Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Reed Hastings, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: That it's very right-brained. Everything at Netflix was very strategic, logical. A lot of big competitors. In skiing, the competitors are very cooperative. It's, I think, because you have 20 or 30 miles between you. And so it's a lot more collegial. And it's aesthetic. The big wins we've done have been building up the art at Powder Mountain. So there's a lot of outdoor land art that's incredibly beautiful to ski through. So if you've had the good fortune to go to Storm King, north of Manhattan. [00:00:00] S0: It's beautiful, yeah. [00:00:00] S1: Okay, so think of Storm King on a ski mountain. [00:00:00] S0: Skiing through it. [00:00:00] S1: Yes, and skiing through it. [00:00:00] S0: Tell me about that part of it. So how did you conceive of that, and how did you execute it? Like, how does one acquire Storm King-like art?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Reed Hastings
[00:00:00] S0: Tell me about that part of it. So how did you conceive of that, and how did you execute it? Like, how does one acquire Storm King-like art? [00:00:00] S1: The conceptual part is the key, which is we wanted to have a ski resort and to differentiate. So what are we going to do in summer? Well, you could do zip lines and mountain biking, but it's like, it's all been done over and over. And frankly, it's high adrenaline and it's like, okay, but it's not that great a match for real estate sales. But most importantly, it's conventional, it's been done. So what's like, interesting and scalable and fantastic, but hasn't been done? And that's the art part. And, you know, I'd been to Storm King, but Storm King is a level 600 acres. So it's not like on a mountain, but it is outdoor sculpture and incredibly stunning. So again, it was that synthesis, of then trying to do that on a mountain. Then it was building in the curators and getting the work going. And now we've got dozens of pieces already in and a lot more coming. That side's really coming together as the heart of our summer-fall experience. [00:00:00] S0: How did you decide to focus so much on education as one of the buckets of your time? We talked about Powder Mountain, but education, charter schools, et cetera, is a huge chunk of your time and philanthropy as well. What was it about that sector that drew you? And I'm just curious for you to riff on the problems that you see in the space.
· Reed Hastings, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, it's interesting. I spend probably a third of my time on Powder Mountain because it's a joy. And then, on the education side, I was a high school math teacher. It was my first job out of college. And so I've always cared about K-12. And I've done a lot of philanthropy in that sector over the last 25 years. And then the new big thing is AI. So it's easy to then put those together. And how are we going to apply AI? The core vision, and it's super well-articulated by your prior guest around Alpha School, is kids should be taught individually, as opposed to having a teacher stand in front of a class and lecture to them. And that industrial model of the teacher, the sage on a stage, we call it, needs to be replaced with individualized tutoring. And prior to AI, individualized tutoring would cost you $100,000 a year per kid. So out of reach of everyone. And so now, with software, we can have individualized instruction. And the teachers become more like social workers, where they're helping on discussion, social-emotional learning, a lot of the more human and emotional factors. But the content transfer — what were the roots of the civil war, how to do fractions, that's all becoming software. And hopefully as quickly as possible, because then it's very global, and because kids will learn more. [00:00:00] S0: What do you think we can do to speed that up the most? It could take decades because of the regulated nature of schools. Things move slowly. What could we do that could speed that up?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Reed Hastings
[00:00:00] S0: What do you think we can do to speed that up the most? It could take decades because of the regulated nature of schools. Things move slowly. What could we do that could speed that up? [00:00:00] S1: It's focused on the apps that really help kids learn more. It's helping parents see that — they all wonder, hey, with AI coming, when my kid's six or sixteen, what's going to happen to them in the workplace? And they need more and better skills than ever. And, you know, every 16 year old is learning things on AI, anyway. So it's having them be more focused on that and less on traditional classrooms. When you think about classrooms, we use it in K-12, we use it in college. And then, like in the workplace, we never use it again. You did all this classroom learning and it has like, no bearing in your working life. And so again, it's really driving the percentage of kids' time that's not in classroom. And as Joe says, it's helping kids really love school because then they'll continue to love learning. And the classroom, and the boredom and frustration of that, is at the heart of it. [00:00:00] S0: I'm curious, as you think about the future, just broadly, across all your interests, you've got a cool purview on the world. What most worries you and what most excites you about the future?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Reed Hastings
[00:00:00] S0: I'm curious, as you think about the future, just broadly, across all your interests, you've got a cool purview on the world. What most worries you and what most excites you about the future? [00:00:00] S1: I'm part of the Anthropic camp where it's good to talk about the negatives. It's not because we think they're going to happen, but because we'll lower the chance of them happening if we're honest and talk about them. So I don't think the AI boomer and doomer thing is that useful. I think we all want to acknowledge there's some pretty significant risks, but they're not dispositive. And then we humans may be able to capture tremendous benefit by harnessing AI for higher quality of life on a global basis. I'm on Team Human for making that happen. But I would say that's the biggest, you know, swing factor of the next 50 years, is how well we do that. [00:00:00] S0: What do you think the biggest risks are?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Reed Hastings
[00:00:00] S0: What do you think the biggest risks are? [00:00:00] S1: Well, the near-term risks are, unemployment causes societal chaos and strife. So if you were to get a lot of unemployment, then you might get radical politicians promising to get rid of AI, and that destabilizes society. There's the long-term power competition between us and say, China. And then, you know, does war become, how many robots do you produce? And, you know, it'd be unfortunate if we both end up having to spend a bunch of money on that because of distrust. Kind of a new Cold War would soak up a lot of GDP growth. And the benefit side would be that we cure disease, we get nuclear fusion with huge amounts of low-cost energy. Humans don't have to work as much, maybe not at all. They get to do things like learn chess and learn how to play all kinds of games. You learn biology for fun, like you learn chess today. So there's tremendous upside to automating a lot of this and taking it to the next level. It's just keeping humans on top as the beneficiary of them. [00:00:00] S0: My traditional closing question for every interview is the same. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?