20VC Exclusive: Keith Rabois on Rejoining Khosla Ventures

25:31So I don't want to be manipulating solidified concrete. I want it to be a null it wants. So the grue there I can get involved the better. That's where I want to be competing. Series A and the risk reward generally speaking can be pretty strong, but you're competing with other people who are very good at what they do. Thanks Marks, pretty good at what they do. So, Koyas be, you have to start with be very good at what they do. You know, you're running right down the middle of some of the bastion bastards on the planet, versus seed you're not, and see you be maybe you're not. Do you think that's still there when you see the multi stage firms move so aggressively into seed?

26:02And then you look at a lot of the partners who led $20 million series HX in years prior ago, oh, I'm underwater with ball commitments. I need to fire sell a load of shit companies. Like I don't want to do new deals. I almost think A is better because they're just saying to all the young ones go do seed. I think when you get, I do think a long fun is getting nervous and risk of burst in the let these go when the market's not going to attract it. But I think the really best investors, which are really the people I compete with, don't do that. The world of adventure is more stratified that two or two investors are very different than two or one.

26:34And I think this is true of a series A dimension. You don't want to pull your foot off the gas in series A if you're really strong investor, but the natural reaction of most firms and most partnerships is to do that, which is a genuine mistake. I think in series A, if the price, if you think about the pricing, let's assume that the median valuation for C -Round is between 10 to 20 these days. And let's say a series A, it's like 30, 40, maybe 50. I agree with you that I'd rather pay 30, 40 for all the learnings. Yeah. Verse 15 to 20 for no learnings often, but then I have to compete with more people.

27:12Like, so, you know, one of the other things I've pointed out is, in about 11 years of doing this, I think there's somewhere between five or six or so terms, you know, I've extended where I didn't close them, like I lost to somebody. And the reality is that four of the sticks are two thirds of them are the same, or it's the same people. So I look like it's a very hyper competitive world, but at the end of the day, I was competing with like one or two other people. And so if I wait to this year is that, I know that there's a decent chance that these people have taste like my taste, and they're actually pretty good at what they do, and they can float, they know how to close, and they have good references to all this things.

27:48So if I go see most of these people do not love to do seeds, and I can get involved before they figure out what the hell's going on, that's much better for me, even if I have to pay a slightly disproportionate It's a huge price to do that. Keith, you know I love you and think the world of you. You're a competitive motherfucker. Why didn't you just beat them at A? Like, if you must reflect. Well, I tried, but like even if you're great at what you do, you're gonna win, call it 50, 60, 70%. You're not gonna close out a hunt right? At C, you're not gonna probably close 100 % of the things I want to invest in, if I want to.

28:21There's no way that go ahead to head with the top two or three other investors. At C, you're gonna have 100 % win, right? You're in. We mentioned the seed there being less competitive but harder and people showing away We mentioned a being the best risk reward growth is pretty dead as I think we're both seeing Do we think it'll stay that way any excited to be more active in growth or not? I think that growth is pretty broken and I think most growth funds were pretty bad at what they were doing Why were they bad because they were just price insensitive? Chasing moment not really understanding fundamental company building thinking spreadsheets to take results It's like, you know, not understanding the inputs, first the outputs that these companies are built by people, not by math.

29:00At the end of the day, so I think most growth funds are your debt or die. So I think there's a zone there that's pretty not competitive. Is that what I do for a living? You know, you have to figure out what your comparative advantage is in life, and I don't think growth and blessings might. I've made a few growth investments over the last three years and three or four years of forced to, they worked out, but I'm extremely careful if I'm leading a growth route Then I think I have some alpha some comparative advantage like so for example back in my KB days What are the better investments I made was co leading the series C for strike?

29:31You know, I worked at PayPal Square understood financial services pretty well There's a reason why I was dialed into that price being willing and comfortable investing at that price at the time at KV When we invested in Stripes series C it was an order of magnitude more expensive than the entry price for any investment in the history of KV Back to the point though about the partner meetings being sometimes counterintuitive. One of the things that was most valuable was Samir was pushing me. He's like, you should do this. And then David said to me, look, I know this is not normally my style to be like price insensitive, but you need to be able to make this call.

