Semil Shah: Apple Intelligence, “The End of Software,” and Where Technology Won’t Go

42:03It does feel like we're entering a new era. and I even think that there are other products and companies that could stand to benefit massively from this ship. I mean, you mentioned Amazon and the Alexas. I mean, you are right. It is not that convenient to do a grocery list on my Alexa. It's not that convenient to order an Uber. It's not that convenient to, honestly, like, it doesn't even always work with Spotify. but I imagine it will be 10 times better if it's powered by an LLM. No doubt, but that's different than the interface or the interface, right? I don't know. What's serving the content?

42:44Yes. What the interface, I mean, I don't really know. Again, do I think something's possible? Absolutely. I'm not saying it's impossible, But when people say fill in the blank can be the next computing platform, I'm generally pretty skeptical. Yeah. OK, I agree with you. I think both things are kind of true. Like, I don't know that voice will be the next platform shift. I do feel like voice interfaces can start to steal away a meaningful chunk of time that we currently spend on screens. I don't think they'll replace them. I don't even think it'll be 30 percent. It might be 5 percent. It might be 10.

43:25But in some cases, it's faster to type and tap than speak. And most people don't speak in true natural language. They actually meander and it's all over the place. That's the beauty of the LLM, though. You don't need to speak perfectly with them. So actually, yesterday I did something that a lot of people have done. You see this on Twitter all the time, but I haven't done it until yesterday. I wired up ChatGPT voice with the action button. You've seen people do this? Yeah. It's pretty cool. it runs in the background i can have my airpods in i can just tap and hold the button start a conversation and uh it was kind of nice it was almost like i was instantly connected to a customer service rep for my life what did you use the action button for so um next week i'm flying to europe and i have a very tight layover in a certain airport going to another airport and And I was talking to my wife about this, and she's like, well, why don't you call the airline?

44:28And I'm thinking, man, it's not going to get someone. It's going to take forever to get through. I'm like, let me just see what ChatGBT has to say about this. And I tried it, and it was a pretty cool experience. I kind of liked it. It wasn't perfect. You know, there were some delays in there, which I think are going to get much faster with 4.0 new voice mode. But it felt pretty cool. and I was walking. I was on the go. So I didn't have to type. I didn't have to look down and type. You know, I was just like, I was on the go. Just having a conversation. Yeah, I think it's possible. I mean, I think if I were to bet then whatever the new little platform is, I think it will be an extension of the hardware we already use.

45:13Yeah, I think I agree with that. And I do think Apple will try to control that. 100%. Did you see how the Apple stock price was down during the presentation? And then the next day, right after Ben Thompson published his take, it like exploded? You think that was all him? You think it was Ben Thompson? I mean, of course, there's always a Ben Thompson effect. But I just like I don't pay. Like, I just have given up trying to figure out like why stocks move up and down. Of course. People are crazy. Of course. But yeah, Ben is a God. Ben is a living God amongst us. He is a living God. Do you read him daily?

46:01Yeah, I mean, I've known Ben a long time. I mean, he and I kind of know each other because we were both like writing about stuff. Yep. And he really, really blew up. I mean, he's just, I've never met anyone in our industry who can do what he does. true and of true and of one yeah the volume of stuff he puts out is crazy like the volume is high and the quality is just insane yeah i mean i think i think ben is truly unique i mean i've thought about this in reading some of his stuff i mean obviously i don't read everything every day but when i do i think of it as like you know in in order for someone to write this post It requires a knowledge of internet architecture and how the internet is set up and works on a protocol level.

46:52Then it's like the knowledge of like application creation and delivery, a legal understanding of like patent and technology law and like the international kind of quote, international relations between these companies and how they compete and cooperate. Yep. That's crazy. And this isn't to demote anybody else, but like all the people who comment on what NVIDIA can be doing or what Apple is doing or Google is doing, Ben is really the only person who you can attribute a stock price movement to. Yeah, for sure. You know, I think you and I might read his NVIDIA stuff and all the top hedge fund CIOs read it too.

47:45Yeah. You know, so it's really powerful. I've really been enjoying his interview series with Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross every couple of them. I don't know how often they do it, but like, I feel like I get smarter from those on all. I don't know. It's just a very good zoomed out view. Yeah. I mean, he's smart too. I mean, he doesn't do that with many people, right? No, no. He won't have VCs on. No. What about Google? Like, what's your take on Google in all of this? Obviously, a lot of people are they've taken a lot of shit, but they're Google. Someone recently pointed out, which I think is like common knowledge, although maybe forgotten is like, I think Larry and Sergey, when they were PhD students, were in the AI lab.

