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Dario Amodei’s letter turns AI-risk debate into an operating agenda
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3 min read
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223 docs
A focused set of authentic recommendations led by Dario Amodei’s AI-safety letter, with complementary lenses on agentic work, AI-risk taxonomy, moral judgment, and skepticism about doomer narratives.
Start with the most actionable item
Dario Amodei’s AI-safety letter
Type / creator: Letter by Dario Amodei. Recommended by: Tomasz Tunguz. Access:discussion in All Eyes on Warsh.
Tunguz calls the letter “really wonderful” because it moves the conversation beyond a simple pro-AI/anti-AI split and identifies work at three levels: the individual company, across companies, and internationally.
Why it matters: This is the clearest practical recommendation in the set: a way to turn an abstract AI-safety argument into a map of who needs to act and where.
Two useful lenses on AI
Ben Hansford’s earlier conversation on working with agents
Type / creator: Video/podcast conversation with Ben Hansford, a USC film professor. Recommended by: Reid Hoffman. Access:Hoffman’s recap; the direct episode link is not included there.
Hoffman says he keeps rewatching the conversation because each viewing teaches him something new. He highlights Hansford’s shift from treating AI as a tool to treating it as a personal team, summed up by the line: “a hammer can’t build a bird box while you sleep.”
Why it matters: It is a concrete model for delegation rather than question-answering: give agents a mission and let them return with completed work.
Yishan’s existential-risk versus misuse post
Type / creator: X essay/post by @yishan. Recommended/shared by: Naval. Link:Yishan’s post. Naval’s accompanying frame is concise: if AI is risky like fire, everyone should have it; if it is risky like a nuclear weapon, no one should.
Yishan’s longer post separates existential risk—the possibility that superintelligence wipes out humanity—from risks caused by powerful AI being misused, then argues that the solutions to those two problems may be nearly opposite.
Why it matters: This is a useful vocabulary for avoiding a common policy failure: two people can say “AI safety” while reasoning about different risks and therefore advocating opposite remedies.
A human precedent for judging behavior under pressure
A French village series about World War II occupation
Type / creator: Television series; the exact title and creator are not named in the exchange. Recommended by: Michael Moritz. Access:Moritz’s interview.
Moritz describes it as a “spectacular” French series about life under occupation: some people resisted, most stayed silent, and some collaborated. During COVID-era Zoom calls, he used those categories as a private test of which acquaintances would have had the backbone to resist.
Why it matters: The recommendation is valuable less as historical background than as a behavioral lens—watching how people respond when conformity, fear, and moral choice collide.
A skeptical counterpoint
@Jason’s AI-“bioweapons” video clip
Type / creator: Video clip featuring @Jason. Recommended by: Bill Gurley. Link:clip post. The post presents the argument that AI-bioweapon fears require an “incredible thriller” and are amplified by science-fiction expectations; Gurley called the clip “spot on” and said people should stop listening to such fantasies.
Use this as a rhetorical counterweight to the risk-focused recommendations above, not as a technical assessment: its value is showing the skeptical, anti-doomer case in its own terms.
Dario Amodei’s letter turns AI-risk debate into an operating agenda
Keith Rabois
- Article — New York Post report on Anthropic’s AI watchdog and its ties to effective altruism: Keith Rabois replied “True” to Hugh Hewitt’s characterization of the article as the story that “killed Anthropic’s credibility in ten minutes of reading,” providing an organic endorsement of it as a credibility-critical read.
Tomasz Tunguz
Profile
- Dario Amodei’s AI-safety letter (letter): Tomasz Tunguz called it “really wonderful” for moving the discussion beyond a simple pro-AI/anti-AI split and clarifying actions needed at the individual-company, cross-company, and international levels.
Naval
Naval links to Yishan’s X post while using a fire-versus-nuclear-weapon distinction to frame whether AI should be widely available or restricted. Yishan’s linked post distinguishes existential risk from superintelligence and risks from human misuse, arguing that their solutions may be nearly opposite. Resource: Yishan’s X post
Reid Hoffman
Profile
- Ben Hansford’s earlier Possible conversation (video/podcast episode; exact title and direct link are not provided): Hoffman says he keeps rewatching the conversation because each viewing teaches him something new. He highlights Hansford’s perspective as a USC film professor using AI agents as a personal team rather than merely a tool, including the line, “a hammer can’t build a bird box while you sleep.”
Invest Like The Best
- French World War II village series — video/TV series (title and creator not identified): Mike, a Sequoia investor, praised an apparently six-part series about life in a French village under Nazi occupation as “spectacular.” He used its distinction between people who resisted, stayed silent, or collaborated during COVID-era Zoom calls to assess which acquaintances had the backbone to resist.
Chamath Palihapitiya
- Video — All-In Podcast (data-center clip): Chamath Palihapitiya shared a post framed as “Debunking the data center hoax,” linking to Rohan Paul’s X post, which contains a clip from the All-In Podcast YouTube channel. The clip’s concrete takeaway is Satya Nadella’s Quincy, Washington example: a 400/500 MW data center contributed to a 12× increase in tax revenues, continued economic growth, and new school, hospital, town-center, and aquatic-center infrastructure. Linked X post.
Bill Gurley
Video clip — Jason Calacanis on AI doomerism and “bioweapons”: Bill Gurley called the linked clip “spot on,” endorsing its argument that AI-bioweapon fears are shaped by science-fiction-style fantasies; the takeaway is to stop listening to those fantasies and get back to work. X post
Sequoia Legend Michael Moritz: Steve Jobs, Being an Outsider, and Investing in the Age of AI
Invest Like The Best
YouTube channel
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highlights
0:00The episode with Jobs and Time was so fascinating in your history and I'm sure frustrating for you.
0:06You know, sadly as a result of that really never repaired the relationship with Steve.
0:12Were you in awe of him?
0:14No.
0:15Have you ever been in awe of anyone?
0:18You know, the people that I've known who have done incredible, remarkable things are also flawed individuals. And if you get to know them well, you also see that aspect of it. So seeing that up close makes it difficult to hold anybody in awe because you see the flaws as well as all of their accomplishments and virtues.
0:52When I was reading your book, one of the lines or the ideas that has really stuck with me ever since is where does one person end and the next person begin?
1:03And this deep dive that you took into the impact of one's history, family history, heritage on who a person is.
1:12I'm interested in this from so many angles. as a parent, as a person interested in history, as a person interested in genetics, nature versus nurture, if I were to sum up the book in that question, what what is your answer to that? Like where do you think what did you come away thinking after this deep study of your own family's history?
1:30One of the things that came out of the book uh which I didn't really expect was discovering who I am and why I became whatever it is that I've become. Um, and that was an sort of unexpected gift of of the writing and it came from an exploration of this exploration of my family's past in particular my parents
1:58and um going back and excavating the deep memories of childhood and the sort of atmosphere in in our home and in the general melar in which I grew up helped me understand a lot about why I
2:25am who I am and react to certain things in in the fashion that I do because unwittingly obviously every parent uh leaves an imprint uh on a child and I think that's Um, obviously especially true during the formative years, whatever the formative years are. I'm no sort of child um um um
2:51specialist or scientist, but those uh you know before you turn 12, 13, 14 years old, those imprints that you've absorbed in some manner, consciously or unconsciously, those remain with you. and uh both the um angels and demons I think that you deal with for the rest of your life.
