Legendary Venture Capitalist Bill Gurley on the AI Bubble, Why IPOs Feel Rigged and How to Find Your Dream Job

15:15Bill Gurley:It's just hard. I mean, I haven't seen the financials. And so I'd really want to wait and see those before I opine. Like, I don't know if it's, you know, they say it's trading at a trillion, but I don't know what the revenues look like. I don't know what the cash flows look like. I'd want to see that stuff before opine on what someone should do. It is a highly speculative time right now. And there's a lot of money flashing around, especially in the venture world, at very high prices. And so I would be cautious in general as a retail investor, even towards AI. If you own the max, if you own it, there's one, another irony is if you own the index, you have pretty good AI exposure already.

16:02Bill Gurley:like the index is nvidia is a big part of it microsoft's a big part of it google's a big part of it and it's supposed to ai even just simply being an index investor yeah the mag 7 and then there's the rest of the s &p but they're just so overweighted i mean i would love to actually go

16:20Nicole Lapin:behind the scenes if you don't mind take us into the room where it happened so to speak because you're on the deutsche team that won and led as you mentioned the underwriting position for the Amazon IPO. So I'd love to hear what happens in those rooms. How did you make the Amazon IPO strategy and solve for that supply-demand mismatch that you're talking about?

16:42Bill Gurley:Well, it is a funny thing. And keep in mind, that was, whatever, 1998, 99. So long, long time ago, 28 years ago. Jeff Bezos, unlike a lot of people, is a very independently minded individual. And he put a lot of pressure on us to price it high. And he didn't care if it broke issue. It did, in fact, break issue. It traded under for a couple of months. And so he pushed us for more perfect pricing because he cared about the long term and he didn't have this silly hang up about whether it went down or not. But part of part of the reason these companies are getting a position where they can be taken advantage of is the press likes to talk about a pop as a win oh look it's so people wanted it so much but the companies sold stock at a price below its i mean would you feel good if you sold your house and the next day it traded at 2x the price to somebody else or would you feel stupid like that's how you think about it from the company side.

17:52Nicole Lapin:That house is a good analogy too. Like, you know, if you know that your house is going to trade for 2 million, but you price it at 1 million and start some bidding war to push the price up.

18:05Bill Gurley:Yeah. But imagine if instead you price, you put a price out on Zillow and that's the price and your realtor comes to us and say, we have 25 people that want to buy at that price and we're going to close with one of them because they're reputable. Wouldn't you be pissed? you'd be like, no, we're going to ask for auctions and raise the price. Of course, that's what you'd do. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Anyway.

18:29Nicole Lapin:But it's interesting to kind of go behind the scenes.

18:32Bill Gurley:Yeah, Bezos pushed us up on price. So this didn't happen. It didn't pop. It actually went down because we'd priced it so high.

18:39Nicole Lapin:And you guys are homies, right? Did he tell you personally that you won the bid?

18:45Bill Gurley:Yes. The team that won the deal was at an investment bank called Deutsche Morgan Grunfeld. So Frank Quattrone had left Morgan Stanley and we were competing with Goldman and Morgan. So yes, we won the mandate, but it was a pretty, once again, Jeff being independently minded, it was pretty risky bet to bet on a bank that no one knew. We did have Frank Quattrone who was the most experienced guy in the business, but that's what happened. Good trivia question, which bank took Amazon public? Most people can't get that one.

19:16Nicole Lapin:I don't know. That's definitely a trivia night. in the valley, nowhere else. But let's zoom out on AI. I mean, the biggest market question, you alluded to it earlier that I'm sure you're getting, I'm getting over the last six months is, we can probably say it in unison, are we in an AI bubble?

19:35Bill Gurley:Yes. So there's a great book by Carlotta Perez, where she talks, she studies tech innovation and waves for over 400 years. And I think this is like, I think this is beautifully elegant, But what she says is if the wave is real and there's people getting rich quick, which is true here, you eventually are going to attract charlatans and speculators. So most people want to put you in a box and say, do you think it's real or a bubble? And what she says, if it's real, there will be a bubble associated with it. And I agree with her analysis. analysis. So I think AI is real and there's bubblish behavior that's a consequence of it being real.

