Airtable’s AI Reboot with CEO Howie Liu

25:30I mean, like I said, like, even pre-AI, we did have to, like, build our own front-end frameworks, like, now you would just have all that, like, out of the box for free to build on, like, the hosting would be easier, there's better infra options, like, you know, so all of that, like, yeah, for sure, there's more leverage afforded by, like, all the new kind of technical foundation, not to mention like, you know, and there is actually like now, I think more recently, I'm in this, you know, kind of chat group that has a lot of other founders debating now, like, does AI, you know, basically augmented coding actually enhance productivity?

26:04Or does it just make you feel like you're more productive? Because like, you actually spend so much time, like, you know, using the AI, prompting AI, that like, it actually, especially for smaller tasks, like, is net neutral, right? Or even net negative. So I'm not convinced that like, okay, just because like you use cursor now, like you're 10 times more productive in all cases. But I do think you could do it faster for a number of reasons. If you relaunch, like if you try to rebuild Airtable today, the good news for us as Airtable is like, you know, we're not at threat of disruption by somebody who recreates like 2015 era Airtable, because now our product has also evolved quite a bit, right?

26:42And we have like a lot more scalability, robust capabilities, et cetera, that like, if you wanted to replicate everything we have, it would take you far more than like, you know, a year, right? Or six months. But like, I do think there is an interesting question of like, is there a complete paradigm shift? So to me, like the really interesting companies to watch are actually like the Vibe coding products. So the replets, the V0s, the lovables, et cetera, not because they're actually coming heads on against us for the same use case, same customers. like a lot of those use cases are prototyping, right?

27:12So it's like, let me build like a prototype, almost more like framer for a non-technical PM or designer or even a technical engineer who like just doesn't want to spend the time building like a real version of this app or a surface area. Let me just go prototype it, right? And that's pretty magical. I think there's like massive value to be created from those products for a different set of use cases than what we go after, which are more like robust business use cases, you know, small companies building their CRM in Airtable, bigger companies doing like, you know, all their marketing operations in Airtable.

27:44But yet, I see this convergence eventually of like that kind of agentic app building experience, and like what value we provide, right? So to me, it's less about like, is this product, is our product today going to instantly, you know, kind of be recreated by somebody else? And more like, is there a completely new way of thinking about the job to be done that somebody knew who, I mean, to your point, like is probably working like, you know, insane hours because they don't have like, you know, a baby or like the family. And like, I mean, they can go on the ramen diet and just be all in, you know, I think that that is a real question.

28:24Um, that probably all of your founder friends in that group chat are talking about right now. For sure. I mean, like, I think, um, you know, the best way to make that threat, you know, less, less foreign, at least, is, is get close to those people, right? So I've personally made it a point to like, try to invest in or just get involved in, you know, a lot of these, these companies, whether, you know, it's like Varun from, from Windsor is a perfect example of like this archetype, right? Like, so hungry. He was so young when he started the company, right? Before he was even an IDE, and just works so hard and so fast, right?

29:02And like, to get close to people like that. And hopefully I can offer some, some wisdom from my experience and scaling our table and how to think about the business. Um, but like, it's a mutual exchange too. Cause like, I think you are the company that you keep, you kind of pick up the traits subconsciously of like the people that you spend time from with and are inspired by. And like, you know, as much as I, you know, in a past era, like wanted to be inspired by like people who had done much larger scale companies than me. Right. So I would go and like try to, you know, spend time with like the entrepreneurial greats.

29:31Yeah. Like the Benioffs of the world. Yeah. The the Benioffs, the Zucks, et cetera. And like, I learned a lot from getting to spend time with folks like that. You know, but also now it's like, I now have the risk of becoming like, you know, the incumbent who needs to like move faster and be inspired by like the - You wanna be inspired by velocity. Exactly. So like that's, I mean, honestly, like a lot of the time I spend with external companies now is like, is that, is like, you know, these like upstarts and - Companies that we're investing in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like you go talk to Harvey or some of these folks Yeah, they're moving.

