Weird ways Ben Horowitz makes Founders more confident

25:57This is still part of the story is broken. You're missing this information and you know, you're not, you're framing it the wrong way. You got to frame it this way. And he's like, okay, this is so helpful. Wow. Thank you guys. Would love to touch base again next week. And Sully was like next week, how long do you think it'll take you to make those three changes? He's like, well, he's like, how about we meet today at 3 PM and you show me and we did two a days with them. And I, it kind of broke my brain a little bit because there was like this invisible wall as a business person like you don't meet twice in a day like that would be a faux pas you know like it's like bad manners it's like fuck your manners when it's like was this a big problem or not like just clarify that for me because if it is a big problem then i'll just keep showing up and saying okay now what okay now what and okay and if you just do that for three days the like all of the excuses get squeezed away is what i found like all the excuses suddenly disappear and you get to the brass tacks about what's going on It was amazing.

26:51That's definitely right. No, no, that's, you know, Sully and I actually had a lot of conversations, but he went through a lot of crises in that. So he knows. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot because using only 20 % of your business data is like dating somebody who only texts you in emojis. First of all, that's annoying. And second, you're missing a lot of the context. But that's how most businesses are operating today. They're only using 20 % of their data, unless you use HubSpot. That's when all your emails, your call logs, your chat messages. They turn into insights to help you grow your business because all that data makes all the difference.

27:24Learn more at HubSpot.com. Can I ask you about confidence? You give a talk with a bunch of your portfolio companies about, I think I saw you say that like they don't fail due to lack of confidence, but a lack of confidence. I would say the number one reason why a founder fails at the CEO job is some kind of lack of confidence, crisis of confidence, whatever it is, that causes them to hesitate, basically. Okay, I should do this, and I can see that I should do this, but I'm not sure I should do this, so I'm going to wait. If you had to teach a class on how to improve someone's confidence, do you have a framework or some bullet points that you would stand by?

28:09It ends up being like at the end of the day, confidence is personal and you have to feel it yourself to have it. Like I can't, you know, it's like the Wizard of Oz. It's like, you know, I can give you like a clock and tell you it's a heart or whatever, but like at some point you've got to believe that. And the thing that causes that crisis in confidence is, you know, okay, you invent something, you hire a bunch of people, you make a decision, it's wrong, people really suffer from it. You feel horrible because you're like, wow, I don't know what I'm doing. And I made a mistake and it had real consequences.

28:51Like most people in life don't have a situation like that until they become CEO. And so then, you know, it's like, well, how do I, how do I recover that? And so like a lot of the idea of the firm is like, well, you know, what if you could call anybody? Like, how would that make you feel? Like, what if you could call anybody, you know, in the White House, in Congress, in, you know, like any executive, you know, any kind of big company CEO and be able to have a conversation? You know, like, what if we could build that network for you? So that was kind of the idea behind the platform. And then, you know, we would do, I used to have this event, which I should probably bring back, but I ran out of room in my backyard called the CEO Barbecue, where we would bring all the CEOs for the portfolio and then we would just like put like very famous people around them.

29:46So we had like Zuck and Larry Page and Kanye all at a barbecue and they're at the barbecue and there's no like talks, there's no business agenda, there's no nothing, there's no even toast, right? Like it's just a barbecue. And so it was just to make them feel like, oh, shit, like I know Kanye. Like I have to be somewhat important. So you're trying to like imbue this feeling that like I may not totally know what I'm doing, but I should be CEO. But I'm at a barbecue with Kanye. Yeah, yeah. I can't be totally dumb. What about the inverse? When you look at a CEO and you're like, oh, they have just like hit this fork in the road.

30:20Now confidence is going to go horribly, is going to go down and it's going to be their demise. What decisions do those people make? Like, what are the commonalities between the people who lose it that way? Sort of like the Charlie Munger, like, tell me where I'm going to die so I know not to go there, right? What would be the decisions I would make to take me off the path? I would say the big thing is it's almost like a lack of decision, right? Like, it's a hesitation. In football, they always say, like, you have to trust your eyes because you can be really fast. But if you don't start running when you see the thing, if you wait, then you're not fast.

30:54And that's kind of what it's like for CEOs. Like, you could be really, really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you're not smart anymore. It's too light. And there's all kinds of, like, excuses people tell themselves to not make a decision. So, for example, like, one of the biggest ones on an executive, like, is, well, if, you know, we made such a big deal when we hired him, like, what is the press going to say or what are the people in the company going to say or, you know, I don't have time to hire a new person to do the job that this guy's fucking up. You know, like these kinds of, there's all these reasons not to make the decision.