20:18Bill Gurley:And I think we've already seen some speculators. We've had late here in Texas, we had the Rick Perry data center SPAC that went up and down already. That's an outsider trying to glom on to a new thing that's happening. I think the circular deals are really bad. I think they smell bad. I think you can, I did this thing where I just described them to chat GBT. I didn't tell it what industry it was. I just described the structure of the deals. And it immediately said, oh, that's like Enron. And like, you know, it brought up these names. So I don't know why they got started with that. It was the Microsoft OpenAI, the very first deal, which was one where they gave them credits, you know, to use back.

21:03Bill Gurley:But you shouldn't be able to, you shouldn't be able to boost your income statement by leveraging your balance sheet. And the reason we know about this stuff is the auditors force them to disclose it. But when we go over the top and there's a correction, which will happen at some point, everyone's going to point to these deals. So there's, look, I believe AI is real. It's disruptive. It's fun. My behavior is completely changed. I use open AI 30 or 40 times a day. But there's also business behavior that's speculative. They're both true.

21:38Nicole Lapin:And yeah, so both can be true at the same time, but the circular spending is a concern. It's not necessarily illegal. It just smells bad. So can you explain, like, in the Microsoft open AI example, just follow the money trail?

21:54Bill Gurley:Yeah, yeah. So and by the way, I, you know, this is an argument to have with with some super experienced auditor, although they typically won't go on podcast and talk. I've tried to have auditors come talk like people think that auditing is this black or white thing, but there are many gray areas. And I can assure you, not from knowledge, but just once the Microsoft deal happened, the next person, their auditor probably said, I'm not sure. and they go, well, Microsoft did it. Like they pressure them to say it's okay. But here's what Microsoft did. So in the very first deal with OpenAI, Microsoft invests X billion dollars.

22:35Bill Gurley:Let's just say it's 500 million. But instead of giving OpenAI cash, they give them credits to use Azure. And so by making this investment, they're assuring they're going to have revenue down the line. And then OpenAI uses those credits, and Microsoft counts that as revenue. But guess what? There was no cash flow. So it's cash flowless revenue for Microsoft. And that should be questionable. It's certainly low revenue quality. You're right. I can't prove it's illegal, but it's extremely low revenue quality for a reason. And now it's all over the place. I mean, I guess NVIDIA committing$2 billion to CoreWeave when CoreWeave may not have another source of funds.

23:25Bill Gurley:And it's just, it's not good. It's very non-ideal.

23:30Nicole Lapin:Not money laundering.

23:32Bill Gurley:I don't know. That's a pretty strong word, money laundering. But it is, you're using your balance sheet to prop up your revenue. you know and and those when you do that the revenue that you get in the future doesn't create positive cash flow for you like if you give credits it certainly doesn't and and and in the case of if if nvidia invest in corby they're giving them the money but then they're giving it back you know and so there's no incremental cash flow so you have revenue without incremental cash flow and if i mean that's i think buffett would would puke all over that.

24:10Nicole Lapin:And there's so much comparison to the dot-com bubble. You were at benchmark at the peak. How do you see it being similar or different to what we're seeing right now?

24:20Bill Gurley:Well, I think you can point to certain things in both directions. I think the revenues weren't as big in the companies back then. And so a bull would say that there's more real spend here from the end customers, the enterprises and the consumers. One thing I would say, most of the circular deals back then involved debt. So they were loaning. Cisco was giving loans to companies to buy their products. But debt comes due fairly quickly. Using equity to do it would allow for it to run for longer because you don't have to pay it back. and and so in some ways it's more speculative to use investments than loans for that reason

25:07Nicole Lapin:you mentioned being on chat gbt 20 times a day so i'm saying you're a chat gbt guy not i try and use them all and there was a time where for current things perplexity was better but then

25:23Bill Gurley:And ChatGPT caught up a little bit on, you know, doing a search, like recognizing you're looking for something current, doing a search and coming back at you. So that differentiation, I felt, got closed. But I do try and jump around.

25:38Nicole Lapin:It seems like all the LLMs, though, are ravenously running toward AGI. What do you think that looks like? And who do you think wins?

25:46Bill Gurley:I'm probably on the other side of this one, Nicole. I think there's a lot of rhetoric in the U.S. model business, and I think a lot of that rhetoric is purposeful to try and attract regulatory capture. And I'm not as convinced that the sentient AI is right around the corner. And there are other people that are smarter than me about this that agree with me, and of course there are other people on the other side. But I'm not personally sitting around worried about it.

26:20Nicole Lapin:Oh, so what are you sitting around worried about right now? What scares you about this market outside of AI? Where do you see the opportunities?