30:03They are moving. Yeah. And they just they have this different feel to them, both as founders and as companies. Like in a way, it's like they've thrown out not just the old product model. There's this really interesting concept that actually a benchmark has been articulating recently, which is inside out instead of outside in thinking. Outside in thinking is like traditional jobs be done. You understand a market segment. I think of like, you know, vertical solution companies is very much in this vein, right? Like they're not going and pioneering like crazy breakthrough tech. They're just taking a known problem and solving it better than anybody else.

30:38Right. With pretty commodity tech. And you can still build an incredible business that way, like the service titans, et cetera, of the world. But now like AI innovation is kind of being dominated by inside out innovation, which is where you have to actually understand the tech. If we had the bleeding edge of understanding every new model release, what's possible? How do you build like a product experience around that? like, you know, there's a, you know, there's a know-how gap that doesn't come in like a O 'Reilly book right now of like, okay, there's the raw models, but then here's how you build a amazing agentic experience like Amanis around that, right?

31:13And I think like, it's the that kind of inside out tech first innovation that is actually creating a lot of alpha now. And I think to think about it that way, it requires not just a different lens on product and what the product experience should be, but also like the business model and also like the operating model of the company, right? Like the way that you operate can't be on like quarterly or annual planning cycles. And you do these like, you know, year end reviews. I mean, by that time, like, you know, a year is like forever. Six model releases. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, company like Cursor a year ago was like probably a sub 10 million revenue business, right?

31:51As was Windsor. And by the way, like, I mean, you know, both companies, I really, really admire, you know, and got to plug into, at least with a small angel check, like, you know, at around that time. But like, you know, what I most admire is like how fast they were able to execute and have been able to execute, right? Like Windsurf, I think they came in with the IDE pivot, like after Cursor, right? They were seeing Cursor really take off. I think they were seeing Copilot really take off. Well, that was true for sure. And that's when they built the first, like before Windsurf was Codium. Before Codium, there was the first thing, which was like the extra function, which was like more like inference optimization.

32:28But they kind of at every point, they like were really smart to leverage the pieces they had before. So it wasn't like throw this entirely away, build a completely new thing from scratch. It was like the inference optimization allowed them to build a better copilot plugin. So they didn't have their own IDE. They just built a plugin, but they could offer a better, cheaper, faster because they had more optimized inference. So they could do lower latency, lower cost copilot basically as a plugin to other IDEs. But then I think as they saw Cursor go all in on like, let's just own the entire IDE experience.

32:56Let's do a full fork of VS Code. Then I think they realized, okay, like that's clearly where the, you know, where the buck is. And then they also forked VS Code. And I think like from start to finish, like when they decided to fork, like I think they built the entire first version of Windsurf, like the full on IDE with like Cascade, the kind of sidebar, like, you know, composer agentic, like, you know, kind of experience. Like I think they built that in like two months. Yeah. Which is insane. Like what in any larger company, like what significant product could be built from start to finish in two months?

33:29Totally. Even your point on the like the the the V zeros, the lovables of the world. Like I have gotten excited about and I'm not like if there is technical and non-technical, like I'm kind of like to the right of non-technical, if that makes sense. Like and I just got excited about this product and this idea of a product. and I was jamming on customers with it. I wanted to see if there was a there there. And I just spent a Saturday in one of these tools, just like jamming it out. And I got a designer friend excited about it. And they use like the traditional design tools that ended up in like slides.

34:07And my instinct continued to be when I was showing it to customers to just go into the actual, like the lovable where it's interactive. And I could like actually be living in it, like changing things on the fly. And then I just told the designer like, hey, let's just collaborate in here. And like, it's not a product, but it's not slides either. Like it's like, it's like we're a lot closer to product than we are prototype. And it's a lot more dynamic in that sense. And like, even me, like I'm, you know, building something interactive with natural language. Like it's insane. Like it is in this world, there's a lot of conversation now around like how great developers become better.

34:47But like I have, I have never felt like the, the like artist of a computer was always the coder. Yeah. And I never felt like I could hold a paintbrush in my hand to be able to create a piece of art. Yeah. And for the first time, I really feel like I have the brush in my hand that I can like draw something. Yeah. That's not like, like if you were to draw Picasso, like I would draw something ugly that you'd see on the side of the street, but like, at least I'm still like, I can still call it something. Well, maybe it's like, you're not going to try to recreate a Picasso. You're going to build your own thing that like uniquely you value.