3:17What were yours? So I'm so curious that you're performing on yourself the exercise that you're famous for doing with others that you invested in or hired focusing on these first 14 years?
3:28What what new understanding of yourself came out of this exercise?
3:33Well, I I grew up as as you know and as the as the book talks about in this um family of uh refugees from Nazi Germany and Wales and uh refugees by definition are a minority. U Jewish refugees in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s were a further minority.
4:00And I think if you grow although even if pe you know people look at me today and they think oh here's this old white man um he's not a minority but and and I can understand that but it's how an individual feels rather than how other people might might look at you. Um but I think it touched me in a variety of ways. Um my parents had
4:29gone through these although they were never in the camps they got out they got out of Germany in the 1930s and they were loathd to use the word survivor because they always felt the word survivor denoted somebody who actually had survived the camps but they were refugees and in their own way had survived and that
4:57uh motive to survive no matter what the odds were even though the odds that I faced growing up weren't like my parents I think the uh the need to survive and when when you think about surviving you're thinking about to some extent living by your wits being very suspicious of the motives of others
5:24wondering where and how bad things will occur and happen and guard guard against them. Um I think gives you uh well certainly g gave me in retrospect I didn't understand it at the time um a sort of drive and and grit that I wouldn't have had uh without that uh particular atmospheric backdrop. When you study it and you think about your own childhood, how did that transfer
5:54from your parents to you? Was it the stories they told?
5:56It was definitely not the stories they told because they didn't tell the stories and I didn't really get to know the stories until I sat down and began work on this book. What I did know was the general arc of history obviously and the world you know this miserable ferocious catastrophic whirlwind in which they and millions of others were um caught up but
6:24they they didn't talk about the past in the real detail that I much later when I said you know when I was thinking about the book became uh interested in it was just broad sweeps. So um I think it was much more the daily behavior, the reaction to events, the reaction to things, the sense that uh
6:49the doom was not very far away. Um and uh the fact that um if horrors had occurred in the past um uh there was a real need to be vigilant and wary about um navigating daily life.
7:08There was a couple stories in the book, one in particular where you talk about two separate people, one who decided to stay in Germany and one who decided to leave. It's quite a poignant and interesting on this topic of survivor, you know, outsider early instinct when things are changing to take notice and not not double down and stick around. What maybe tell that story and and explain what you learned from that.
7:31Well, the two the two individuals, Patrick, that you uh referred to were my um grandfathers, my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandfather. I'll start with my paternal grandfather who was a civil servant. He was a sort of lower level judge in the judiciary in Bavaria province in uh in southern Germany. He
7:55had um fought in World War I. He had uh somehow or other survived the horror of Verdon. He had been given his um iron cross um and he was um I think a great believer in the German state and uh in the security that the state offered and
8:22then much later in 1933 he he lost his job. Uh but somehow I think because this is my assessment of the situation because he was um a civil servant. He was by nature conservative by nature somewhat cautious but also had this great belief that in the state and the endurance of the
8:50state and the durability of the state and that eventually the storm would blow over. And he also had a pension and the pension was very important to him as a as a means for survival. And so I think it was a combination of all of those things that he wasn't oblivious obviously to what was happening around him. But it did make him more reluctant to leave Germany I think until it was until it was too late. And people forget
9:20there are there were any even if you decided to somebody had decided to leave Germany there are all sorts of obstacles in the way. You had to find a place elsewhere that would accept you. You had to pay big um um taxes to uh the Nazi government in order to be able to secure your exit visas. So they're all all these sorts of obstacles. So that was my paternal grandfather and he and his wife eventually
9:47uh were shipped off east and disappeared from history. And my maternal uh grandfather was cut from a different cloth. And he he was um again I was too callow as a youth to really understand this, but I knew him as a as a he died when I was about 16. And um he had been a um cattle trader, which was one of the the occupations that Jews were really
10:14permitted u to do in in Germany. But he he was almost blind as a young man and completely blind by the time uh that I met him. But somehow or other had been able to carve out a comfortable living for himself and his family by trading in cattle in a rural village in northwestern Germany. My assessment of him was again in retrospect was that he was more street wise. He was more in entrepreneurial.
10:48He didn't wasn't burdened by the need to remain and collect a state pension because he had always been able to sustain himself and you know look out for his future. and he got out with his wife, my grandmother, but they got out by the by the skin of their teeth. They got out um 72 hours before war broke out. So 72 hours later,
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13:01What do you take from that? Like, what is the big lesson from that instinct, how does that instinct imprinted on you and on the people you you've backed throughout your life and career written about? I'm not sure that it's all that relevant to uh um the people I I've encountered in in this journey through life, but it certainly has had consequences for me, particularly in times like the ones that we are living through at the moment and the atmosphere
13:30that is prevalent to some extent in the US and also um in Western Europe. Um, I think the uh necessity for always feeling that you have a bolt hole, that you have someplace to go if the fire gets too hot. Um, that's the lesson that I took away from my family history saying um that you can never have enough passports.
13:56Do you feel that especially true now?
13:58Yes.
13:59Say say a bit about the state of the world, how you perceive the state of the world. It's an uncomfortable place for minorities, the United States and Western Europe at large. Um, it doesn't matter whether you're Asian or Muslim or or um, black or Jewish.
14:24Um, and you know, I understand understand the reasons and I want to be careful as well. I am not whining about anti-semitism. I'm not complaining about it. I long ago came to terms with the fact that it's just a fact of life. It's been around for 2500 years. It's not going to disappear in 2026 or 2030. It's always going to be with us. And in fact, as we were talking about a few minutes
14:53ago, I think the fact that anti-semitism was around and has been around and it's been something I've been conscious of um all my life or all my sentient life um it's it's made me stronger. But I think uh it's disquing if you're living in a society where you know in America I think my my simplistic way of thinking about who feels safe in America is I think the the
15:23contingent of Americans who feel safe are white Christians who own guns. Everybody else feels a degree of insecurity whether you're pursued by ICE or you go to a house of prayer that um has to be guarded by police to ensure that that that's safe. And that exists in America.
15:45uh it exists in the United Kingdom, in France, in other countries around Europe where far-right governments have um have come to the four and obviously everybody has read about the recent elections in in Germany of a farright party in in the Saxony province and I think in times of economic distress where you have millions of people who've been tens of millions of people who feel they've been
16:14left behind.
16:16That feeling of um despair um can easily be whipped up into a um horrendous stew by leaders with uh authoritarian impulses.
16:31If I force you to put on your optimistic or hopeful hat and thinking about the future as it relates to this problem.