26:28Bill Gurley:Yeah, I mean, I would say one thing that I use the word scare. I think the venture capital industry, you know, from the day I entered to the day I left, only got more competitive. And since I've stopped doing new investments, I would say it's gotten even more competitive. And how that manifests itself in the markets is the vast majority of new investments in successful companies are preemptive and proactive, which means the company didn't go out looking to raise money. The investor came to the company and insisted they take their money. And I experienced this in the Uber Lyft situation. it is it creates a situation where these companies have burn rates that are much bigger than anyone before them and you know it's funny when when uber was burning one or two billion a year everybody thought we were crazy and now open ai is burning a number that's a multiple of that and so that that means you're in these businesses where it's kind of a sport of kings and you got to get comfortable with massive burn rates.

27:40And you're not allowed as a founder or an investor to

27:44Bill Gurley:say, hey, let's just sit around and be disciplined. We're not going to do that. So if you take like the legal AI category, you can have ChatGPT do this analysis for you. But there's like eight companies that have raised over$100 million. So if you're an entrepreneur 14 entering this market and you think like you know you're just you're dead you're dead man walking like you got no shot because there's just going to be so much money spent i mean i wish it was a sport or game of queens but it's not yeah that's that's a fair that's a fair pushback on the term but but it what i meant was that everyone out there has massive amounts of money and you're very unlikely to be able to compete if you don't have access to a similar amount of money, whether you like it or not.

28:36Nicole Lapin:I think everybody would like to have more money.

28:39Bill Gurley:It's dilutive. It's dilutive. It pushes up your valuation. Your valuation really represents discounted future expectations. So now if you raise money at really high prices, you've got to perform higher. Or you run the risk of a down round. Down rounds in private companies are messy as all get out. I'm not convinced that for a founder, always having more money is a good thing. I think there are a lot of negative consequences.

29:07Nicole Lapin:So outside of tech and AI, do you see other opportunities? Ray Dalio, who's been on the show, has his all-weather portfolio that stocks and long-term bonds and intermediate bonds and gold and commodities.

29:21Bill Gurley:I've spent my life as a venture capitalist, not as an LP. So, I mean, I've generally, every time someone asks me for investment advice, I ask them if they've read A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton McHale. And if you haven't, like, go read that and then let's have a conversation. But I generally believe unless you have a reason to know that you have an edge in a particular field, you should run a well-balanced portfolio, as Burton would suggest, you know. And so whether or not someone knows someone have an edge is really a question for them, not me. But in general, that's how I feel. If I were to say one thing, the SaaS companies have been beat up pretty bad late recently, very recently.

30:06Bill Gurley:And if you had a correction that was caused by AI that took them down even further, Like that would be, I think, an incredible entry point for some pretty strong positive cash flowing stocks. And I'm also somewhat skeptical of this argument some people have made that because AI can write code, they won't buy software anymore. And I just like I can't imagine someone saying like replacing SAP with, you know, just telling AI, oh, well, we'll just dump our transactions into AI and see it. Like, I really can't see. I don't think the auditors would be OK with it. It's just too cute. It's a step too far.

30:51Bill Gurley:So I would I would watch and wait for a bit more of a correction. And then I think you can get some real bargains in non-AI stocks.

31:00Nicole Lapin:B2B SaaS, so you're talking about the sales forces of the world.

31:03Bill Gurley:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you could, like, there are certain companies like Adobe where you may be more susceptible to AI risk. But, yeah, I'm talking about, you know, Workday, SAP, those kind of things. Yeah, if those get beat up even further, I think you're picking up stuff really cheap.

31:21Nicole Lapin:How often do you check your portfolio?

31:23Bill Gurley:Not as much as I should at this point. Not as much as I should at this point. There's another trait I like, which is here I say you should all index and then I'm going to give specific names. I really like this battery manufacturer in China. I think China is extremely well positioned to serve solar and battery demand across the world. We don't have any competitive products whatsoever in the U.S. And, you know, Elon recently when he was at Davos, he said we should cover like a small fraction of Utah or Nevada with solar panels and we could serve the whole energy in the U.S. And the person said, well, why won't that happen?

32:06Bill Gurley:And he said, because we can't import these Chinese products because of tariffs. And so that's a that's a big hint to me that the rest of the world is going to buy a ton of this stuff. And this this this company is particularly innovative. So it's an innovative exporter in China.

32:21Nicole Lapin:Say the ticker one more time.

