Uncapped #42 | Bret Taylor from Sierra

23:44My theory of that is it depends on what you're testing. So if you're using ChatGPT for trip planning, you probably haven't seen a material change over the past year and a half because you reached sort of sufficient intelligence for trip planning a long time ago. If you're using AI to write Rust code, Codex is like mind-blowing right now. So I think one of the interesting things when I think about like second, third order effects and like the progress of AI is, you know, where you pass the horizon where like every model is sufficient in that task. And then there'll be some things where like the frontier continues to move.

24:19And it's hard to imagine, but it's just like we're in a crazy time. Where are we at with support agents right now? Like, are there still edge cases, last mile things like that AI can't do still? Yeah, we are, though. I imagine a lot of the technical problems as opposed to product problems will become easier. But there's a lot of them still. So, you know, we at Sierra support most spoken languages in the world. And, you know, if you want to support Cantonese and Tagalog, most of the good voice models, you know, don't come from like the traditional Western model companies. Similarly, one of our clients is SafeLite Autoglass.

25:01So it's like roadside assistance. And it turns out that like car horns, background noise, kids talking background, you know, are actually all fairly hard problems to solve. And even in some of the advanced voice mode stuff, if you are in a noisy environment, it constantly thinks it's being interrupted and things like that. So you end up having to build proprietary voice activity detection, multiple speaker detection, all these other things. We develop all this technology because we need to be the best now. And I think we are the best now. And you're like, OK, that's probably going to be a commodity two years from now, one year from now.

25:32I mean, who knows? You have to do it because you need to be the best at every stage of your company's existence. And I think then the way we think about the world is we have a product, which is called Agent Studio or Agent OS. And we're going to make, in three years, we'll judge us by our product. And right now, we're probably, our clients don't really put it this way, they're judged by the technology. But if you go back to 1996, I remember when Netscape had a web server and Apache was new and done it. Like, no one cares how you serve web pages now. Like, it's a commodity. But at the time, that was what you sold.

26:03and now you have increasingly higher order website building like Shopify. So I just think the AI agent market is going to take that progression. We're going from a tech-centric sales cycle to a product-centric sales cycle. It's interesting that you're obviously having to be the best at something that you know is going to get commoditized, which is probably not something, I don't know if you ever had to experience something like that. I mean, for that to be true, you just have to be in the middle of an insane rate of change. But that means you have teams who are putting like, you know, a lot of their life force for two years into something that everybody knows is just for two years, but it still matters nonetheless.

26:37It's crazy. I mean, you look at traditional, I'll just say enterprise software, consumer's a little different, but you think about you're building up this asset, your intellectual property. There's a fancy name for it. It's like, look at this platform that we're building. And like, we took so many years to build it. And it's got all these features. And now you're like, I'm building this and I'm 100 % certain we'll throw it away in the next 40 months. But I have to build it because if I don't, I can't serve the bank that has a big, you know, business in Hong Kong or whatever it might be where we need Cantonese support.

27:06So that is the reality right now. And so I actually think I've been thinking a lot about this, actually, just because I think it was Toby Lukey who sort of said something provocative around, you know, when generating the code is easy, it's almost like the system and the prompts that are actually the durable asset. You know, put another way, could you sort of terraform your software from scratch. You know, it's the prompts that led to it. I do think that is sort of the software of the future in a lot of ways, where how do you encode the infinite number of little product decisions that you made?

27:38Because so much of that is encoded in code today. I mean, if you think about like a product requirements document versus the code, what percentage of the emergent product that comes out of it is encode? Almost like 90%, like a lot of the little details are in there. I think a little bit it's like software companies of the future and the products that they make are just going to take a really different shape in the future. And I'm so excited to be a part of it. I mean, I think it's really fascinating. I think there's something really interesting about AI impacting the software engineering industry almost first and most, because we're disrupting the craft of making what we're building in real time.

28:18And it's fascinating. It's a fascinating time. I think there's a prevailing idea in tech that AI is moving so fast that young founders have this massive advantage. And I mean this with no offense. You're not old, but you're also... You're telling me I'm old. No, you're not the youngest founder. And you have one of the most successful AI startups there is. And it does seem like you've brought a lot of your previous experiences to what you're doing, but I can tell from talking to you that you also are just rethinking everything. And so I'm curious your own experience for yourself and for other founders you look around out like do you think by and large young founders have the advantage what does it take for more experienced founders have the advantage you know i'm always a big believer there was i don't know if it's a real quote but i some vc said you know like uh why was this you know founder able to you know conquer this market where so many others had failed and they said well he was too naive to know it couldn't be done and there's a certain element of that that i love because you end up with this kind of naivete that is actually sort of a form of principled first principles thinking that a lot of young founders have.