48:28Yeah, I think that's right. So they this is in their blood, so to speak. Right. I think Sergey is like committing code. Sergey's like in the trenches right now, they say. Yeah, I don't think this is like an earth-shattering statement. It's like just the largesse and the sort of plaque buildup organizationally makes it really hard to get going, you know? So do they have the capabilities, the financial resources, the cutting edge, just even like just being around TensorFlow, being around that ecosystem, right? Like they're an amazing position. And, you know, I wouldn't count them out by any means.

49:13So, so I, I think they're in a different position than Apple and probably a good wake up call.

49:23And, you know, I'm not like a management consultant type. Like, I don't know what the right thing to do is, but like, I know they tried to break up Google into like Alphabet to like, like make sure that all the projects sprawl that was there, my understanding, is that there's some accounting for it. And like the CFO, when they go report, you know, quarterly can kind of give shareholders a clearer view of what's happening. I wonder if that needs to happen on an even grander and more intentional scale to release some of these product creators out. Because even if you think about some of the new stuff coming out now, a lot of those people have Google pedigree.

50:08And, you know, that seems like kind of a shame, right? Like if I'm Larry and Sergey, I just think a lot of researchers at OpenAI, obviously the Anthropic folks, the original, you know, Transformers paper, etc. I mean, this is all common lore now, but it seems a kind of a shame that the competing interests inside the organization, there's so many competing interests in so many people that it's not producing the very best of what they're capable of. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess per your point, now a lot of these people have left. They've gone on to start very prominent companies. Maybe we will continue to see that.

50:53It's possible. I do think like, you know, we talked a little while ago about Apple and how they are leveraging ChatGPT, perhaps because, as you pointed out, maybe they can't pull off a GPT-4, perhaps because some of the risks you and I talked about. You know, Google does have that whole stack, right? They have the OS for half of the market share of smartphones in the world, and they do have Gemini, right? And they have the dominant search platform. So obviously like maximum, maximum distribution. I don't know. I think that could be interesting. That could be very, very, very, a very, very formidable competitor to everything Apple's lining up right now.

51:43But of course, people were not nearly as excited about Google's conference a few weeks ago as people were about WWDC just a couple of days ago. Yeah, but people don't have the same like hardware and emotional connection to Apple as it is to Google. you know so i think that that's the proof will be in the pudding like what what drives revenue um what drives the incredible business model right what have you observed about vc um or in the vc landscape in the past couple of months well i think that's why we're gonna experiment with doing this quarterly because I think that is bonkers. Like anything we discussed.

52:22Tell me your observations. I think a lot of VCs have conflated that this is going to be the next thing with, let me just invest in it at all costs. I think as VC firms have gotten bigger, they do need to move more money. And this is a perfect vessel to move a lot of money in right now. I do think that entrepreneurs are picking up on this, some in genuine ways and some in, I think, potentially harmful to the ecosystem ways. Like I was joking with a friend yesterday who mentioned that they were talking to a potential founder who's thinking about starting something. And the founder casually mused to them whether it was easier to raise money for an AI startup or to actually get a job at an AI company.

53:19It's kind of sad. I think there's been a really fever pitch around this stuff. And people are, they're almost getting kind of like Braveheart about it. What do you mean? Just like it's moving from like business and technology conviction into like more religious conviction and, you know, tremendous amount of FOMO. So a lot of it doesn't, a lot of it makes sense to me in the sense that I do think there'll be great opportunities, but, um, there's a huge fear of missing out right now. Yeah. And there's a lot of capital, so it's kind of a perfect storm. How does that end? You know, it's funny, like Ken, Ken Griffin, who arguably is the most successful hedge fund manager in the world.

54:11And he gives a lot of talks. His most recent talk at Milken was a couple of weeks ago. He was even more forceful in his statements than he was in the past. He's very prepared. But he basically said that they've been using AI a lot and a lot of their own computer scientists and developers have been integrating it into their own systems for their different working groups, you know? Um, but then when he goes and asks other companies they're evaluating, um, you know, to invest in or other pitches he takes and he asks them like, well, what have you done? He does, he said he doesn't really get a lot back.

