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.
00:11:44 · Anurag Goel, Jonathan Brebner
[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. [00:12:33] S0: Ruchi, which, you know, for the viewers at home, is the founder of SPC, has described you as some some version of, you know, like, the cofounder or or a a founder. It was, like, very important to the early part of SPC in part in kind of building up what the the culture was. Right? And the way I've heard it described, again, it it predated my time, is that you brought kind of a a sense of, like, a building culture. Right? Like, always trying to build something new, collaborate with other people. Right? Try and find ways that that would, like, spark new ideas. Exactly. And that was also a pretty kind of key part from what I remember about, like, what led to Render. Of course. Right? After Can you talk about that a little
00:12:33 · Jonathan Brebner, Anurag Goel
[00:12:33] S0: Ruchi, which, you know, for the viewers at home, is the founder of SPC, has described you as some some version of, you know, like, the cofounder or or a a founder. It was, like, very important to the early part of SPC in part in kind of building up what the the culture was. Right? And the way I've heard it described, again, it it predated my time, is that you brought kind of a a sense of, like, a building culture. Right? Like, always trying to build something new, collaborate with other people. Right? Try and find ways that that would, like, spark new ideas. Exactly. And that was also a pretty kind of key part from what I remember about, like, what led to Render. Of course. Right? After Can you talk about that a little [00:13:11] S1: Yeah. Yeah. So the way I thought I would be able to figure out what I would feel excited about for an extended period would be to try to build things in specific domains. I decided that I I wanted to solve problems by building software. And I spent about six months learning all I could about healthcare. Spoke to a lot of people, including a lot of folks at the Commons, and then realized that the kind of software I want to build and healthcare problems don't go well together. At least at the time, that's what it felt like to me. And then I moved on from that and then looked at other problem areas like infrastructure for real time communications or deep learning. I actually built a tiny company while at the Commons that made it possible for people to spin up a Jupyter notebook.