29:24You know, you just don't know why this messy, bad product, you know, dominates the market. You think there's a better, faster, cheaper way to do it. And because you don't have any of the hard-win lessons that can end up, you know, oversimplified analogies, keeping you from actually taking that leap, you can end up with, you know, Tony made DoorDash and didn't care about, say, WebVans, Monzo, or whatever it was like. I can't remember all the dot-com bubble companies. But I do think, especially in enterprise software, the experience that some of our team members bring, including the old man me and Clay, bring to it really does matter.

30:06Part of the reason we're able to serve so much of the Fortune 100 is we can go into a bank or a healthcare payer, a healthcare provider, a revenue cycle management firm, or a big telecommunications company and understand their business. We're working with one large medical device companies consolidating 40 of their call centers into one. And we can have a discussion about the change management of doing that. And that's not really a tech problem, but it does require, you know, understanding business. And I think there's like, we always joke at Sierra, it's like the Venn diagram, like there's a circle.

30:43People understand like next generation of AI and people understand business. And we're like the company right in the middle of that, maybe the only one. And that matters because I don't know, there's that sort of infamous MIT study saying all these AI projects fail. It's like none of ours do. And that's our value proposition. Like we can actually help you go live. And I think the experience has benefited us. Yeah. I'm curious if you can point to what has created the lead you have so far. And obviously, I know you're just getting started, but at the moment you do, you've pulled away in a big way.

31:13And I'm sure there's a lot of just daily blocking and tackling. But I'm curious if there are any foundational decisions that you've made or strategic approaches that over the last couple of years you look back at and you're like, that was pretty essential to make this happen. I think there's two almost independent areas of investment. They're not independent, but they're like very different. One is the product and one is our sort of our go-to-market and partnership model. And they're both really intentionally built. On the product side, we've tried to balance ease of use and extensibility because when you serve really large companies that have been around for 200 years, you know, you need to work with mainframes.

31:55You need to work with a thousand different systems. you've done 10 acquisitions, there's all the enterprises are messy. And so that's why you tend to have, you know, most, I'll say enterprise software, this design for larger companies tends to be quite extensible. Often that extensibility comes at a cost, which is, is it easy to get up and running? And so as a product designer, like one of the things I've just spent a lot of time thinking about is like, we're trying to have our cake and eat it too. Like, can you go live in two months and still be maximally extensible? And I'm really proud of the product that we've built.

32:26And some of that is born from experience of what does extensibility mean? And I think we have an opinionated view of what it means and have been able to accommodate like some fairly exotic deployment requests and still do it fast. That's really unique. The second thing is our go-to-market and partnership model. We knew when we started the company, we wanted to work with the largest companies in the world. Not only, but we want to be able to work with largest companies in the world. And I focused on that. And as a consequence, we just have a really unique partnership model. There's sort of a fashionable thing to talk about forward deployed engineering in Silicon Valley.

33:01We don't call it that. And it's a very unique model because it's not all about technology. Like most of our clients build and maintain their agents themselves. It's pretty easy to do. But we show up and we help you be successful. And so it's like, we'll just show up. Like we're not going to let you fail. Like and I think that is a very different because we have this outcomes model, outcomes based pricing model. We don't get paid unless it works. And so - How much of that is technical versus like change management? It's a mix of both. You know, I don't know if it's 50-50. Do you know it as two people or it's one person who does both?

33:33We have a mix of roles. We sort of evolved that. We try to hire really technical people in all roles though, because part of our secret is we want to be like, be your trusted partner in AI. So you want the person who is working with you every day to be the most knowledgeable AI person you know. It's like a forward deployed change management engineer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's crazy what we're doing. And so, and what's really neat about it is if you're like a really talented technical person who wants to go transform an industry, you can do it at Sierra. I mean, you can go in and like we're working with most of the healthcare insurance companies.