31:39And they're all just, if you think about them for more than like five minutes, you go, well, that doesn't make any fucking sense because this guy's like fucking up the whole org. Like who gives a fuck what the press says? Like you just get rid of him, like start rebuilding now you know like it's not if he's doing a bad job like no job is better than a bad job like i think we all know that and everything kind of ends up like that i don't know enough to make the decision like i didn't give him enough of a chance this and that the other so it's it's kind of that lack of confidence that generally causes a no decision where there really needs to be a decision uh is is the main i would say that's the common pattern yeah so in the two examples you gave, the first one was like, ah, the CTO, blah, blah, blah.

32:25And that's kind of like avoiding the conversation would be the mistake there. And then in this one, like avoiding the decision would be the mistake. Yeah. You have to, you know, I wrote a post a long time ago, so called, you know, run out the pain and darkness. You have to run out the pain and darkness. You can't run away from it. If you run away from it, it's all bad. You're pretty good at, uh, titling blog posts and books. I think, uh, you know, the hard thing, the hard thing is like badass but i think you said that i think in the in the publishing industry typically the author's title is not the winning title and i think you were like bragging that you're like that's my title i came up with it yeah they ran well i i i didn't well you know because i didn't need a book like i didn't actually want to write the book they asked me to write the book the publisher so i felt like i didn't do what i wanted so i i called it what i wanted yeah what um what do you what excites you so this you know a lot of the stuff we talked about is like the hard stuff, the pain.

33:18But nobody gets into this for just the pain, right? Nobody gets into this. The pain is just a sort of necessary that we go through to do the good stuff. I'm just curious, what are you really excited about right now? What are either, you know, rabbit holes are going down, cool stuff you've seen that you haven't been able to forget. What's really cool and interesting to Ben Horowitz? Well, so one of the most exciting things that's going on now is, you know, like kind of it's well known that the United States has kind of fallen behind in defense, manufacturing, rare earth minerals, all these kinds of things.

33:56But what's been very exciting is like there are startups that are like, oh, I'll solve that for America. And so like we have a company that we just funded recently, Periodic Labs, which is using AI to do like novel material science to kind of enable better kind of design of everything from like rockets to missiles to, you know, all sorts of things. And then we have a company, Cobol Metals, that is basically using AI. So they take a dirt sample and they use AI to analyze the dirt sample and they can tell you, oh yeah, there's going to be like, you know, copper below that, you know, whatever, a mile down into the earth.

34:37And so, you know, these kinds of techniques where you're kind of using tech to go, oh, no, we're going to catch up fast has been very, very exciting, I would say. My view as a founder on the ground is just that sometimes you see something and like I said, it breaks an imaginary wall you had. And sometimes things become cool. And cool, although we try to not follow trends, sometimes you could use your psychology for you rather than against you. And so seeing what Elon has done, where it's like, oh, he goes into these really hard spaces and does these hardware, hard tech, literal rocket science, right?

35:13And sort of unafraid of that. Or, you know, Anderil going in and doing, you know, weapons and defense tech and making that cool to be kind of patriotic in that way. Is that what it was? Is that what it took? Or was there something else to it? You know, there's a lot, they're very challenging companies to build in some ways. But on the other hand, you know, it's a good time to do them because people, because Elon has, I mean, you know, God bless Elon for showing that it was possible. So now, whereas like only Elon could have financed Tesla, normal people can start to finance these things now because Elon has shown that it's possible.

35:54So it's a little bit like the four-minute mile in that way, I would say. But yeah, I mean, like, you know, the things that, yeah, and even in like public safety, you look at something like, you know, flock safety, In a way, technologically, it's not nearly as complicated as some of the others, like an andrel or something like that. But it's very, very powerful. I mean, you know, they really make both kind of policing, being a citizen, and even being a criminal more safe, because all of a sudden, you're using AI to provide real intelligence. So, you know, for example, in Las Vegas, where we deployed it, a huge problem, a huge problem in like police violence, police getting killed are traffic stops.

36:41And a big reason for that is somebody reports there's a, you know, a 1998 Honda Acura that's driving, that's brown, that kidnapped a baby. Okay. So that's a real situation. But like that description is usually wrong. Like the description of the actual car is usually wrong. So you have flock safety, you have the exact match. So the difference between a cop going into a situation where they may have the wrong guy, and if they have the wrong guy, the guys could get very agitated, and then you have a bad situation, or they know 100 % this guy is in a car that we know is the car, and there's a baby in the back that's not his.