54:49You know, it's a lot of, it's a lot of hand wavy stuff for someone like Ken to say that is, I think pretty interesting. and he also said, and I'm paraphrasing now, that a lot of people feel like the correction in the economy started in the beginning of 2022 and the last few years had been that kind of unwinding, but tech has kind of taken off. I don't want to speak for Ken, but the way I heard his milk in talk was like more that like, we're now nearing the end of the cycle and this could be a part of the end. This, this sort of froth that's happening now. I thought that was an interesting framing.

55:34I haven't sat with that long enough to come up with my own view. And obviously he has better data than, than me, uh, going, but I do think it's a provocative thesis that actually the correction never really happened, but it's, it were on the precipice of it and it could be triggered by this this is like a sort of last last gasp yeah again who knows i mean it could be totally off but i do think it's an interesting comment and provocative because i think most people in our world in the technology world would have said no actually the clock started again in 2022 and then chat gpt and then the anthropic and then yeah that's interesting what are you seeing I think you may have actually put out some tweets about this about sort of the state of seed and A about how well really about A I guess how hard it is to raise A series A and beyond but maybe with the lens of AI versus not AI yeah I think AI is in its own sort of space I mean I don't fully understand that market.

56:49I mean, I think it's very competitive. I mean, you live in there, so I'd love to learn from you. I think we think about things more broadly. So what I see is that if you're a company that's not like a true AI native technology company, and you're trying to raise the next round, everyone's pretty distracted right now. So it becomes tougher. There's two ways to read that, which is, hey, those people will be left behind and the venture market is just fixating on the place where every investment can be a 10x investment or you can say hey that's actually a good place to deploy capital because there's a scarcity capital and attention there and like if you take a 10 10 year view on this stuff like there will be good companies that don't have this as like their core ethos and like they're all being right now right that's like the contrarian bet to make right now if everyone's investing in ai invest in things that are in ai for the alpha there's also just like a price there's like a price thing going on too where it's like you know to go in above 50 million price like at a 50 million price you can you can get a billion dollar exit 20x that entry that's a lot like you know so so i think a lot of these things are just distorting the economics there.

58:14Right, right. So yeah, AI being frothy, valuations being higher for a seed fund like Haystack, the business model maybe breaks down on some of these deals where it just doesn't make sense. Yeah, in a funny way, a lot of what we've done have been AI applications that are very specific and would never be built into a core model. But the reason we did that wasn't because we thought about the landscape and narrowed in on that. It was because those rounds were actually like normal seed rounds. Yeah. The entrepreneur was raising like$3 million or$4 million. And I still think that's a lot of money. you know but we we get desensitized to um how much people need or how much people can raise do you think this current dynamic ends up um having basically like a long-term or let's say like permanent impact on vc altogether like will this change the way the game is played from here on out the the difference today is that you have multiple large platforms that have multiple billion dollar pockets of money to invest globally and so they're playing for the chance to be in the next sales force or you're referring to the lps lps and vcs yeah okay they're paying for the opportunity and chance to be you know a 10 8 percent owner in the next sales force or whatever right and what's interesting is that like the market supports that potential hypothesis like if you look at the trillion dollar companies like a couple of them were started within the last 20 years or so right or one of them just really picked up that market cap in less five to whatever years, right?

1:00:22So could that happen with one or two more companies? Like, can you get a hundred,$200 billion company in 10 years? Like, I think it's possible. And that's a game that they're playing. So they'll all be chasing the things at work to get a spot in that, right? And then the problem becomes is you want to move earlier and earlier and earlier, and keep it captive in the portfolio. So I do think it'll change venture. I mean, it already has because you have these like multi-billion dollar platforms there that now can go attack global markets. And the data is already set, like even in the, again, putting Ken Griffin aside in that correction, what is Datadog still a$30 billion company?

1:01:07It's still legit. So if OpenAI were to go public, right let's just assume that we're going to go public this year would probably be a 50 to 75 billion dollar company maybe more a minimum i mean yeah a minimum right so so that's how lps think about it that you you think they think about it as in you know as an asset class us. it's going to be, you know, 2x, 3x. But what I really want is I'm just hoping this vintage, maybe I end up getting a 20X because of the next OpenAI. I actually just was texting about this with a group this morning. So if you look at, he was sharing like the VC DPIs across different vintages and different size of funds.

1:02:01and most of them are between one and two, meaning like you're locked up in this illiquid thing as an LP for 10 plus years. And in aggregate, you're going to get one to two times your money back, which sucks. I think what sophisticated LPs will say who have a book, diversified book of assets, will say in traditional private equity where I have a control investment, where something's already working, we're trying to make it work better. I can probably get a 2 to 3x net in these funds where my underlying GPs have more control and are investing in improving more mature businesses. But if I want to get a 5x or a 10x, I need to go into venture.