34:05Like you want to change healthcare costs and, you know, like what a cool vantage point to do it. So we've been able to attract some really remarkable people too. You said that it's not just support agents now. Yeah. It's like, what else are you finding shoots in? I'll give you one of my favorite relationships with Rocket. So based in Detroit, remarkable story. Their founder has done more for Detroit than I think any one person's done for any city. Just like remarkable company. But they own Redfin, which is a home search site, Rocket Mortgage, which is like the number one consumer mortgage originator in the country.

34:39And then they bought a mortgage servicing firm recently as well. And you can go to redfin.com and use an AI agent to search for a house. you can go to rocket.com and finance that house with an AI agent. And then you can, with the acquisition they've done to this mortgage service firm, you can then, when you're servicing your mortgage, you'll talk on the phone with an AI agent as well. So like everything from finding a house to originating the mortgage to servicing that mortgage, I think it's pretty cool. And like they have an amazing CTO named Sean Mohotra, like pretty visionary. And I love their CEO of Rune too, but it's like everything from finding a house all the way through servicing.

35:15It's kind of what we believe a lot of businesses will do is like look at their entire customer life cycle from, you know, I'll say purchase consideration, which is a fancy way of saying like browsing. I think homes are probably one of the more considered purchases that you could do through executing the purchase. They're having issues with it all the way through, you know, retention. And for a lot of, for example, a lot of our telecommunications customers, their AI agent is actually doing negotiations. So like Like you've probably negotiated your cable bill at some point. Probably. And so RAI agents are doing billions of dollars of negotiations for everything from, you know, satellite radio subscriptions to cable television subscriptions.

35:57It's pretty cool. I mean, it's like really, you know, over a billion dollars of mortgage. Basically just like all transactional communications eventually. The way I think about it is website is a technology, but your.com, the one with your brand at the top is your website. We're sort of doing that for agents. It's sort of like agents will do a lot of things. The one with your brand at the top that your customers go to, whether it's buying or servicing, we would like to help you make that. And I think it's an interesting, as agents go, it's often interacting with other agents, right? If you think about a home and auto insurance company, you know, you may have a claim adjudication agent, you know, that's quite complicated.

36:40So our agent that's having the phone conversation when you're on the fender bender will interact with that. But it is almost the intersection of all of that technology because it's sort of your front door. And our whole hypothesis is every company needed a website in 1997, every company needs an agent in 2027. And like we want to be that that company. What's the nuance about like agent builders, though? Because I know you have like a view that like just being like a generic agent builder is not the right thing. Yeah, I mean, I've been surprised how many enterprise like large income enterprise software companies like their first foray into AI was you can an agent building tool.

37:19it just feels inevitably to be a commodity in my mind because maybe making a website was hard in 1995, but today there's like a million ways to make a website. Most of them are open source. And you have like cool companies like Purcell, which I love, but it's not like there's a huge market for this stuff. And in practice, I think the same will happen with agent building. I think OpenAI will have a great tool. Probably all the foundation model companies will. There'll be open source packages like Langchain and Lengraf. The idea that you have the right to win there, I don't know if anyone has the right to win there just because it's just a technology.

37:56It's a horizontal technology and I just believe in open source and it's just going to become a commodity. So my belief where there's value is really going to be in agents that do things and you'll hire those agents and purchase those agents for what they do. So I believe in companies like Sierra. I believe in companies like Harvey. I really admire what they do. And, you know, they have an agent that will do an antitrust review. You know, I think there'll be a finance agent that audits your financials. There'll be one that helps you onboard a, you know, supply chain vendor. There'll be one that, you know, if you just think about onboarding a new vendor, it's like there's a procurement process, there's a legal process, there's a contract review process.

38:39Whether or not it's completely autonomous or human in the loop, all of that could be augmented with an AI. And I'm like, that's a product. Yeah. Agent building is not a product. It embraces a technology. Speaking of the platforms, aside from being the founder of Sierra, you're also on the board of OpenAI. You're the chairman there. I wanted to ask you specifically about Codex. Over the last couple of weeks, it's been unbelievable. It's like a curtain just came down. Did you expect this? Did you think that what has happened here was going to happen? Or when did you start to have an inkling that code was going to go vertical like this?

39:10I'll say yes, I expected it just because being on the board of OpenAI, we talk a lot about it. and all the labs, Anthropic and OpenAI in particular, talk a lot about using coding agents to help build AI. And certainly building an AI researcher is an important part of building an AGI lab. The weird part about for me as someone who is a software engineer, I didn't feel it until I used it. So you can talk about it all the time. And then the first time you one-shot something and it turns out like really good and not like slop, but like really good. It's an emotional experience, I think. I mean, for me, it was.