30:08Like you should be better situated to make this call to anybody else in the planet. Just decide. Don't worry about what might my my normal feedback is. So Samir and David being very enthusiastic that I should be in if I wanted to gain more or courage and work with Xion because this is pretty early in my career as either the first or second year of air. So that's why sometimes the Fardner meeting can be exciting and like give you more conviction and confidence. I don't know that I wouldn't have proceeded how they'd be more cynical actually because it was so early like trajectory but they were like, nope, this is what we hired you to do.

30:38This is the area you should know better, make a call. Translating's back, that was fun. It could be very successful. because I think most other growth funds are basically not able to compete and founder of some has great talent in the growth side. When I put on Twitter that we were doing this show I got a load of DMs and they were saying three billion dollars in KV fund how can you make money on a fund that size? So I'd love to put that to you so you can kind of break that down and debunk that. Properly sizing a venture fund is one of these other complicated arts in the industry. I think the key is there's a couple of inputs.

31:14One is what stage are you investing? How many opportunities are there unlikely to be? And then see what's the team composition, your internal team. So let's walk through. So KDE, although that sounds like a big number, 415 million of that is for seed investing. 1 .5 billion or so is for venture, and only about 800 or 900 million is for growth. So, as a firm and a set of partners that really enjoy seed investing, that's the note right down the middle, smear right down the middle of what he likes to do, probably my comparative advantage in life, you have three to five partners that all really strongly like to lead seed grounds.

31:56So, $400 million isn't unreasonable at all for a seed fund, the high conviction, high over -ship seed bud. Then you go to the Venture Style, okay? You have $1 .5 billion. If you're really doubling down paradas and reinvesting or leading aes in the portfolio of seed, you can consume a decent amount of that. And let's say you compete in an external world for another half of it. It's not that far off the sizing when you have five M .D .s plus a seed of partners like Nikita and Alex Morgan, we're really good at what they do. You could see with like seven, eight kind of lead investors $1 .5 billion venture fund being moderately appropriately sized, actually.

32:34You have to combine all these and try and get a bit. When you look at $400, Keith, take out fees for a 320 investible, so we can do 100 checks and put all in 3 .2. Yeah, well, I think if I want to be a little less than a hundred, a hundred might be a little bit much to make a little bit more dollars per minute. But if we're doing reserves to initial, you could do 50 and still have a one to one. 50 is a pretty diverse portfolio. That's what you want. I mean, the guidance I learned, and I don't know, this is as rigorous as many things, but, whilst we have good portfolio for a fun one, it should be about 50, 30 to 50.

33:12So you're in this zone of like what most people would advise, you're certainly not outside of it, but it does come down to how many barrels are shooting through. Like, I have this metaphor, I use company building about barrels and ammunition. Make sure it works that way too. how many people are gonna be high quality investors? Do you have at any given time in a fund? It's usually a small number than you think. Almost like a micro parallel with it a parallel. And so if you have two, three, four, five, six quality investors, you can size the fund significantly greater than if you have two or three.

33:42Ultimately, your fund size does affect your strategy or should. It has to be a recursive dialogue. So, a founder's fund, which has more total assets of the management, let's say, or more current funds are probably closed to four bill than three. The allocation is very different though. It's 900 million or so in that's that's eight. In about 3 .2 billion I think in the growth fund growth two. It's a different waiting. So you need to have a strategy that's going here around the people, the team and the waiting of your fund sizes. When we spoke last time and I said what would you change about Farnas Fund?

34:13You said we could be younger. Could Coastal be younger with the same apply here. You know, good question. I don't know yet. The four people that are most senior at RNGs, you know, they official on D's, at KVO, the same people I worked with, when I was there. I haven't worked with most of the people that are not at the partner level at KVO. I have worked with Nikita before, I mean, that's what I was I recruited him. I worked closely with Alex Morgan, lots of interesting dialogues and debates. So I know those two pretty well. They're rest of the team. I don't know very well. I shouldn't really apply yet.

34:48What do you think KV can learn from Founders Fund? I think the rigor around growth investing, I actually, I learned this personally, I think FF is very strong at figuring out how to value a growth stage opportunity. And that translates to the reason why I care. What makes them good at it, whether growth investors we mentioned before sucked? That's a great question actually. And I'm not sure I know the answer other than just watching who produced this for investments or not. But the one thing that was most relevant to me to learn is you have to make all these pro -rata decisions in your best companies.

35:23So you know how to say I need a seed for DoorDash and the series A, ProRotter, that's easy, not different all. But then CD, E, you know, at different prices or Open Door, or 100 ,000, 500 ,000, 600 ,000, do these routes? How do you think about them? And I don't think back in my day at KB that we had a lot of analytical rigor to those late -stage parrata decisions. Whereas if Felters fun, the growth team is very dialed in to evaluating those opportunities. And so I felt like I learned a lot about how they do their work. That would make me sharper about my own parrata decisions on the company's numbers.

35:58Peter Till often says about the decision not to do. I think they'd be a Facebook or the A .F. Facebook being his most costly. Yeah, it's easy to make a mistake. I actually think that I, you know,

36:12I I only said abused about whether or not to do piranhas, like to the companies I'm involved in, but I'd learned a lot from like working with deploy and his team at Fowler Sun. I spoke to Mike, but you'll like, how the fuck did he speak to so many people before this show how I re -agreed it last night? But I also spoke to Mike at the trouble. And he had a question, why would founders prefer working with one firm versus another? Yeah, well, I think it's a matchmaking exercise at the end of the day. The rate failure paired with the rate of master increases the probabilities of success for the company in my view.

36:43And so every founder who's successful, every founder of hasn't shot at being really successful is different. Like Mike is definitely different than other founders. Mike and Jack Dorsey, for example, very, very different. Both extreme going to be extremely successful. The correct pairing for different founders is who's complimentary to you. Who can you work with and add value but be on the same page with? So for example, Mike has very strong views on culture, how to run a company, how to build a company. Being in line with his views allows me to be more effective because when I'm channeling feedback, we're not debating first principles ever.

37:19But once in a while, I may see something where, you know, in this cartoonish mirror, I can play it back to him, his decisions, or what I see, and say, hey, just applying your own principles, your own philosophy. Does this make sense? First, he's debating whether his fall, us to be is correct. He would be a hard -earing with someone who doesn't agree with this philosophy. They would just have like constant thoughts should be useless. Or so let's take another example. Jack, Jack is very design driven and he wanted to build swear in a design driven culture, which is, you know, let's say jargonistically like Alphalask, most of them know what that really means, but like fundamentally a design driven culture.

37:55Perry Jack with someone who doesn't appreciate design would be an unmitigated disaster. Like the investment in a design, the quality of design, the thoughtfulness, the crafting, the perfectionism across so many different dimensions, which just be almost unboundedable to someone who grew up in a bottom -up and pureful, you know, everything's not qualified, maybe, testing. So you have to be careful. That's why I think speed dating during COVID was a disaster for everybody. It wasn't good for founders to do zoom based investing. It wasn't good for investors. And so I think it's healthier to take your time as FF outer.

38:28Inside someone who can be insightful but is directly aligned with your ambition, with your prioritization, that's when you get a match that really works for like a decade. Do you think FF and Kavi have the same type of founder? When I look at Mike, he fits the founder mold for what I think a founder's fund founder would be. Run through walls, very opinionated, very good hard, and shares a lot of traits with him and a lot of other FF I found as I know. Do you think KV has an archetype like that? Yeah, I actually do. I mean, I think one reason why you see such a high portfolio overlap is like the proof of the story.

39:02KV and FF have almost exactly the same ownership in Tromba. I believe in OpenStore, we have the same preferred ownership, KV and FF. I think in Avan, FF and KV have very similar ownerships. A lot of people like KV are founder driven. I wouldn't say this is only criteria at KV. Sometimes KB can be technology driven, innovation driven, whereas FF is mostly founder driven, but the then diagram overlap of a successful founder is pretty high, which is why the portfolio overlap H sleep, you know, more portfolio overlap, VARDA, more portfolio overlap, high portfolio overlap. So obviously the criteria is clearly similar because you're seeing the manifestation of that in the portfolios.

39:47When you were thinking about just this option, always other options come to mind. Did you consider other options? Not with a pre -existing fund. It felt that I gave the new why we were successful. We were successful. I knew why or at least I think I know why. And I thought that that would be helpful. I think every other fund that grants me a little bit greener kind of problem of like they have their own bodies. There's more mess somewhere else than one of fixed other people's messes. kind of like flushing, you know, over the years, and I'd say over the 15 -year time prize, and last 15 years of my life, I have occasionally thought about should I start a fund.

40:24There's downfully a lot of drug coefficient associated with that that I was not particularly excited with, which is why, sort of, my definition. I have a start in the fund. I did look at it very seriously in 2010 or so, in 2013 for Journey KB. I had a pretty specific idea about a fund, but for lots of reasons, what I like to do is most importantly, find undiscovered founders, give them the opportunity to be the successful with advice, counsel, and capital, and then work with those founders and help them shift the probabilities of success so that they can achieve the admissions for their company.

41:00That's what I want to do. Everything else is drag coefficient to me. Why did you not think you'd get rid of the drag coefficient? I was the same. I don't think you can get rid of the drag coefficient, certainly from scratch. I mean, they say the first six months, let's say, heavy drag coefficient. Can you later review it? It's like a high fixed cost away. One very successful founder, it's a little bit of ice. The fixed cost is very high. I want you to get over the fixed cost. Maybe the marginal cost is more tolerable. But that first fixed cost is really painful. And I like what I do. The reason why I work is I really enjoy meeting these founders, discovering these people and saying, yeah, this person's got shot and they're working with them in helping unlock the brain once in a while.

41:44And watching the eyes light up, that's what motivates me every day. Do you ever think about money? No, not really, honestly. This was another question I have which is you have more cash than Rockefeller. So like, what motivates you today? What are my good friends that I work with? How does 30th birthday recently? And at the dinner of first 30th birthday, the question up to table is what do you want people to kind of say it, or you know, you would use someone more bit, but whatever. And I thought about it. And it occurred to me when I want to say, what I want people to say is, I can't imagine my life without keeping it, you know, like that has that much impact in some ways.

42:20And there's different ways you have impact, obviously. But I was like fundamentally, I really want to have impacted people's lives. And then they really think about it that it is that impactful that their life would have been completely different. And so this is the business version of that, you know, the entrepreneur's version of that. You've definitely had a huge impact on Dallion's life. How did Dallion take it? Well, you should ask him, I shouldn't speak for him. Yeah, I think I will. You can ask him, he's opinionated lots of things. He's very strong -wilded, very opinionated. He's certainly opinionated.

42:55Can I ask a spoochess Samir before? And he said, what does it take for an investor and a firm to win today? after 10 years of bull run. First of all, I said this several years ago on your 20 minute EC, you have to have a compared advantage. Sure, and you need to isolate it for you and your fun. Like, why me and why us? So for example, like our mutual friend Mike, when he meets a new investor, he always asks him this question. He loves doing this, he's great at it. Why should it top to your founder like me, take your money? And you need to have a sharp, differentiated answer to be successful. And the more differentiated the more true that is the better.

43:32And I think most investors either don't have an answer or forget and so you don't want to be a commodity You need to be special and you need to be treated so you need to have you know, either difference like compared to the advantage somewhere I remember I posted publicly my investment criteria probably 2017 and you know Twitter and the last one that confused a lot of people was the last question was Do I have a comparative advantage and I take that pretty damn seriously that why me why am I investing in this company? Because the general returns of measure are not strong at all. The general returns in 75, 80, and if you normalize against the two hot periods of the last 50 years, like 1996, 1989, and Tikal, like 2019, and 21, the returns are horrific, except in maybe the top two to five, maybe 10 % of measure.

44:21If you don't have a strong answer to why you have a comparative advantage, you're going to regress to the middle of the bell curve, and the middle of the bell curve returns are just not acceptable. Period. And so I always take that very very very seriously. It will often pass if I can't look in the mirror and say this is what I would wear a band so like we talked about a couple of companies. Fair. The CEO and CEO worked for me. I used to be able to assess their abilities better than the name of the else in the planet. Period. And I can't do that on the YBDC. As strike we talked about you know I helped build PayPal I ran a large fraction of square.

44:53I need to be able to understand strike for a lot of pretty good while or it shouldn't be a DC. You know, Mike was my best friend. He was the... And was my best friend before he started the company. I definitely knew the traits that would be to the way he runs this company, intentional culture, the tenacity, the resourcefulness. That was all there from like, damn, Adam. What if you're not the best for it, but you know it is incredible. Are you not gonna do that, Dale? Gray question. I think at a fund, the first instinct is to have a partner who would be a really good pair. And at KV we did do this.

45:27I would consciously think like oh David Whiting maybe a really good partner for this specific both market and founder or Samir might be there are ties when Samir would be a much better partner for example Then I would be to a specific founder to the hands again or Vinote Vinote me or send really depends what the company's doing and the founder skill set So the first thing so you could be okay I don't really feel I have a compared advantage but our fun may or someone also the fun maybe Let's introduce them and see if that kind of partnership can work really well And so this does work now the answer may be within our fund whether it's found I'm actually doing that.

46:07I mean, we know we know might as less the phone by the We definitely we absolutely do that all the time like like every week like instantly a Founders fund we do we did it too But more on an ad hoc basis not systematic, but a KBS very systematic like topped out even Vinod sometimes to say, let's say something came into me, he might say, hey, don't you think like Sven or Samir or David would be a better partner? The way we usually resolve it, if like for example, wasn't clear, sometimes we'd actually tell the founder, hey, you get a choice. I don't just find it like we might say, hey, get a choice to watch me with three or four people and see who you think would be most useful.

46:46And who's the right pairing? So that's my normal default is, If that means there's somebody else I have conviction about and then if not our fun That is some wise work complicated decision of what to do. Do you worry about the weight of your words? You look at and I loved Mike and I think he's great But like you look at someone like Mike he's younger than you He's a lot less experienced than you when you say no. This is what I think do you worry that you have too much impact at points? You have to be thick well, I'll say globally a DC and a board member I absolutely need to worry about this all the time.

47:19I've learned from some of the best video, Roll Off taught me some lessons, I'll articulate a few, Pierre Levant taught me early in my career, how did you do some of these things? So I think Roll Off taught me as a board member, one of the best ways to ask things in terms of questions, not in terms of answers. So you've pro -by -questions, because then you're never leading, you may be leading a little bit, but you're never prescribing, and it's a very big difference. So try to get you down. The second thing I've learned is to describe intentionally, carefully, and calibrated your level of conviction.

47:52So I will sometimes say to you something like Mike, like my instinct is to do acts, but actually I don't have that much confidence that I'm right. Like if you forced me to make a decision, this is how I would make a decision here, why, but it's a close call on my mind, I'm not sure. Or sometimes when I might say to somebody, whether Mike or someone else, I have about 80 % confidence. I know the right answer here. So, you know, be able to communicate the level of connection, help them just challenge or, you know, solve it. Sound founders also, the other thing I do pretty well is reverse engineering the logic.

48:25Not always, but sometimes it's actually hard to understand how you're about to conclude it. And then you have this intuitive reaction and then trying to decompose, okay, what's the logic behind that decision? For example, I work with Sadi and Avin. He's a really great company. He's a phenomenal founder. He always wants to know the why. It's always y, y, y, y, y, y, and he does that internally. He does that with me. It's great. So I can walk through the logic underneath it and then he could say, oh, that I buy that logic or a gold buy that logic That's another, you know, sort of in San T. You know it and the final point is and I'll give you a kind of amazing attitude about this I almost never ever tell a founder what they really should do Like I almost never say you must do this That the one example that always occurs to me is there was a time when Mike was building his company in Miami That he's incredibly fruitful the company's incredibly financially good something and in Miami the buildings charge a search Charge for running air conditioning past their hours and he was hesitant to pay the air conditioning Either that they're working by night like night plus and there was one point of time when I said to him like well How much is the incremental air conditioning was like $6 ,000 or something?

49:35I'm like, I might be stupid here. Yes, no. That's about the most direct, I've ever been with a soundtrack. You mentioned there about Vansion not being like, necessarily a great asset class in terms of returns. I totally agree with you. Actually, when you look at the historical data on distributions, there's very small windows where liquidity is apparent and strong. And if you don't take advantage of them, it's quite crap, even for the best. How do you think about when to sell? Unless you have a great answer to this, by the way, in one of the benefits of being a super -released the stage investor is, you don't have to be perfect.

50:04I've watched other people make these decisions and I've seen brilliance sometimes. So for example, KV before my days invested $10 million or roughly $10 million in the seed grounds for Square. And after I joined KV, there was always a question after I'm just a Square on Pub, but when sell, the market didn't really appreciate Square fairly for a long time. So there's lots of domain internally. And Vinod had a very strong perspective it that proved out to be incredibly valuable, incredibly prostate, predicated a couple key dimensions, and I want to show the exact logic, but fundamentally, he had a very strong view that KVC absolutely not sell period.

50:42And it turned out to produce meaningfully different results based upon his insight. And I remember listening to those debates, I wasn't able to just fake because I had my own shares, you know, as an executive, so it's completely recused from deciding what to sell. But the logic in his insight was incredibly penetrating and it led to significantly better returns for KB3. Understanding how to think about that is the real superpower, but I think it's very rare, and I started having mastered it. Kass, what makes Vinod so special? Him and his brown delight on the Ascent again. There's a couple, there's a couple of ingredients.

51:22First, he is the technologist at heart. He really does see the implications of a new technology way before other people do and can see the implications of society, the implications of business, the disruptive elements, a decade often before the people. He was on the AI crusade before I even joined KV in 2013. He published papers about how AI was going to replace doctors and medicine. This is like before I joined KV. So way ahead of the curve really understood the implications, potential of AI and really masters like how the dots enact and spends lots of time with all the leading practitioners is both an academic academia and on the ground, you know, companies.

52:01So that's what second thing is just pure input. He still works hard. He loves his craft. He loves working with founders. I've seen him work 8 a .m. to midnight on Sundays. Sometimes like taking meetings. You do that for 50 years and that's up. So like, if a note still takes meetings, still our works, most people over less than half of the age. What do you think drives Vinod? He really does love changing the world to technology. It really motivated. Sometimes you're so good at seeing the implications that you have to find the founder can actually take advantage of the insight, which is dumb. There's only so many founders who are amazing.

52:33Sometimes you can't take all your ideas to get them in the ends of World's House founders. That's probably going to be a waste of words. When you think about kind of reflecting on your time with Founders Fund before we do a quick thought, what's your biggest takeaway from that time and how it impacted your investing style? I think you were well, I mean, I've had the advantage of being a senior person at two different funds and I think what you learn from that experience is what's in Demick to venture there are fundamentals about our business that are basically baked into the business and then what are what are optional decisions around culture decision making hiring and then how can you tease those out to be more successful.

53:09So I think having two different advantage points, I hopefully will lock in my brain. It allows me to manipulate either those decisions to be ideal, you know, ideal to reduce the best possible outcome and produce the best possible happiness for me. It's very rare to have like those kind of unique advantage points. So that's my takeaways. I mentioned like for example, I learned significantly more about growth investing and how to be disappointed about figuring out the valuation for a high potential company, etc. That'll take with me. But just how do you make decisions was the best way to make decisions how much time you spend in a partner meeting versus not.

53:45One of the benefits of spending eight hours a week in a partner meeting versus spending 30 minutes a week. Where's that client? Where's the dependency margin over turns, etc. Did kids change your mindset, Keith? Becoming a father. I think there's a couple of piffinis I have at the minimum. I strongly believe but have watched it already. my case, or two and a half years old, that people are much more baked and impressionable at earlier ages that dictate how they are when they grow up at much earlier ages than people realize. They absorb so much. And even if they can't communicate back to you what they're absorbing, they are absolutely absorbing.

54:25The brain is like, you know, in any of the world, their inputs are kind of like training their brain in a kind of machine -printing sense. And so you ought to be very careful, very thoughtful about what those inputs are, even though most parents are not. Incredibly conscious about that and just watching what they've already been able to learn and absorb that started almost like from day one. Do you feel the weight of that responsibility? Oh, absolutely. Like for example, the downside of having access to resources, like you know money, etc. Is I feel the weight of of anti -entitlement. I think about this every day of how do we have kids that are not entitled, because it's natural, like they have a lot of benefits.

55:08I want them to have the work ethic of someone who has nothing. How do you think about doing that? I chatted David at New Bank and he was like, it's the hardest thing I think I have to deal with. I've actually discussed this with a lot of people who have seen people that have watched race kids, so I think are really successful and inspiring and ask them very specifically, what you do, what you not do, what you think about what you're not, and try to borrow some ideas. But it's a complicated topic, but I'm stressed out about it. It's a good day. I worry with kids that I will not be present. Like, if I want to do what I do to the best and I want to win, just like you, you have to fucking give it everything and you have to be an absolute monster.

55:48Well, I think there's definitely important ingredients to success. You need to be thoughtful about what's most important to you and achieving success, but people have irrational success. Top 10 basis points, one basis point in any field are absolutely making tradeoff decisions hopefully intentionally. You can be like eight out of 10 good and be there for dinner I think, but if you wanna be like 9 .9 out of 10, which you have to be in venture, I don't need to be home for dinner every night. I think there are some pieces from Biden if it's somehow do that, but I think they've been offset it at other times and other ways.

56:24and I don't believe there's shortcuts to success. One of the benefits of just, you know, people knowing me in other fields is I get to watch really successful people in music, politics, sports, and the traits of each success are shockingly common and a lot of it is just pure input. Right, are you ready for a quick find, my friend? Let's go. Okay, so one from somewhere. What do you think about Bitcoin going forward? Major question. So my theory was always from 2013 or 2014 that adoption of Bitcoin would globally be inversely correlated to the rule of law in a specific market or specific country.

57:02I think that's proven to be true. In fact, I think even in the United States, Bitcoin really took off in terms of valuation, market cap, etc. after the election of Trump. And that was preceded by the market as instability or less real law. It had to be way that's your cause, but there's perception. And so I think what happens is in 2024 is somewhat dictates answer. And people believe the world is more stable than all of laws likely to be more robust. Bitcoin doesn't appreciate it. But if the world is more tumultuous, the rule of law takes steps back in major markets, then I think Bitcoin appreciates.

57:41Okay, which way do you think the world is going to get? Well, I think 2024 is going to be pretty tumultuous. It's sort of way off to that start. is Trump gonna win? No, you know, as you probably see in Australia, I don't even believe he's gonna be the Republican nominee for president. Okay, cheating could get a president. I don't know. You know, one of the things you learn to do when you focus your time, and I focus my time on investing and working with founders and Gary's, I've had to you subtract out of my brain a lot of legal interests. Like I used to be a pretty damn good lawyer or a litigator and I used to have intellectual curiosity about a lot of topics a lot.

58:12I haven't read all the complaints, I mean, Simon focused on them. I know it exists, X -Fatter, I know the general arc of them, but I don't have a strong opinion about the quality of the cases and the likely outcome. Did Figma kill M &A in 2024? Well, I don't think it's Figma -Claw. Figma, I think Figma in some ways was easier case for the government in the FTC, which has been very aggressive than many other cases. Figma is competitive with Adobe's products. Like at the end of the day, that's not like a stretch where the FTC has been taking some crazy positions based on 50, 60, 70, 80 years of American jurisprudence.

58:48They've been really confronting some acquisitions that really don't have market overlap. This one seems down, what's more down the middle? I was implied in visa. I think that one, a normal conservative and a trustable, they were like me, like I grew up as an trust lawyer. I could see bringing that case. I can also see bringing the Adobe Figma case. Most of the other stuff the FTC does, seems like ridiculous. Will IPO Windows open again in 2024? Oh, absolutely. So I don't believe that I've hear Windows really close or open. I think just the criteria for success is different in that, you know, what the bar is on, let's say revenue or what the bar is on your unit economic.

59:29It is a sound that you think you want to go out. You mentioned, Jon, I'm like, there's a stripe. Why would I go out in 2004? I'm going to get on. I believe most companies are better off going public early period. And so I still prescribe that I still advise that I hope you know a lot of the companies that work with will take advantage of that advice Why would you could you get better as an domestic youth? Oh, oh, so my biggest while You know if you have any solutions I'm all yours because it's very persistent is the hardest part for me is deciding which first meetings to take And you get a large amount of inbound interest introductions, etc.

1:00:04And deciding of that pool, you can't take them all. It's like not possible in like seed to literally meet every company. Whereas the growth people can meet every company that's ready for growth growth. Yeah, up to this time and I have made several bad mistakes historically as an angel master as a professional of the scene to clienting some meetings. Once you get me in the room with founders, I've made those calls really really well. Like I was basically the other day that I'm not sure I've ever passed on somebody that's turned out to be building a multi -billion dollar company, but I have definitely to climb meetings for companies that turned out to be good.

1:00:41I don't know how to solve this, like that's the problem is you can try like take more meetings but then as your brain really sharp you can try to delegate it but if your founder tastes is off like the person you delegate to isn't really helping. I say yes for two things. One like I mean this is the nicest way. If someone I hugely respect to or like sends me something I'll jump on it that day and do it myself or if it's something where I love it, where like you may do with a fit of payment or whatever that may be specifically related to your experience, I'll jump on it and kind of everything else.

1:01:11I just have this sounds awful, but like a person in the team who just means everything else. That way I feel no guilt on like will we miss it because if it's great, yes, back to me. But I have guilt, I definitely try to find, I'm trying to find like a better way to do it. But you know, and Rohroff mentioned this to me. I remember her talking to me a year after he joined Sequoia as far as 2004 and we had coffee and I said what's the hardest part of the job and he said deciding which first meeting to take. Why would you send your kids to college some year again? I would tell fellowship. We're definitely on the tell fellowship crusade that you know I've been tweeting about it.

1:01:48I mentioned Peter recently that I think that was probably the most important thing he's done. I think hopefully they want to achieve in their own way and I think tell fellowships a great way to cultivate those values. Do you think Europe is descending into a retirement home? And, you know, Lyrus Delver's quote is still pretty good that Europe's a museum. I think that's probably pretty apt. Is that anything I could do about a Keith, even though me for a few years? Oh wow, it seems like the combination of, you know, content plus investing is working really well. It is different. It is what we talked about.

1:02:25There's not that many people who do it period. and so it's a cohesive coherent and unique strategy, which is I think how you get alpha in venture. So that's great. The guest quality is obviously awesome. So yeah, now I'm keep going. Like if you have a strategy, keep doing, you know, keep tasting it. Eventually all strategies and venture people learn that they're effective and can reverse engineer them, but you may have a five or 10 year window before that's the case. Final one for you, my friend. Everything about Keith 10 years out. Is Keith at KV, then? is keep thing as I'm fun then, is keep chilling.

1:02:59What's key? I think the two most obvious components to answer are I would definitely not be silly and I will not do my own fun. Will I do something outside technology? That's an open question. Should I when I, will I when I one day do something that's very different? At some point in my life, maybe. Did the KVLP know that you were joining when they invested? Oh, definitely not. The funds were all closed. Oh, they must be happy then. Hopefully. I don't know them all, but obviously there's a good group from six years ago. There's a good overlap. Actually, with that FFL piece, I know pretty well to you.

1:03:36So hopefully they're happy. I actually enjoyed meeting with LPs and brainstorming with them. Keith, I so enjoyed this. Thank you so much for doing it. And my always love our chas. Pleasure to be back. I mean, what a fantastic discussion that was. Because if you want to see the full video you can check it out on YouTube by searching for 20VC, I always love to see you there, but before we leave you today, there's no shortage of helpful AI tools out there, but using the mean switching back and forth between yet another digital tool, what was supposed to simplify your workflow just made it way more complicated, unless of course you're in Notion.

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1:06:06As always, I so appreciate your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode this coming Monday with Hubsport co -founder Brian Halligan.