16:38Well, Victor Orin was booted from office and he was riding high a couple of years ago. I think uh in in some places there clearly are pushes to the center which would be uh I think very consoling for people and a return to some modicum of civility uh in the various societies in which you know people like us uh uh us
17:05travel. So here in America, uh clearly the midterms in the next uh and the 18 months or after that are really going to shape how we're going to live in the next decade because the last decade has been there's been the imprint of one person on the last decade in America. I think in uh in Britain, the person who's identified with the far right, Nigel Farage, may well have had his best day and his best day may well be behind him.
17:34I think it's different in France with Marie Le Pen and the elections next year. It's different in Spain and uh it's potentially different in Germany.
17:44Do you think that the internet fundamentally changes the potential for civility and political moderation because it so rewards extremes in in attention?
17:54And I think the three-letter answer is yes. I think it's been true of every form of new media that um from the beginning of the printing press. Uh but obviously the internet and mobile telefanany uh has made it far easier to spread false memes and uh innuendo. Uh but um it's a much larger more um um much more
18:24amplified version of what um occurred in Germany when radio took off during the 1930s and where the radio waves were dominated uh by extreme um propaganda and racist views and loud lies told frequently. M going back to your family's history, one of my favorite topics is this idea that you can learn so much about a person from what happens in their first 12, 13,
18:5214 years. As you said, Carl Young had this great idea of studying the unlived life of the parent. Another way of framing it would be this is a little trit, but you should be like who your father was supposed to be. Like you should live the life that he was unable to or or didn't quite. And that there's a part of that imprinting is um children observing their parents what they're not going after, the risks they're not taking. And maybe running in
19:21that direction is a is a great way to explore.
19:24And back to the point about where does one person end and the next begin like the break from the parents is really important. And so I'm curious how you arrived at this method of yours, this first 14-year interrogation method, like when you first did it and and why you find it so how you do it, like what the method is and and why you find it just so impactful in understanding a new person. I suppose I first came across it um oddly in Detroit when I was a
19:53correspondent for Time magazine and uh with a colleague um I wrote a book about the Chrysler Corporation but more importantly the person who turned around Chrysler at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s and a man who was for a time uh the best known business figure in America even though Today most people struggle to pronounce his last name but he was uh uh
20:23a gentleman called Liia Koka. He was the uh son of Italian immigrants. Um, and in writing this book, we spent a fair amount of time interviewing Ayakoko. And what came through loud and clear was how much as the son of Italian immigrants who'd grown up in Pennsylvania, uh Lee grew up in Pennsylvania, he felt like an outsider and he worked
21:00in the automobile industry and obviously in the upper echelons of the automobile industry where I think uh he was always viewed with suspicion by um most notably when he w worked at the Ford Motor Company by Henry Ford II and the other uh uh people who obviously everybody had im immigrated but who were at some point in their family's history but who were uh much more members of the
21:29establishment and Ayakoka never felt like a member of the establishment and became very clear that all of that stem from his childhood and Um then um I think uh uh as the years went by he began to interpret many of the slights that then fell upon him including not getting the top job at Ford uh to the
21:56fact that he was seen as um as an Italian immigrant.
22:01If you think about the people who have harnessed that outsider energy, a lot of whom you've backed with great success.
22:08Have you seen people graduate out of it?
22:11And and when they do, is their drive and motiv does their drive and motivation go away or suffer? Well, I want to answer the previous question a little bit as well about, you know, you asked why I when I've met various people and various founders over the years, spend so much time on their on their backgrounds. Um, many of these people are only, you know, 20 years old or 21 years old.
22:35You're covering a big percentage. you're not exactly going to be able to ask them about their life in their 50s. So, uh, so it's just natural. It's, uh, uh, to try to understand that. I don't think people grow out of it. I think what happens is that people work with a certain intensity in their late teens and their 20s and maybe their early 30s.
23:01And that intensity for a whole variety of reasons diminishes over time. I think that's what changes. The inner being doesn't change. The outward intensity changes.
23:13When you were asking these questions, was there any one thing or set of things that you tended to be looking for? Was it was it you coming away feeling as though someone had extreme drive and you were No, I I think it's I try to paint when I have some time and I'm not a good painter, but I I I really enjoy it. And when you can when at least the
23:41way that I paint, you make marks in different parts of the canvas and the marks seem unrelated and you know, maybe it's a color blue here and a color brown there and and uh you're putting these marks and dots on the canvas and there doesn't seem to be any composition there whatsoever. And then eventually in my case the picture comes out and it's bad but there's a picture
24:10at the end of it and it's the the um accumulation of all these different marks and I think that's what happens when you're talking to people about their backgrounds. You're looking for these little dots here and then eventually you put together this uh portrait for yourself of the individual.
24:29In searching for those dots did you come to favorite questions that you always found yourself asking? There's one that comes to mind which um I've always found quite invariably found quite revealing is to ask somebody if they think back and had a chance to do one thing differently, one action differently, what is it that
24:57they would do?
24:59And I remember one person we interviewed for Sequoia um who burst into tears when I asked that question. And um it turned out that he had grown up as the as the son of an immigrant here in America. um he was um Hispanic and his father was a you know very proud
25:27to have made it here and that his child was bright, his son was bright and he was getting good marks at school. And this fell probably when he was 12 or so had gone down to a corner grocery store with a pal of his and stolen some candy.
25:46And the shopkeeper who knew his father complained to his father and his father took him by the ear, took him back down to the candy store, made him apologize, made him empty uh uh empty his pockets, and uh the man I interviewed was so chasened, so embarrassed um by um bringing shame upon his family and his father just burst into tears. H
26:16what's your answer to the question? What would you have done differently?
26:21You're a good interviewer. People don't listen to answers very often when they uh when they uh uh interview people.
26:30I think I would have and you know I think every every child of parents feels this in one way or another and I I felt it as I was writing the book that I was embarrassed and if I could erase one thing it would be some of my uh interactions and dealings with my parents which uh I feel ashamed about
26:58today. Uh but there's uh but there's no going back you know I was um you know and I spent the first 16 17 years of my life with them. Um but there were many things probably that I wish and and also when I was a younger man and just encounters with them that I wished had gone differently because I didn't really understand who they were and so be it. Do you think that was mostly a a natural drive to create your own
27:27independence like every child goes through with their parents?
27:30I'm sure that was I'm sure that was some of it. Um, arrogance was probably another part of fail of comprehension of what they themselves had experienced and what had made them who they were, which I didn't understand.
27:48There's this notion of very small deeds in the book. I think the character's name was Anna. Um yes.
27:53Can can you talk about what you learned about the impact of small deeds?
27:58Well, it was more than small deeds. So, um this lady that you referred to whom I knew as a child, uh her name was her first name was Anna.
28:09And uh when my father and uh uncle were growing up in Munich in the 1920s and the early 1930s, every sort of you know middle class, lower middle class household had a u a family servant. Um you know these were the days before washing machines and vacuum cleaners and all the rest of it. those individuals um in these households when children were born invariably became nannies as well.
28:43And uh for my father and my uncle, this lady Anna who was that person in my grandfather's house, she became a surrogate. Uh oh. She was a a nanny and um she was Roman Catholic and eventually um left the employment of my uh grandparents
29:11and she married a railway worker uh in Bavaria uh who was also a Roman Catholic. They built their own house with their own hands and she and her husband offered uh they never forgot the Moritz family.
