Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
00:58:02 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[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. [00:58:16] S2: Yeah, you're being too generous. I had very little sense that a company could grow at the rate that some of these artificial intelligence companies have grown at today. I mean, it's beyond comprehension. I remember many years ago, this was at the dawn of the internet or probably after the dawn of the internet. And Tom Siebel, who started a well known entrepreneur and had been seen as a very successful entrepreneur, I remember him wistfully saying one day, his company is sold for whatever it was, 10,000,000,000. And he said very wistfully, that was back when $10,000,000,000 was worth a lot of money. Today you look back and you say, whether it was Facebook's IPO or Google, was back when $100,000,000,000 was worth a lot of money. I think the idea that you can have a six year old company with trillions of dollars, nobody would have imagined that. [00:59:10] S0: Are you mostly excited about this technology
00:59:10 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[00:59:10] S0: Are you mostly excited about this technology [00:59:12] S2: or scared or both? I read what everybody else reads and have heard the boogeyman opine. I think I'm probably a bit more hopeful than others. Again, I'm not an expert. I don't mean to diminish the dark side of what may or may not happen with AI. I do take some solace in the fact that Armageddon was predicted or a form of Armageddon was predicted when the first nuclear bomb was exploded. And fortunately, here we are close to a century later and that hasn't occurred. Or if you read all the stuff from the mid 1970s about the genetic revolution and how there were gonna be scientists creating legions of individuals that they deem suitable to walk on the face of the earth. That hasn't occurred either. And today, even though I'm absolutely certain that there's gonna be enormous disruption, in particular job sectors caused by AI, I think that it's gonna create more jobs than are gonna be lost. Everyone can say that this time is different, but there hasn't been a huge improvement in technology that has in the last two or three centuries led to lower employment in the long term. I mean, there've been depressions and massive disruptions in sectors, but overall employment has grown. So I'm a little more optimistic. I think there'll be a lot of jobs that get created that we couldn't categorize today.
00:59:12 · Michael Moritz, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:59:12] S2: or scared or both? I read what everybody else reads and have heard the boogeyman opine. I think I'm probably a bit more hopeful than others. Again, I'm not an expert. I don't mean to diminish the dark side of what may or may not happen with AI. I do take some solace in the fact that Armageddon was predicted or a form of Armageddon was predicted when the first nuclear bomb was exploded. And fortunately, here we are close to a century later and that hasn't occurred. Or if you read all the stuff from the mid 1970s about the genetic revolution and how there were gonna be scientists creating legions of individuals that they deem suitable to walk on the face of the earth. That hasn't occurred either. And today, even though I'm absolutely certain that there's gonna be enormous disruption, in particular job sectors caused by AI, I think that it's gonna create more jobs than are gonna be lost. Everyone can say that this time is different, but there hasn't been a huge improvement in technology that has in the last two or three centuries led to lower employment in the long term. I mean, there've been depressions and massive disruptions in sectors, but overall employment has grown. So I'm a little more optimistic. I think there'll be a lot of jobs that get created that we couldn't categorize today. [01:00:46] S0: Because AI produces prodigious amounts of new text and writing so easily, I think the value of extraordinary writing is going up, that can cut through the CF slop. How would you define extraordinary writing, having done quite a bit of it yourself?
01:00:46 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[01:00:46] S0: Because AI produces prodigious amounts of new text and writing so easily, I think the value of extraordinary writing is going up, that can cut through the CF slop. How would you define extraordinary writing, having done quite a bit of it yourself? [01:01:04] S2: Again, you're too flattering and kind about that on that particular topic. It's hearing the unmistakable voice of the author. [01:01:12] S0: How do you do that as a writer? [01:01:14] S2: It's the same with the journey through life. The toughest thing I think for an individual, whether it's guiding them through what it is they want to do in life, or what they want to put on paper. It's being in touch enough with your inner feelings and inner voice to allow those to conquer the pressures of the expectations of others. [01:01:39] S0: Joseph Campbell said the privilege of a lifetime is becoming who you are, but also that that's the hardest thing to do. [01:01:45] S2: I wish I'd been clever enough to say that. I completely agree. I think that's the struggle everybody has. And it's also the struggle when you put things down on paper. [01:01:56] S0: Is there a moment in your own life that was the most important in becoming who you were, like the hardest part of doing it? It's so valuable to do and it's so hard to do. It makes me wonder about what the hardest part was for you. [01:02:10] S2: I don't think I've done it. [01:02:11] S0: Why not? What's the barrier that's left between you and who you are? It's one of
01:02:11 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[01:02:11] S0: Why not? What's the barrier that's left between you and who you are? It's one of [01:02:16] S2: my many weaknesses. I've always been too prone to live up to the pressures or expectations from the outside or from others than to let myself run free. Is it a [01:02:28] S0: goal of the remainder of your life to do so? [01:02:30] S2: I'll try. [01:02:31] S0: I'm so struck by how unbelievably self aware you seem, but then you're giving yourself poor grades that seem like objectively wrong. What is that? I'm just still struggling to understand. [01:02:45] S2: I don't know. Maybe it's the specter of my mother. [01:02:49] S0: Can you say more about her? We didn't talk too much about her other than her doom prophecies. I [01:02:54] S2: owe her many things. She aroused my interest in art and variety of things, but she would always find fault no matter how good things or what I had done. I remember there was some newspaper coverage years ago in Britain when Yahoo became public and there were some stories about me in the British press. I mean, she was convinced I was a crook. She was absolutely convinced that this police should come for me because there was no possible way that I could have participated in anything like this that could possibly be legal. [01:03:32] S0: Did that hurt? [01:03:33] S2: No. By that point, I was more amused by it than anything else. [01:03:38] S0: Early did it hurt that nothing you did was satisfied? No. [01:03:42] S2: Because it was just a fact of life. [01:03:44] S0: And yet it seems to have echoed.
01:03:44 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[01:03:44] S0: And yet it seems to have echoed. [01:03:46] S2: Yeah. You never get the boy out of [01:03:48] S0: the man. What is the experience of stepping back from sequoia because you were sick? What has that taught you?