37:29Okay, you're going in with a hole. You're not sending a single person in there with a gun coming off their motorcycle. Like, you've got a whole team that's going to make sure that that person is apprehended safely and correctly and the baby is saved. I've heard, I've heard flocks, this amazing thing. Is it drones? Is it cameras? What are they doing? Yeah, you know, so it's primarily like a camera system where AI will basically, so somebody does something, you know, they grab the car on the camera, that car shows up on another camera anywhere in the city and they're like, oh, there it is. And actually, that's how they caught, interestingly, the Tesla terrorist who set the Tesla ship on fire in Las Vegas was he came in earlier to case the place.

38:15Flock Safety picked up the car. They saw the car come back at night. And they were like, oh, we know whose car that is. And they just went and arrested him. Did you guys see that ad? I think it was like two weeks ago. I was trying to find it. it was went viral on twitter but it was basically i believe it was a solar company was it a solar company where they're recruiting employees and they had a whole website just dedicated to the recruitment uh aspect of just they needed more staff and they bought an ad in the new york times i believe or some newspaper and it was like uh uh an old man sitting with like what it looked like his grandson overlooking a mountain and they were like overlooking i think it was solar panels i'm not exactly sure but it was like do you really want to tell your grandkids that you spent your entire 30s and 40s building just b2b software it was great and it like and there's this whole trend amongst uh young people on twitter of like being more traditional and things like that and i think that to answer your question sean about andrel and and elon i think that it's kind of been like a perfect spiral or a perfect mix of like people seeing elon and and palmer do these interesting things and also just like getting sick of just building b2b software or something you know that's is a stereotype for what's boring.

39:25That may or may not be true. But like, you know, like seeing this, like there could be more out there. I think that the software had to get good enough to, of course, make these other things possible, which is, you know, and it's amazing that we're at that time where you can really imagine changing the world in all kinds of ways. You get to see a lot of pitches of the smartest people in the world telling you what the future is going to look like in five years. And so you have this like element of your job that's a little bit like a time traveler. So you probably have a better sense of what the world looks.

40:02Nobody has perfect sense, but you have a better sense of what the world looks like, you know, five, seven, 10 years from now. You don't know exactly when, you don't know who's going to do it. What's broken your brain, either from a demo or a story pitch that you've heard, you know, sometime in the last year or so that the rest of us will experience, you know, sometime in the future. Yeah, so I think, you know, one of the things that, I mean, everybody's talking about embodied AI and robots and so forth, and rightly so. But I would say, like, in the creative space, I'm starting to realize, like, this AI video and so forth, it's not like making the old thing more efficient.

40:38It's a new medium. It's an actual new thing. in the same ways that like movies weren't plays. You know, AI video is not video. The stories that you can tell are completely different because you can do things that you just, you know, without a$200 million budget, you had had no chance of doing. And now it's like no problem. And I think that's going to be like very, very, very interesting. And then how well it's working on like existing stuff. So people, you know, the people who are on the cutting edge of the movie industry are now, you know, they're able to do like whole movie scenes or edit or change their movie, have the AI actor do the third cut at a level of quality that even the actor doesn't know it wasn't them doing the acting and that kind of thing.

41:34So I think it's going to change dramatically again. And there's going to be kind of white space for not only new creatives, but new entertainment entrepreneurs and so forth that nobody is really imagining now. Is there any AI content that you consume as a fan? Yeah, I don't know. Well, I've been watching that the one with the cat was pretty good over the weekend. The cat playing all the instruments and the lady coming out on the forge going like, you got to get that racket out. Do you guys see that one? Was that on Sora? That was pretty good. Yeah, I think it's a Sora video. Ben, do you mess around on Suno at all with AI Music?

42:15Yeah, Suno and Eleven Labs has a model. and UDO's got a very good model. So there's a few different really good models. Like I feel like I could have a music career again. That's going to be very, very interesting to me because it's sort of like one thing that hip hop showed was, so people don't really realize this, but this is something Quincy Jones pointed out to me before he passed. He said, you know, Ben, like hip hop started like exactly when they canceled all the music programs in schools. Like it was the same, the exact same time when people didn't learn to play instruments in schools. That's when, that is exactly when hip hop began.

42:59And hip hop kind of freed you as somebody who was like a musical talent from actually having to learn to play an instrument. Which, you know, and even for the producers, right? Like you had a drum machine, you had samples. so you could hear what you liked and play it, but you didn't need to be a virtuoso. And that kind of opened up a world that we didn't have before. And I think AI music is kind of that on steroids. I don't know if you guys know, the number one song in the country right now is an AI country artist. It's called Walk My Walk. Oh, yeah. And the first, I think the first AI artist that got a record deal recently.

