are you doing this? And he's like, look, Orin, I don't, we don't have any modes. Um, yeah, we, we have all these competitors. He sells, he sells mostly his products to like, AI labs and other types of things. So he's like, I'm, I'm, I'm competing against the smartest people. I'm selling to the smartest people in the world. I constantly, I'm constantly on this treadmill, like, how, how should we be thinking about this as investors when like, even a company is growing so fast, like, feels like they're constantly under

• 45:58Auren Hoffman?

  the gun?

• 45:59Speaker 00

  I would say, uh, the modes are dead. Long live the modes. Um, so, in the beginning of our conversation, we touched on growth mindset and resetting your priors multiple times. I think one of the most important things to take away is, look, the reality is, you start with a battle plan and you get into battle, and then all of a sudden, like, everything is different. You're in the battle now. It's not what you expected. You're just gonna have to figure it out. And the reality is, just because the initial place where you expected to have a mode has changed, and you no longer have a mode there, doesn't mean that there is no other place there can be a mode. Right? Like, maybe the

• 46:42Speaker 00

  market has changed, maybe that market is totally different. Um, data can be a mode, distribution can be a mode, a partnership can be a mode. Um, the fact that the product is a platform and not something else can be a mode. I was just thinking about it, like, I know you had this really thoughtful post that was getting a lot of attention over the weekend. And like, are there modes left in software? And then I was thinking about it. I mean, we still have software companies like NNN and Superbase. And, I mean, you can ask AI to write a program, but they basically did something that is difficult, where they

• 47:23Speaker 00

  built a platform that became ingrained in like, millions of developers and what they're building.

• 47:28Auren Hoffman?

  I use Superbase every day. And literally, I mean, I'm constantly using, I like, I can't, it's just such an amazing product. I'm like, like, and everyone I know is like, building on top of it. Like, it's, it's very hard to replicate something like that.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  It's very hard to replicate. And look, the funny thing is, I almost feel like I shouldn't even be qualified to talk about Superbase, even though I'm an investor, I'm not an engineer, I'm not a programmer, I'm not a, you know, data nerd like you. But I understood something really important is that, if that company ever succeeds, it's going to be the key ingredient for every developer. And then the thesis is like, look, it used to be that only people with computer science degrees could write a computer program. And now in the age of AI, where any agent can write software, and any person in the world can use an AI agent to write the program for themselves, if in that world, you can still be the key ingredient to all the websites or the programs, you're gonna be an important

• 48:23Speaker 00

  company. The rest I don't like. It's about my pay grade, but do you see like, my Achilles heel, like, Aiden, you know, nothing about data, you know, nothing about database. I'm like, no, actually, this one simple thing, if they get it right, it's gonna be an important company. So this is to say that, look, I think we just gotta be open minded about modes and everything else. It, just because it's not in the obvious or expected places doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It might mean that we need to reset our priors, we need to like, think again, like, where are the most today? Like, where can you have something that is a little bit more durable? And if one thing had changed, it doesn't mean that something else has not taken its place.

• 49:01Auren Hoffman?

  Now, you're, you've also recently started doing more stuff like in the national security world. What have you learned from that?

• 49:06Speaker 00

  I mean, one of the things that we haven't yet talked about, you know how everybody talks about markets and growth and, you know, like, how do you make great investments? I think one of the things that helped me is add another dimension that very few people talk about, which is, you know, everybody always talks about, well, how big is the market? And are these founders really great? But nobody talks about like, well, how timely is it to go after this market? Or what is the urgency? We talk about this whole concept of being relentless. One of the things that I pay attention to, like, if I'm gonna be relentless, I need to feel the urgency of why this market matters now. And one of the things we started seeing is that, for instance, you know, on the topic of natural resilience,

• 49:49Speaker 00

  I'm seeing that, for instance, energy has become a big problem. Like, you're a data person, one crazy data or one crazy piece of stat, China has 10 times the data or, uh, energy already to power data centers. So we're already at a 10 to 1 disadvantage. Um, in national security, I mean, you're seeing that the way that warfare is performed has drastically changed, whether it's the conflict with Iran or what's happening between Russia and Ukraine. I mean, we might, we used to talk about Terminator, like Star Wars. I mean, at the border of Ukraine and Russia, people are no longer fighting. And if you're a person, you're basically dead. Like, they're essentially gonna send drones and these other fighting like, robots. Like, you have no chance. Right? And so, what basically like,