39:53It was just sort of like, holy shit, like this is real. As you said, it's really over the past three months that it has felt really materially different to me. And I've been thinking about it a lot. I was thinking about the past 20 years of software engineering. I remember the first time I worked on an engineering team that had real CICD, where you'd check in code and it would just automatically end up into production. And I remember how I'll just like, if you've ever worked in an engineering team that did that versus one that did manual releases, it's completely different. Because to have something that can safely go from commit to production, there's so many things that have to happen to make that work.

40:38You end up relying a lot on testing. So both unit testing, integration testing, and canary testing, because the last thing you want is someone clicking a button and taking down the service. And it's almost impossible for a team that is doing manual releases to convert into CI, like true continuous delivery, because there's so many implied processes that are incompatible with that. It's like easy to start that way and very hard to work. So I've been asking myself, clearly in three years, we're going to, like if we were talking, we could talk about what are the best practices to set up a software team that's optimized for this technology.

41:16And we'll know what those best practices are. And right now we're just figuring them out in real time. And like my hypothesis is the companies that figure it out first will move the fastest. Yeah. And the other part of that is the companies that don't will move much more slowly. It's fascinating to me. uh and andre carpathia he had a really interesting post about this too like i think a lot of folks are sort of like in deep here have been thinking about it and it's fun to see the industry you love sort of flipped on its head and yeah in real time well it's interesting because like i think people like you know software engineers on one end and then like say somebody who's like you know in you know some part of the country where ai has not yet kind of like gotten it's fully extended like there's like a wide gap in people's current sort of comprehension of like what ai is going to do.

42:03And so I think, you know, it's like, it's a little bit unknown. Like, you know, there's a lot of blog posts going on right now that are breathlessly saying like, it's all over. I think, you know, I'm probably more in the camp of like, maybe software is like, I don't know, people, you know, use the word software is solved. I don't know if it's that, but I'm curious if you have a view on like, if Codex and Cloud Code and sort of like the latest in coding, is that going to change the way companies are built? You know, like one easy strongman question there would be like, Like, you know, people have been claiming that there's going to be my brother, you know, these 10 person billion dollar companies.

42:35You know, is that are we at the precipice of that? Does that make sense? Are there other changes? Like what's going to happen now? There probably will be a 10 person billion dollar company, but I don't necessarily think will be the norm. And the reason for that is competition. If you imagine like the mobile phone market in the United States, there's three main competitors, Verizon, AT &T, T-Mobile. and they're all competing for a fixed pie of mobile subscribers. And it's why it's extremely competitive. There's promotions, there's ads. They can't make more of us. They can't make more of us. They can build up their network.

43:07They can do other pricing and packaging. And it's a really complex business to run. All of them have access to AI, every single one. So the idea that you could deploy AI and not have to do things you're doing currently because of AI is probably true. But if any one of them figures out a way to use a person to gain market share against the other one, they're going to do it. And then as a response, their competitors will do it too. And that's how, you know, we spoke about this earlier, but it's the reason why when automated teller machines were introduced to banks, the teller job went away, but there's no fewer bank branches and no fewer people in those bank branches.

43:47And it's because, I don't know if it was JPMC or someone figured out, hey, if we put financial advisors in there and other things, we can actually make more revenue per branch. My personal take is in a competitive market, and that's the key, by the way, you need competition. So people can't just pass the cost savings onto shareholders or dividends. The second order effect of the efficiencies of AI will be investment to compete, lower prices or customer acquisition or whatever it might be. So we want to have fewer engineers per company. We'll just, they'll be way more productive. And so you just end up with way better software.

44:18Or you might have fewer engineers and more of something else, or you might have more engineers. You know, I don't, I'm not sure, but it's the idea that like it will be what it is today, but just more efficient, I think, is like a lack of imagination, in my opinion. The interesting thing though is the other part of this, software engineering does feel special. And I think people extrapolating too much from software engineering are, it's a bit simplistic. You're like the same thing might not happen to every other function. I'll just be really simple about it, which is finance and software engineering might be limited by intelligence.

