Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #21: The AI-Native Revolution: Community, Culture, & the Next Decade of Humanity – Jeremiah Owyang

Transcript

#21: The AI-Native Revolution: Community, Culture, & the Next Decade of Humanity – Jeremiah Owyang · Love Conquers Fear

0:00
Want to talk about Ted AI because it was so cool seeing
0:02
you close that out. Let's talk about what your
0:04
speech was about in closing that out and what was the main
0:07
message you were trying to convey.
0:09
I, I said in my opener, is all about community.
0:11
I heard gaffes in the audience when CEO's see that slide.
0:14
I understand the gravity, what that means.
0:17
Communities form culture. Strong communities have
0:19
cultures. And there's in particular the
0:20
the cultures that have emerged here in San Francisco is there's
0:23
an AI first culture, which is being adopted by the giant tech
0:26
companies that are not AI leaders.
0:28
And there's thousands of startups in San Francisco that
0:31
were born in the last few years. AI natives from San Francisco.
0:34
It's derived from a leaderboard that exists other young
0:37
companies, fewer than 50 employees and their revenue per
0:39
employees 2.2 million. So 10X crew AI.
0:43
Their company was incorporated in 2024 and it's already been
0:46
adopted by 60% of the Fortune 500's.
0:49
Insane, growable. And here's the other thing
0:51
believable. They only have 35 human
0:53
employees, but 350 AI agents. I think are the most important
0:58
ten years in human history. We've always It's been the way
1:00
exponentials were, of course. Is they really really slowly?
1:04
Hit first. Now it's near vertical.
1:06
Everybody should be trying those tools and you should maximize
1:08
LMS. You should have a subscription
1:10
to both GPT and THOUGHT. So that's $20 to $20.
1:14
It's definitely money to spend. Hi everyone, welcome back to
1:20
Love Conquers Fear. I have a very exciting episode
1:24
today. As I mentioned on the last
1:26
episode with Mike Maples Junior, I was just about to walk into
1:31
the Ted AI event and my guest today, unbeknownst to me because
1:36
I did not look at the agenda, I want to be surprised.
1:39
Going to that event was the closing speaker of the first day
1:44
and closed it out in a really amazing, beautiful way with the
1:48
core message of community. So we'll be talking about that
1:51
and talking about the amazing community that he's built here
1:54
in San Francisco. I also yesterday had a really
2:00
beautiful happening where Christopher Michael reached out
2:04
to me. He is the photographer for the
2:07
National Academy of Arts and Sciences.
2:11
And he said, hey, I love what you're up to with love Conquers
2:14
fear. And I'd like to take your photo.
2:16
And he he did portraits of me, which I haven't hadn't done in a
2:20
long, long time. And so I've shared that online
2:23
and I'll probably be sharing that in a soon to be announced
2:26
website for the podcast where you'll be able to find a list of
2:30
all the books that have been recommended in every episode.
2:34
So it'll make it very easy for you that he turned me on to a
2:40
short story that I had never read.
2:41
I didn't even know it existed. Called The Egg by Andy Weir.
2:46
He asked me first if I was Andy We're fan and I told him I'd
2:50
recently finished Project Tell Mary and love that novel and
2:54
I've covered that on this podcast.
2:57
I also mentioned on the podcast a warning alert.
2:59
Do not watch the trailer because it literally spoils all the best
3:03
parts of the book in my opinion. It's one of those trailers that
3:07
just tells way too much and you really want to be surprised when
3:11
you watch the actual movie. There's a lot of great surprises
3:14
that are really worth it, but the egg is essentially an origin
3:18
of life, the universe and everything short story, so I
3:21
really enjoyed it. Would really recommend it.
3:24
And I also use that opportunity to read The Last Question by
3:29
Isaac Asimov, which had been recommended to me a number of
3:32
times actually, with my science fiction novella The Lattice out.
3:38
That book kept on coming up or that short story kept on coming
3:41
up. So I finally listened to it.
3:44
It's a really funny one on Audible because I guess it was
3:47
recorded during the days of cd-roms because they keep on
3:52
referencing that on the actual reading of it.
3:56
And it's very highly produced, but in a kind of a cheesy way.
4:00
But it was a fun, you know, kind of throwback in the OR, you
4:04
know, I went in the way back machine.
4:06
And it's also an origin of life, the universe and everything.
4:10
And essentially, where did The Big Bang come from?