• 50:34Speaker 00

  changed is that, we used to talk about defense or military spend as something in the future, like, something optional, like, we're building these things, we're gonna build more tanks. And people are like, yeah, like, right, we have thousand tanks. Do we need another 200 tanks? And now, like, you're seeing like, the drones, whatever, it became, it became survival. Right? Like, people can attack us with this for other countries, like, they're literally like, protecting their livelihood. So this element of criticality has totally changed it, in which like, I remember that I was in this private conversation with some extremely high ranking people. And they're like, look, there is a need in defense, but it is not going to be equally spent across all areas of defense. There are certain areas

• 51:18Speaker 00

  that are so critical that we're ready to spend the money yesterday. Right? Like, billions of dollars, like, three very specific products, like, national security, whatever. So it immediately dawned on me, it wasn't like, oh, the fence is hot, because now like, so many more VCs are talking about it, or Twitter or X is blowing up. But it's real people that make real decisions to spend incredible amounts of money and determine

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Big decisions for our country, like literally said, here are three areas like we have zeroed up and we're gonna spend a lot of money and this is like super important to the future of our country. It doesn't get any more critical than that and it's not that difficult to be relentless then about something where you know has not just the magnitude, but also the timing aspect of it, right? Like it's critical now. This is not optional. I don't have to worry whether the company is gonna hit the numbers because I already know that the buyer basically said, if you can ship this thing, I'm ready to buy billions of dollars of it. And not one customer, not one country, multiple countries, multiple customers are ready to do it today. So that to me is a great indication that it's worth going after.

• 52:26Auren Hoffman?

  The buyer has changed that the buyer, it seems they're way more open to buying from startups that are less tested, that are more startup-y, that are, it's just like the openness to working with a true innovator rather than a company that's been around for 50 years is just off the charts today. Again, you have to prove it. It has to actually be really good. But if you have a great product, if you can show you have a great product, before it was still, could still be like a 10-year cycle before you could get anything. And now if you have a great product, you can accelerate that like really fast.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Actually, that brings me back to one of the questions you asked before. You asked, how did the venture market change? One of the things that I would say is, when I started, software was solving a very limited number of problems. The moment SpaceX basically put a rocket out there that self-landed itself, now people are like, well, there is nothing in the world, no crazy problem we can't solve. So one of the things that's both scary and exciting at the same time, it used to be that, hey, you know, like defense, we don't touch that. Like software is not gonna move the needle there. Or space is like too crazy. Or like, take your pick of whatever is the craziest market that we thought, software

• 53:52Speaker 00

  was not gonna get near that. Software is only gonna be like consumers and enterprises and maybe better versions of like whatever Excel and you know, like, or like some other like software. But all of a sudden now, like you literally have software and AI going after insurmountable problems that have kind of physical aspects, like with robotics and manufacturing and all of that. We're going after like a huge set of problems in markets that are probably like orders of magnitude bigger than 20 years ago, 24 years ago, when you and I first met, which is a major change. It's both exhilarating, exhilarating and exciting at the same time.

• 54:30Auren Hoffman?

  All right, two last questions we ask all of our guests. The first one is, how are you personally using like AI in your day to day?

• 54:38Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm trying to, one of the things that I will say that is true is that the more you use it, the more you suspend disbelief, the more helpful it is. I think I'm just really trying to use it a lot for synthesizing information, gathering information. I know that you're a voracious reader. I love reading. I love podcasts. Sometimes when I don't have time, like, hey, can you summarize this book? Can you summarize this podcast? Because I'm trying to like accelerate like how much more interesting insights and words of wisdom I can consume and get smarter. The last thing is, is a very interesting one. I was just talking to a VC friend of mine and he said, 15 years ago, like being a specialist and

• 55:23Speaker 00

  being an expert really mattered. Like if you were talking about like chips or data centers, if you didn't have experience, you're not gonna understand. And today, any topic, no matter how complex, you can literally ask AI and like, simplify it for me. Tell me like what matters.