43:40Like, you know, so this is definitely what the future looks like is people who, non-musicians, it's just like, you know, Replit and others make it so that you don't have to be a coder to make apps. And now you don't have to be a musician to make music. And I don't think people really understand how big of a deal that is. Like my personal trainer who's been in the fitness world his whole life has been in a rabbit hole making, he's probably in the top 0.1 % of AI creators in the world right now creating music. And he's like got like a full band. He's like his own record label. And every day he's up till two in the morning.

44:12And he knows these programs inside and out. because it wasn't really accessible to somebody who didn't have musical talent before to be able to make music. Right, there's a big difference between taste and creativity and being a virtuoso violinist, right? Like those don't necessarily have to be the same thing. And it's great that, you know, people, you know, whatever, practice violin for three hours a day and like get amazing at it and all that kind of thing. But it's pretty neat to have a world where like, okay, if you can just do this part, you can still play. This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least$3 million a year in revenue.

44:58Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things. One, you've done something great, but you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize, I am all alone. I've outrun my peers, which means you're now making$10 million decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are going to hold you accountable, call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way.

45:32Because the fact is, is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there. And they're hard to find. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're going to be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up 10 years from now and saying, shit, I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members. And I know this stuff actually works. It can change your life.

46:03It changed mine, and I know it will change yours. So check it out, joinhampton.com. Sean, can you ask, you have this really cool line about the rules of culture and making them memorable. Well, yeah. So when I'm doing the research, one thing that stands out is like, you talk about culture, you talk about like, which is normally culture is like, I just fall asleep because it's so over-talked about in the business world. You just like, you got to really tell me something new. Well, over-talked about without anybody saying anything. Yeah, exactly. Culture, culture. Right. And it's like, oh, so cool.

46:35Tell me your values. Like integrity. Like, all right, great. Glad to hear it. I was worried it was going to be the opposite, right? Like it doesn't really tell you anything. And, you know, when you go walk into the company, the stuff on the wall doesn't match the stuff you see happening within the four walls. So you get sort of disillusioned in a way. But when you see somebody doing something interesting or somebody actually pulling it off, which, of course, there are examples, I get interested. And so one thing that I thought was cool, a nuance that I hadn't really heard before was you were talking about how at A6NZ, you kind of take time to drive the culture.

47:05Like I think in the new onboarding, you like I do a culture session one hour, they sign something at the end. And one of the nuances I thought that was interesting was you said, my rule for writing the kind of like the culture rules is it has to have some shock value. Like it has to give the other person like, oh, what the hell are you talking about type of reaction? If it's going to be memorable. I think the idea was, if it's not memorable, it's never going to be remembered or used. So you have to do something to make it memorable. Can you talk about your theory around this? Yeah. So, I mean, it kind of comes down to what you do every day, right?

47:37Like, it's a daily habit. So, you know, this idea that you put cultural values on the wall and then once a year in a performance tree, you say, do you follow the culture? It's like, that means absolutely nothing, right? It's nothing. And so it's like, well, what do you do every day? And so like one of the things we do every day is like we meet with entrepreneurs. So like what's a rule that sets the culture around that? So it's like, well, if you're late for that meeting, it's$10 a minute. It's like, well,$10 a minute. Like, well, what if I have to go to the bathroom? Yeah, you owe me$50. I don't care.

48:12You know, what if I had an important phone call? Okay, you owe me$100. Like, I don't care you had an important phone call. Well, like, why am I paying to work here? You know, well, because building a company is extremely hard. And culturally, we want to have the ultimate respect for that. And we don't want to waste any entrepreneur's time. And so that's your most important thing. So you have to plan to do that. You guys have a fine now. You're talking, this is a real A16s. Yeah. So every time I have to, like, go to the meeting, you know, like, I have to think about that. Because I've got to be on time.

48:43I've got to fucking plan my day. So, like, there's not, I'm not back to back on that one. I got to be on time. Otherwise, you know, I'm going to be embarrassed and all that kind of thing. And so, well, why and why am I doing that? And then that, OK, if you do that, that's a habit that makes you go, OK, like, no, I'm going to respect what this is. I know how hard it is to build a company. I may not even know how hard it is, but I know that like somebody here thinks it's hard enough that I have to show up on time. So can you keep can you tell some more of those interesting like, you know, the tardiness paying thing?