1:02:47and that's why people pile into what they perceive to be the best funds because if you go back to my friend's data and you just take the aggregate it's a dumb decision but if you're able to be in with a VC that you think is properly sized positioned etc then you might be able to get a 5 or 10x not in every vintage but if you back them over a two decade period say they have seven or eight vintages over that two decade period, two of them, you might hit the five or 10 X and it'll cover the cost of the rest. I think that's a game these folks are playing. And because of that, I think what they'll do is some of them will orient towards being in funds that are of a certain size and smaller because they want to drive the multiple.

1:03:34Some of them will say, hey, I'm going to stay with my incumbents, my big multi-billion global platforms because, hey, if I ever leave, I'm not going to be invited back, you know? Yeah. And they're going to be there and we'll kind of ride it out. So I don't know how much it changes per se. I do think this AI wave will put new people on the map too. Like I, you know, in the last time we've mentioned what Dan and Nat are doing of like just separating themselves from everybody else. Like it's so clear, right? Right. You know, if I think about another fund, you know, that should get credit is Menlo.

1:04:13I think they've been very creative and aggressive for a fund their size in the space. It's a bet they're making. Right. I I admire that. I admire when people make bets. Yeah. Clear bets. You know, you're sort of hanging in there for the year when you might get an outsized return. And you know that the cost is that most years you won't get that. And that's okay. Because that's the price of admission. But think about open AI. If you're the university of, you're Harvard University and you have this huge endowment. If one of your underlying managers at exit can own 5 % of open AI, and you look at the cost basis of what you had to pay to get in, you'd want that option versus having Citadel be trading in and out of it.

1:05:11Right. Right. So you're betting on, I always call it flypaper, like you're buying into a fund, that fund creates flypaper, and you're hoping that the flypaper that you're invested in is going to catch a few things per decade. You mentioned Menlo. They're doing things differently. They're placing bets. You mentioned Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. They're obviously doing really interesting, creative things. What about, are you guys doing anything differently at Haystack? Are you playing, you're doing the same thing you've been doing, which clearly has work. No, it's just a philosophy is like people build the companies and technologies and just find interesting people and they'll take us in place we need to go.

1:05:52Yeah. But I've never tried to figure out like where the market's going to go. I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. So same, you know, same strategy and approach to fund size, check size, entry point, you know, generalized, not super sector specific. That's kind of been your bread and butter each and every fund. Yeah, I mean, what ends up happening is if you follow or orient around interesting people, invariably those people will be touching this stuff. And so, you know, some of them do raise huge rounds. Like I, you know, shall go unnamed, but a kid I funded out of college right when I started investing started this huge AI company and raised, you know, big eight figures out of the gate.

1:06:38now we decided not to do that because the entry price was really high and um but we wrestled with it you know yeah and it's a great great person like super brilliant person um maybe we should have maybe we shouldn't have i don't know and how do you think okay now maybe like stepping away from haystack specifically how do you think vcs so well we talked about how like lps think about investing in VC and specifically in terms of AI right now, like how do you think GPs and the funds and the different flavors of them, right? Seed, large platforms, you know, the stuff in between, like how are they thinking about their business models in this moment of AI?

1:07:26Well, I do think there's FOMO cross stage because a lot of VCs are marketing to the ecosystem and founders in their own LPs that this is something they're really excited about and orienting around. But once you start doing that in a couple of years, you'll have to point to, well, what did that yield? and for the earlier funds that means that you have to point to like what are the companies you're in so like an example i use here to describe this conundrum is like if you think back to previous trends that got super white hot um you could say crypto um fill in the blank once you go deeper deeper into a sector and start to evangelize the benefits or the conviction or your interest around it.

1:08:23That'll influence the flow of what comes in and what you put in the portfolio and increase the scrutiny and megawatts and spotlight when people say, well, what's in there? What do you mean? Let's say you're a big believer in climate technology. It could be everything from mitigation to core technologies. And you've built a couple of funds around it. but nothing's really broken out, you know, but it takes longer to break out. People may say like, well, you know, what, what is breaking out? What is working from there? So you always run a risk when you go kind of vertical or sector specific as a VC and especially make that intentionally so public that people will start to ask, well, okay, what's your flypaper?