32:23Bill Gurley:It's CATL. It trades on the Hong Kong exchange.

32:26Nicole Lapin:And just as a reminder, not financial advice. Do your own research.

32:30Bill Gurley:And I do own it for full disclosure.

32:33Nicole Lapin:Thank you for that. That was my next question. You know, we talk about this idea of private markets being risky, but another way that people have exposure to private equity or private company stock is being employed by them. And you talk in your book about how you were offered stock options for the very first time when you were in Compaqs. One of the most popular episodes we've had on the show is actually how to assess stock options as an employee when you're joining a company and you're being offered, you know, base salary plus options. What are good things to look for in order to see if it's worth taking a smaller salary in exchange for?

33:11Bill Gurley:Yeah, so I mean, I can imagine all the different kind of things you guys could have talked about because it's quite complex. Most people that take stock options probably have no idea how many total shares outstanding they are, which is a really important thing to know if you're going to try to attempt to value what you're getting. Unfortunately, there's this practice called 409A where you try and have an opinion of what this company is actually worth. And I think from a just purely from a financial rigor standpoint, that process is really sadly imperfect. And so that number is not something I think you can hold much weight on.

33:52Bill Gurley:I mean, it's important to know what the strike price you're being offered is compared to what you think the company's worth. And you need to know Total Shares Outstanding to pull that off.

34:07Nicole Lapin:I think compared is the interesting word there or just context in general, because, you know, I think people see a big number or a bunch of shares and they're like, oh, my God, I'm going to be rich. And then end of story. In the episode, we talked for sure about the number of shares outstanding, you know, the founders goals for liquidation event.

34:26Bill Gurley:I mean, people don't know this, but a company can have as many shares outstanding as it wants. So some founders have made the argument that if they just say, OK, well, we'll have 400 million shares, then when they their offers to the individual will have more absolute shares. But then on the eve of the IPO, you might do a big 10 to one reverse split to clean it up before you go public. And all of a sudden, the number of shares that person has gets cut in by 10. And that happens frequently. So, yeah, you really you really need to know total shares outstanding. Probably the thing that matters most, though, is that the company's really well positioned and going places.

35:07Bill Gurley:And there are multiple reasons, especially for someone early in their career, to jump on. Jim Barksdale used to say get in front of a parade. Like, if the company's working really well, two things are going to happen regardless of how many shares you get. If it's growing really fast, the opportunity for advancement is really high. You know, if you're in a company that doesn't grow, in order for you to move up, someone's got to get fired or quit because you're not hiring. And these companies that are expanding aggressively, you know, if you're doubling headcount every year, there's management opportunities coming up all the time or the ability to move up.

35:49Bill Gurley:And then, two, you're going to be around some of the brightest people that you could ever imagine being around if you're at a hot company. And those networks are going to give you value long into your life. And so when young people, you know, ask me about and if they don't have some massive passion to like start a company themselves or whatever, you know, I think being a part of something that's really working for a year or two or three or four can be super helpful to an early resume.

36:23Nicole Lapin:But maybe beat low expectations, like in your mind, assume it could also be worth nothing.

36:31Bill Gurley:Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I'm making a different point, I guess, which is the long term impact to what you may be worth from merely improving your network and being exposed to great people might mean more than whatever the options are worth.

36:51Nicole Lapin:You're talking about the intangible value.

36:53Bill Gurley:Yes, yes, yes.

36:55Nicole Lapin:And a lot of our listeners are first-time investors wanting to get into the market. I'd love to just briefly talk about your previous life as an analyst on both buy side and then sell side. Can you decode for us when you hear in the headlines like analyst so-and-so changes stock such-and-such from hold to buy or whatever? Who is making those calls? How seriously should we be taking them?

37:20Bill Gurley:I wouldn't take it very seriously. So the four years of my career as a sell-side analyst. So most of the people that are quoted that way are at sell-side firms. And what the term sell-side means is they're being paid by the companies that want you to trade stocks. And the purpose of what they're doing is to get you to trade stocks. Now, the amount you can make for trading a stock used to be a lot higher before automated trading. And there were some famous things that happened during the dot-com period that caused Elliot Spitzer to build this wall. And the sell-side analysts don't make nearly as much as they used to, but they're still the ones that are most quoted.