• 55:37Auren Hoffman?

  You can get up to speed so much faster, yeah, today, yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  And there is nothing, like no idea, no matter how complex or far out there, like it's gonna boil it down to very simple terms. And for me, like you'll relate to it as a data person. I feel that we used to solve puzzles that are two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Now, when you look at companies and markets, like it's like 15, 20 dimensional puzzle, right? Like you're looking at so many different things and it's a little bit more difficult to get it right in human brain. So what I try to do is, hey, like you have all these considerations, then how would you rank this set of companies or this set of factors? And it doesn't mean that it's gonna give you a perfect answer, but just directionally, like the signal that it gives you, I think is very interesting.

• 56:23Auren Hoffman?

  How are you using like in your personal life?

• 56:25Speaker 00

  One of the things that I started doing is, I never thought that I would do this, but I do a lot of coaching myself. And one of the tough thing about coaching is that it's very difficult to implement it. So I do both like physical fitness coaching as well as like just regular, you know, like strategy and like, how do you manage a team better coaching? And so for instance, on the business side of things, you know, we basically now like record our meetings and I can ask, so for instance, like my coach made a statement, if you wanna be a good leader, you have to talk a lot less, like ideally like 30% of the time and not 70% of the time. And I could never measure that before. And now I can just go to AI and AI is like very honest. I'm like, sorry, I

• 57:10Speaker 00

  didn't like, you spoke like 70%, like shut up, like obviously it doesn't.

• 57:14Auren Hoffman?

  Totally. You need something that like zaps you in the meeting, like.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Exactly. The zapping function has not been invented, but I'm like probably one thing short of doing it. And then the second thing is just fitness, like even like I use Fitbit, I'm so old school, I still use Fitbit, but Google changed it now. I have like AI coach and immediately like, oh, like that exercise really helped you. And like now you're like, whatever, like you have this much like more, you know, readiness to start today, whatever. It's just so beautiful. Like you're a data nerd and what's beautiful about being a data nerd, it makes it like crystal clear, right? Like even in physical fitness, this is your like heart rate variability, this is your resting heart rate, this is your sleep quality. So you know what's working and you know what's not. You go back and you do more of the things that are good and less of the things that are bad.

• 58:02Auren Hoffman?

  All right, last question we ask all of our guests. What conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

• 58:07Speaker 00

  I think anything conventional is bad, period. Let me make it very simple. Is it fair to say everybody wants to be successful or really great at something? I mean, everybody has an aspiration. I think what I have learned, doing everything that I learned, copying others and using convention is not gonna get you to greatness, whatever it is that you're looking for. By default, in order to achieve greatness, you need to be original and you need to do something unconventional. Like even like for instance, I suck at basketball, but my younger son Alex loves it. And whenever I watch videos of like, say Kevin Durant, he's like, I was the only kid that showed up in gym at 5:00 AM. And like, I did these

• 58:50Speaker 00

  things. And then you look at some other athlete and I did this thing that nobody else did, right? Like you basically say, oh, like this is the top speed in like tennis. I'm crazy about tennis. Then somebody comes in and like broke the top speed. I'm like, how is that even humanly possible? They did something that nobody has tried before. So my best advice to everybody on the pod is honestly, like life is too short and like to make it truly great, try to be unconventional and don't pay attention to conventional advice or conventional wisdom.

• 59:20Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it was like the guy who like did the free throw shooting underhanded and you know, everyone made fun of him, but he made like all the shots or something, yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Another outsider.

• 59:29Auren Hoffman?

  Exactly, another outsider. Thank you. I thank you for joining us on Sumation. By the way, I follow you on X, at A Senkut. I definitely recommend everyone follow you there. This has been, I knew this would be awesome. We're longtime friends, but this was incredible. Thank you again.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  Thank you, Orin. Really appreciate it. And Orin H.

• 59:49Auren Hoffman?

  One more thing before we go. I read a blog called Sumation. It's the same as this podcast. The blog is about non-obvious idea sharing on business, talent, data, longevity, and random contrarian takes. If you like the conversations on this show, you'll probably like the blog. It's free. New content comes out twice a month. You could subscribe at orin.substack.com. That's orin.substack.com.