49:16That's pretty cool. Yeah, so a second one is like if you talk smack about an entrepreneur on X, you're fired. It doesn't matter if they're in the portfolio or not. You're just, that's it. And why is that? Well, culturally, first of all, we're dream builders. We're not dream killers. If you want to do something bigger than yourself and make the world a better place, I don't care what it is. I don't care if I think it's stupid. it. I'm for that. I'm not against that. I am for that. And I don't care if like Sequoia funded you or Benchmark funded you. I'm for that. Like, go get it. Like we're a pro entrepreneur.

49:56And then, you know, kind of related to that, I don't want to give anybody credit for making themselves look smart by making somebody else look stupid. Like, I don't want to give anybody like a gold star for saying that guy's, you know, making selling dollars for 85 cents. Oh, I'm so clever. You know, like, fuck you like nah we're not doing that here and so it's it's that kind of thing where it's like oh that seems like a harsh punishment but i get it i get it because i've heard it and and i understand it and so then that's like a way to kind of show up behaviorally daily as opposed to um you know like look here's the problem with integrity what does that mean right like integrity only matters when it's tested.

50:47Everybody has integrity. Everybody's honest until it's tested. And then when it's tested, very few people are, right? Like when it costs you money, when it costs you a deal, when it costs you your marriage, are you honest then? Because that's the actual thing. And so you can't just have it in the abstract. You have to say, like, what behaviors do you have to have to work here? You know, how responsive do you have to be? These things end up making the culture much more so than like a value or like one thing I really like is the samurai called them virtues. They didn't call them values. It's like, these are the virtues.

51:33Like this is your way of being. This isn't like some fucking, it's not a set of ideas. It's a set of actions. A culture is a set of actions. Listen to this, Sean. So if you go to a16z.com slash about, you'll see their values. And I just want to read, like I've never seen this before, so I'm just going to read a couple of them. But the six out of seven, it's we play to win. Our culture only matters if we're important. And in order to be important, we must win. We are the best firm in the world, so we expect to win. It's just like, that's fantastic. I love that. And that's, I don't know if controversial is the right word, but it's polarizing, right?

52:09Not a lot of people are into that, but that's badass. And then you say, you have another one that I really like. We only do first-class business and only in a first-class way. I think that's a really... I actually stole that phrasing from J.P. Morgan. It was so cool. He said it in court. They were accusing him of some kind of crazy market manipulation. You're talking about the J.P. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The J.P. Morgan, yeah. Yeah, I think I read about that line And Andrew Sorkin's got that 1928 or 29 book. And I think he says that, but that's great. Okay, so when I go to this site and I see these, I'm like, okay, these are like the high-level principles.

52:50But what you were saying just now is a little bit different. You were like, hey, look. Well, there's got to be behaviors that support the principles, yeah. Yeah, so you basically were like, what are the daily situations and actions where we have a choice? We either show up this way or we show up this way. And we're going to show up this way. And sometimes with a penalty, punishment, or praise based on, like, the extreme version of that behavior with the no tolerance policy, right? Like, and I think there's this great military quote that you have in your book. Oh, yeah. Well, if you see something below standard and you don't correct it, you set a new standard.

53:25And that's very true. And that's why they have to be specific because if they're not specific, you can't enforce it. How do you enforce, like, you don't have integrity? That just gets weaponized. It's like, that guy doesn't have integrity. He's not following the cultural value. You know, he doesn't have, why doesn't he have integrity? Well, he lied to me. Well, let's go talk to him. Oh, no, I didn't lie to you. Like, so it's not that. Whereas, oh, you just put out that tweet. Like, that's clearly against the cultural value. Like, uh-uh, there's no backing off that. So, like, you know, Facebook famously had move fast and break things, which I think is like - I thought that was really good, by the way.

54:00Hall of Fame. Yeah. You know, that's a Hall of Famer. But, like, that's kind of the, you know, one of the few that I know. I thought about that for months. I'm like, move fast and break. Because it's so counterintuitive. It's like, well, you want me to break things? I'm an engineer. I make things. I don't break things. But it was just his way of saying, there is no excuse for not fucking shipping. We're going fast. But they don't have that anymore, do they? Is that still a thing? Well, they got bigger, and then I think speed wasn't their main thing that they were trying to achieve. I think they literally changed it to move fast, It's move fast.

54:34With stability and stable infrastructure and reliability. Yeah, exactly. Somehow lost its edge. Yeah, yeah. So have you seen anything like that, move fast and break things, or just a behavior when you walked into the Airbnb office and you noticed something? Yeah, I mean, so, and, you know, Amazon had this thing where they used to make the desks out of, like, doors and two-by-fours. I tried doing that, by the way. It's way cheaper to get a desk. It's way cheaper to get a desk. But like, I think the idea back in whatever the late nineties when they did that was like, like, we're not wasting any money, you know, and that kind of thing, which is, you know, those markers are, are very, very powerful.