1:09:14What'd you catch with the flypaper? Yeah. So that's one way that can manifest. Another way is that we don't know if it can go out of favor. Everyone believes this is going to be that way. But what if there is an AI winter? No one has talked about an AI winter. Yeah. Are there still major funds that are not placing bets right now? I feel like I remember like six, eight months ago, it was like, oh, X firm is not betting here. They don't think that AI is an opportunity. Well, I don't want to speak. I don't want to speak for another fund. But my observation from the outside and listening to Founders Fund is that they initially looked at the whole landscape and said, I'm just going to invest in open AI and call it a day.

1:10:03I don't want to deal with all the head trauma of trying to figure this out. And one of their interns from 10 years ago helped start Cognition. So they did the seed round of that. Yep. and now they're probably like well i'll just wait around for something to knock off knock my socks off and until then i'm good yeah don't chase just sort of wait to see if anything like super obvious comes our way if not we already have our bets placed and the 29 entry when they put in 300 that was open ai they they put in 300 at 29 billion got it something like that yeah Yeah. What did, what did Khosla, what was Khosla's entry point?

1:10:41I think it was 500 or so. Wow. But remember, like, I always tell this story about Vinod because he, he really is like in a totally different class of gunslinger. Like when Jack Dorsey was starting Square, I remember, cause this is right around when I was like getting into the ecosystem and people were being like, oh, this guy Jack Dorsey is a Twitter. who's going to start this new thing and, you know, the little reader and all that stuff. And he wanted 10 million out of the gate. People were like, that's a series A out of the gate. Jack wanted 10 million. Jack wanted 10 million. Yep. So, you know, what did Gideon and Binot do?

1:11:19It was like, here's 10 on 40. Crushed it. But that broke a lot of conventional wisdom of like how VCs like to trunch their bets. um with with um with open ai i don't i don't know who would have done that deal at 500 post right because everyone knew everyone knows sam and like sam's super connected he's always going to optimize for exactly what he wants and he usually gets what he wants you know and people are probably like i wonder what yeah but so okay this notion of you know sort of like backing great founders, pre-product, pre-company, whatever. Like that seems like a pretty common thing in VC today.

1:12:03You're telling me at the time of Square, that was not a common thing to write. I mean, Jack Torr is, we're talking about the Twitter founder here. Again, at that time, there were a lot of people who were like, I'll fund Jack. I don't want to give him 10 million bucks to start to do this little hardware reader on phone. Right. You're saying it was hardware. It was like a very, very out there concept. Yeah, I mean, like before Square existed, it did seem, I remember when they announced it, it was like, wait, how the heck can that thing process a credit card? That doesn't make any sense. Plugs into the audio jack?

1:12:35What? It was super sci-fi, actually, now that we talk about it. I don't know. I wasn't around that round, but they, you know, they took the pitch and I think we're probably like, hey, let's, this is important. and let's invest in this guy and see what happens. Yeah, and it seems like he's still doing that, right? I mean, you hear a lot about the node taking these pre-product bets or maybe just very, very early bets showing up at every YC demo day, etc. The thing that's really interesting about him, and I feel like there are a few people in the ecosystem like this, which is one, if you get a meeting with him, there's it's enough of a it's enough of a series of checkpoints where it's probably interesting right then if he's in the meeting because he's wired the way he is right he's got 30 years of experience on top of the success as an entrepreneur and his just energy force field around him right he can very quickly size up like can this person hang in the room with me and that i think is just i mean just very hard to replicate you know and and just the ability to ask questions on the fly and not give a not care what the other party thinks about your questions yeah when i was building anchor we had the good fortune of pitching to him um and yeah i mean highly highly engaged in the meeting um You know, I don't know if he prepped or not, but he seemed like he had thought a lot about or even in the moment was thinking a lot about our business and where it could go, asking really, really thoughtful questions.

1:14:26Definitely impressive, for sure. Left an impression on me, for sure. It's the same thing with people like Mark, where when they've done it and they're operating at a level of intensity and rigor, they can just tell them, am I in the ring with the right person? right oh wait a minute i'm i'm in a different class like call me later yeah haystack has sort of been doing what you know what you all always do i want to talk about this thing you've been saying to me recently which i like and and i'm curious to know where you're actually applying it to your life clearly not haystack and that is opposite george um obviously opposite George classic Seinfeld episode George is doing everything that he normally wouldn't do I do a lot of this and I try to do a lot of this in work and life as much as I can tell me about it you know the personal side like going on this retreat yeah you said it was the first time you'd done it right yeah and a lot of the retreat work at the end is like the integration of it right so it's like the the kind of idea is like when you go into these different meditative meditative or conscious states i mean i don't i don't mean to sound like pie in the sky but the the hope is that like as your brain is quieted down and you think about things and you work in this group conversation about things you want to talk about you have to integrate it because for a period of time your brain is like open to being rewired in certain ways right so in work i would say you know there's been a lot of opposite george which is like um like i'll give you an example like i uh haystack for years has funded a lot of um dual use dod type technologies um explain what you mean by that like one of one of the interesting technology companies we invested in and it's going going through a little bit of a rough patch now but I think should be okay, was a team out of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio that had become specialists in using electromagnetic signals to take over unmanned aerial aircraft and then take it over.

1:16:53So they were trying to commercialize that solution. We've done a ton of these things. But, you know, if you notice now, because of the success of Anderle and other companies, and I think it's a real market, it's become more fashionable and in vogue to talk about the defense market as a market for VCs to invest in, right? Like 10 years ago, a lot of people would have said, you know, we're not going to touch it. Right. That's not the case today. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's one of the most, one of like the hottest areas right now. Yeah. So the opposite, George, for us is I have this draft blog post that kind of walks through how we have done it over the years and how we got there.

1:17:39Again, much more of a follow the founder approach, right? Like, oh yeah, I met this person. Like, I remember meeting Grant, the drone takeover guy in a coffee shop in Palo Alto and just like hearing his whole story. And I was like, you know, I said yes at the end of the meeting right now. I don't know if it'll end up being a good investment or not, but super fascinating company. And I have this whole post written and I think the regular George mode would have been like, well, hey, everyone's piling into this now. It's a thing. It's a thing. Put Haystack out there. Get Haystack in that zone. And actually, I just decided like, no, I don't need we don't need to do that right now.

1:18:25So that's an opposite George kind of view. Are you guys doing a lot of AI? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of the founders we back are technical and curious enough that they're going to include it in what they're doing. And some of them are explicitly focusing on it. So it's either one or the other. One, I would say they're going to use AI to augment some of what they do, but it's not core to what they do. and another recent one like the two next ones that we're wiring one of them is a straight up legal you know vertical application in a medical medical law area for ai yeah i think i'm doing this a bit as well maybe because i've been hanging out with you so much but uh i'm trying to recently just like fight against some of my instincts you know i think for a while even just like getting settled in VC, I was trying to get really specific around my schedule and building my days in such a way that I allocated a certain percentage to this and then to that.

1:19:28And, um, just so I could feel like I was being more productive. And recently, like I decided I'm just like throwing all of that out the window. Well, it's natural for someone like you. Cause you're what, two years in, right? Yeah. And your, your ramp has been amazing. I mean, most people two years in are flailing um you figured a lot of things out a lot quicker so that's a testament to like if you're doing opposite mic or even even sprinkling in opposite mic it's it's good right you should keep doing that for me i think it's more just a reminder that like i do do have to constantly make adjustments and make these decisions and that we you know we make a lot of mistakes and can get trapped in a lot of things.

1:20:13Right. And so I have a whole opposite philosophy, honestly, like I don't take it to its extreme, but a lot of times I'll just kind of be like, I'll kind of say, Hey, a bunch of people are doing this. And actually I like those people and I admire those people and they're really smart, but do I want to do that? Yeah. Resisting the, resisting the impulse to follow the herd. I think it's just like, stop for a minute and say, do I want to do that? Like, I was invited to this like very exclusive tech event. I've been invited every year. You know, I profusely apologized that I didn't want to go. It was going to be a who's who of people there.

1:20:55So for me, just to be seen there would have been great. Right. Job accomplished. And I woke up that day and I was like, I don't want to go. I feel like I'm behind on deal flow. I'm behind on these emails I got to write. And like the day before I was totally going to go. And then I emailed my friend who puts it on. And I just said, I feel really backed up. I don't think I'll be able to like really enjoy the event. I want to give my seat to somebody else. Like, I'm sorry. And, you know, his assistant was like, thank you. And then a bunch of people texted me and they're like, why aren't you here?

1:21:31And I'm like, I don't need to see these people speak. And I was like, I was just too distracted by other stuff. And then I had a couple of text threads with people and they were like, yeah, you didn't miss much. Or like, you know, sorry, I try to do that when I can. Or even around like deals, like we, we lost something recently where the round escalated and like the founder, you know, we met the founder early, but he went and talked to like 30 to 50 people. And I get it. Like it's an overwhelming process, but I try to channel just like, Hey, it's okay. Like he chose different direction, chose to raise big around, kind of broke our model and like, you just kind of move on.

1:22:18Yeah. I've, I've, I've had a couple of deals, uh, over the past year where like, I get really close to doing it. And then fortunately for whatever reason, maybe you advised me or somebody, you know, hey stop for a minute like really think about don't you know pull yourself away from the momentum from the sort of like riptide that's pulling you out to see and just like stop for a second and on a number of occasions i've i've gotten really close and then bailed after taking that moment yeah well you know no no shocker here like one of the best articulations i've heard from this and has always stuck with me is from Belsky.

1:22:59Scott Belsky. Yep. Yeah. When Scott was thinking about joining Benchmark, obviously I was talking to him a lot about that. And we talk quite a bit. And he's like, okay, I'm going to go do it. Okay, great. Then he's in there. And so I'm kind of asking him like, hey, how does it work? Because they're kind of famed for being fantastic pickers, right? And one of the things he said always stuck with me is like, you try to get in a constant conversational flow with a set of people that you admire. You know, it's great. Like we're just kind of helping each other out. But I think creating the time for the subconscious to kick in and guide you a little bit is really important.

1:23:41And if your calendar is full, or you go into all these events, or you're trying to do the hustle stuff to the next meeting, your subconscious will just never be able to have a say yeah and it's all external signals it's like all momentum all external signals and then by the way you've just signed up for a 10 year 10 year commitment yeah what's kind of cool is there have been well there's one time in particular but you know a couple a couple other times um where i do that i back away and then it comes back up and the subconscious actually says no you made a mistake um and that's that's even more powerful i think and and actually in the case that i'm thinking of i won't name the company that was a signal to me that like i actually really needed to go and work with this company and and did end up investing in this company and and now like i'm i'm so glad um Um, so almost like giving yourself permission to have like extended space and see if your subconscious pulls you back in can be the most powerful thing I've found.

1:24:55Yeah. Like one opposite George feeling I have is like investors shouldn't be in meetings all day. Hmm. Yeah. VC. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Like if I were running a big firm, I would want my top people like only, I wouldn't want them in meetings all day. Yeah, no time to think. Yeah, I want them meeting high impact people and then go on a boat ride, like go on a long walk, go play nine holes of golf, whatever it is. Yeah. Past three months since we last did this, slightly shifting away from tech. What content have you been into? You and I have obviously talked a lot about Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm, I think, ended during that time.

1:25:37But what else are you listening to, watching? no well first i need to i need to thank you for the neil brennan jerry seinfeld tip like that i listened to that three or four times it's great i could listen to those guys talk for 10 hours saturday but but jerry's done a bunch of stuff recently but that was 10x better than all the other stuff it was really good it was fantastic so got into that i mean um I listened to a bunch of Rick Rubin interviews. Those are fascinating. His stuff is great. I listened to a lot of Lex Friedman. I know he's a fun punching bag for some people. I think he's great.

1:26:25He's good. The questions are really thoughtful. Yeah. And then weird content stuff is I listened to a lot of astrophysics stuff. It was random. Really? Really? I didn't know that about you. Really? It's just entertainment, you know. Tell me more. What about astrophysics? You know, what actually happened in the Big Bang? Or why did Karl Perlmutter win a Nobel Prize in 2011 for proving that the universe is expanding at a faster rate? Or what happened before the Big Bang? Or like, how did Einstein improve on Newton's theories or equations? Where is this, by the way? this is youtube what is this yeah youtube well i know i know a lot of the people who um who like talk about this stuff often who are like train astrophysicists got it but it's more like entertainment like in the same way i was very curious like i love sports so i don't i don't really care if dan hurley became the lakers head coach but i wanted to understand how the lakers could have screwed up that yeah you're into the storylines yeah yeah i feel like you that you've said that before like you're not a football you're not a fan of any nfl team but you love the storylines is that right oh i absolutely do yeah like yeah the storylines the nfl's content generation machine but yeah um but yeah like the dan hurley thing like fascinating i knew as soon as that story dropped he wasn't going to take it and i'm like i just want to see how the lakers are going to screw this up and it will be amazing to watch this train wreck happen uh and of course it happened so i'll like that's more just like mindless stuff but some of this is like brain clearing stuff versus like you know the neil brennan jerry seinfeld thing i'm really listening to right like i'm really listening to that um the the other thing i've i've decided to do that i started doing is like i i watched chef table before the pandemic and then i i started re-watching it again, because so much of my cooking went to another level in the pandemic.

1:28:36So I'm actually going to like, I've been taking like notes on like, what are the three or five most interesting things I'm getting from each episode? Because I think a lot of it can map back to entrepreneurship. You know, I don't know if you've ever watched that series. I haven't, I'm aware of it, but I paused because your, your, your point about entrepreneurship has me thinking a little bit like okay let me make a connection here you you actually said something to me a while ago you said you read a dinner i won't name the person obviously you can name the person if you want but i won't name the person and you said that they said something like um the reason they love tech or they love working in tech or vc or something is because it's the greatest show on earth oh yeah sure you you remember telling me this i'm sure do you think the entertainment value of tech drives the results of tech in some way tech is highly entertaining right we just we just we spent a half hour talking about wwdc there's a new open ai story every other day elon musk amazing rocket launch the other day we didn't even talk about all the criminal activity in tech but yeah we didn't we didn't talk about any of that stuff.

1:29:54This stuff is entertaining. And by the way, every time there is one of these things, it takes over Twitter. That probably creates some sort of feedback loop for the founders or the people involved. Do you think that the entertainment value that founders, companies, creators deliver, maybe not super consciously, maybe subconsciously, is part of what drives them and therefore drives results? Drives them, yes. That's an easy yes. Does it drive the results? I don't know. I'm a little bit stumped by that question to be frank. I don't have a clear gut reaction answer to that. This word disruptive is used in startups and tech and people kind of hate that word.

1:30:43But let's put the connotation aside. In the last, whatever, two decades or so, what were the disruptive, truly disruptive companies, meaning like they moved other people's cheese, right? So for sure, Facebook was disruptive. You know? Yep. I think for sure, in a very different way, Uber was disruptive. It was literally the one I was going to say next to. And then we definitely have open AI. How are you defining disruptive here? Meaning like you agitate different parts of the economy. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You put people on notice and they get angry. And we're talking about decades, like past 10 years?

1:31:29I'm just saying the past since Zuck in the dorm room in 2004. So it is the greatest show on earth. It's produced these truly disruptive companies. a bunch of people a bunch of companies below that that have driven um this thing and i think it's a disruptive force in technology i mean look at some of the senators out there who are saying crazy things about it i mean this is now getting more political but i just think it's crazy that like in our country we have so many elected officials who were like trying to like openly mock and cut down our best assets like it doesn't make any sense to me you know and it's not to say they shouldn't be regulated or watched in some degree but like i don't know just i i've never been able to figure that out yeah yeah i do think open ai is in that category for sure 100 for sure I'm thinking about all this actually your mention of open AI is what brought me back I kind of feel like it probably the entertainment the entertainment value of tech probably does drive results to some extent bringing it all the way back to WWDC think about how much of these products or these launches happen in these demos in these events and think about what goes into planning these oh this will look great on stage.

1:33:01This will look great when we reveal it like this. They're basically orchestrating the entertainment of these products. Now, the person who said this is the greatest show on earth, he was more talking about startups. Okay. Like if a startup is a spectacular success, it's a great show. If a startup has a spectacular fall, it's a great show. everything in its extremity in this extreme form is a great show yeah the arc of the of the journey it's entertainment yeah it's like why certain companies had you know netflix series it sounds cliche but that's why i go around and people are like oh we've seen we see and i'm like do you realize you have the greatest job in the world like okay what would you do up like what else would you do um putting aside the fact that most vcs couldn't hold a real job in and of itself once they become a vc but like you are meeting the most amazing people uh every day like that's a show this is a good place to leave it there we go this is fun maybe we'll do it again in in three months depending on if the ratings tank now you know although don't don't listen to the rick rubin would say don't don't don't create for others create for yourself right is that what he says something like that samil thank you so much this was a blast sir have a great trip thank you so much for listening to my conversation with samil if you liked what you heard please do us a favor and rate and review the podcast on apple podcast and spotify that really helps and if you haven't subscribed yet make sure you tap the subscribe button so you get notifications every time we publish a new episode.

1:34:53Generative Now is produced by Lightspeed in partnership with Pod People. We'll be back next week with another awesome episode. Thanks so much.