38:08Bill Gurley:But I find that a lot of what they write is just a regurgitation of what the company told them to write. They don't have, I'd be much more interested personally, you can't get this information, but if the buy side was making a call, so the people that actually buy or sell the stock, like if you see, you know, a investor you respect, like a capital group or a Fidelity move out of a stock, that's a bigger signal, I think a more important signal. Unfortunately, the media doesn't track that as much as they could. The filings are a little delayed. They're like 90 days delayed. they could not pay that much attention to it.

38:47Nicole Lapin:Yeah. We had to that point, we had a big fund manager on the show saying that it's a lagging indicator because of that delay. So, you know, but when you go onto a brokerage, you see a lot of reports and it's kind of fuzzy to see how much weight you should put.

39:04Bill Gurley:Yeah. Yeah. Even though I came from that world and loved every minute of it And I would like to think I was differentiated. I just think you asked the question, I'm giving you my opinion. I wouldn't put that much weight on.

39:17Nicole Lapin:I appreciate it. Loving every minute of it. You've also said that you've gotten your dream job in VC. You talk about this realization in your book, getting your dream job or even liking your job isn't necessarily a given that you have to continue to make it your dream job. How do you do that?

39:37Bill Gurley:Well, for me, I've discovered something in talking about the book that I didn't know because everybody likes to go through my journey. I didn't realize I was doing it, but my first job was as an engineer. My second job was as a cell site analyst. And in both cases, about two or three years in, I had a moment where I asked myself the question. I reflected and asked myself the question, do I want to do this for the next 30 years? And in both cases, I reached a point where the answer was no. And I don't know how many people take the time to ask that question. You get caught up in the moment. You're trying to get ahead.

40:17Bill Gurley:You're working. It's not a question anybody provocatively tells you to ask yourself. But there's quite a bit of data that when people get towards the end of their life, their biggest regrets, Daniel Pink talks about this a lot, their biggest regrets are regrets of inaction. And they don't hold, they're not mad at themselves for the mistakes they made. They're mad at themselves for the things they didn't try. Daniel calls them boldness, regrets. And so if you want to, you know, life's short. I have a phrase in the book, life is a use it or lose it proposition. And I think it's awesome to explore.

40:53I think it's awesome to, I don't think anyone should be, feel guilty if they're in a job

40:59Bill Gurley:they don't love, but give yourself the opportunity to move on. And be flexible about it. A lot of people change jobs. A lot of people change careers. Nothing's set in stone. Plenty of people end up working in areas that are different from their major. And so just be fluid. Be flexible. And ask yourself this question, do I want to do this for 30 years? And if not, man, life's short. Go do something else. Have fun.

41:26Nicole Lapin:I thought it was really interesting in the book that you have the study with Wharton that said nearly six in 10 people would do things differently if they could start over. They had wished they had followed their interests, but also a ton of people in the survey said they wish they made more money.

41:42Bill Gurley:I think there's quite a bit of data through a bunch of different research that money doesn't drive happiness. And one of the things I was careful to do in the book, We have a number of stories. In fact, every other chapter is a story. And I was very careful to pick industries that are the kind of jobs where your parents might tell you not to go into them. Because I think one of the problems we've gotten to is parents with very strong positive intentions push people towards jobs where they can make money. But if you're unhappy, like I just don't think it's going to matter how much money you have.

42:25Bill Gurley:And one of the things that I hope I uncovered with the stories in the book, if you go into a sector that may not be one that's known for making money, but you thrive and you really love it, the wealth tends to follow. And so I would, at this point in time, with all the data from all these surveys, there's another survey in the book you didn't mention the Gallup poll survey that only like 23 % of people would call themselves engaged at work and like 59 % are quiet quitting. Like that's not ideal. Like that's not an ideal way to go through your whole life.

43:03Nicole Lapin:I just worry a little bit, Bill, about this follow your passion rallying call because I think there has to be a baseline unless you're from a privileged position or family, you know, there's no shame in obviously needing money to feed yourself or your family. And sometimes your interests don't lead to even that baseline. So that makes people feel bad that they're optimizing for money.

43:26Bill Gurley:Here's what I would say. I would not, I would not hold out to you the argument that the point of the book is to be a operating manual for every human on the planet, for every job. The goal of the book is to help unlock human potential, to give those people who have the little bit of inkling or a little bit of spark or a little bit of fire the permission to go do what they love. And I think for those people, they're going to have a much more satisfied life if they do it. And I think the money will follow. And one important corollary and caveat to that is they're going to have to work their butt off, you know?