55:14Like one of my favorite ones was actually from the Haitian revolution when Toussaint Louverture basically made a rule. He's like, you can't shoot on your wife, which was like so absurd because here they are, they're in a colony, you know, a French colony. They're, you know, the British, the Spanish, the French, they're all raping and pillaging and doing all this stuff, all these armies. And these guys, like, can't cheat on their walks. But that little cultural idea that said, look, this is about trust. I got to be able to trust you. And, like, the people have to be able to trust you ended up basically really influencing the war.

55:52So one of the things that was, like, very surprising, I think, to people who read about the Haitian Revolution was, you know, here's this slave army taking on these European colonies, and the white women in the colonies supported Toussaint against, like, the French. And you go like, well, why'd they do that? Because they didn't rape. They didn't pillage. Like, Toussaint, like, these guys were, like, half-naked soldiers or slaves, and they weren't doing any of that. They were super polite. They behaved in a certain way. And the legend is, so he was Toussaint, Toussaint Louverture, but slaves didn't have last names.

56:29So where did Louverture come from? And so the story is Napoleon, who really was pissed at him, brought his generals together. And it's like, how in the fuck can you not get this slave? Like, how can you not defeat this slave? And they're like, well, we get him backed up. We get him surrounded. And then all of a sudden, there's an opening. And he became Toussaint Louverture, Toussaint the opening. And the opening, a lot of people say, was created by these townspeople, these women who were just like, oh, fuck, we're for him. We're for that army. I don't give a fuck about your army. We're for that army.

57:04So culture can be super influential. That's a great story. That's really cool. That's badass. You mentioned Amazon. Did you see Jeff Bezos got a new startup? Oh, I did. Did Jeff got a new startup? Yeah, you didn't see this announcement? Project Prometheus, They raised an initial seed round of$6 billion to bring… Is that true? They called it a seed round? Yeah, it's the first round of funding. So$6 billion raised, and they got 100 people, and they're building AI for the physical world. So it's not just robots, but basically the manufacturing of airplanes and ships and things like that. So they're basically saying, how do we use AI in advanced manufacturing, I think is the idea, but obviously there are a little title details.

57:49but that's pretty cool. He's like back in an operational role for the first time, which is cool. Yeah, no, I think that, by the way, like how great is it that the logistics genius of our time is back at it and going to help us like get back in the manufacturing game like that? Yeah. You know, those things are just incredible to me. And I think all of us were a little sad when Jeff was just living his best life just because he is so talented. So this is very great news. I loved it. I was like, this guy's having fun. He's getting jacked. He's showing a different, you know, a new North Star also, which like has kind of also taken over the tech industry.

58:30And by the way, like whatever, like, you know, people always make you into cartoon when you get to that level. He is, you know, for sure, like a top two or three best CEO in the last 40 years. So you're a bit surprising to me because I've read all your books. I know about your background. Basically, like you have like guided the people who have shaped destiny. You have also shaped destiny yourself. But like you're you've done all these amazing things and you're a shockingly fun hang. Normally, I think like, you know, about hip hop and all this stuff. Normally, the people who have outsized results typically have very strange personalities and they're like a little quirky.

59:10and I'm sure you have your quirks, but you just seem shockingly well-balanced for how not normal your success is. Is there anything in your day-to-day life that you think that would surprise probably like the average person or are there any tendencies that you have that you recognize probably aren't at all normal? Well, you know, I would say probably the thing that my daughter always says that is unusual about me and I think it came from like the beginning of my you know like I had I am different than the modern people like I was married when I was 22 I had three kids by the time I was 25 like I kind of had to grow up fast and you know and then I had the company I was trying to raise the kids and the company and you know I didn't have money for nannies or anything so like it was a lot of that but what she says to me she's like dad like you're like at the top of Maslow's hierarchy like You're very zen with all this.

1:00:10I take things for what they are. I'm pretty good at not being unemotional, but not letting my emotional reaction control my behavior. Were you always that way, or did you become that? No, no, no, no, no, definitely not. I think it was just all the trauma that forced me to learn that. What made you calm down? Was it age? Was it kids? Was it success? Was it like, look, I've made it. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I don't care. Well, I think it was the combination of the kids and the company, you know, the first company I founded, LoudCloud, which then became Opsware, was so difficult that I never, like in life since then, like we've had difficulties building the firm, whatever.

