Dear Graduates: we’re sorry about the Schmidt speech

0:05Today on Great Chat, we're talking about commencement speeches. In the wake of Eric Schmidt's disastrous AI pitch at the University of Arizona, we break down what went wrong and walk through some of the great counterexamples from recent decades. More broadly, has the art of speech writing been lost in this age of clipping? I'm Helen, and this week, it's me and Ashley. Great Chat is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking loved by over 300 ,000 entrepreneurs. We use Mercury to run this podcast and love recommending it to other founders and fund managers. It's free to get started.

0:37Try it for yourself. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Hey. Hi. Just the two of us this week. How cozy. Just the two of us reminds me. Do you see the SNL cold open? I did not, but now I have the, Just the Two of Us song in my head. Is that related? It involves that, yes. It ends with Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump singing that. So I've had that stuck in my head for a couple of days. It's funny you said that. I'm such a millennial. My brain goes to Dr. Evil and Mini-Me doing The Two of Us in Austin Powers. I apologize to our Gen Z listeners who might not get that reference.

1:17Oh, man. And if you ever look me up on Quora, I do answer a series of questions about Austin Powers. A fun fact about me. Really? Slightly obsessed with the Austin Powers series. Anyways, moving on. Wait, me too. I was like Ivana Humpalot for like Halloween when you're at Box. Like it extended into my 20s, which, you know, very corporate, appropriate Halloween costume. and that just really is a sign of the times when it was like sort of anything goes in that startup era. Okay, bringing it back to the present day. We're recording this on Tuesday, which means yesterday we got the verdict for the Musk versus Altman OpenAI trial.

2:06And it's funny, it was like the most boring possible conclusion, but I kind of felt like it would be. Like, I don't know. I I don't know. How are you feeling? I didn't think like, oh my gosh, this is the beginning of the end for Open AI. I mean, the stakes were really high, but it just felt kind of impossible that Elon was going to win. It did not seem impossible he was going to win. He's had so many at-bats, like going to trial, filing lawsuits, you know, losing, but winning and, you know, losing, you also learn a ton of things too, right? And this was very new for Sam and the OpenAI team, which is a pretty new team.

2:41And so I actually don't think that it was like a foregone conclusion. And the reason why people were like sort of on the edge of their seats is because they really didn't know which way it was going to go. But my husband is a litigator. And I was like, this was the outcome. And he's just, he's like, ha. And I'm like, what? Do you think that was the strategy? And he's like, yeah, that was probably the strategy because you just go for like the least muddy, least messy path. And so if the OpenAI team decided that that is the most like black and white clear case, right? That's what they're going to go for.

3:17Now, the reason why as people who did not go to the trial, right? And watch it, but followed it, you know, on Twitter, we were surprised is because that strategy is boring, like you said, and it's never covered. It's all the little this and that and the story arc and the characters, right? Like that got covered to death. So we started like obsessing about those things and the drama. And so this sort of felt like a surprise, right? But I think it seems like it was pretty, pretty intentional and deliberate on opening eyes part. So good for them. Oh, yeah. I mean, I actually saw some commentary that like OpenAI should have brought that up earlier because the judge wouldn't rule on the statute of limitations unless it was like brought up by the defense.

4:02I don't understand the legal procedures enough to know if that's an accurate internet hot take. Like talking to some friends who are lawyers, they thought that Musk's legal representation was terrible. And I was like, why? He's like one of the richest, if not the richest man in the world. And it's just like lawyers hate working with him because he's so unpredictable. He's so challenging. He's so antagonistic. So the people who in my mind are more expert than I am didn't think he had a chance. And a lot of it was because the way that they tried to build their case. It's funny. It almost feels like this entire thing was designed for like maximum entertainment with minimum impact because we, of course, did get all of the like Sam Altman and Mira tech stumps.

4:59And we now know that Greg Brockman and Ilya have like 30 billion and 7 billion worth of open AI. Lots of money. Yeah. It's kind of like no one won. I mean, definitely like OpenAI avoided disaster, but it almost felt like in some ways like a continuation of the New Yorker profile and a lot of the dirty laundry around OpenAI being aired. Well, that's why people settle, right? Sure. And I also wonder if like that was part of Elon's gamble. I mean, he texted Greg Brockman, right? Like days before the trial saying, you know, you have a chance to settle this or else, you know, you two will be the most hated men in America or something like that.

5:37He said something like that, right? And so that I think probably that supports what you're saying. But yeah, I think that's why people often do settle, even if they have a clear cut case. They just like don't want to be on the stand or like all that evidence to be released. I also feel like these moments are basically like the Super Bowl for the reporters who cover them. Like Mike Isaac. It seemed like, oh, it seemed like it. Nobody was enjoying this more than him. Yeah. Totally. Although I started listening to his daily episode yesterday day where he was talking about the trial, but pre-verdict.

6:09And then while I was listening, the verdict came out. So I kind of lost interest because I was like, well, now I know how this story ends. He was saying he was like up at five every morning. I mean, it is like a super taxing, maybe like Olympics or something that is continuous is a better sports metaphor. That is always fun. And it made me think back to the Elizabeth Holmes trial and how Twitter and And like it's a moment where actually journalists really shine on Twitter, which is, you know, less common these days because they are the ones reporting out and the internet gets to react. So speaking of Twitter, Helen, how real is that DD post that has gone super viral about how like depressed everyone in San Francisco is?

6:56Let me tell you about how my weekend went. And I am like in a number of group chats, including our own, where the post comes up and I was super dismissive of it. I was like, I feel bad for this person. And this is this is dumb. And various people who, you know, I love and respect in many cases were just like, I think that's super real. And I'm I'm miserable as a result, like identifying with one of like the archetypes that he laid out. And I was like, oh, shit, was that insensitive of me? and you know so i i feel like i've been like pulling back a little bit on my thoughts on this one because it definitely resonates like that maybe we should summarize for people who aren't extremely online yeah this guy posted about with a caveat that like it is speaking to a twitter crowd i think that this is not something that was meant to be broad consumption yeah twitter crowd slash like Silicon Valley, like elite.

7:51But the general gist is that there are a lot of people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley who have quite a bit of anxiety around not hitting a certain like escape velocity, given the wild distribution of wealth in the tech ecosystem right now. So he references how like, maybe just a quote over the past five years, a group of 10 ,000 people who are employees at OpenAI, Anthropik, XAI, et cetera, have hit retirement wealth of well over 20 million. And that like everyone else is like struggling with their sub 500K salaries and like can't see the path. And just sort of the, you know, it ties into the sort of narrative around the permanent underclass.

8:34And I think there really is, there does seem to be like a feeling that if you don't make it in the next couple of years, you've sort of like missed your window. The funny thing is, you know, it's, it's, this is not a, a new dynamic. It's just a more extreme version of a story that we've heard before, extreme in terms of like the levels of wealth and extreme in terms of the speed. But like, I've always been fascinated by how the seemingly random distribution of success impacts certain people. And, and that's always been part of the challenge of living and working in the startup ecosystem, if you feel, if you, if you hold yourself in comparison to other people, you're always going to have examples of like the peer you like came up with, or maybe who reported to you, like vastly outpacing you.

9:24And it's, I've always been, I actually had like a novel I was going to write that was like about this, like following three friends over the course of their careers and like how that changes the sort of relational dynamics, how people feel about themselves because I do think it is fascinating and it is a very unique environment to be part of. And so to me, this just feels like this is a really extreme version. And it's also, the thing that feels new is that status in tech is more tied to wealth than it was before. I mean, it was cool to be part of a company that went public for sure, but it did not feel like wealth was the metric.

10:04Wealth was sort of the output or the sort of byproduct of other types of success, other types of status. And now everything just feels much more measurable. And it also reflects the way we talk about companies. It's all, you know, path to 100 million ARR. What's your latest valuation? And that feels like it's seeped down on an individual level as well in a way that like I honestly cannot relate as I'm a very online person, but I live in New York and I do not feel this. Like I do not feel this in the New York tech community at all, which I think is kind of fascinating. You know, the reason why I sort of like pushed that aside was this weekend was beautiful in San Francisco.

10:43It was like stunning and sunny. And when I moved to San Francisco, I moved here from Chicago. I was dirt poor, like making less than$30 ,000 a year. and I was so happy because San Francisco is such a beautiful city and for being in California it actually has really great public transportation I didn't have a car but I like could get everywhere and it was just sort of like I was super happy when I had nothing and I got to enjoy all the gifts of the city and like especially growing up uh in the east coast and the midwest like appreciating the weather and like all of these things right so to me I think I've always one difference that I felt like growing up in tech, after leaving advertising and joining tech, where I was like, oh, people grew up, you know, for the most part, pretty privileged, like, or went to good schools.

11:37I just kind of felt like what made me a little bit different was sort of like, I know what it feels like to have nothing. I know what it feels like to go to a state university and like have certain, you know, ideas of what my future would look like, like, successful, but not like, you know, I'm going to be on the cover of Time magazine. Like, it was just sort of like a different thing. And Helen, I believe in you. One day your time will come. Yes. Because yes, magazine covers in me, but face for time. But like, my point is sort of like, I feel so luck. I feel super lucky, right? To for everything that I have.

12:09And I think that that's, that's what a lot of people's were saying is commentary where it's just like, what you were saying about like, your peer group, just keep you keep comparing, right? No matter how successful you get, you just keep comparing, you keep comparing. And that can make you miserable. and even people who are, you know, who have made it. And if you're in part of that 10 ,000 person group, oh, there's definitely segmentation and misery, right, within that group as well. And I think that because San Francisco, like, isn't a very big city, like it's, you know, the groups can be smaller.

12:39It's like the people you are in preschool with or, you know, schools and like different organizations and clubs or whatever, like, you know, it's easier for you to have like a peer set that you start comparing yourself to. And it truly is, you know, that quote, the thief comparison is the thief of joy. Like, I think a lot of comparison is really hard, especially if you have gone to all the right schools, have worked really hard and, you know, worked at all the right places. And still, still, you're not among the top, whatever, right? I'm sure that can feel very, very frustrating and unfair. But, you know, I'm very like, life is not fair.

13:16And I think I was probably insensitive about that in some chats. but that's how I feel. What you were alluding to is like the sort of baseline you said is really important. So like people talk about happiness being reality minus expectations, but a lot of us have very like high expectations or ambitions for life. And so the thing that I found most useful is very intentionally picking my like, what am I comparing myself to? Am I comparing myself to like me from three months ago or my friend who's super smart and accomplished? Or am I like thinking about to your point, like when you first moved to San Francisco and started working, like you would be blown away by all you've gotten to experience and be part of over the course of your career.

14:05So I think you and I also have this other benefit, which is that we were part of previous generations of wealth creation, right? And so we can kind of fast forward and see a nice sample size of what happens to those people. And, you know, after Facebook went public, that was life changing for I think several 1000s of people in San Francisco, many more in larger Bay Area, of course, you know, I'm friends with a lot of those people. And yeah, some of them are super happy. And some of them are not. And it's just sort of there's there's a there's a sample set where you see variants, if that makes sense.

14:38Right. And like, however you want to feel, there's going to be data to support however you want to feel. So decide to feel good. It's kind of like how I think. I thought you were going to say we have the benefit of having been in like lower status roles, like marketing and PR, especially during the era that we came up in. We're not like now, like storytelling is super hot. And you're like, if you're a good storyteller, you're like at an A16Z new media retreat the last weekend being wined and dined. That was like not the reality, at least for me during my like six years at box. I had no opportunity to develop like a big ego, my status within tech.

15:21And I think that's really, I think that's really helpful. Like I think it was humbling to be like, okay, there's not going to be like a ton of external validation for this role, but I actually see how it's really important and get value from that, like derive my value from like that impact versus do people think I'm cool? And I mean, you worked at Facebook, so you had that going for you, but I was like enterprise software PR. I think that start was helpful. And especially now we've talked about this before, being a VC and especially having an emerging fund is like lower status than it used to be.

15:57Totally. This is where I'm comfortable. I don't need a high status job. I measure things on different dimensions. So anyway, none of this is to preach to anyone because I do think the feelings can be very real. And to your point, I think if you're in some of these communities where everyone feels this way, it's very hard to extract yourself from that. But I think it was both fascinating how people identified with this tweet and then also interesting to see the push back. And I think this does sort of represent a broader struggle that's happening right now and sort of the tech elite. Also really interesting juxtaposition with the sort of meta layoffs, which are a story that continues to unfold.

16:38I feel like we had different opinions about the whole like leak a month ago, you know, where they announced that on May 20th, they would be letting go of 8 ,000 people or whatever the final number was. And I thought, oh, maybe that's smart that they got ahead of it, whatever. But now I'm kind of like, oh, like it's just really feels like prolonging the drama and anticipation. And I feel like Meta's hand was forced because it did like properly. It was a leak. And then it took them a couple weeks to confirm the leak. And I imagine they probably had to do that because there was so much internal pressure to weigh in on this news report.

17:14And so like a month ago, they were like, yes, we are going to do these layoffs, but we're not going to do them until May 20th because they were like still figuring out like who was going to be part of them, which is crazy. It's an interesting look. I feel like you don't normally get like such a big window. And also I feel like people are just grieving more openly these days because maybe because there's less stigma with being laid off when like everyone's being laid off everywhere. Emily Dreyfus in the San Francisco Standard had an interview, an anonymous interview with an employee who had been at Meta for 10 plus years and was like wondering if she's going to get laid off.

17:52And like, she's just talking about like the openly doomsday vibes. People are feeling extra pressure to maintain or grow their place on these like AI leaderboards. So they're just like finding ways to use tokens in case that's a filter. The most interesting thing from this piece was the woman who was interviewed referenced an internal post from an employee where they said something like people employees are being they're being made to do work to replace themselves with AI right so like training the AI to do their jobs there should be like a different kind of severance but it is an interesting question of like is the classic like severance and I think companies are being very generous with severance these days because they know how hard the job market is And they're generally doing these from like a position of relative strength, right?

18:42They're not about to go out of business when they're doing these layoffs. But like, is the classic severance enough? Is there like a broader conversation we need to have around like, yeah, if employees jobs are to train AI to take their jobs away, should they be compensated differently? should there be like retraining as part of these layoffs? Like I think we're in this first wave where we're kind of mimicking the traditional norms, but maybe we're gonna see some sort of like future state of how layoffs are conducted, especially as it's companies, again, like doing this from a relative position of strength.

19:24Yeah, that's an interesting point about having your severance tied to how your involvement, your direct involvement in training your AI replacement that benefits the company in the long term. It gives whole new meaning to like lasting impact, right? Like as an employee. It's almost like royalties, right? Like royalties for knowledge work. Right. Because AI trained is continuing to use your workflows, your institutional knowledge, etc. That's really interesting. I think that that might actually create a new framework for how we value just general work in, you know, work in general with no one being replaced by anything.

20:04But yeah, that will be, I'm sure that will hit hard this week and it will be weird. And, you know, I think one of the sadder things about it is like companies will follow. Right. And I think that's a reality. yeah it's like we saw this with um elon when he took over twitter however many years ago and like asked a bunch of people and it gave a lot of other people permission to like cut bloated workforces and this is just that on a much much bigger scale right and so yeah it'll be interesting and stressful to watch um i think the other fascinating thing is like i find it very easy to have empathy for people in these situations but i feel like probably the general public does not feel too bad for the meta employee who's worked there for 10 years and making like very healthy six figures probably has an amazing equity package and so once again there's this like distortion of perception between you know inside of tech and and outside which maybe is a good tee up for um there's a new new york times sienna poll I think because I wrote about like tech's doomsday AI narrative people just tag me in this stuff now and honestly it's so helpful like anytime there's anything around like negative public sentiments around AI I'm like oh I've like trained I've like trained Twitter to send me stuff um but um this one was interesting it basically showed uh perception around AI by both like um political affiliation, but then also age group.

21:40The sort of most relevant stat for our broader conversation today is that it is the 18 to 29 group, which was the youngest group polled, that is the most negative about AI. So 47 % of that cohort think that AI is mostly bad. I mean, it's funny. It was like compared to like something in like the 20s or whatever for much older people. And I'm like, I just don't think the older people are paying attention. I don't know if it's so much that like grandma's like loving AI, although maybe she is. But yeah, a negative sentiment around AI, which I think like flows us perfectly into want to talk a little bit about Eric Schmidt's commencement speech.

22:22Yeah. And the reception there. Yes. Eric Schmidt's commencement speech also made the rounds on Twitter and various group chats. And I think generally speaking, although I saw a couple of very strange in defense of Eric Schmidt's graduation speech, for the most part, people were like, hmm, that did not land. It was a little tone deaf. And so if you haven't caught it, basically, he gave the commencement speech at University of Arizona and he got booed. And two, I think two important pieces of context. Like one, there was already like a petition circulating or there was already sort of like people kind of not being stoked that he was chosen as the speaker because he's got like a civil suit against him by like a former girlfriend right now or something.

23:08Oh, he's got a lot of interesting skeletons in his closet. Yeah, so I guess the audience was primed, right? And then, you know, the way that he talked about AI, and this is what we're going to talk about, which is like comparing it to other times technology leaders have talked about technology to a newly graduating class seemed off and was not meeting the moment, was not sort of self-aware of the stat that Ashley just shared on sentiment among young people. It seemed like anytime he mentioned AI, he just got booed even louder. Well, I have some nuanced takes. I mean, I absolutely agree that speech was like a huge flop.

23:48I listened to the whole thing. So first I saw the clips and I was like, Oh, unforced error, terrible job, like whatever. And then I listened to the speech in its entirety, which like maybe that's problem number one. No one listens to these things in their entirety anymore, right? We are in an era of clips. We're in the clipping era. How many articles do we have to read about clipping right now? Oh my God. The clipping era. And the clips really made it seem like the crowd was like booing any mention of AI. but if you are packing up your apartment and have a lot of free time late at night to listen to multiple commencement speeches in preparation for this podcast and you listen to the whole thing, you will note that people were booing before he said a single word.

24:34So it was like from the beginning they were booing. He started off talking about like the personal computer and like people where it was not a like, oh, there was a mention of AI or his messaging didn't land. And not to say that it's not the booing wasn't about AI, but I think this speech does not live in a vacuum. And I actually think there was no way Eric Schmidt was going to be able to deliver a successful speech with this audience. And he did actually attempt to like meet people where they were. I don't think he did a very artful job of it, but he sort of acknowledged that like earlier eras of computing they were so optimistic and they thought democratization access would only be good for people and of course reality was like much more nuanced and much like you know much more challenging and so like he really did try to like preface and sort of set the stage for a conversation around AI that wasn't just like AI hype but like hey like we've learned in tech that like progress is is hard and it impacts people in ways we can't imagine and so anyways I think like this speech was actually architected for a critical audience, but it didn't matter.

25:43I saw some people wordsmithing his messaging and I'm like, uh-uh. There was no way this was going to land because these students are online and they are seeing all the other headlines and all the other clips and all the other quotes about this doomsday narrative and how there are going to be no more white collar jobs and no more entry level jobs and, and how data centers are, he's like many ways the face of it. He just becomes like as a tech person, right? Totally. And he's also not like an inspiring, you know, he's no Steve Jobs, who we will get to in a bit. And so he also just doesn't have that like natural charisma or like emotional connection with an audience.

26:28And so there was no way to craft this speech where he would have won over this audience. The other piece of nuance that I do want to flag is that he got applause at the end. More applause than boos. And that might just have been people feeling bad for him because he literally did have to give his speech while people were booing the entire time, which I was like, I don't know if I could do that personally. And so, you know, it's possible that 20 % of the audience hated this. And then like, you know, 20 % fucking loved it. And then the middle was just neutral and was like, let's, let's hear this guy out.

27:07And you just, it's like Twitter. It's like, you don't, you don't know what the silent majority are thinking. And it wasn't a speech where there were opportunities to cheer or laugh. And so all you had were opportunities to hear booing. I will give one piece of messaging feedback, which is that like, he was really trying to force feed the future to these students. And it was like, this is happening. This is going to happen everywhere. It's going to change everything. And then his like rallying cry was like, help shape it and be part of it and have agency. But I just, I think it was too forceful and too like, like the train is already moving.

27:45He used his rocket ship quote again, which I was like, I know, I know we can't do that again. But like he tried to apply it to AI, which is like, like AI is a rocket ship. Like just get on. Don't worry about your seat. And I feel like that's just a kind of a condescending message to this like class of young people. Yeah. I thought the commencement speaker pick was like knowing how fraught sort of the landscape is right now on data centers, right? On job insecurity and all that stuff. So picking a tech leader, he's, I guess, most tied to Google. And Google is definitely still in the AI race, right?

28:23It just felt like, oh, that was a choice. And so not sure how much he was even set up for success anyways, right? Like what prompted the students to go digging and find a lot of the civil lawsuit stuff, right? Because they were probably already feeling like, ugh, like on the choice. And so that's on the school, in my opinion. But that's actually like a nice segue into a very different type of speech, which was Tom Brady's at Georgetown's business school. And I always think of sports as one of the few things we have left that really unites people across different sectors, social strata, right? Like we're really running out of the things that people can sort of find common ground in.