44:07Bill Gurley:And so all those things have to line up. But I do think that if we have more of those types of people in the world, the world's a better place. I think they're the ones that will dent the universe. They're the ones that will change their fields. They're the ones that you'll be inspired by. And so the goal of the book is to create more of those types of people. And certainly I think a number of people won't qualify for that, for that mission.

44:38Nicole Lapin:I mean, for me personally, I made my job, my dream job out of necessity. I started as a poetry major. And so continuing on that passion wasn't going to pay the bills. But once I got into business news, I sort of found the shaded part of the Venn diagram of what I love to do. And then the activities I had. So I started writing, like I incorporated some of what I wanted to do into, you know, the jobs that I had to pay the bills.

45:06Bill Gurley:No doubt. And look, there's a number of you said, which I double click on. First of all, a lot of podcasters are in their dream job. Like they love, they get to talk to interesting people. They love it. And most of them, and you're probably similar, kind of created the job yourself, right? You didn't apply to be a podcaster somewhere, right? This is something you went out and hustled and made happen. We use a phrase in the book, be a candidate of one. And so many of the stories are people that are purposely creating the job they want. A good friend of mine, his name, Mike Mobison. Mike loves reading books about the brain and investing and talking about investing.

45:49Bill Gurley:And he has found a way for 30 years now to get paid to read everything he possibly can and to synthesize it. And his career is very non-traditional. He's found people to hire him that appreciate that he does that, but he's got to do what he loves his entire life. And that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, like helping people to unlock that. The example you used about thinking about what you're good at and what you love, there's a story in the book about this gentleman who lives here in Austin, Texas, that was a seismologist undergrad, did that for a while, became a mortgage broker. He's 40 years old.

46:33He's watching a PBS show and someone has an exercise where they take a blank sheet of paper,

46:40Bill Gurley:draw a line down the middle, put what they're good at on one side, what they love to do on the other and try and find an intersection. And that is how Tito's Vodka was started, him doing that simple example with that sheet of paper. Most successful spirit brand in America. He owns 100 % of it. And it all started from that exercise. And this gets back to my point about, like if someone said the time stamp date when Tito started Tito's, I'm going to start a beverage company in Austin, Texas. they would tell you you're not going to make money doing that you're going to fail that's a that's a quixotic thing to go do and he's one of the richest people in america today and i just i have examples in the book that are more realistic that maybe relate to your major but like there's a gentleman who fell in love with the grand canyon and started writing about it and he's published several books now and has a podcast and like he has enough listeners he gets you know he's doing fine you know, and loves what he does.

47:45Bill Gurley:There's another one that does the same thing for Texas horticulture. And if you can do it in those fields, I think you can do it in almost any field. You do have to love it. I had this argument, a similar argument about whether you should chase your dreams or not with a counselor at one of the top universities in the country and brought up poetry. And I brought up these examples and she said, yeah, but you'd have to work really hard. And I said, yes, absolutely. You'd have to work really hard. Yeah. Look, one of the big points we make in the book is that if you can find something you're fascinated by that you're extremely curious about, it won't feel like a grind.

48:29Bill Gurley:You'll be out there doing continuous learning all the time. And that means working hard won't feel like working hard. And you'll be successful. And by the way, the flip side of it is an interesting lens to which to evaluate. You send someone into a job they don't love. If they're competing with someone that does love that job, that other person's going to be out there doing continuous learning, doing the networking, the mentorship, connecting with peers. And you're not going to you're going to fall behind. And because the other person is just going to be more motivated. So that's a dangerous trap, I would argue, of just going into a job because you think it's safe.

49:14Nicole Lapin:Well, you mentioned a dream job being podcasting, and you have an excellent, the most excellent podcast voice, but I think you know that. And in October, you did an episode of the BG2 pod that you used to co-host, where you talked about the next phase of your life is all about giving back. You said that this was something you were looking to do not only with the book, but quote in the next project after the book. So it sounds like you already know what that project is. But can I guess?

49:45Bill Gurley:Yes, I do. Sure.

49:47Nicole Lapin:Anything in politics?

49:48Bill Gurley:Somewhat related. So first of all, one of the things that allowed me to focus on this book, and people have asked me why I wrote a book about careers. Why didn't I write a book about VCs or investing or tech or any of those things? And once I decided to hang up my boots from venture investing and started thinking about what I do with my life from here forward, I read this great book by Arthur Books, From Strength to Strength, which is really targeted writing for people where I am. And I think I did make a decision that finding a way to give back was what I wanted to do. And once that decision was made, this was really the only book I wanted to write.