1:01:01but like they never got like a rise out of me that could compare to you know what i'd already been through so it's almost like i i feel like it's almost like i know guys my friend oliver stone um was in vietnam and like you could tell everything about him was i'm not in vietnam anymore so much of his life is defined by not being in nam and like i do feel like i don't want to compare it to war because people always criticize me for my war metaphors but it's kind of like that feeling where it's like okay i've been through that i'm just looking at the world differently now and i bet it and and like i'm sure you had some sense of like all right i've accomplished something like i feel good maybe i'm playing with house money a little bit with with everything else um yeah it's a little house money and then it's a little like all you can do is deal with the thing that it is you can't stop it from having happen it happens and that now you have to deal with it.

1:01:58Were there any other sort of wisdom accelerators? So you have these formative experiences, right? You got three kids in three years or whatever, and you're by the time you're 25, and then you're trying to build a startup and everything. You face kind of like the back against the wall moments. Were there any other formative things? Like, you know, for example, in my life, I went to like a Tony Robbins seminar. It's like, you know, I sort of got five years of wisdom in a weekend type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he's very good at like dealing with your own psychology. Yeah, or you spend a summer doing something, or you read a book at the right time or you get the right message at the right time and you have a moment where you just decide like from now on x i guess like i'm just curious was there any if i just think about like formative moments besides the kids and besides loud cloud what what else would there have been okay so when i was a kid um i was in this uh relay race and it was like it was a very big deal for me you know like it was whatever the track meet and we came in second in the relay race my father wasn't at the race, but we came in second because, and the team that came in first dropped the baton and like didn't pick it up.

1:03:02The guy just ran without the baton and they gave it in first place and they didn't penalize it. And so I was, you know, my father said, how'd you do in the race? And I was like, well, we came in second, but it wasn't fair. And I was going to explain to him why? And he said, stop right there. He said, life isn't fair. And that shocked me so much at the time, but it really stuck with me. And it's the single best lesson that I ever got in my life was life isn't fair. And I see young people wreck themselves so much because they have an expectation that something about life is going to be fair. Like nothing about life is fair.

1:03:44It's not fair where you're born. It's not fair what race you are. It's not fair like what your parents did. It's not fair like the job interviews aren't fair, like nothing, the tests aren't fair. Nothing is fair in life. And so the way you succeed is you don't have that expectation. You just deal with it as it is. And I think that everybody who tries to, or who like thinks, well, like I wasn't treated fairly or this isn't fixed. Like that is devastating. You know, like for sure. I mean, the whole time, you know, when LoudCloud and the dot-com crashed and half our customers went out of business, I never crossed my mind to go, this isn't fair.

1:04:30It was just like, okay, I have to deal with it. And that is, I would say, the single best piece of advice and way of looking at life that you can have is just, it is what it is. And now do what you can do with it being as it is. It was very important. You've referenced a lot of really cool stuff. The Haiti story, I've heard you talk about history a lot. Outside of work, work-related stuff, what interests you right now? You know, Sean and I, we like to talk about just like just fun stuff that you were into. I'm constantly reading about World War II. I like that. What about you? Is there anything that you're kind of like being obsessed about?

1:05:12Yeah, so I do have this, I'll give a plug for it. So I have this charity that I created with my wife called the Paid in Full Foundation, which basically, you know, is kind of this idea on a whim, but we give pensions to the old hip hop guys. So, you know, they got$100 ,000 a year. And then we have this award show for them, you know, where we name them Grandmasters and so forth. and you know that so the first winners were rakim and scarface and then you know we had grandmaster kaz and shante and um kumodi and so forth and then grand poobah and and uh koji rap and this year you know we added this thing the uh crinsey jones award um to the guys who got sampled the most and we gave it to george clinton and the event was so i'm still thinking about it was so amazing because is so George Clinton knows all the words to follow the leader.

1:06:11And so he's on stage and Chrissy John says, can you rap follow? And he's raps follow the leader. And Rakim came out and rapped it with him. So it got George Clinton and Rakim. And then Dr. Dre bought a table to the event. And he like couldn't help himself. He goes up on stage just to say, look, I have no career without George Clinton. And it was just so amazing to have like all these guys that were so important, that influenced so many people just being that appreciative of each other was, I was like, you know, and it's kind of, and, you know, hip hop, of course, is so competitive and, and, you know, they're always going at each other and so forth.