29:34They in the 1930s opened their house to my grandparents and my uncle and and father at a time when um it became very unpopular to um have Jews come stay in in in rural Bavaria for their holidays. But they did it for as long as possible. They were horrified by the the children, these two. They were horrified by the the
30:03Nazis. They did everything possible to help uh my grandparents and and my my father and and uncle. And then after the war, my because the feelings were so intense between my father and my uncle and this lady Anna, they went back to Bavaria very soon after the end of the war.
30:28and um developed this very strong connection with her until she eventually died. And I remember going and staying in her house and the house and the story of this house features in the book as well as a young boy and surrounded by the specters of the uh of the Nazi past. But this lady um was I think you know what they they
30:57say at Yad Vashem um when they um bestow acknowledgements on all the people who help um Jews and others during World War II. She was one of the righteous and had this ethical compass um that she wouldn't allow anyone else to alter. What did you learn with from these categories of people? I think you called them the resistors, the silent, and the collabos.
31:24Yes. Well, I watched this. This is a spectacular um series that came out maybe 12 years ago, shot in France. Maybe it's a a six series tale about life in a French village um during uh World War II. and how some people resisted the occupation for as long as possible.
31:56Most people remained silent and some became active collaborators uh with the Nazis. And during COVID when we were all on these um long Zoom calls with lots of little pictures of you know 10 other participants that were in the Zoom room.
32:18Um, I always used to look at each individual whom I knew on the whole and I kept asking myself, well, if these people had been living in the French village in the 1940s, who would have stayed silent, who would have resisted and who would have been collaborating
32:47exercise. I didn't tell anybody else about it at the time, obviously, but I could I I knew everybody on these calls well enough to know who had the sort of backbone that this lady that we were just talking about had. And they were always in the minority.
33:02How rare is it? Is it 1% the resistors of the out of a 100 people? Like, how rare do you think that expression is?
33:10I think it's very rare because bad things happen in countries when most people stay silent. Very few actively resist.
33:22Do you think that most of the people that you've back in your career would be resistors?
33:28I'd have to think about that.
33:30I'd like to think so, but I'm not sure.
33:34Can you talk about the role that Bill Deeds played in your life? And I'm always interested in these early moments of activation. And I'm curious when you first felt in life, whether it was with him or or or other at some other time, when you first felt you were really good at something.
33:50I've never felt I'm really good at something. That's not false modesty on my part.
33:55Really?
33:55To this day?
33:56How can that be in face of the evidence?
34:00Well, I think everybody is plagued by doubts and um maybe competitiveness and uh no, I've and everything that I may have done I I uh and it's a failing on my part. I have a very difficult time celebrating good things and uh and celebrating success.
34:25But anyway, back to I want to know why that is. Like why do you given that you're self-aware about it, have you ever tried to I think it's heritage. I think it's uh it's the fact that my mother always felt that disaster was always around the corner and doom was always around the corner. I mean, she died a few weeks before CO and this, you know, my my
34:53mother was the predictor of doom and I remember as a kid growing up, she would have listened to the radio and uh and uh inevitably the talk uh when we're having breakfast would be about some natural disaster that had occurred or um a plane crash or something dreadful around the world. So um in a way she died a few weeks before CO and that was the one of the great disaster I I felt sorry for her in a way
35:21that she missed COVID because this was the disaster that uh she'd been predicting or one of the natural disasters that she'd been predicting all her life. So she was uh she was cheated out of uh out of co but I think it's the that sort of sense of uh being one step away from the precipice.
35:42Have you ever though been proud of a piece of work that you've done or created or fel felt that pride like the emotion of it?
35:51I think I've always felt everything is unfinished and uh could be improved. and none of it's ever been perfect. So, never a satisfied moment. Sometimes when I paint and compare a painting to what I might have been able to paint 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So I see a road to improvement, but then you go to MoMA or the Met and you uh you're diminished a and you're reduced to being an insignificant spec.
36:33What about feeling of pride for someone else, not so much for yourself?
36:38I mean, you've backed some of the most extraordinary people in business history for sure. You've written about some of the most extraordinary leaders, Alex Ferguson, others. Have you felt proud of them?
36:50No, not necessarily. I think I've because I the relationship is different. Um, and so those have been uh voyages of of curiosity where um they're the people who should feel proud of their accomplishments. Uh, not me as a bystander.
37:15I'm so curious about how for someone that's been involved in so many fascinating things, unlikely things, what jumps out as like the highest energy moments for you? Like what what what was what were the things along the whole journey that gave you the most energy? I know you're a deeply curious person, so maybe it's something there.
37:35I think it's family and children and all the moments associated with, you know, and I have Harriet, my wife and I, we have two sons and they're now in their 30s and one of them's got a couple of grandkid. I think it's deeply personal stuff.
37:55Back to Bill Deeds. I lost my train of thought there for a minute. I'm curious the impact that he had on you and I'm always interested in early impact on that people have on others.
38:05Uh so I bet better give a bit of context to you. to build in I grew up in I grew up uh as you know in Britain and when I left college I I really wanted to be a journalist and my goal was to work on one of the big at that point what were called the Fleet Street newspapers that uh this is a long time ago it's 50 years ago that uh everybody read um and there were papers for you know different
38:34sections of uh different sections of the population and I wanted to work on one of the biggest big really well- reggarded newspapers. But there were um trade union rules because the unions had a big clamp on the way in down on the on the on the way in which they held the operators of these newspapers in a in a straight jacket. And one of the consequences was that the newspaper um
39:02editors, they weren't allowed to hire college graduates directly from college because um the fear of the unions was that it would impede their ability, interfere with their ability to hire 16 year olds uh straight out of high school. So the result was that if I'd wanted to go and work on the Times or the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, one of those papers, I would have had to go and spend two or three years working on a small
39:30provincial newspaper. And I just didn't really want to do it. I thought it, you know, I was impatient, I was ambitious and all all that sort of stuff. And I met this fellow Bill Deeds who was the editor of the Daily Telegraph and was a revered figure in uh in British journalism and had actually in an earlier life been the figure on which Eivelyn War had modeled one of the characters in his very sort of famous
39:58satirical novel called Scoop. Anyway, uh, Bill Deeds very kindly responded to a letter that I'd written to him applying for a job at the Daily Telegraph and he gave me half an hour in his office in Fleet Street. And I remember it. It was it was in the it was in the winter. It was raining and um he told me I asked him for advice and he told me that he what he had wished he had done as a young man was go to
40:27America and he encouraged me to move to America and I think that was the most salient I think that really helped propel me um head in this direction. Mhm. So when you arrived here, what was the first big break or big big move that you made that kicked off this?
40:50Well, I got very lucky. I got hired by time, right? and um straight out of school and uh without any work experience and they were as an organization again 50 years or so ago they were very willing to take a risk on a 22y old or 23 year old without any real prior experience and that was my f first big break
41:17the episode with jobs and time was so fascinating in your history and I'm sure frust frustrating for you. What did you learn? What happened? And what did you learn through that episode?
