00:13:58 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:13:58] S1: So what is language? What is language is it is symbols that represent ideas. And because no idea can be perfectly three sixty degrees encapsulated in something, they're a little bit of shorthand. And so the language becomes an association that evokes a mental image that then evokes feelings or ideas or connection, whatever else. So when you give something the right language, it makes people think about the thing, and it makes people think about the thing in a certain way. So in the case of Napoleon, he had these guys guarding a cannon that was within gunshot range of the Austrians. And the people guarding this cannon had 100% casualty rate. Not that they all died, but they all got shot. And so he needed to replenish guys to go guard this cannon. And so imagine you're going go to your troops and be like, who wants that job? It's like something out of the Simpsons is like comically difficult to pitch. And what he did was he gave this group a name, and he called them, means the men without fear. So instead of saying, would you like to go get shot guarding this cannon? He said, who are going to be the next batch of the men without fear? And he filled it with volunteers and people who raised their hands to be part of that. And this is how we get people for difficult missions, whether that is going to the moon or working for a startup, which when you describe what working for a startup is, it sucks. It sucks. And for someone to want that job, they have to picture it as something else, right? They have to picture this as we're bringing nuclear energy back to America. We're making humans an interplanetary species. We're making robots available in every home. That's the thing I'm doing. It's not that I'm sitting in this office for eighteen hours a day eating ramen out of a box. It's not that. It's A not B. So that's the example for language. This has happened, by the way, throughout history where the words we use shape how we see something, including literally. So in a lot of languages around the world, the word blue didn't exist for a long time because there's not a lot of blue in nature. So if you and I are just walking around in our loincloths or whatever Sorry for the image. We would have occasion to say, green, well, actually, sky is blue. So now I'm starting to question but people merged green and blue as one concept.
00:16:25 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
The people who speak those languages, physically, literally can't see the difference between green and blue, as well, just can't see it. So when something doesn't exist as a language concept, it just doesn't exist to us. This happens with the word teenager and adolescent. It became a concept and the words became more commonly used, I think around the turn of the twentieth century, where before you were either a child or an adult. Imagine being 15 and having to be treated as a child or as an adult. And that led to basically child abuse. It led to child labor. People would on the side of treating children as adults. So you would go get a job, you're 15 already, you're a grown up, go get married like Palmer's telling you to. And when the concept of being an adolescent and being a teenager was introduced, suddenly people now gave them a new category. We need to treat them differently. There are services available, like mental health services, social services, advertising, marketing, and it became a discrete thing. We now are missing that word for a lot of concepts that I think are just like open season for anyone who wants to coin. But for example, the space between being an adult and being an old person has really changed. It used to be you were 65, you would retire, now you're an old person. Now, there are people who are like 76, who are pretty spry and working, and they're not senile, they're not senescent, they're not a retiree, but they're also not like you. And maybe we should treat them differently. So, takeaway for someone starting a company is you're making a new thing for maybe a new use case, you might want to consider giving the thing a name if it didn't exist before. Because if people are using shorthand, or if people are using existing language, it might make it seem like your thing is not actually needed, because they're not thinking of this gap as an actual category.
00:18:24 · Ty Morse
[00:18:24] S0: On the case of Anduril, I don't think anyone has really gone through the early days of Anduril and how you helped build what the culture is and the vibe and the brand of Anduril is today, and specifically around even people liking it and choosing who to alienate?
00:18:43 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:18:43] S1: The first thing I'll say is that the founders choose to do this. You know, no other person, whether inside, outside the company, their parents, like, no, no people besides the people starting the company are able to set the tone of the culture and decide what to stand up for. You can't like Weekend at Bernie's wheel somebody in and get them to be credible. So I'm more speaking as somebody who I think helped facilitate and support, but really, this is them. You can't like attach a spine from the outside. You know, it has to be there. It's really important to choose whose side you're not on. The people who avoid picking a side, it's not that they are then beloved by everybody, it's that they're beloved by nobody. You're in the demilitarized zone. You're in no man's land. So you might as well pick a side or eventually one will get chosen for you kind of haphazardly. And so saying that we're not on the side of the people who believe that it's morally wrong to work with military, and we are on the side of the people in uniform, at least makes it so that the people who do believe that feel like they find a home with you. And the people who don't, this is like the Elon email, you do not want them here. They're a time bomb. There are people that you might employ that will actually destroy your company from the inside. The most catastrophic, destructive crises are always inside of a company. You see these things happen where CEOs get attacked from the outside all the time, like Brian Armstrong, he was attacked from inside outside. And so he got rid of the people who are attacking from the inside. And then he was only attacked from the outside. And that was fine. And it was fine. And like two months later, everything was better than before. But when you see people get attacked by their own employees, and they're not able to manage that, and they're not able to make a hard decision like Brian did, that's when the company is just, I think, not going to make it.
00:20:40 · Ty Morse
[00:20:40] S0: Sam Altman recently came out after someone like threw a Molotov cocktail at his house. And he effectively said, I worry that I've been too, like, non confrontational. And I think that was, like, his one of his biggest weaknesses over the past, you know, twenty years as he's been building his companies. What is the power of being, like, confrontational and being willing to, like, fight?
00:20:59 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:20:59] S1: You know the phrase, the enemy of my enemy is my friend? When you fight for someone, you can be so much stronger and more powerful than if you're fighting for yourself. So this is like a hack. But you defending yourself comes off as like self interested. You know, people discount it. But you picking somebody, and it can be somebody with like identical interest to yours, but you advocating for them is so much more powerful. So there company was that I had, and I was a leader in the company. And we had someone who was making the case that tenure shouldn't determine how much you were paid. You shouldn't have to work there longer to get paid more. It should just be straight up on performance. And I also happen to believe that. But if I had said, hey, you know, I know I have no comms experience, but I feel like I should get paid based on my output, it's not as strong as me advocating for her and saying she doesn't need to be here for ten years in order to get paid at the level of someone who's been here for ten years, but isn't performing as well as her. That's not fair. And so you can literally just pick someone else to support, and then put yourselves on the same side, and you can come out so much more forcefully and not have that be discounted. That's one. Two is people see sincerity when you're willing to do something costly. And getting into a fight is pretty costly. I don't recommend doing it all the time because it's training. You fight to win. Don't You just get in a fight and then leave. If you're in the fight, put some effort. You're going be in the fight and it's going to be painful. You're going to take some blows. It's going be damaging maybe. But when people see that you're willing to do that, they believe that your principles are real. And so I think Sam is correct. Maybe maybe that is the case. Like, I don't know psychology, but it sounds like a good analysis.