4:14
And it's AI don't want to spoil it for you, but it's a, it's an
4:18
interesting theory of what actually calls The Big Bang that
4:22
supposedly happened 13.8 billion years ago, but we're finding out
4:27
is actually older than that with the James Webb telescope.
4:31
So who actually knows? We're talking about time times
4:35
that we can't even imagine. And I mentioned to you on my
4:39
first episode, The Order of Time by Carlo Ravelli is a fantastic
4:45
book about how time itself is an illusion.
4:48
Anyways, So that's that's kind of a fun read.
4:51
It's just a pure science book, but it ends with a very mystical
4:56
ending, even though he's not trying to be mystical at all.
4:59
He's just trying to be scientific on his theory of why
5:04
time is an illusion. So who knows, right?
5:08
And we've been here many times before.
5:10
Is this, is this the first instantiation of this universe?
5:14
Do we live in parallel universes?
5:17
There's just so many questions. We don't know which.
5:19
Frankly, I think the acceleration with AI, quantum
5:23
computing, robotics, and brain computer interfaces are going to
5:26
take us more and more into whatever the nature of this
5:29
reality is. But let's just be thankful that
5:32
it's rooted in love is the highest order principle.
5:36
And I've seen that whether I've read books on quantum physics or
5:40
AI or consciousness or spirituality, that that seems to
5:45
be the reality that we're in. And anybody that's ever done,
5:48
you know, a silent retreat or psychedelic journey or a deep
5:52
meditation, they see the unity of all things and and they see
5:58
that we're rooted in love, which is beautiful.
6:02
So today, very excited to say that my guest is Jeremiah Owing.
6:08
Jeremiah has been a long time friend.
6:10
I actually known him since since 2005.
6:15
Can't believe that. But yeah, awesome buddy.
6:17
Yeah. What an honor to be here with
6:19
you. Yeah.
6:20
What an amazing journey and I'm so grateful that our friendship
6:22
is still intact and it's this is going to be a great
6:25
conversation. Let's.
6:26
Go. It really is.
6:27
Yeah. Yeah.
6:27
I'm just very honored to know you.
6:29
And you know, you're someone who I just want to say out of all
6:34
the industry analysts I know now you're a venture capitalist and
6:37
we'll talk about that. You are always able to see the
6:40
future clearly. And that's really, really
6:42
unusual. And somehow the way that we both
6:47
saw the future lined up, you know, we lined up with different
6:52
bookmarks in our career, which I which I always thought was a
6:55
very cool synchronicity between us.
6:58
Thank you. Well, to put a little bit of
7:02
scope on, I can see the future like a tech market business, but
7:06
I can't like, I don't know what I'm having for dinner tonight
7:08
yet, Brett. There's some definite
7:11
limitations and you know, don't bet on me in Vegas, that will
7:13
probably go bad. So it's just really great to be
7:16
here and in the heart of San Francisco, too.
7:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I love being here.
7:21
You know, this is, we're in the mission right now recording
7:23
this. And when Deborah and I moved
7:26
here at the beginning of 2000 for core metrics because all of
7:31
our customers were here, we're selling to dot coms like crazy.
7:34
And we had we had a 1.100.com customers that went down to
7:40
threeasthe.com bubble burst. So I was, I was here in the
7:44
height of the boom, the depths of despair, the slow rebuild
7:47
where, you know, eventually Facebook landed a $10 million
7:52
investment in them by Excel. And that was for $100 million
7:57
valuation. And people were like, the good
7:58
times are back, baby. It was so far, Dion, But this is
8:04
this. I always feel this is kind of
8:05
where my roots were. And and, you know, I want to
8:07
talk about Ted AI because it was so cool seeing you close that
8:12
out. Like, let's talk about what your
8:14
speech was about in closing that out.
8:16
And, you know, what was the main message you're trying to convey?
8:20
I, I said in my opener, is all about community.
8:24
Yes, 100% about community. That was a life moment to to do
8:30
that and a lot of prep went into it and thinking and working with
8:36
the team and the and the coaches.
8:38
But just to back up in 2023, I could see Jen AI was about to
8:45
pop off. There was a bunch of indicators,
8:47
and I've seen this before, and because ivebeenheresince.com,
8:50
like, I can see these little, little flares in the sky.
8:54
And when you learn how to read these little signals, then you
8:57
can tell what's going to pop. And so I've done that 4, four
9:02
times in my career. Yeah.
