The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:47:27 · Alex Mashrabov
[00:47:27] S0: I think one of the things why Europe thrives so much... Like, I know that you typically say otherwise, but let me just challenge you. Like, who are the most relevant neo clouds today? It's Endscale, Iran, and Nervous, and Crusoe. Crusoe, okay, is Silicon Valley story. I ran from Australia and scale from The UK, and Nervous is UK and Netherlands. Let's talk about the companies on application layer that matter. I know that you mentioned Merkor and you mentioned Harvey, but Ligora, eleven Labs, Lovable, they all deeply matter. So if we just go outside of the model layer, because then I don't wanna go into the Mistral topic, right? Because I think by usage, the numbers are very strong, but people for some reason don't believe in that. I don't know why, but public data shows that the usage is there. But on every other layer, Europe is extremely competitive. Without ASML, this whole thing just wouldn't happen. So I think fundamentally what matters if Europe is gonna figure out energy, but that's above my pay grade, right? So very important to say here is that now there are more opportunities to create company from different kind of cities, from different parts of the world, while before it all felt extremely centralized. And we are obviously excited about that. Another thing about hiring is that in Silicon Valley, unfortunately, what I'm seeing is that people just jump between jobs every two years. That's why I think Europe can be so competitive because the sense of loyalty matters a lot. And that goes sort of a little bit to the childhood. We just discussed that. Let's say if you're a Fulham fan, you are not gonna root for Arsenal just because they won or played in the Champions League final. But in The United States, if Lakers are on the top, people are gonna say, yeah. I'm I'm fan of Lakers because it just makes it easier
00:49:25 · Harry Stebbings, Alex Mashrabov
[00:49:25] S1: to start conversation. You know? When you think about your own CEO style, what's changed most? [00:49:31] S0: In AI, it's so important to look at actual signals and actual adoption and having access to raw information. I was obviously taught the corporate school of management in The United States. And when I look at the CEOs whom I'm learning from is obviously Jensen, Elon, and Nick. Those three, they completely abandon all the management principles. They don't necessarily are fans of one on one and soft feedback. All of them, I think, are encouraged, being down to the points, knowing the details. While it would be called in corporate America something like micromanagement. What management [00:50:11] S1: principle do you disregard that many people think is important? [00:50:16] S0: I do believe that it's as simple as hire the best people to do the best work and figure out how to retain them. Everything else is frankly secondary. And people just create so much theory around that, and then essentially, there are just so many fake rules which are disconnected from reality. It's really as simple as hire the best people, empower them to do the best work, and just figure out how to establish relationship and retain them. [00:50:40] S1: A lot of them do see dollar signs, and secondaries are a part of that. How do you think about doing annual tenders to retain people?
00:50:40 · Harry Stebbings, Alex Mashrabov
[00:50:40] S1: A lot of them do see dollar signs, and secondaries are a part of that. How do you think about doing annual tenders to retain people? [00:50:49] S0: Across our team, roughly 50 are in California. We're gonna get to roughly 50 remotes and over 300 in Kazakhstan. So look, I just hope we're gonna print more dollar millionaires in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, in this part of [00:51:05] S1: the world than any other company. What's the labor arbitrage on cost between Kazakhstan and The US?
00:51:05 · Harry Stebbings, Alex Mashrabov
[00:51:05] S1: the world than any other company. What's the labor arbitrage on cost between Kazakhstan and The US? [00:51:12] S0: I I know that a lot of people, when they look at Higgs, they think about the arbitrage. Is that not true? Look. Like, Kazakhstan is top five in the world in physics. Like, you look at the recent International Physics Olympiad for high schoolers, like, they're top five in the world. It's on par with, like, The United States, China, India. And this is also the core of our team are people who won international competitions in math and physics. That's the first part. The second part is that about Kazakhstan is that they actually took the Soviet school of math, but really upgraded with Singaporean principles. Singaporean system of education is considered to be probably the best in the world. At least many people in Silicon Valley believe that. And the government basically subsidizes for thousands of high schoolers to study abroad, and many of these people come back. And so just the density of talents definitely got there. It's top 10 largest countries in the world, so over 20,000,000 population. And we are also actively hiring, bringing their talents from Europe, from other countries in Asia. And people just enjoy some benefits, like 15% personal income tax. Yeah, man, it's like... [00:52:19] S1: Don't even get me started. Fucking UK will tax you to breathe. Seriously, The UK, you get your, you know, paycheck, and then it's like, I don't know, a 100,000. And then you get the end, and it's kind of like 3,500.
00:52:32 · Alex Mashrabov
[00:52:32] S0: Yeah. But it's also English common law. So it's not like that bad as people think. You move here. Let's swap places. Do you have a mega pad in Kazakhstan? No. I don't. I don't own any property. What? Why? Remember that I come from Asian family. Whenever we sold the company, I made over $1,000,000, and I spent all this money buying apartments for my parents, relatives, my wife parents because this is just part of the culture. Wow. And the fam... Like, extended family is not small by any means. But look, it's just part of the culture to give back. And then when it comes to the family, especially to my parents, they obviously sacrificed a lot. So I felt like I had to give back at least things, like, mind three things, which I could do. But I drive Tesla Model three, and I sleep. So I'm not a guy who's gonna just show up with Lamborghini or Porsche. Do you invest? We mentioned solve intelligence. Before I did that, but now I spend roughly ninety hours a week, eighty, ninety hours a week on Higgs Field. I try to spend ideally at least three hours a week with my wife, at least five hours a week with my son. Sometimes I do the catch up because when I travel for a week, for two weeks, for three weeks, then I try to take Sunday off to spend the whole day with my son. And over the last three months, yes, I was able to find one day when I spent, like, end to end with my son without emails, without talking to without talking to
00:54:07 · Harry Stebbings, Alex Mashrabov
[00:54:07] S1: the team members. I get in trouble for this, but I think there's no shortcut to hard work. The harder I work, the luckier I get. I meet more founders. I find more great companies. I do more shows. I have more success. Do you buy the bullshit of The Balance and, oh, it's okay. You can leave at five and be home for bath time and crush it? [00:54:28] S0: This is a good question. So look, obviously being an immigrant, I always have to prove that I belong, right? I feel like now people accept, people recognize that Hixfield is probably a top 10 application AI companies by revenue and probably number one. But I think when it comes to hard work, the people whom we know in common, we talked about, let's say, Peter Sellis, legend in consumer space, obviously Jack. I spent decent amount of time with them and the other product leaders at Stamp. Like, the density of product talent at Stamp was unprecedented. All of them work really hard. All of them are smart. Like, none of them just checks emails four or five hours a day and calls it work. Each of them is deeply rooted into their recent trends in product, product design, activation. They know data really well. So yeah, I don't believe that there is any shortcut to hard work. [00:55:24] S1: Three hours a week with your wife. I don't know about you, dude. Mine would dump me for three hours a week. How do you make marriage work on three hours a week?