00:05:50 · Jonathan Brebner, Anurag Goel
[00:05:50] S0: the like messy beginning or or... I mean, the joke version of it is like, you know, I I always knew from the age of three when my mom break down crying after a check bounced in the grocery store aisle that I wanted to build b to b SaaS for, like, payment verification. You know, like some Exactly. Some version of that. Right? Yeah. It's made. Like, you have seen this. You saw that Stripe. Right? Very early process there. You went through it yourself. Like, you saw a lot of it at SPC. [00:06:18] S1: I saw a lot of it [00:06:19] S0: at SPC. Totally. Like, you were a part of... Like, making it the culture of embracing that. Right? That was the point. It was actually just like lean into that. Don't be afraid of it. Yeah. How do you think about it after the fact as like [00:06:29] S1: Yeah. [00:06:30] S0: Like the myth making side of it? [00:06:31] S1: Yeah. I think it goes back to the values that you want to espouse both for yourself and for the company. And for me personally, I don't want to spread a falsehood about the company just because it'll help us be more successful. And there are ways to run a company that that help you feel good about what you're doing and help you sleep well at night. And they might not make you the most successful company ever, but they'll still make you pretty... Plenty successful. And so it... Again, it's it's a personal choice that everyone
00:06:31 · Anurag Goel, Jonathan Brebner
[00:06:31] S1: Yeah. I think it goes back to the values that you want to espouse both for yourself and for the company. And for me personally, I don't want to spread a falsehood about the company just because it'll help us be more successful. And there are ways to run a company that that help you feel good about what you're doing and help you sleep well at night. And they might not make you the most successful company ever, but they'll still make you pretty... Plenty successful. And so it... Again, it's it's a personal choice that everyone [00:07:11] S0: makes. Yeah. Yeah. It's not one that I I, like, look down on. It feels very human to me. It's vulnerable to talk about the times when you're very uncertain or something goes wrong Yeah. Or we don't naturally like making that part of our persona, or or, like, public story. I... You do have to kind of become a public figure in many ways as a as a founder, right, as it grows.
00:07:11 · Jonathan Brebner, Anurag Goel
[00:07:11] S0: makes. Yeah. Yeah. It's not one that I I, like, look down on. It feels very human to me. It's vulnerable to talk about the times when you're very uncertain or something goes wrong Yeah. Or we don't naturally like making that part of our persona, or or, like, public story. I... You do have to kind of become a public figure in many ways as a as a founder, right, as it grows. [00:07:32] S1: Yeah, but I also think that people respond well to vulnerability, especially within a company as a leader, something I've learned, is it's not your job as a CEO to always be the positive force that everyone wants you to be. You can be vulnerable. You can talk about what's not working well. You can say, Okay, well, we tried this, it didn't work, and that's not great, but we can do better. I think that leaders generate the most trust when people see them as human beings who are going through some of the same challenges that people themselves are going through. It's one thing to be sort of this, you know, standard Silicon Valley, 100% confident about everything sort of founder. Honestly, that's tiring to me. It's very tiring to me to see people be in that mode, and I'm sure it's very tiring for them. [00:08:31] S0: There was something you you, posted about recently about how... You you were the eighth employee at Stripe. Is that right? [00:08:37] S1: I was. Yeah. [00:08:38] S0: Which is to say, you don't have to work if you don't want to. Right? You you have a lot of options, and you did before founding Render. [00:08:47] S1: Yeah.
00:08:47 · Anurag Goel, Jonathan Brebner
[00:08:47] S1: Yeah. [00:08:47] S0: But you you have decided to go and, like, do the hard thing of building a company. What led to that decision? Like, what... Was there a point that you can look back to and be like, that's when I made the greatterrible decision to go and start a company. [00:09:05] S1: Yeah. So I decided to leave Stripe in 2015, and I actually ended up leaving in 2016. And I just needed to give my team enough time and make sure there were enough people to take over. My wife and I decided we just needed a complete break, we went to New Zealand for three weeks weeks and did not think about anything. And then we came back. And as soon as we got back, I... The next day, I was in the Commons in South Park, figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And [00:09:40] S0: At that point, did you know or suspect it was going to be a company, or did you It [00:09:45] S1: was the options. Yeah. It was always one of the options. I just didn't know, what kind of company, which domain, and whether it would be a company. [00:09:56] S0: And
00:09:56 · Jonathan Brebner, Anurag Goel
[00:09:56] S0: And [00:09:58] S1: the main thing that I knew that my wife and I decided after I left Stripe where we had a lot of options was we wanted to contribute in some way. We wanted to use this incredibly fortunate position that we found ourselves in and give back. And that would kind of be a way for us to spend the rest of our lives that we we would feel good about. Mhmm. And for me, giving back meant using my experience, skills, and talent to solve a large problem that I would be excited about solving over the very long term. And most large problems take a while. Mhmm. And it was important for me to find something that I remained excited about for ideally decades. [00:10:50] S0: Yeah. Life's work sort of stuff. [00:10:52] S1: Yeah. Pretty [00:10:53] S0: much. Were you involved in, crafting the manifesto at SPC for the the context here being that the community's, manifesto has a line about, like, we're here to find... Yeah. Help each other find our life's work. [00:11:05] S1: Yeah. I... It was so long ago. Yeah. I I don't remember. But I know it was a great manifesto. We should feature it somehow as part of this. [00:11:14] S0: It's right there. Oh, there's... It's on the wall. Yeah. Did. We put it. Yeah. We put it on the wall. So, literally, you only get a few shots at building your life's work. That's... There you right. [00:11:22] S1: Exactly. And the kind of work that makes a difference, that can't happen without you. [00:11:27] S0: And... You're just reading. Yeah. No, this is good. This is good.
00:11:27 · Jonathan Brebner, Anurag Goel
[00:11:27] S0: And... You're just reading. Yeah. No, this is good. This is good. [00:11:30] S1: Yeah. That's what you want me to do, right? Just read it out. So here I am in the Commons and I'm trying to figure out, well, what am I gonna do? [00:11:40] S0: How did you end up there? What is the story that I ended up... You get recruited? [00:11:44] S1: I did not. Well, what happened was, weirdly, Greg Brockman, who I worked with at Stripe, who is now the co founder of OpenAI. I think Ruchi had spoken to him about maybe joining, but he had already started working on OpenAI. And he knew that I was gonna leave Stripe, and so he introduced me to Ruchi. Mhmm. And I met her in October, and she was talking about the Commons. And I was like, well, this sounds interesting. And then I went to this meeting of some of the early members, and they all seemed very accomplished. And I was like, all right, well, this seems like a good group. Why don't I find a way to get involved somehow? So that's how I got involved.