Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
00:50:04 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[00:50:04] S0: How did you see him do that? I know he was famous for preferring players with tough upbringings. [00:50:08] S2: He's got this reputation, which is an unfair reputation of being very hard and harsh. That was certainly an aspect of the way that he managed. But he was a man who didn't want to be loved, he didn't want to be feared, he wanted to be respected by the individuals who played for him. So he was there for them, which people don't understand in their bleak dark times when they needed support, when they were feeling lower than a snake's belly, he was there for them. None of that really gets written about. There was an incident I remember, I forget which year it was, but David Beckham had been playing for England in a World Cup competition where he got sent off, and the British press was merciless about Beckham's perceived stupidity. And Alex went to meet him at the Apple because he knew he needed an arm around his shoulder. Those sorts of things, little things that happen out of sight. People aren't aware of them. There are no cameras around. [00:51:11] S0: Do you think you were so interested in him for almost like autobiographical reasons? That description He kinda sounds like
00:51:18 · Michael Moritz
[00:51:18] S2: was much more skillful at it than I was. The reason the book came together was this. People, for whatever reason, had been badgering me to write a book about Silicon Valley, and I was always very interested through the Sequoia lens of what it took to build two things, one of which was a business that endured for ourselves for Sequoia because there are all these tales of venture firms that had a period in the limelight and then blew up for whatever reason, the founders killed each other, all the partners killed each other and they all split up and it all became ugly. And then also the byproduct of it being what it took to have an enduring standalone company that a firm like Sequoia could invest in. And I didn't wanna do that through a Silicon Valley lens. And there are enough books about Silicon Valley. So I was casting around for the company or for an organization that had flourished over the course of multiple decades. I'd been a bit of a fan of Manchester United Football Club since I was a kid. It was this manager who took them over, I think in 1986 and retired in 2013. Wendy took them over when they're in bad shape, and then established a record over multiple seasons, twenty six seasons of astonishing success that'll be almost impossible for anybody to duplicate. We had a PR guy who worked, or communications guy who worked for Sequoia, and I'd shown him at that point when I finished the book, and I showed him a draft of the book, and he said, Well, I can't tell because I ghosted the book, ghost wrote the book. And this fella sent to me, I can't tell what's you and what's Sir Alex, I said precisely.
00:53:02 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[00:53:02] S0: Do you believe in the great man theory of history? I'm asking this question because I'm very interested by institutions that endure and what you've learned about how the ones that have endured have pulled that off like Sequoia. And I'm also pulled to people, of course, like Elon, who you were an early backer and partnered to in x.com, how they shape history. And it seems like we might have a few world historic figures alive and operating today. What do you think is the balance of shaping history between these world historic people, great men and women, and enduring institutions? [00:53:37] S2: The short answer to the question is I'm a great believer in the great person theory. All these people that we've talked about, well, you just referred to Elon or we were talking about Li Iacocca or Steve Jobs, or you go into the political realm or the field of battle, it is about great leaders. Great leaders. And obviously there are some terrible authoritarian figures that have cast black shadows over tens of millions of people and over multiple decades in different countries around the world for hundreds of years. And so for good and bad, I think the individual has an enormous impact on what is around him or her capable of, on the good side of it, not the dark side of it, persuading others to achieve what's perceived as impossible. I'm a huge acolyte of that theory. [00:54:34] S0: Do you think Elon is the great exemplar of that today? [00:54:37] S2: Yes. He may well be the greatest industrialist in the history of America. [00:54:44] S0: What would you say about him?
00:54:44 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[00:54:44] S0: What would you say about him? [00:54:45] S2: I don't know that I have anything to add other than it's impossible for me to understand how one individual has been able to achieve. And I know he's a controversial figure, but I'm just looking at him through the lens of history and through an investor's lens. They have this phrase in Britain called gobsmacked. I'm completely gobsmacked by the scale of his achievements in a variety of different industries, which is the thing that sets him apart from others.
00:55:18 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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00:56:50 · Michael Moritz, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:56:50] S2: I don't know. If you go to China, you will find the founders of companies, or if you go to, I think probably South Korea, which I know far less about, you will find that the creators of one company have really imperial ambitions. And the creator of a company is along the way, or they take their one company and convert it into, look at Xiaomi, the manufacturers, these cars today that exceed the quality and performance and other attributes of Porsches, but began in 2010 as a phone maker, as an Android licensee, I think. Creative people or these rare, rare people armed with this extraordinary selection of power in the tools that are at their fingertips, or at the fingertips of the people who work for them, they're gonna be able to do a lot more in the future than somebody might have been able to do in the past. [00:57:46] S0: What is your model of this technology? Like as an observer of it, and I'm sure interested observer, how do you tell your family about it and what it will mean? [00:57:54] S2: Well, we don't talk about it. Well, not very much. [00:57:56] S0: It's kinda nice. [00:57:57] S2: People will always ask me, but I'm not a technologist. I'm not an AI sousse. [00:58:02] S0: But you were so good at seeing what was going to play out. Like if I think about so many of your investments, the thing seemed small, but it was then something that became like infrastructure that the, Instacart or something that the world was built on.