41:28Uh it's a painful part of the past. Um I had this is a maybe two three years after I joined time. I'd taken a leave of absence. By then I was working in San Francisco in the in the bureau there and had taken a leave of absence to write a book about Apple and for a variety of reasons because um the the magazine didn't have room enough to tell the tale of the private days of Apple which is what I was really interested in doing.
41:56And then I was on this leave and I got a call from Time asking me to contribute to a profile of Steve um that they wanted to run in what became a very famous edition of Time which was the computer of the year and uh and I think it was the only time in Time's history where they had picked an inanimate object to celebrate uh for their big annual issue. So I worked on this
42:25profile of Steve. Steve was convinced that he was going to be named man of the year. Um even though nobody had told him that, confirmed it. Yes or no. But worst of all, the profile which he hated for very good reason, I might say, in his defense, and I was appalled by uh for different reasons.
42:52um severed my relationship with with Steve back then at time these things went through an editorial combine harvester. So what came out in the bail at the end probably didn't resemble very much of the straw that got fed in. And so the whole tone of the piece was uh was malicious and and and nasty and
43:20underhanded. And as I said uh Steve disliked it and it was one of the reasons I left time and uh I felt very very disenchanted by by the treatment of it all. And um you know sadly as a result of that really never repaired the relationship with Steve.
43:41Were you in awe of him?
43:43No.
43:44Have you ever been in awe of anyone?
43:48That's a difficult question and I I think it's tilted to uh I'd really have to think about that, Patrick, to get to give you a really considered answer. You know, the people that I've known who have done incredible, remarkable things are also flawed individuals. And
44:17if you get to know them well, you also see that aspect of it. So seeing that up close makes it difficult to hold anybody in awe because you see the flaws as well as all of their accomplishments and virtues.
44:31Why were you not in awe of Steve? It seems like he's the person that the most people in our world were in awe of in living memory.
44:39I think I was I I want to be careful here because I respected him. I admired him tremendously. Uh I was well aware of the fact that he had achieved things uh later obviously as well that I couldn't ever possibly have accomplishment. But I think I I knew some of the um darker shades of him which made it difficult to hold him up as a as
45:17an object of unaloyed admiration, but but I you know I he's a heroic figure obviously. What's the role of monomomania in all of these character studies? And I'm curious to tie it back to this idea of the outsider, you know, the well survivor.
45:36You you see it now I and this this goes in generations. Um the monoomania when it I think when it comes to creating anything of value, it could be a piece of music, it could be a book, it could be a painting, it could be a company, complete obsession with the topic at hand and locking out the rest of the
46:03world and eliminating every unnecessary distraction I think is uh what uh and I think those are and again there are downsides to this people get hurt along the way uh there isn't enough time for families or others or friends uh because of the monomomania that you refer to and uh but then great things sometimes come out of it
46:32is the primary cost of monomomania relationships typically I suspect the the answer is yes. Or maybe for some of these people feeling that um they may have like lived life differently if they had to live it over again because there were consequences to this to this monomomania. But yes, clearly uh relationships. Elyn War this
47:00you know people don't really know him today but a very famous um author British author um who was capable of writing 10,000 words a week with ease um which 10,000 good words not rubbish. Uh he said the um the greatest enemy to to good art is the sight of the pram the stroller in today's parliament is the
47:30sight of the stroller uh in the hallway.
47:35What about Frank? Is it our painter?
47:37Mhm.
47:38Was he a mono maniacal?
47:40Frank Frankach has never got the recognition in this country that he deserves. although there's a retrospective of him coming here in the next two years to uh and to very significant museums around the country here. So he was a um a refugee uh from uh Nazi Germany. Um he died maybe 5 years or so ago and I didn't know him
48:07well uh but I got to know him a little bit and he was a complete um obsessive completely uh completely obsessed with his art painted every day except he treated himself to a day one holiday for many many years he treated himself to one day off a year and every year he'd go to Brighton where there's a famous pier, it's on the south coast of England, and take the day off
48:36on Christmas Day. Every other day of the year, he he worked. And I remember once talking to him, his wife had uh a house out on the English coast. And I I asked him once at a dinner. I said, "So, do you ever go out and visit Julia, your wife?"
48:56He said, "I've never been to the house." And then now this is probably 10 years ago. We we were chatting and I you know he was asking me where and we were talking about New York came up and he said I love New York City. I just love it. It's so bustling with energy and going to Time Square and all the rest of it. And so this conversation was maybe in 2012, 2013.
49:30And so I said, "Oh, Frank, when was the last time you were in were you just in New York when?" Because Oh, yeah. I went there in 1967 and he had this routine where he had and I knew some of these people who posed for him or know some of these people that actually I think that all of his subjects are still alive. They posed for him once a week. He had this regular codery of sitters and he painted these
49:58same individuals uh for his figurative work over the course of 30 40 years. And there's one of the subjects who lived in venice of all places who once a week flew to London for his session with Frank because I think the sitters found it like therapy uh sitting for Frank. uh but he'd go into an utter meltdown if the if the sitter was late. And then similarly with his landscape paintings,
50:26he painted the same landscape over and over and over again interpreting it. But he he lived for art and really there was no time for he had a son Jake um but there was no time for anything else. Do you get more energy from monoomaniacs?
50:50You spend a lot of time around them.
50:52Do you prefer being with them over dilons like yourself?
50:58It's nice to have a mixture of friends and acquaintances, some of whom have tied themselves to a particular mast, others who are prepared to wander around and live life more casually. But I've always found it difficult more difficult to be around people who and I like them and enjoy being with them but who appear to be doing nothing. Vanta automates compliance so your team can spend less time on security reviews and
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52:50What did Don Valentine see in you and what did you see in him? So Don was the uh founder of Sequoia and um he took a risk on me uh in the around 1985 and um hired me to join Sequoia when Sequoia was a very small firm. I mean, uh, we're sitting around this, uh, this table here in in in your studio and, uh,
53:20it's probably large enough to accommodate, uh, all of the people who work for Seoia at that point and I was a journalist, had been a journalist and but wanted to get into the venture business because I'd become interested by it and had met some of the people who were running these firms, all of which were very small at the time, and uh, had written to five of them. This was in the days when you didn't send emails, you actually wrote letters and uh had gone to see each of them. They were kind
53:50enough to give me some time.
53:52All saved on said uh we don't really know what to do with you because you don't have a technical background. You you know, you didn't you don't have an engineering degree of any sort. Um you don't really have any technical knowledge. uh you don't have any work experience in a in a Silicon Valley kind of company and you know you've been a journalist um so maybe you should go and find a role in public relations or
54:22marketing or something like that which was not exactly what I wanted to do and um and Don was more willing to take a risk and the reason was uh fairly straightforward because he had seen uh people that he expected because they had big uh uh um operating backgrounds in technology companies. A few of them come into the venture business and not be very successful. And then he was aware of some who had carved out very
54:52successful lives as investors. There was a fellow called Tommy Davis, I think, who started a fund called the Mayfield fund. There was um another guy who'd been an insurance accurate actuary, but the the one that um Don pointed to more than anybody else was a gentleman called Arthur Rock who just celebrated his 100th birthday. And Arthur had organized
55:19he was um banker, commercial banker or investment banker at a small boutique here in New York called Hayden Stone. This is back in the 1950s.
