No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
00:16:06 · Andrew Feldman
[00:16:06] S0: Well, first, I have empathy for them. I mean, being CEO is an extraordinarily lonely thing. And you're building a business, you're building a business. You guys know this, that being a leader is lonely, and it's not easy. And people don't like to say that, especially for those of us who like to solve problems, specifically the problems everyone else says can't be solved. You sort of you you you gain fire from that chip on your on your shoulder. Right? When when they say it can't be solved, you say in your head, you can't solve it. Right. I thought it was just fine. No. That's right. That's exactly right. You You know, you were a top venture firm. You wanted to do it your way. Right? And so you stepped out doing it your way. And you say to yourself, I can do this, and it's not easy. And that's one thing. The other thing is you have to love the journey. Right? These things we do are too hard if you don't like the building. Right? That you do this for the money is is a horrible thing. There are way easier ways to make money than than trying to create something extraordinary and compete with somebody as strong as as NVIDIA. That is not the easiest path. You you gotta love being a David. Right? I'm a professional David. This is my fifth startup. I compete against Goliath. That is what I do for a living. And I think to myself that every dollar, every million dollars, every billion dollars we sell, if it wasn't for our brains, their muscle would have taken it in a heartbeat. And you gotta love that. And if you don't love that, it's a very long road.
00:17:47 · Elad Gil, Andrew Feldman
[00:17:47] S1: When do you think because there's sort of two views of the world in terms of when to give up on something. And one argument is just going no matter what, and hopefully things work out or eventually they will. The other view of the world is, you should be constantly reassessing whether the journey you're on is the right one. And there are some moments where actually giving up is the smartest possible thing you can do. What's your view on that? Or how do you think about when's the right time to give up on something? [00:18:13] S0: I think it is clearly the right time to give up when you've laid out a set of hypotheses about what it's gonna take to win, and they all come back negative. [00:18:27] S1: Yeah. But I see people kind do this sequentially. Right? They say, oh, I just need to test one more thing, and they test it it doesn't work. So I need to test one more. And so [00:18:33] S0: the slippery slope is a beast. Yeah. The slippery slope in all things, in ethical situations, in your life. I mean, the slippery slope is really something you have to guard against. Right? And I think sometimes having other former CEOs or other really seasoned entrepreneurs who are on your side and who can share with you remember a year ago, you said, if you got to this point, you didn't have this, and to remind you, so so they pull you back off that slippery slope. Right? They they said, you know, the old frog in the the warm water thing is like, you said if it got this hot, you were gonna get out. Yeah. And it slowly kept getting warmer.
00:18:33 · Andrew Feldman, Elad Gil
[00:18:33] S0: the slippery slope is a beast. Yeah. The slippery slope in all things, in ethical situations, in your life. I mean, the slippery slope is really something you have to guard against. Right? And I think sometimes having other former CEOs or other really seasoned entrepreneurs who are on your side and who can share with you remember a year ago, you said, if you got to this point, you didn't have this, and to remind you, so so they pull you back off that slippery slope. Right? They they said, you know, the old frog in the the warm water thing is like, you said if it got this hot, you were gonna get out. Yeah. And it slowly kept getting warmer. [00:19:18] S1: So it's basically, can other people keep you effectively accountable to [00:19:21] S0: That's right. [00:19:22] S1: Directions. [00:19:22] S0: Accountable to your own thinking. Yeah. If you understand why it's not working, right, if there are some things that that you can articulate that have to change Yeah. In order for it to work, and and you can put some sort of time frame on it. But that is an extraordinarily hard question. And I I think it's probably the case that lots of efforts ought to be truncated. Yeah. And those people sort of redeploy their efforts to new and different ideas that they have.
00:19:22 · Andrew Feldman, Elad Gil
[00:19:22] S0: Accountable to your own thinking. Yeah. If you understand why it's not working, right, if there are some things that that you can articulate that have to change Yeah. In order for it to work, and and you can put some sort of time frame on it. But that is an extraordinarily hard question. And I I think it's probably the case that lots of efforts ought to be truncated. Yeah. And those people sort of redeploy their efforts to new and different ideas that they have. [00:20:00] S1: Yeah. It's kind of like I view it as opportunity cost on life. For some people, it's the best moment of their lives in terms of productivity or things they could do. And so the cost of time is extremely high. In your guys' case, obviously it worked out. What made you all decide to go public? Similarly, there's differing opinions on when to go public, why to go public, what's the benefits, what's the drawbacks. What was that in your mind, and what made you decide to go out now? First, sort of
00:20:00 · Elad Gil, Andrew Feldman
[00:20:00] S1: Yeah. It's kind of like I view it as opportunity cost on life. For some people, it's the best moment of their lives in terms of productivity or things they could do. And so the cost of time is extremely high. In your guys' case, obviously it worked out. What made you all decide to go public? Similarly, there's differing opinions on when to go public, why to go public, what's the benefits, what's the drawbacks. What was that in your mind, and what made you decide to go out now? First, sort of [00:20:23] S0: going public is exchanging some professional investors, venture capitalists who specialize in technology investing for a different class of investors, in so doing, reducing your cost of capital a little bit. Right? This is really what's happening. Suddenly, we go from pros like you to my dad. Right? That that that's sort of the trade off. And in return for that, you have to agree to to be governed by a set of extraordinarily stringent rules. I think your question is complicated by the fact that there have been, for the first time in history, four or five companies that can raise huge amounts of money without going public, that this was never a thing before OpenAI and Anthropic and Databricks. [00:21:11] S1: Do you know where the option package timeline from for Silicon Valley comes from? It's like a four year timeline. [00:21:16] S0: It used to be how long it would take you to get public. Exactly. Yeah. Used to be four years. Right? It used to be four years. And that was the way you got evaluation in the hundreds of millions. Yeah. Right? But I I think
00:21:16 · Andrew Feldman, Sarah Guo, Elad Gil
[00:21:16] S0: It used to be how long it would take you to get public. Exactly. Yeah. Used to be four years. Right? It used to be four years. And that was the way you got evaluation in the hundreds of millions. Yeah. Right? But I I think [00:21:28] S2: Now people have a tender cycle. [00:21:30] S0: That's right. [00:21:30] S2: At a certain scale. [00:21:31] S0: That it took us 10. And I I think that changes a lot. Right? What we did is we opened up the secondary market and let people sell, right? If you're gonna bet big chunks your career with us, we thought it would be perfectly reasonable for you to find modest liquidity as you went along. I think you have to think very differently if it's gonna take you a decade. [00:21:53] S1: Mhmm.