44:50meaning they're largely digital. They are largely like manipulating sort of digital things to, and you could imagine AI automating that. Most of the economy isn't digital, like exclusively. So, you know, if you need to ship something, a t-shirt from Vietnam to here, yeah, you could automate some of that stuff. But at the end of the day, like that cargo ship still needs to be in the water. And I always bring this up, you know, like just imagine you run a pharmaceutical company you know, you can think about, you know, how to make a therapy. You probably need a wet lab. So, okay, well, that's intersects the real world.

45:29Maybe you could do robotics, but then you need a clinical trial. And then, you know, so just a lot of the economy is like real. And so it definitely will change the way companies are built. But I think when people say everything will be 10 people. It's like maybe just the stuff that lives in bits. Yeah, that's right. Which is a lot of the economy, but not the economy. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's easy to talk about this, but you're right. Like if you just like move around the physical world and you get off of, you know, this podcast and, you know, this computer I'm sitting in front of all this stuff and you got into the world and there's like, you know, trucks moving dirt around and people who need a building that has lights in it.

46:02And there's like a lot of physical things. I kind of tend to think that the value of that stuff is all going to go up until maybe robots happen. But in general, I think, you know, the value of bits goes down. The value of stuff goes up potentially. I think you're probably right. and some of, you know, like robotics will have a big impact as well. But I think people are thinking about this a bit simplistically is my take. And I think intelligence is clearly on the cusp of going up exponentially, but it doesn't mean adoption of, like that can't be absorbed by the economy perfectly exponentially.

46:36And so I just think people are a little bit simplistic. Do you think there's any cognitive things that are immune from intelligence? So like Dylan Field, when he was on this podcast, gave an example of like Brat Summer as something where he was just like, that would have been such an insanely hard call for an AI to make. And you need so much context and taste and opinion. You know, where my head was going is, okay, so coding is, you know, whatever's happening there is happening there. But what about like brand or storytelling? And I'm kind of asking you this both as an operator and as, you know, somebody who's very deep with open AI.

47:11Do you think that these other parts of intelligence also go the way of AI? I don't know if taste is necessarily related to intelligence. It might be, but I've got three kids, including a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old. And when they decide what they're going to wear to school, I don't think they will consider chat GPT's opinion. They care more about what the person in class next to them is wearing. Similarly, if you go to the most elite, competitive, college preparatory school, or the worst school in the world, there's always going to be the smart kid in class, and the dumb kid in class, and the strong kid, and the fast kid, and all these other things.

47:58It's all relative, and it's all very local, and it's all very human. And so I think the idea that because AI is smart, it takes something away from us as humans, I don't necessarily subscribe to. I don't, you know, you all see these things that go around online where people are sort of lamenting older technology, like the bicycle. And, you know, we've been weaker than machines for my entire life. And I don't think it like, it doesn't make me feel like weak as a person. And I think for the first time, we have computers that are going to be more intelligent than us. I think there will, you know, the emotions I had about codecs writing code that was high quality was an experience because, you know, I might have some of my identity tied up in that task.

48:45And the next day I woke up and I'm using it as a tool and I can make better software. I'm like, this is great. Probably actually like a good like self-actualization anyway to go through that. Like, oh, I'm not my ability to code. I think people's vocations and their identities are often very intertwined. But I think once you absorb the technology, I don't think it's actually your identity. And so I think I actually am quite optimistic that we will be human. We will all be status-seeking animals. We all compete for the real estate here in San Francisco. And even though our standard of living will go way up, we will all be jealous of people still.

49:21We will all compete. And as a consequence, I think humanity will be just fine. That's my view on it. And I think it's just hard to imagine, but it doesn't mean it's going to be catastrophically bad. I just think it's actually, I think it will be largely good for humanity. I have a friend who believes that like, as this kind of progress, you know, we're already, everybody's already completely addicted to their phones and it's a disaster and whatever. Now you have all this AI happening. A friend of mine was saying that he basically thinks that it'll actually become a status signal to become increasingly offline.

49:48And I'm like, actually, that might be an interesting call. Like, I do think that like people will kind of hit a tipping point with a lot of this stuff where like, Like all of it will happen. Like intelligence will get so good. And then people will sort of just be like enough of all of this. And like, hopefully there's a big screen time reduction, you know? And it's like, you saw like parents were revolting on social media, like about social media for their kids and like a bunch of schools and all the parents, like nobody take a phone, like everybody agree to it. So I think that'll be an interesting thing of like, does humanity, like, does it, is there like an essential humanity that like gets sharpened?

50:18I hope so. I actually, one of the things, you know, I love the iPhone. It's one of the greatest inventions of this century. I hope we're not staring at a glowing rectangle in 10 years. It can't be the right way to do it. And, you know, now that AI can talk to you and human computer interfaces. Like, so this is my point. I actually think hopefully humanity can become more self-actualized, you know, as a consequence of this. And that is the purpose of technology. So, you know, just like the Industrial Revolution had Luddites and globalization led to job loss in the Rust Belt of the United States, but certain goods got less expensive in other parts of it.

50:57Like, there's not going to be no issues. I think it would be callous and insincere to imply otherwise. But I think it will largely just really accelerate humanity in a really positive way. And I think that for me, and I think for like, if you're thinking about how does this impact me is like, have a more flexible view of your own identity, like the what how you do it every day doesn't define you. I was like the metaphor, because it was so obvious before and after imagining being an accountant before Microsoft Excel and after Microsoft Excel. Yeah. So much of the act of being an account was like adding up numbers and things, you know, and now it's like building a model.

51:35And it's not like what you did, like the value you provided didn't change. But actually the act of doing it is completely different. Like the skill set is completely different. And so I think it was just like a lot of us are just going to go through that in a very compressed period of time. And it's OK. It's just a little anxiety. Yeah, makes sense. My last question about AI, there was a shot from Anthropic at OpenAI around the Super Bowl commercial about the ads, which is there were good ads. They were funny. But then I think sparked like a debate around sort of like the whole topic of like, what is the role of these foundation labs and how should they sort of like bring AI to the masses or not?

52:12What's the appropriate business model? What are the tradeoffs of all of this? It's you've obviously like, you know, you have experience with social networks and a lot of different pricing, you know, models, you know, open AI. Well, you know, you know how to consume AI. So I'm just curious how you think about this and like, what is the right thing when you consider like a lot of these dimensions? I'm very optimistic about ads done in sort of a tasteful way. You know, I started my career at Google. I think I arrived like the day AdWords came out. So it was just interesting because when I started there, you'll laugh at this, but like everyone in my family, when they found I was working there was like, how did they even make money?

52:49And I laughed just because I was like, I think I listened to the Acquired podcast. It's literally the most profitable business ever created. But as a consequence, you know, Google is widely available for free for people who want to use it and has created an economy around it for demand fulfillment advertising. I think there's reasonable criticisms of advertising. if it starts to get in the way of the sanctity of what the AI is recommending you, which was sort of the backhanded implication. But I just think it's not true. And so I actually think if ads are clearly labeled and not contained in the experience, I think it's really aligned with the OpenAI mission because our mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits humanity.

53:31Obviously, the most important part of that mission is safety. But after you get back the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm, the job of a doctor to cure, So then after you say, okay, it's safe, how do we widely distribute it? And I think we have an obligation being a mission driven, you know, I'm the chair of the foundation and on the PBC board, like our mission matters and being able to offer it for free widely is a huge part of that. And we need to be able to afford that. But I think it's not only, I just, I find it inauthentic. Like I'm like, this is an incredible opportunity to provide this at scale to society.

54:07And I think the idea that it will somehow take the experience is too strong. You know, like I grew up in like suburb of St. Louis and, you know, so it's like a whole different world than like, you know, what we're in now. And it's like, when I think about like, you know, people, you know, that I grew up with or, you know, from just other parts of the country, 20 bucks a month is a lot. And I think, you know, it's easy to forget in our ecosystem that like not everybody wants or can spend$20 a month on stuff, but they really want these services. Like, you know, if the whole world had to pay for Google, like that'd be a worse world.

54:37Like it's really good that everybody has access. I just think it's important we do it well. Yeah. Yeah. People want good ads. Like I like good ads. Like I would actually, if people bring me the right product, I'm like, that's really nice. This is the other part of it. It's like you want businesses to be able to grow from scratch. There's such a purpose of it. It just needs to be done in the right way. So I find the discussion not particularly authentic. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to ask you about was how you've chosen to sort of like finance the company. And I guess I'm curious about three parts, which are how you got started and, you know, working with Peter Fenton and then like what you've done since then to date and what's been important for you.