55:29He had had the moxy to organize the original breakout and financing of Fairchild Semiconductor. And then in the 1960s, people won't know the names anymore, but um he had helped finance Taladine um scientific Henry Singleton, right?
55:48Huh?
55:48Henry Singleton. Henry Singleton and scientific Henry Singleton who later became one of the early board members at first board members at Apple um uh scientific data systems and then became the chairman and original investor in Intel day one and then a few years later backed Apple and Don said look there's nothing in his background that would have suggested he'd be successful and uh
56:17so that was the That was the main reason.
56:20And what did you see in him in the early days? Like what a job.
56:26What did he teach you?
56:29Um John uh Don didn't believe in teaching. Uh he he he believed in throwing people into he had a survivalist instinct. Uh so he just uh believed in uh tossing people into the deep end and and and see if they drowned. But um I learned a lot by observation and listening and um good things and bad things. And uh uh there was another
57:01gentleman at SEOA uh named Pierre Lamond who was a very formative who was a uh played a huge role in the rise of the semiconductor industry. Um, and he too was uh was something of an influence, but it was being in the middle of that meure and watching good things happen and bad things happen and gradually trying to form my own opinions about things.
57:30What do you think it teaches us about early stage investing that a journalist with no technical ability and no work experience can be one of the best investors of that type ever? Well, the venture business that I got into way back when is very different from the venture business today. There aren't many parallels.
57:52I don't know that I would flourish in today's venture business. It's for a whole variety of Why not?
57:59I think it's become much more much more difficult. um we had a lot of or we had a variety of um benefits um back in the 80s and '9s I think that began to dissipate maybe 15 16 years ago that don't exist today uh one of them being uh imperfect information so the pre- internet unless you were very close to things you didn't know what was happening today
58:32because the internet and some of the stuff that we were talking about earlier, everybody around the world knows exactly what's happening. Everybody's got access to the same information on, you know, more or less the same information.
58:42So, that's number one. Number two, um there just so many more entities of all stripes, individuals, two or three people banding together in a small firm at the other end of it, huge mutual funds pouring money into it.
58:58that the very early stage private market is is very very different. And so 40 years ago, 30 years ago, it was possible if you were an individual to form a relationship, a real relationship, close relationship with the people that you were getting into business with. That doesn't exist today. Um uh particularly for uh for a venture film, there just too many intermediaries in between. And so I
59:28I'm not sure that um the luck that I had back then and I was also catapulted right into the middle of the one place in the world where all of this stuff was happening. And so that's a huge competitive uh advantage too. So I'm not sure that any of that uh translates today. I think uh you know moderately intelligent 14 16 year old uh who had his or her wits
59:58about him would have been able to succeed in the venture business in the mid80s.
1:00:01Do you think the ecosystem is healthy today?
1:00:04I think it is if you're a founder pretty good. I like the quote that you've said often that your favorite investment was.
1:00:12What was going through your head as you took it over? not to screw it up. And you know, the sequoia that was around in 1995 was very different from the one that was around when I sort of stepped down in 2012, 2013. Number one was not to screw it up.
1:00:36Number two was um to ensure that everybody who worked there felt that our we're only as good as our next investment and that we couldn't rest on the laurels of the past.
1:00:53Uh and then number three um you know take advantage of the new market opportunities that uh that began to occur. And so whether it was um eventually you know going overseas as um as Silicon Valley's share of startup activity though still obviously the best place to be uh became smaller.
1:01:19So first of all we went to Israel then we went to most notably to China and then uh started another business called Sequoia Heritage which is a very different business and I know Kevin well he's an incredible talent.
1:01:38Yes. Yeah. Very much so. And Keith and our small and mighty heroic investment team there. Um but number one was uh and and I think the other thing that I I don't want to sound like Jon of Arc here. I felt doing right by our investors was really important and most of our investments and investors were not for profits and I think making sure that
1:02:20we perform well for them and if we didn't perform we I didn't want to be in a in a business where if we didn't perform perform well.
1:02:32We still got paid very handsomely. I just I think that's part of the problem with a lot of the aspects of the financial service providers of all sorts of different forms and it has been for a long time which is that the firm that provided as well but their clients may not you know may as may have done as well just investing in an index fund. When I did this with Doug, he told me the story of that one fund that you fought so hard to
1:02:59get back to par over 10 years or something like this.
1:03:02Right. Right. And we we could have said to investors, well, um, look, you've had a lot of good times with us and you've just got to uh accept the fact that you've got a fund here that isn't going to make any money. And, you know, I certainly wasn't wired like that. It was a matter of pride. What did you learn about working with someone like Doug that was so different than you, but you had such a fruitful
1:03:31partnership?
1:03:32Tolerance anymore.
1:03:37I think you have to adjust to other, you know, when you're trying to work in a team, you have to try to understand what the other people around you need. what's important to them and feed that need um with people who are wired as as you said very very differently and uh
1:04:13I think I think uh I think that's the most important thing I've learned about you know building a team or leading a team uh is to and I think today I'd be much better at it than I was 25 years ago, 30 years ago. Uh but and I learned a lot of that actually from the way that um I did this book maybe 10 11 years ago with a famous soccer manager.
1:04:39I was just going to ask about Alex, Alex Ferguson. And I think one of his great skills was the ability to understand what motivated each of his individual players.
1:04:52How did you see him do that? I know he was famous for preferring players with tough upbringings.
1:05:00I think I think he he knew I think he and 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 he managed.
1:05:18But 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 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. Um and uh there was an incident I remember
1:05:47I forget which year it was but David Beckham had been playing for England uh in a World Cup competition where he got sent off and and the British press was merciless about u Beckham's perceived stupidity and Alex went to meet him at the airport uh because he knew he needed an arm around his shoulder. uh those sorts of things, little things that happen out of sight. People aren't aware of them. There are no cameras around.
1:06:20Do you think you were so interested in him for almost like autobiographical reasons? That description kind of sounds like you.
1:06:27The the reason No, I think he's much he was much more skillful at it than I was.
1:06:32Um the reason the book came together was this that you know um 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 an inter a business that endured for ourselves for Sequoia because there are all these tales of venture firms that had a a period in the limelight and then blew up for whatever reason. the founders killed
1:07:01each other or the you know the partners killed each other and they all split up and it all became ugly and then um also the byproduct of it uh being what it took to have an enduring standalone company that a firm like Sequoia could invest in and I didn't want to do that through a Silicon Valley lens and there are enough books about Silicon Valley and but so I was casting around for a company that had or for organization
1:07:30that had flourished over the course of multiple decades. And um I'd been a bit of a fan of Manchester United Football Club um since I was a kid. And here was this manager who took them over I think in 1986 and retired in 2013. and he took them over when they're in bad shape and then established a record over multiple seasons, 26 seasons
1:07:57of astonishing success that'll be almost impossible for anybody to duplicate. And so we had a PR guy who wor 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 and Ghost wrote the book and this fellow said to me you know I can't tell what's you and what's Sir Alex and I said
1:08:26precisely do you believe in the great man theory of history and 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 SEOA and I'm also pulled to people of course like Elon who you were an early backer and and and partnered to and X.com how they shape history and it seems like we might have a few world historic
1:08:54figures alive and operating today. What do you think is the balance of shaping history between the indiv these world historic people great great men and women and enduring institutions?