1:06:50But for them to be at that point where they could just go, man, you guys meant so much to me. And, and that kind of thing was, it was just very special. That's so cool. Yeah, that idea of pensions for the OGs is so great. Did that just come on a whim or you're just at lunch one day and you're like, why don't they? How does that idea? Because that one-liner gives you the clarity, right? It gives you the clarity of where to go. So I was listening to the H to the Izzo Jay-Z song where he says, I'm overcharging for what they did to the cold crush. And it kind of goes, it's like, who was the cold crush?

1:07:30And it turns out, right, it's Grandmaster Kaz and Grandmaster Kaz wrote Rapper's Delight, basically, and they stole it from him. And they stole it from him so nasty that they didn't change the word. So Big Bang Hank raps up. I'm the G-R-A-N-D-R-A-N-D-M-A-S-T-E-R. That's Grandmaster Kaz. That's his. He's rapping about his name, not Big Bang Hank. Big Bang Hank is not named Grandmaster. Why is he calling himself Grandmaster? Because he stole his fucking rhyme. And he never got paid and he never got credit for it. And everybody in hip-hop knows this. And Grandmaster Kaz, by the way, like if you meet him, he's a stunk.

1:08:12Like he's the coolest guy in the room. He dresses amazing. He's like super articulate. He can still rap like crazy today. He's 66 years old or 65, something like that. And I was like, well, like we ought to go back and fix that. And then, you know, Rakim was like on tour at these little clubs and so forth. I was like, that's Rakim. Like, how are people treating him like that? So that was the idea. I was like, we ought to just do it. You know, I'm like getting it set up with the IRS and all that stuff is like extremely complicated. But yeah, it's been really, really, I would say amazing. And like just like an unbelievable epilogue.

1:08:53So Kaz at the last one tells me, he's like, Ben, I bought a house. I was like, oh, that's amazing, Kaz. You've got a house. he's like no ben it's the first time in my life i haven't lived in the projects like grandmaster cas the guy who wrote the first great hip-hop song has never not lived in the projects like how crazy is that and you know now here he is with the house in pennsylvania and he's got berries in his backyard and the whole thing yeah he's got berries in his backyard it is pretty nuts the people who are like invent the don't get it like for example sean i love ufc and like we see like the early UFC events.

1:09:30These guys are badasses. They didn't make anything, yeah. And they're getting$2 ,000 to show up. Yeah. And they still come to like the Legends Awards and they still are talking. And you're like, damn, dude, this guy probably is selling insurance or something like that. Like, you know, he probably got made$15 ,000 that year. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. This happens in the NBA too. This is why like the culture gets kind of messed up because the old heads keep criticizing all the new players. Yeah. And it's like, oh, why are you doing that? And it's like, because they made too much more money. they're making 70 million dollars a year and that guy didn't make seven in his whole career and he's like i'm better than that guy and that guy you know so that this resentment and then they get on and then they're the the guys doing the halftime shows and it's bad bad for the product right like it's bad for the lineage right because everything is a creative lineage like on top of what was yeah before right so you it's really cool to kind of almost like economically fix the you know or try to improve that ecosystem because it's like the whole thing was kind of like you know it's funny it's um it's also kind of this thought i have about capitalism which is capitalism is is definitely the system that lifted the world out of poverty and like kind of created the modern world we live in yet you know it's incredibly powerful but right over time it does get um corrupted and so forth and even if it wasn't corrupted it's not perfect and like certain things happen like oh you create a musical art form and are the guys who actually made it happen and it becomes the biggest musical art form in the world and you never got paid like capitalism shouldn't work like that but it's just kind of the way it works right like and it's nobody's fault and so like if you can go back and say well we'll just correct those things i think that i think you are so cool like you're on one hand you're like a pretty like hard-hitting capitalist where you're getting after it and you're talking about making really tough decisions of having to fire people, whatever.

1:11:20But then you're also like, but also we can, we can do good by doing all this other stuff. And I think that like, particularly in tech, I don't think that people's interests are, are particularly that wide. Yeah. Well, I think people get very into tech. Yeah. Like tech is so deep and vast that like people can get stuck in it for sure. Yeah. Well, Ben, we thank you for coming on, man. I know, uh, you, uh, you got a lot of things going on, but this was, this is a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, it was a good time. Thanks, guys. Definitely. All right. Appreciate you. That's it. That's the pod.

1:11:48I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Hey, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Roberge. He was the founding CRO of HubSpot, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. The guy's smart. And he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like Klaviyo and Vanta and OpenAI. And he's asking about their strategies, their tactics, and how they're growing their companies as head of sales or chief revenue officer.

1:12:22If you're looking to scale a company up, if you're a CRO or a head of sales that's looking to level up in your career, I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to The Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts.