Jeremy Allaire

12:42David Rubenstein:I did. So I started working with, I got connected into marketing agencies, some like PC firms, others basically who wanted to, and this was in 1993, the very first web browser, the very first graphical web browser came out in 1993. And I got really excited that, wow, this is going to reshape how communications and media and software works. And so I just said, everyone needs to build on the web. And so I started creating web stuff. Did you have clients that did? I did. They would pay me by the hour. By the hour? Yes. Okay. And did you know Steve Case then? I, of course, knew Steve Case, but I didn't know him personally until much later when he invested in my next company.

13:30Jeremy Allaire:Really? Yeah. Okay. So you started a company, another company after the internet consulting company. Yes. And what was that cleverly named?

13:38David Rubenstein:Well, so that was actually a name chosen by my brother called Allaire Corporation. Allaire Corporation. Yes. Was it hard to get that name? I think we still have the domain name. We bought it from Adobe, who ended up owning the company and its assets. All right, so you started Allaire Corporation or company. What did it do? So Allaire built some of the very first software products to create interactive applications on the web. So in 1994, 1995, the idea was, hey, instead of building software that gets put on a personal computer, you could build software that is distributed through a web browser.

14:14David Rubenstein:And And the first product called ColdFusion created a very simple way for someone who was not that technical to create software programs that ran on the web.

14:25Jeremy Allaire:And were you still living in Minnesota?

14:27David Rubenstein:Yeah, in the Twin Cities.

14:29Jeremy Allaire:Did anybody tell you that probably wasn't the center of the Internet world at the time?

14:33David Rubenstein:Well, our venture capital investors, in fact, said, you've got to move. So did you actually move at some point? We did. And as the story goes, my brother and other colleagues were signing a lease in Silicon Valley in Menlo Park to move the company there because that was where the Internet was going to happen. But the venture capital firm, which was a startup VC at the time, Polaris Venture Partners, said, you know, all their all their kind of contacts were out on the East Coast and in the Boston area. And so we actually said, well, you know what, we'll go to Boston. We had East Coast Heritage as some of the founders, my brother and I.

15:13David Rubenstein:And we thought building a company, a tech software company there, will sort of be easier than being crowded out in a place like Philadelphia. Okay, so you moved to Boston. Yes. How big did the company become? So that company grew to over$100 million in revenue, went public in early 1999.

15:31Jeremy Allaire:So when the great internet bubble burst occurred in 98, 99, 2000, what happened to your company?

15:38David Rubenstein:We had a great franchise, meaning we had an incredibly loyal customer base. And over time, literally millions of developers used our software to build websites and applications. And we decided to merge with another internet software company called Macromedia that made some of the most popular tools for building the web and building content on the web. We merged the companies together, two public companies.

16:01Jeremy Allaire:And what was it then called, Allaire Macromedia? Well, that was just Macromedia. You gave up the Allaire name. Yes. Okay, and how long did you stay at Macromedia? For about two years. Really? Okay. And then when you left, what did you do next?

16:15David Rubenstein:Well, so while I was at Macromedia, I was the chief technology officer, and we released into the market a technology called Flash. Many of you probably remember Flash Player. You couldn't use the internet without using Flash Player. Thank you. All right. We actually, in 2002, put the best video technology that the internet had ever seen into Flash. And within a year, every computer in the world, 98 % of computers in the world, could play back video more smoothly. And I got very excited about this. And I got excited that, you know, there's going to be a video publishing revolution. And that every person, every business, every media company could be transformed.

16:53David Rubenstein:and essentially television would move to the internet. And so this was in 2002. In 2003, I left and then went as an entrepreneur in residence at General Catalyst. Which is a venture capital firm. Venture capital firm in Cambridge at the time. And they were a startup VC really then. And incubated this idea and then founded it officially in 2004. That company was? Brightcove. Bright Cove grew over the next half a decade. We had a successful IPO in 2012, and the company powered many of the television and media streaming infrastructures for a lot of media companies, major brands, and others.

17:39Jeremy Allaire:So you took two companies public. That's a lot. And so has Bright Cove now been bought by somebody else? It has been.

17:46David Rubenstein:It's a private equity firm. Took it private.

17:48Jeremy Allaire:Okay. Okay. So after that company was bought or sold...

17:53David Rubenstein:I took Breitco Public in early 2012, and I got immersed in this whole technology of crypto later in 2012. And then I stepped down as CEO in the beginning of 2013, and then I started Circle. When I started the company, I told the early employees and the early board members and investors, This is like a 10 to 20 year thing to accomplish what we think we can accomplish. And now when I look at where we are, where I look at where I kind of see the progression of this technology and the future impact. And I'm like, there's another 10 to 20 years here. So I'm trying to build a very long lasting institution.

18:33David Rubenstein:And I think it can be fundamental to changing not just the financial system, but the way the broader economic system works.

18:40Jeremy Allaire:People have accepted the idea you can move value from one country to another very rapidly, maybe quicker than banks can. what is inning two and three? What are the next things you're going to do to build on this?

18:50David Rubenstein:The kind of first order of business is how do we establish sort of very safe forms of money, like what I call full reserve money, not fractional reserve money. So fully reserved forms of money on the internet. We're getting there. And the idea behind this is, this is general purpose, general architecture money. And as I like to say, you know, USDC can be used to make a micro payment between two AI agents at in a fraction of a second at a fraction of a cent. And it is being used that way. And it can also be used between two huge institutions to settle a billion dollar transaction and everything in between.

19:31David Rubenstein:And I think so we're just getting to that point. And now enshrined in law that this can be utilized, whether it's in in big, heavy things like capital markets or in lending or in payments, It can be used in all these different areas.

19:44Jeremy Allaire:To have a stable coin and make it stable, you need to have something behind it, which is, let's say, dollar reserves. That's right. Where do you get your dollars from?

19:54David Rubenstein:People give us their dollars. They give you dollars? Yes. Do you give them interest or what do you do? We do not pay interest. In fact, all around the world, we're prohibited from paying interest. All right.

20:04Jeremy Allaire:So let me ask you, I want to know about the future because the future is where I want to invest. So is artificial intelligence going to be good for society? And are people going to lose their jobs? Or are people going to get more jobs because of artificial intelligence?

20:18David Rubenstein:It's very likely, in my view, that artificial intelligence is going to pretty dramatically disrupt the labor market as we know it today. And it's going to, you know, I think there's huge numbers of human labor jobs that will be replaced by AI. Not private equity, though. Never. Never. Never. Never. I do think that there's going to be a huge amount of displacement from AI. And at the same time, and this is what I tell all of my employees, we have a very aggressive AI adoption posture in our company. And what I've told every employee in the company is, you want to become really good at using these tools.

21:07David Rubenstein:It's sort of like when personal computers came out, you could have chosen to learn how to use a spreadsheet or a word processor. Or when the internet came out, you could have chosen to decide to figure out all this stuff. These are choices that people make. And in their careers, they have to make these choices. Now, not everyone has that opportunity. So obviously, it's different because I'm sort of shepherding this. But my view is that the capabilities that humans will have and do have already through the application of AI are extraordinary. and will continue to be extraordinary. And so human capital and AI labor are going to work closely together.

21:48David Rubenstein:And it's that orchestration of that that is going to be some of the highest value labor that's out there. What about quantum computing?

21:55Jeremy Allaire:Is that the next wave of the future? Is that going to happen?

21:57David Rubenstein:All of the fundamental infrastructure that we run on is built on cryptography. Crypto is cryptography and it's applied cryptography and it uses cryptography for security. It uses cryptography for kind of systems to prove data and other things. And so cryptography and the resilience of cryptography is a really critical thing. And so when people think about quantum, one of the first things they think about is breaking cryptography. And if you can break cryptography, then all bets are off, right? You can just pour into an energy grid or you could take over banks, you could do whatever. And so as we build our systems, we're studying what is quantum cryptography going to look like?

22:43David Rubenstein:What is quantum-resistant cryptography going to look like? And we're actively working on engineering and working in communities that are working on quantum-resistant tech. Now, when people sort of say, well, what's the time horizon on that? You hear a lot of different estimates on that. But I think we feel compelled that in 2026 and 2027, we need to have infrastructure that is quantum ready, if you will, from a security perspective. So I don't know what that means in terms of when it's available. Obviously, the implications are extraordinary in terms of this scale of compute and what it could be applied in.

23:22David Rubenstein:And I think obviously when you think about quantum in coordination with other technology things that we have going on, it's pretty interesting.

23:29Jeremy Allaire:know technology well. So this example, I'm using what I call a last adopter. I'm still trying to use a Blackberry, but then nobody else wants to use them. So what do you use for technology? You have, how many computers do you have? Do you have iPads? How many smartphones do you use? And how often do you spend your, how many hours a day do you spend looking at your screens?

23:49David Rubenstein:I use an iPhone. I use tablets. I use laptops. And I have a variety of those. And some that I will use strictly for personal reasons and others for work.

24:01Jeremy Allaire:But you should be worried about people hacking you. Absolutely. So you have a pretty good anti-hacking system. We have a lot of cybersecurity. What do you want most people to leave here tonight knowing about Circle?

24:12David Rubenstein:I would say a couple of things. I think the first is that we're still in the very early days of this technology. And while the aggregate numbers sound really big, there's trillions of dollars of transactions and all this stuff, we're really, really in the early days. And if you think about what Circle's trying to do, we're not just our stablecoin network. We're building a whole set of infrastructure, operating system infrastructure, platforms for developers, these monetary systems, and utilities to use all this. And our view is that over the next 10 years, there are going to be, just like we've had internet platform companies that came up for, say, communications or for digital media or for selling products and services or for mobile handsets and other things.

25:01David Rubenstein:We believe that over the next 10 years, there are going to be very significant internet financial platform companies that are major utilities for the way the financial and economic system work. And we hope to be one of those. We're working on that. Thanks for listening.

25:17Jeremy Allaire:To hear more of my interviews, you can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.