1:09:08The the short answer to the question is I'm a great believer in the great the great person theory. all these people that we've talked about whether you just referred to Elon or we were talking about Leia Koker or Steve Jobs or you go into the political realm or the field of battle. It is about great leaders. Great leaders.
1:09:33And obviously there are some terrible authoritarian figures that have cast black shadows over 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 uh
1:09:59on what is around uh him or her. and uh capable of on the good side of it, not the dark side of it. Uh persuading others to achieve what's perceived as impossible. U yeah I'm a huge acolyte of that theory.
1:10:23Do you think Elon is the great exemplar of that today?
1:10:27Yes, he may well be the greatest industrialist in the history of America.
1:10:34What would you say about him?
1:10:36I don't know that I have anything to add uh other than it's impossible. Anyway, uh it's impossible for me to understand how one individual has been able to achieve what and I know he's a controversial figure, but I I'm just looking at him through the lens of um through the lens of history and through an investor's lens. And I'm just uh they have this phrase in in Britain called gobsmacked.
1:11:10And uh I I I'm completely gobsmacked uh by the scale of his achievements in uh a variety of different industries which is the thing that sets him apart from others. What do you make of today's prevailing technology environment and how this changes all the things we've talked about? Like it seems as though uh one of the other PayPal founders told me recently that he thinks people like Elon and other great entrepreneurs will probably do more things, more than one company, expand out of Monomomania
1:11:38because all these tools give them so much leverage. Do you think that this is like a a true tear in history that we now have intelligence? I I don't know the um if you go to China, you will find that 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
1:12:06imperial ambitions and the creator of a company is along the way or they take their one company and convert it into look at Xiaomi um that manufactures is these cars today that exceed the quality and performance and other attributes of Porsches but began in 2010 as a phone maker. There's an Android licency I think. So yeah, I think creative people or these
1:12:36rare rare people armed with this extraordinary selection of of power in the tools that are at their fingertips or at the fingertips of the people who work for them, they're going to be able to do a lot more in the future than somebody might have been able to do in the past. What is your model of this technology like as a observer of it and I'm sure interested how do you tell your family about it and what it will mean?
1:13:04Well, we don't talk about it.
1:13:06Well, not very much. I mean people people will always ask me but I'm not a technologist. I'm not a AI sus.
1:13:14But 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, you know, Instacart or something that the world was built on.
1:13:28Yeah. You're being too generous. Um, a lot of data points. I I didn't I didn't think now I think a lot of other people didn't think it as well, but I had uh 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
1:13:57beyond comprehension. uh I remember u many years ago you know this was at the dawn of the internet or probably after the dawn of the internet and Tom Seel who started well-known entrepreneur and um had been seen as a very successful entrepreneur I remember him um wistfully saying one day um well and you know his company had sold for whatever it was $10
1:14:24billion and he said very wisfully that was back when 10 billion ion dollar was worth a lot of money. And today you look back and you say whether it was Facebook's IPO or or Google or that was back when a hundred billion dollars was worth a lot of money. I think the idea that you can have a six-year-old company worth trillions of dollars. Nobody would have imagined that.
1:14:45Are you mostly excited about this technology or scared or both? I don't spend a lot of, you know, I read read what everybody else reads and uh have heard the boogyman of pine and uh I think I'm probably a bit more hopeful than than others. Um if you go back to
1:15:13and I don't mean to 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 almost a century later, close to a century later,
1:15:41and that hasn't occurred. Or if you think about the if you read all the stuff from the mid 1970s about the genetic revolution and how um uh there were going to be scientists creating legions of uh uh individuals um that they deemed suitable to walk on the face of the earth. That hasn't occurred either. So, and today even though I I'm absolutely certain that there's going to
1:16:08be enormous disruption uh in particular job sectors caused by AI, I think that um it's going to create more jobs than are going to be uh going to be lost. And uh there hasn't been and again 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
1:16:38um lower employment in the long term. I mean there've been depressions and uh massive disruptions in sectors but overall employment has grown and so so I'm a little more optimistic. I think there'll be a lot of jobs that get created that we uh we couldn't categorize today because AI produces prodigious amounts of new text and writing so easily. I think the value of
1:17:05extraordinary writing is going up. That can cut through the sea of slop.
1:17:13How would you define extraordinary writing having done quite a bit of it yourself?
1:17:18Well, again, you're too flattering and kind about that on that on that particular topic.
1:17:25It's hearing the unmistakable voice of the author.
1:17:31How do you do that as a writer? I think it's the same with the journey through life toughest thing I think for an individual is to be 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 lit. 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.
1:18:14Joseph Campbell said, "The privilege of a lifetime is becoming who you are, but also that that's the hardest thing to do."
1:18:20I 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 um put things down on paper.
1:18:32Is there a moment in your own life that was the most important in becoming who you were? Like the hardest part of doing it if 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.
1:18:47I don't think I've done it.
1:18:48Why not? What's the barrier that's left between you and who you are? Oh, I think I'm I always have been. It's one of my weakness, one of my many weaknesses. I've always uh been too prone to um live up to the pressures or expectations from the outside or from others than to um let myself run free.
1:19:15Is it a goal of your the remainder of your life to do so?
1:19:18I'll try. I'm so struck by how like unbelievably self-aware you seem, but then you sort of have like uh you're giving yourself poor grades that seem like objectively wrong. What What is that? I'm just still struggling to understand.
1:19:39I I don't know. Maybe it's the Maybe it's the spectre of my mother.
1:19:44Can you say more about her?
1:19:46We didn't talk too much about her other than her doom prophecies. Uh she she was you know I owe like everybody does I owe her many things and she aroused my interest in art and variety of things but um she would always find fault and no matter how good things or what I had done um
1:20:15she would invariably. Uh, you know, she was convinced. I remember there was some newspaper coverage years ago in Britain when Yahoo became public and somehow, you know, I got a I there were some stories about me in the British press. I mean, she was convinced I was a crook.
1:20:43She was absolutely convinced that the police should come for me because there was no possible way that I could have participated in anything like this um that could possibly be legal.
1:20:56Does that hurt? Did that hurt?
1:20:59No, it was uh by that point I was more amused by it than anything else. So early did it hurt that that nothing you did was you know satisfied because it was it was just a fact of life and yet it seems to have you know echoed.
1:21:17Yeah. Yeah. Well as you never get the boy out of the man.
1:21:23What is the experience of stepping back from Sequoia because you were sick been like? Like what has that taught you?