35:27Right. I mean, like, correct. I've just never felt personally, like I've ever been like had access to the same sets of tools that someone like you has had access to in the world of like computers. And for the first time, I really do feel quite empowered to just in English, tell them what I want to do. And it just goes and does it. And it writes the code for me on the back end. Like, it's pretty incredible. Like, it really, really is incredible. Yeah. I mean, so we like went way into the deep end at the founding of Airtable, like looking back at like the history of computing, personal computing.

36:04And it turns out, I mean, like this was like the original vision by some of the early computing pioneers like Alan Kay and like this guy, JCR Licklitter. like they envisioned a world where like everybody who use computers and everybody should use computers could then not only use pre-built applications but like instead actually open the hood and like build their own applications right like they could actually use i mean software is the like the fuel that runs through like all computing devices right and yet like if you can actually like be a participant in creating those experiences like you have full control over like what's possible with a computer versus, you know, if you're using a canned app, it's almost like you don't really get to like gain full leverage on the power of like software and computing in general, right?

36:49And I think that's basically what you're describing, which is most people today still haven't really been able to like participate in like the actual, you know, use of software as a medium, as opposed to these pre-built applications and devices that they've kind of like used at the surface level. And like the whole vision for no code was always about like bringing anyone closer to that medium of like, you know, in Airtable, even before agentic, like you could just go in and like use drag and drop to add like to change the data. Like if you had a CRM and you're like, hey, here's my investment CRM.

37:27And you went to like other people you're working with and said like, hey, look, like you want to change it. Like I could just change it right here. I'll add a field. I'll like change the interface layout. Like that was one step closer towards the promised land of like anyone can just go in and like stick their hands into the computer and change how it works. I think now like having agentic experiences where like it's even more natural. You get to like talk to like a agent and it builds it for you. But you can still then inspect and see what it's built so that it's you know, it's not like, you know, kind of opaque to you.

37:59I think that's like kind of the holy grail. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like these LLMs and what they can do is like the fullest expression of low code, no code. It is. And yet, like, I think actually you have to blend the two concepts because like one of the downsides of pure code gen with agents is that if you're not a developer, like all you can do is do visual inspection on the rendered app output to see what's going on. Right. So like in the CRM example, you could go into like, you know, one of these Vibe Coding products and say like, hey, like build me a CRM for my VC firm. Right. And track track the deals.

38:34Yeah. And it would do it. And you could like literally look at the output HTML and say, like, oh, that kind of looks right. But you wouldn't be able to inspect like the data model underneath. And maybe there's some like automations or logic workflow that says, like, every time I add a new portfolio company, do this thing. And it'd be really hard to actually inspect everything underneath the hood and say, like, this is correct. Right. And it'd be really hard also for you to go and manually try out every scenario, just manually, like in the product. And so I think that's where the no-code representation that agents can now generate as an intermediary.

39:08So you're not like generating raw code, but you're actually outputting like these no code components. Like here's, you know, a data model that you can understand because you get to see it right as a table. And it's very easy to like interact with. But here's also the interface on top of it. And here's how the interface layout works. So you can go and directly drag and drop it kind of like you would like a website in Squarespace or Wix. Like, you know, I think it's it's it's the best of both worlds if you can go and have the agent go and do everything, you know, through conversational input. but then still like see more than just like raw, like HTML and code that like is unintelligible to a non-developer, right?

39:44Yeah. And what's interesting is like in your founder group chat today, when everyone's talking about this, if it is the best of both worlds and you're right, your business is undervalued. And if it's not the best of both worlds, then you might be in hot water. And I think that's the core of the question that any incumbent in air quotes is wrestling with right now, which is like, okay, is what I am doing like a building block to the future that integrated tightly and appropriately will actually lead to a better outcome for sure. Or am I just convincing myself of that? Because the alternative reality is that I then have to rebuild my entire company from scratch, which is basically untenable, which is the story of every incumbent that has ever been disrupted before.

40:33Well, I think, I think if you literally have no incumbent advantages at all, like you're better off literally selling the company for whatever you can get right now and going and starting a new one from scratch, right? Just because literally you won't have all the drag from the current company business model, like expectations, even like cap table structure. Like if you start a new company from scratch, you can fully incentivize every single person there to like pursue this new thing. Right. So you have to truly believe that or else you have some incumbent advantages or else like rationally, the right thing to do is to just like sell and move on, right?

41:07And, and refound, like literally refound. Personally for Airtable, like I do actually really truly believe like we have the right pieces to win at this. I don't think it's guaranteed by any means. And I think we do have to radically refound the company and break a lot of the current way of working as well as like the current way the product works in order to, to win. Right. Meaning like I almost see our current, like our pre, you know, kind of AI native company as a parts bin that I get to pilfer from. And like, you know, as an example, like we do have an existing distribution base. That's a valuable part, right?

41:44Like we do have these no-code components. That's a valuable part. Like it would be really hard if somebody knew, like if a, let's say, replet wanted to create like really reliable, scalable no-code components like this data layer that has real-time collab built in and you can just like have ai now generate the data layer but it's like you know got this like air table like data io experience right um and then like a really nice interface layout engine etc like all the integrations the scalability part like it'd be really hard to go and like build those from scratch i mean you could do it but that's another part from the parts bin but i think like Like the wrong approach would be to say like, okay, let's just take our existing product, our existing business and slap some AI on top of it.

42:27And frankly, I think a lot of the really large incumbents are effectively doing that, right? Yeah. Especially in the enterprise SaaS space. And I think that's where it's like, well, like you can never incrementally get to the promised land. Because the promised land, like, I mean, this launch we just did a couple of weeks ago was really about saying, look, like we had some AI capabilities before in Airtable. We had what we called co-builder, which is a one-shot way to generate a new app from scratch with AI. So you come in and say, build me that CRM generates an app from scratch. But then it wasn't a full agent that could go and manipulate and do anything else that you wanted on the app.

43:03Like it was a one-shot. And then we had AI fields that could do some stuff at runtime. So you could generate content or do summaries, et cetera, on a row-by-row level. So for every portfolio company, summarize the current deal or whatever. So we had like the, you know, I would say like the obvious AI capabilities to build. But when I look back at the, or when I look at like the true AI native disruptors, like the, you know, these, you know, kind of code gen agents, these vibe coding products from scratch, like they're taking a radically different approach, right? Which is like you come in and everything can be done conversationally.

43:39So it's not just like conversational app building at one little point in the journey. It's like no every single thing that previously would have required like one in their cases like writing code You know and inspecting code you can now just do conversationally, right? And so I think we had to like rethink the entire product paradigm like we literally changed the entire Layout of our product like the the informational architecture to say like look like Conversational is the default and like it's almost like chat to be tea We're like you just have this massive chat bar now And that's the main way that you interact with your table and we literally like decompose our components into little bits and pieces that now we can inject into the chat experience so that you get these artifacts, these fragments, as you're interacting with, you know, what we call Omni, our new agent that does it all.

44:26But you could ask it data questions, you could ask it to build out a report, and it will preview like, here's that fragment that I created for you with these now like kind of disembodied no code components. And also let me show you right next to it, just like with cursor, you have the agentic composer. And then next to that, still the IDE, like we've kind of blended both, but we had to rethink the entire paradigm and the experience overall. And then actually like do the heavy lifting of making an agent that actually works to do everything that literally everything that like required point and click and keyboard before, like you can now do just through like conversation.

45:01Do you, when you hang out with the young founders that are building in this space right now, do you ever think like oh man i don't have what they have like uh maybe i have experience yeah and i know things that they don't yeah and i have company building kind of like battle wounds but i don't have that energy yeah like like do you think that i mean look i mean i think there's definitely an energy uh deficit that i have compared to these like young upstarts who literally can just throw everything at their company, right? To some extent, I think when you're a first-time founder and when you don't have experience, that's what you have to do.

45:39That's what I did, right? I had no experience. I didn't have wisdom. I didn't have credibility. So all I had was sweat. And as much sweat as I could output was the success of the company. I do think that with experience, you can make better decisions, right? And I think one of the things I've learned in actually giving advice, whether it's product strategy or go-to-market strategy, for some of these companies, you know, a common question is like PLG versus like enterprise. How do we think about that? Like, how do we think about use cases versus horizontal platform positioning? Airtable obviously have to solve a lot of that, you know, in Sterney, right?

46:13Like we're horizontal product, general purpose, but also we have to do, think about like use cases and use case marketing and templates and eventually solutions. So I think like, you know, as I've like talked to a lot of these founders and like given them advice, I think what I've learned is like, actually you can, make decisions that actually save you a lot of rework. Maybe you would have gotten there by trial and error if you didn't have the wisdom. But there's some instinctive judgment calls that I think I can make differently than I would if I were 20 and just working really, really hard, but figuring everything else out from scratch.

46:50I do think the most critical

46:55knowledge, you know, gap that I need to make sure I never allow to exist or grow is the technical one, which is like all of the stuff that's happening in AI, there's no substitute for actually being hands-on with it and understanding how it works at a technical level, right? Like, Like, this is not something like, you know, let's say in the SaaS world, like, you know, there was a lot of concepts that you didn't need to technically understand. And like how integrations work, like maybe you don't actually need to like understand literally like how an integration with this, you know, kind of partner works at a technical level to be able to say like at a strategic level, we need to build an integration with Salesforce.

47:42right yeah i think now the way things work technically actually is profoundly important on how you think about the product and even the business right and so like as an example with integrations like if you actually understand how mcp works and what like what a successful mcp server implementation looks like and why that's different from like a naive one that just thinly wraps a rest api then you actually understand like how do you build a truly different and magical product experience powered by MCP where like in Airtable, you could actually have really smart agents pull in like intelligently just the right summary or insight from any other system out there like Salesforce, et cetera.

48:22And that kind of technical ingenuity and insight can actually shortcut you what would have been like a much heavier lift to build like a different kind of implementation and that wouldn't actually deliver on the customer need nearly as well. So to me, it's like the bigger risk than like, you know, not working hard enough or fast or long enough is actually to get technically obsolete or technically abstracted away from the details such that you're making decisions on a, you know, kind of a very, very, very zoomed out or summarized understanding of like what's actually happening at the technical level.

49:03Yeah, that makes sense. When founders, when you're talking to some of these younger founders and they ask for Howie's advice on like, hey, how do I like manage my life while I build a company? Like, don't like, how does that like, yeah, like what do you say? I mean, look, I think it's like, it is a all out sprint in the early days. And I think until you found product market fit, it should be an all out sprint. It's not like a marathon, you got to pace yourself. It's like, you know, you have a very fleeting moment of time before you either run out of funding or I mean, nowadays, like you can raise so much funding up front, like maybe that's not even the constraint, but it's like you run out of like patience or your team runs out of patience, right?

49:45Like you can't go and spend five years finding the right to product market fit. Like nobody would join your company in today's era, right? Like they would just join some other company that's already found it. So I think like it has to be an all out sprint. You have to move so, so fast. And like, I mean, to some extent, like, especially if you're coming in as a like relatively inexperienced founder and all you have is speed and maybe like, you know, um, technical acumen, you know, there, there is no balance. I think like, you know, you just got to go all out and, and, um, and keep iterating until you find that product market fit.

50:20I think once you have it, then you can kind of like change into a little bit more of an endurance sport. And by the way, like, you know, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. Like guess what? Marathons are like intense. I've never run one, but like, you know, I did like the 400 meter and the 800 meter dash or, you know, run distance poorly at one point. And like, you know, the longer you go, like the longer the distance, it's just like more grueling intensity of speed for an even longer stretch. So I think it is accurate to call it like it becomes more of a marathon than an all out sprint. But like that still means you're like giving it your all.

50:57And it's still like very, very intense. Yeah. And what's the what are the like subtle distinctions between a marathon and a sprint? Like as you live your life in a marathon, which is probably what you're doing now. Like what what does that practically mean? Well, look, I mean, first of all, interestingly, like the like Olympic marathon runners like run each of the hundred meters faster than I can run a hundred meters. Right. I mean, so like, you know, first of all, like somebody moving really fast, even in the marathon mode is still moving faster, like on a per chunk, like on an every week basis.