50:34Bill Gurley:I had done the speech on this topic six years earlier. And so I knew the content was there. But this book hopefully has an ability to impact a way broader audience than writing a VC book would have. so I'm hopeful for that I also I'm going to turn my attention to a foundation that's associated with the book so we're going to give out uh five thousand dollar grants to people that apply that want to chase their dreams and need a financial boost so I'll be doing that but but that's not the thing that's not the thing you were asking about and there's the last page in the book talks about the uh the foundation and there's a website well and at the end of the book I appreciate that

51:17Nicole Lapin:You say you could have written an Uber book or a memoir, but you didn't. And you found this really cool niche and sweet spot. And you're putting your money where your mouth is.

51:27Bill Gurley:My intention past the book is to start a policy institute. So there was something that happened in the past five years that I considered to be a win from a policy perspective. And that is it relates to nuclear energy. So there were these huge voices that had decided that nuclear wasn't clean. And you had a bunch of people, you know, arguing to tear down nuclear plants. And unfortunately, in places like Germany, they started decommissioning plants all over the place. and a number of voices, many of who I respect, like Steven Pinker and Elon Musk and the Collison brothers, pushed back. And they were willing to go out, despite the fact that the political winds were going the other direction, and said, this is silly.

52:22Bill Gurley:And Josh Wolfe at Lux. Josh used to say, if we had never had a nuclear bomb and we had just discovered nuclear energy, we'd have been like, oh my God, this solves all the world's problems. And we're sitting here worried about climate change. Anyway, there's also a woman here in Austin, Isabel Bowmicky. I can't pronounce her last name, but she became like an influencer on this topic. And anyway, it shifted. There was a moment like a year or two ago where everyone kind of woke up and agreed, oops, that was a mistake, and flipped back the other way. And now there's a bunch of people that all agree nuclear is really smart.

53:03Bill Gurley:And so I'm going to be looking for opportunities that have that type of thing. I don't want to lobby. I don't want to get in and deal with little bitty state-by-state laws. But I'd like to find big ideas where some research and some synthesis can lead to better thoughts and decision-making. Topics that interest me include nuclear, the U.S. health care problem. I just want to go tilt at that. I really don't have an answer. I want to go learn for a long, but we got a real problem. U.S.-China relations, the K-12 education system in America, I think, could use an overhaul. And I just want to figure out what those big top-down type decisions that could be made that could potentially fix some of these things.

53:55Nicole Lapin:Fix it, Bill. Those are the biggest ones. I don't.

53:58Bill Gurley:I mean, it might be a quixotic effort, but it's what I'd like to spend my brain time on.

54:04Nicole Lapin:Quixotic is an excellent word. You've used it twice and I really appreciate it. So it sounds like the dream that you're running down now is policy.

54:15Bill Gurley:Yeah. And by the way, it took me and, you know, who knows, I might get into it and not like it, but it took me a while to come to that conclusion. A lot of people wanted me to go be an angel investor. A lot of people wanted me to manage my own money. A lot of, you know, there were people pushing me in different directions. But this is the one. And it took a couple of years. And Arthur Brooks' book really helped on this also.

54:40Nicole Lapin:He's been on the show. And I agree that the linkage there is really asking yourself, not everybody else, what will bring you happiness. We end all of our episodes, Bill, by asking our guests for a tip they can take straight to the bank.

54:56Bill Gurley:I'm going to steal one from the book that we hinted at. But I fundamentally believe that the most advantaged people in any field are those that have this commitment to continuous learning. And I don't think you can fake it. And I don't think you can muscle your way through it because you'll burn out. And Duckworth, Angela Duckworth has come out like 10 years after she wrote Grit and said, I probably should have put more weight on passion and perseverance because we've taught these kids how to grind. But eventually, like they just burn out, like if they don't love it. And people like to talk about AI taking jobs.

55:39Bill Gurley:I'd like to make an argument that for those that are curious and are fast learners in their field, they're going to, it's going to be an accelerant. They're going to move faster as a result of AI being out there. But you've got to want to learn. It's almost got to be for free. I've used the phrase, like, it's got to compete with Netflix. like do you want to go learn about this more than you want to watch a tv series and if you can find that place you're gonna i think you're gonna have an awesome life well the cool thing about

56:14Nicole Lapin:learning is that the more you learn the more you realize there is to learn and so the cycle continues