1:21:31Well, it's allowed me to do well, first of all, I think I don't think uh leaders should stick around. I think uh if they have decided for whatever reason not to lead, they've got to get out of the way.
1:21:44So, I went cold turkey even though people didn't think, you know, I tried to help Seco in what ways I could and was involved with a variety of companies, but it was as a individual contributor. Uh but it was not as leadership. I got out of there as quickly as possible because I didn't think it was fair for um someone to linger in the those sorts of meetings. I'd lived through that myself and uh and and so it's allowed me
1:22:11to do things that um I wouldn't have had I wouldn't have I mean when I was running Sequoia it was talk about monomomania and obsessions. I mean that was it. It was everything every single day of the week. And uh so it allowed me to do things and you know I I I could write I could uh uh and my wife and I started well we started it about 25 years ago we started a foundation so we spent more time on
1:22:41that. In recent years, I spent u more time on um trying to help um San Francisco, which is where I've lived, you know, pushing 50 years, not quite, but uh to turn around and and flourish and along with a wonderful co-founder, Griff Gaffne, um I started a media business there as well, uh which is fun and um I hope contributes to the the
1:23:10life of the city called the San Francisco Standard and and then I'm involved with what used to be called Sequoia Heritage in a sort of advisory capacity. So there's plenty of stuff to do and um which is fulfilling and unfulfilling at the same time because while there are whole variety of things, it's not the obsessive monomaniacal focus on one thing.
1:23:34Do you miss it? Yeah, there are aspects of it, but it's all I miss aspects of it, but I know full well that I would not want to return to that way of life.
1:23:45Is it the flow state of it that you miss the the feeling of total immersion and sort of like forgetting yourself?
1:23:51Maybe I get that when I'm painting. It's simpler. It's a simpler life. You don't have to make decisions about how you allocate your time because your calendar is commanded by some other force.
1:24:06Uh the difference between having your com calendar dictated by others and being in complete control of your calendar yourself, it's night and day.
1:24:17What's your hope for the standard? What are the principles that guide it? Griff and I didn't set it up as a not for-p profofit because what we one of the things that we wanted to do was to show that local journalism can be a profitable business. Number one. Number two, it's to have a vibrant um interesting diverting uh but reliable uh source of information for people in San Francisco and the great the greater
1:24:47bay bay area uh for people who care about um um that sort of stuff. And number three, I've been very clear from day one that um you know, news coverage um there's no proprietatorial thumb on the scale when it comes to news coverage. If you know I've been in some of the stories in the standard, I've been mentioned and referred to in ways that I wouldn't
1:25:16you know necessarily write myself, but so that's fair game. But in the ideas and opinions area, it's center of right of center. And that's that's what this um this is. And that's a much needed voice in San Francisco.
1:25:33As I as I think back to the book and I put it down and and wondered about okay, what what's going to last in me having read this, the thing I keep coming back to, it's obviously selfish and context dependent is parenting. And you know, I have two young kids who are in their zone of they're 12 and 10.
1:25:51Yeah.
1:25:52Um so that you know, they're approaching that end of that window where uh you know, you describe them as being imprinted and the damage they're impaired for life.
1:26:03I So I wonder if you turn the whole exercise of exploring your own history and your family's history into how to think about the role of parenting. I'm curious what comes to mind. I think it's to arm the children with confidence.
1:26:19Simple as that.
1:26:23By doing what?
1:26:25I don't know. I've I'd have to think hard about the handbook of parenting. Uh but I think it's to instill that feeling of self self-confidence and freedom. and to try as a parent not to be sensorious.
1:26:53Do you think also thinking about the book that an important lesson is that we cannot take progress for granted, positive progress?
1:27:04History is littered with examples of u terrible things that happened over periods of time uh for millions of people all around the world uh Russia, China, Iran, um Africa, uh India.
1:27:26There have been terrible things that have happened over the last thousand years and I think there's very little that separates the human from the beast and it's remaining human and not becoming the beast that is everybody's challenge. How do you think you were most changed by the
1:27:54exercise of studying your family and writing the book?
1:27:58Understanding myself a little better.
1:27:59A little better. And in the final analysis, what matters?
1:28:04I think it's two things. I think it's relationships with the people that you care about and knowing that we're all completely insignificant no matter what the individual has accomplished. trying to leave things a little better uh than uh than they were um before we got before any of us got engaged with it.
1:28:34If you had to write a next book, what topic piques your curiosity?
1:28:40I've been playing around with this idea, which I don't know if I'll ever actually get around to writing, but I've been reading about it a fair amount. I'm very interested, weirdly, uh, in Iran, Persia of the 1940s and the collision of individuals from inside and outside Iran. That explains so much about the world we live in today. And I think what I've been thinking about is not non-fiction, but a blend of fiction and non-fiction.
1:29:28Now, as I said, I don't know if I'll ever get the um narrative and the structure and the composition right, but it's the I think what happened my view of what happened has happened in Iran is it's this collision of personalities from very different backgrounds in different parts of the world that have
1:29:55failed to understand each other. And it's pretty fascinating.
1:30:01One of the great things about your thinking and writing was how short some of the very famous memos and things were. Your what could go right understanding for a company like Stripe where I understand the memo is was quite short. If you were to write I'm curious about that notion of compression and the power of compression. But if you were to sort of write something like that about the state of the world and give it to your grandson or something today, you seem so good at identifying like the things that matter that will determine where things will go.
1:30:30I know that's a big question, but again, you're too kind. Um, for me being able to boil and and I don't have a good answer to that question, Patrick. I'm I'm sorry. Um, but for me being able to, and it's part of the training as a journalist, it's part of what I learned at college, uh, being able to distill
1:30:59things to their essence, uh, and keep it very short, um, I think, uh, has stood me in goodstead over the years.
1:31:13Can that be taught? Seems like more valuable than ever. so much information and bombardment.
1:31:19I don't know. I think it depends a lot on reading and um I listen to I I think it's it's hard when people are fed a diet of a limited vocabulary and uh not not to single well I suppos I am singling him out but if you do these
1:31:47studies of the vocabulary of presidents of the United States. Trump's vocabulary is by far the lowest. And I think he's got a vocabulary of about 2400 words. Obama was maybe 4,500 words, common vocabulary. And I think having a huge vocabulary at your fingertips that you can select from allows you to express complicated ideas in a simple manner.
1:32:22I love the book. I loved our conversation. I've loved all your writing. Oh, you're uh you're far too kind and flattering and gracious and um the questions have been, as you can tell, thoughtprovoking and wonderful.
1:32:39I ask one final question every time I interview someone. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?
1:32:46Marry me.
1:32:50So beautiful. Simple. What have you learned from your wife?
1:32:55Tolerance.
1:32:57Common theme. Mike, thanks so much for your time.
1:32:59Thank you.
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpQBb0fToph3jrDulwz1iUQ
- French World War II village series — video/TV series (title and creator not identified): Mike, a Sequoia investor, praised an apparently six-part series about life in a French village under Nazi occupation as “spectacular.” He used its distinction between people who resisted, stayed silent, or collaborated during COVID-era Zoom calls to assess which acquaintances had the backbone to resist.