51:33They're probably doing more and getting like more done than like a like non fast person, like a typical sprinter, like a pit. Yeah. And like, you know, to bring it back to like companies like like the average person at the average big company is operating like even in what they call like a sprint, like far slower than what a like high intensity startup founder or startup team is doing on a regular basis all the time. Right. And so, I mean, like you think about Cursor and Windsor, if it's like, you know, for the entire year span, like they've maintained an insane pace of execution intensity. So it's not just like, okay, we got to like go and sprint for three months to figure this out.

52:15It's like, I mean, you know, it's been well over a year, right? Like years, actually. And before they even launched the IDEs, like they were already working really hard. And so like you have to be able to maintain this like really, really intense pace of execution for like years on end. And I would say like for me, though, it's actually really fun. And like, there's a, I've realized, I think there's a difference between like, you know, the time constraints you have and the energy constraints you have. Right. So meaning like, you know, you'll never get more than 24 hours a day. Right. And you need some time to sleep.

52:49And so like, there's only so many more hours you can literally work. Um, and at some point, like you kind of start to plateau, whether that's at eight hours, 12 hours or 18 hours per day. but there's also energy of execution, right? Where if you're low energy and you're kind of like taking your time about like doing something, like you might just actually spend the same chunk of time doing 10 times slower work. And especially if like you're doing a lot of work that is not actually the most impactful stuff. So you're working slower, like the velocity of your literal clicks and execution is slower.

53:23But then on top of that, you're working on like the suboptimal things that are not highest impact. You're just going through activities, you know like I think the biggest culprit of this is like you just take a bunch of meetings for the sake of taking meetings and everybody like has these rituals where we have weekly recurring things that we all just do but all kind of like you know in our heart of hearts no is not actually the thing that's going to really move the needle like why do you keep doing it right like if you threw all that out and just did the right thing have you been able to throw it out I've been pretty radical and like you know I've canceled all my standing one-on-ones I've canceled most of my like previously recurring weekly meetings.

53:58And on the one-on-ones front, like, you know, I now believe like anything important and worth talking about, like we shouldn't wait a week to talk about it. Like ping me right now and either I'll give you an instant response on Slack or like I'll schedule like that day, like sometimes even within the hour, hey, let's get on a quick call right now. And because you're clearing out all of the standing time that was just like allocated by activity rather than topical urgency, like you can make more time last minute to get on for those things, right? Like I just imagine if you're like a five person startup hustling product might fit, it's not like you have like all these recurring meetings all day.

54:36Like you're like any given moment you're jumping on whatever is the most important thing to unblock at that moment. So just in how I manage my calendar, absolutely. I kind of like blew up all of the like recurring things that are not actually like every week driving meaningful progress. I also now block out time for like actually getting hands-on with our own product. And like every week we should be dogfooding or shipping new features that like are pretty significant. And like the only way to really like get a feel for them and like, you know, figure out like where we need to go with them is to use it yourself in addition to getting customer feedback.

55:12So I spend a lot of time doing that. And then also like trying out other companies' products, right? So like these, all these startups, like try to sign up for every single one And like, you know, I probably I probably contribute like maybe I mean, well, in the thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars back to the like early stage. Because because I'm just willing to like upgrade immediately. They're like 200 bucks a month. Sure. Whatever. I'll pay. You know, I just like I want to try out every single product that comes out and like really get a feel for it and understand. Like I try to squint and see the good and the potential in it almost like an early stage investor versus Dismissing it as like, oh, this is like not very good.

55:52Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, well courtesy of you all these companies revenues are going up and then we're paying those We're playing those prices because yeah, I never turn to like I never can't just like whatever like I haven't used this product for like Eight months, but like, you know, it's like I'll just keep it on the credit card I'll go back to it I want to be able to periodically check in every once in a while and see what's new. It is pretty mind-blowing that you can now just like, I could go and take a screenshot of Airtable's homepage and a bunch of product screens and then basically just input that screenshot into one of these tools.

56:24It just goes and builds it. For sure. Now, it's not like it. You know what I mean? No, it's like insane. For sure. I mean, one thing I've done now is because you can build a website so trivially, I'll sometimes create a microsite just to like express an idea. Right. So like, you know, I have like all the stuff about like vibe coding versus like no code or the fusion thereof. Like, you know, instead of going and like writing a blog post or an ebook or something about it, like I actually vibe coded a microsite. Now I had to like go and like do some research ahead of time with like deep research, curate it, add my own thoughts.

56:58Like there's some like, you know, kind of multi-step prompting that went into this. But then I take the like context that I want to give a product like a replet into replet and then i have it generate a microsite for me and like for that it's like profound it's like it's like wow like this perfectly shows like in a almost like a content page um you know where you scroll down and you just learn about like you know uh like that the concepts and there's little quotes embedded like it's like actually a better representation of those concepts The idea is that I'm sharing with the team for their sake than like a traditional internal like messaging doc.

57:38Right. So I just think it's really I think what's cool is like it allows you to work more directly with a more powerful medium than what most of us had before. Right. Like before you might do that in docs or slides or whatever. And now you can like actually build not only a website, but like an interactive prototype of a concept. Right. I think that's really, really powerful. um when founders ask you about help with like how to structure yeah the cap table up front like how did you learn anything from like or things that you were like i now that i'm 10 years into air table i wish i did a couple of things differently on the like foundation of the house yeah yeah i mean one i think the most important thing is find the people and the structure that allows you to move with the most autonomy and agility, right?

58:25Like, so, you know, I think there's much greater downside from creating drag potentially on decision-making. Like, you know, one example of this is like, I do think founders should try to, as much as possible, retain board control, especially in the early product market fit finding phase. You got to do it yourself. Like, I mean, sure, you should surround yourself with like really smart people. And some of those could be investors, board members, but like, you know, ultimately, like you're not going to get to product market fit by committee. And therefore the best way to get there is to allow yourself to move as quickly as possible.

58:59So like board control, I generally think like, you know, don't over optimize for like sensational valuation, like just optimize to get the right people as efficiently as possible that you want involved, involved, and then more importantly, be able to get back to work. Right. And I think like, you know, as with the big game hunting exec, you know, kind of ego trip that we talked about before, I think there can also be an ego trip for, especially first time founders with like the whole, you know, um, uh, I want to find her on my cap table. Yeah. And like, I think there's like almost this, like, I mean, there is this ego flattery of like, you went from being like kind of a, like, you know, nobody, right.

59:34I mean, I was nobody before I started my first company and even then, right. Like to some extent, but like you suddenly have the attention of all these VCs, especially if you have a hot round, you're like, Whoa, this is really cool. And I want to take all these meetings. Cause like, you know, it's a form of flattery, right? And I think you can over-optimize fundraising. You can over-optimize for valuation. You can over-optimize like, oh man, but I need to talk to every single possible investor and be comprehensive in my search. And I think instead, like the goal should be find somebody great. There are multiple great people to work with.

1:00:06Get clean terms, most of all from a structural or control standpoint, and then freaking get back to work as quickly as possible. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's fair. Also, like from the ego perspective, it's like nobody was giving you attention. Now all of these people that maybe you deem as important or something in your industry are showering you with attention. And you're like, OK, I kind of want this to last as long as I can. It's like, let's let's milk this fundraising cycle to be like six months instead of a six week, you know, closing process. Right. Right. I mean, for sure. Like there is some of that.

1:00:37And then you rationalize it with like, well, we want to get to know them for the next round. Right. Or like, you know, like, oh, we got to really exhaustively consider all the options and, you know, optimize for the highest possible valuation. Like you can always come up with some justification for like spending time on the wrong things. And I think that is absolutely one of the wrong things. Yeah. I was talking this with one of my partners internally yesterday, actually. And interestingly, how you fundraise tells you a lot about the person that you are. You know, like what you say, is that what you want to do?

1:01:07You know, like, like how much information do you feel like you want to give up front? Like, especially in these days, like people are fairly maybe non-collaborative about the information that they want to share. And it turns out like they're just not that collaborative with like, you know, like as, as founders, you know? And so like, it does, I think there's actually kind of like, there's data points that you can learn just even in the fundraising process mutually. Oh, totally. I mean, like for me, a few anti patterns of founder style are one like barking louder than the bite. Right. I mean, like, you know, there are some founders who come in and they just like they talk the big game versus having a certain amount of humility and like starting first with like, here's what we actually have.