55:13And then I'm curious, just like, as you think about the future, like what's important to you as you think about other partners or capitalizing. And, you know, I'm asking just because this is a podcast has a lot of VC in it. So I got to have a little flourish. Yeah, totally. We have three members of our board, which are sort of represent kind of like our kind of three rounds of investments. So Peter Fenton from Benchmark, Ravi Gupta, who just left Sequoia, though he's still a venture partner there, and Neil Mehta from Green Oaks. Just a fantastic group of people and chose them all both for the firm and the person.

55:47But notably, like Peter, I've worked with both my previous companies. So, you know, our first round of financing, I didn't talk to anyone else and introduced him to Clay, my co-friend who hadn't spent time with him. And we talked once. He sent me a term sheet. I signed it. No edits. And it was like a very much a trust relationship. And it is interesting, like one of the things I really have appreciated about. So there's some downsides to Silicon Valley and how insular the community is. One of the great parts, though, is just the relationships you can forge over years. And for me, it meant Peter and I could sort of start on third base just because we've worked together a lot before.

56:26And so you just don't end up with a lot of the—there's no funny business in the fundraising process, no funny business in the boardroom. It's just like, let's get to work. And it's fun. It was fun to sort of get the band back together there. But the fun part for me is I had never worked with Ravi nor Neil before. and like clay and i just it's like it's just it's just a great board yeah like it's just like people we seek out advice from as opposed to people we report to you know every quarter it's so it's amazing how do you think about because you're both like no like you know when when opening i we won't go back to the story but like you know when opening i had it's like oh my god moment like sam was like you know right you gotta like you're like the board member and then you've also got a board that you're so you're you're in both roles at once how do you like make the most out of the board?

57:12Like, you know, obviously you've got these particular relationships, but like, what do you expect that relationship to look like? First, I really like written documents for boards over presentations, both as a board member and as like a founder of a company, because you end up letting people synthesize information ahead of the board meeting. So you end up with more substantive discussions in the boardroom. I've done this for the last two companies I've started, and it's just been great to sent out a board document. Sometimes people will comment ahead of the meeting, but I actually think the main thing is it's been read and it's been read ahead of time.

57:48And then you end up with a meeting about the actual meat and potatoes of the topics. You're not like staring at a bunch of sales numbers for the first time. You're not running through slides. You're not running through slides. And I find it to be incredibly, I think most companies should be run this way. The other thing that is really interesting is like, don't write it with AI. It's so funny to have to say that now, but I find that... The process of the writing? The process of the writing is a process of clarifying your thoughts. And so for Clay and me, this is a process by which we synthesize what's been happening.

58:18And you know it, you talk about it, but to actually write it and write it eloquently and concisely is incredibly important because it's essentially a way of, you know, it's like, what's that famous line? If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, like spend the time. Because that's actually how you can show respect to your stakeholders that you're thinking about the strategic issues going on in your business. And the last thing I'd say is board members aren't sort of single issue voters, but everyone has their strengths. And, you know, at OpenAI, we've recruited a pretty diverse set of skills.

58:48Zico Coulter is a professor at CMU who specializes in, among other things, jailbreaking. So just like one of the experts on some of the more subtle safety aspects, Nicole Seligman was a great attorney. And, you know, she's an expert in a lot of like legal issues. And what's really nice is when you grow out a board, you know, beyond your initial investors too, is find people that your management team will want to go to for advice. Obviously, the audit committee chair and your CFO have a really unique relationship, but you really want folks like, who's your head of sales going to go talk to? Do you have someone who's like kind of been there, done that?

59:24Because you want them to have that kind of like, I always think of it as like, who are the advisors you want to surround your management team? Well, and I think a functional board really has those relationships. And then when you're in a board discussion, you have all these board members who have had lots of engagement with the company, but in a really valuable kind of targeted way. So I like to think of the board as a collection of people. Don't look at the individuals. The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. Anything this year you're particularly excited about that you can share?

59:51I think the real exciting part is going to be adoption and regulated industries. I think we are moving beyond the early adopters to everyone. And so I think if we talk a year from now - You're going to be doing the hard stuff. It's going to be like the really hard stuff. That's awesome. And if you want like a hot take, I think my intuition is regulators will start asking for agents. The idea that you have a human set of controls over a regulated process will start to feel like a risk rather than the risk being AI. And that's my, I don't know what happened this year, but I think that will happen.

1:00:28All right, well, I'll call you in a year and we'll do take two of this. That sounds great. All right. Thanks so much for doing this, Brett. This was great. Thanks for having me.