1:01:47Right. Like when they overplay the like vision and like all the stuff that's not actually substantive, it's like all talk. Right. And so I think that's one anti pattern. I think another is like getting too aggressive with, again, the optimization of the wrong things, right? Like when, like, it's almost like it becomes this like game for, you know, or, or like, um, power play dynamic where it's like, you know, oh, I need to like, like fake it till I make it. And I have to show that I have the upper hand. So like, I'm going to like, make everybody kind of like, you know, beg to, to, um, you know, to, to, uh, to get to like, talk to me or work with me.

1:02:23And to be honest, like, you know, unintentionally, I think I gained a reputation for a little of this back when I was first raising money, not because I actually wanted to play the game, but just because like, ironically, I was actually just trying to like, stay heads down and focus on my work and building the product. And so I would literally respond to a lot of inbound investor interests and say like, hey, like, you know, really sorry, heads down with execution, which was true. Like, you know, can we take a rain check on meeting up, especially if we're not raising around right now? and the like weird thing that I learned from that is like, you know, it actually made a lot of the investors want even more to like talk and get involved.

1:02:59And I think like there's some founders who then like play into that or like, you know, kind of they love that feeling. Unattainability, right? And like if you play into that intentionally, I think that's also an anti-pattern. Interesting. Yeah, like you're too cool for school. Yeah, exactly. Huh, crazy, really crazy. Yeah, it's crazy times. It's crazy times. I can't wait to see how things play out. I'm really excited. And I appreciate you doing this. Yeah, of course. This was fun. Are you hiring? We are, absolutely. So the interesting thing, we never stopped hiring even during the rifts. Because my strong philosophy is like, you know, even if you have to radically downsize the company because like you're overweight, right?

1:03:42both in terms of cost structure, but also like too many humans, even if each individually is a great person and great even at their job or a skill set, like too many people at the wrong time can be counterproductive, right? But my strong belief was that even if we needed to net downsize, like it would be almost like hubris to say, yeah, and like every single person that we ever need to execute from here, like we already hired all the right people. So like we never have to hire anybody new. And so I've always believed like you should always be hiring because like there's always some set of skills or behaviors that you want to bring into the company at any time.

1:04:20So we're always hiring. And it's my belief that that's like how you like, you know, there's the ship of Theseus, like you gotta like, you know, replace the ship floorboard by floorboard. And eventually the whole ship is different. Right. And like the way you go from like maybe a traditional pre-AI company to an AI native one is you got to rebuild like kind of every single part of your, not just product and business, but like actually your organization. Now that doesn't mean like every single person needs to be replaced, but I think it means that like culturally you have to start shifting like the whole thing towards the new way of operating.

1:04:52So, and, and, you know, bringing in like fresh new eyes is sometimes a really good way to do that. When you hear the word grit, what do you think of? uh i think of like life like i mean meaning like i actually think now that it's the gritty experiences that actually make life life you know like uh in in a physics like equilibrium you know is death literally like you know an organism or a you know kind of um a colony of any like, you know, kind of, you know, living animals, like if it gets into equilibrium, where like everything is calm and still everything's like perfectly like kind of allocated, like there is no life.

1:05:41Life is all about like, you know, kind of entropy and the fact that like, you know, we're all just like, you know, fighting to like, you know, create something and do something interesting. And so I think like to me, like grit is both the texture of experience along the way, and kind of the necessary adversity that makes the journey more than just like, I love the the Wally scene, you know, from the movie, where, like, there's just all these humans that have had, like, all their needs satiated by perfect technology, right? They're all sitting in like these big hover chairs, they just like drink, like, you know, basically soiled multicolored Soylent all the time.

1:06:20They just watch TV all the time. And like everything theoretically is perfectly handed to them. And yet that is so not a life worth living, right? Like obviously. And so, I mean, to me, it's like the texture is what makes life life. It is what makes the journey, the hero's journey and interesting. And so like I, you know, now that's hard to like sometimes appreciate when you're really in it and it's like really tough going. But I think like, you know, when you zoom out and reflect on it, it's like, you know, that's what made it like interesting and worthwhile. I love that answer. Thank you. Yeah, of course.

1:06:53I appreciate you doing this. This was really fun. That's it for now. If you liked the episode, please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks. This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production and I'm Jubin. Thanks for listening.

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