9:04
And I know, I know that you're rooted in humility, but I want
9:07
to emphasize again, I think you've seen the future clearly
9:11
multiple times. Thanks.
9:14
And so I do what my natural instinct is, Brett.
9:17
It's to build community and to write about it and to share and
9:24
and include people. So I started an event series in
9:27
April 2023 called Llama Lounge. I wanted a name that would stand
9:32
out. Most events are called AGI this,
9:34
AI that, ML this. And so Fast forward, there's
9:38
been 20 Llama Lounge events. Wine llama.
9:41
Llama. Oh, so Llama is an acronym,
9:46
Large Language model LLM. And so the industry's just say,
9:50
well, let's just call this spiritual creature, mythical
9:54
creature instead of unicorns, llama.
9:56
So llama's been adopted. There's obviously this Llama
9:59
model, there's Llama Index, there's Llama.
10:01
Yeah, there's many companies called Llama.
10:02
And so it's just kind of known. It's kind of an icon that's just
10:06
emerged. And so I went with Llama Lounge,
10:09
you know, because we're hanging out and it's become a pitch
10:12
event and it's so I it's an ecosystem.
10:16
We have founders who come and they pitch to their peers.
10:20
Investors typically have 50 to 75 VCs in the room.
10:24
And then we have corporate buyers as well.
10:25
So it's a full ecosystem and the three to 400 people per events.
10:29
And we usually have to turn hundreds away.
10:32
And we have to have uniformed security guards now, at least
10:35
three guards at each event. And I think it's it's a thing
10:39
and there's over. There's a significant amount of
10:42
capital in the room and decisions are made and
10:44
everybody's title is a leadership title now.
10:47
So it's just kind of grown. And what happened was the
10:50
organizers of Ted AI before they announced they're going to do a
10:53
conference, they came to SF and they were checking out like
10:55
what's going on out here and they came to a llama lounge.
10:58
And so they were just kind of tracking me.
11:01
And so in first year of Ted AII was a panelist, second year as a
11:04
panelist and then third year is offered this slot to bring home
11:08
the conference, which was very tech heavy.
11:12
But they wanted me to close on the theme was San Francisco is
11:16
the epicenter of AI because and they wanted me to fill in the
11:20
gap with a nod towards its community.
11:23
So it was it was a three-step message that I gave.
11:28
So community was key. And I showed data from Cerebral
11:31
Valley that there's been over 4700 in person events and it's
11:36
only climbing up. That was.
11:37
Stunning. Stunning, yeah.
11:38
So this month, right now we're in fall 2025, there's 300 events
11:45
in person event. So it's 10 per day that we know
11:47
of and there's many more that we just don't know of.
11:50
So the community is incredibly, I've never seen this.
11:54
I've been here as I was here at dot com and web two, never seen
11:57
this. And then the second part of my
11:59
message was the community's great and all, but it's resulted
12:02
in some new cultures. Communities form culture.
12:05
Strong communities have cultures.
12:07
Like I've seen your culture bizarre voice.
12:09
You built a beautiful culture. Thank you.
12:11
We did. We did see.
12:13
That's the right answer. See, That's the right answer.
12:15
Yeah, you did. I remember.
12:16
You toured me through your office.
12:17
I remember that event. And you showed me how you would
12:19
celebrate wins. We had this giant gong.
12:21
And you were one of the first companies to do that, I think.
12:23
Right. Yeah.
12:24
So you built a culture? That was my Co founder Brent
12:27
Barton to give credit or credits to he he had this great idea
12:32
where he bought it actually from Wuhan and it's a huge.
12:37
Massive. Huge Gong.
12:39
And you know, we would stop everything when we got a client
12:42
when including being on meetings with customers and literally
12:46
people would be like, hey, you know, I really apologize.
12:48
I need to step out. Like we just had, you know, the
12:51
summoning and they would go and it would just take like 5
12:56
minutes and then boom, be back. And more often than not,
13:00
customers would ask us. They would say like, Oh my gosh,
13:03
like I wish we had that kind of culture.
13:06
And then we eventually sent mini gongs to customers.
13:09
Nice to to allow them to gong like big milestones like when
13:14
they went live, when they, you know, graduated to a certain
13:19
adoption threshold, like for their customers, writing
13:21
reviews, like all types of things.
13:23
It's really fun. I mean, even your product, a
13:25
bizarre voice was community on the website, right?
13:28
You brought you brought human connection and reviews of
13:32
customers on a corporate website that used to be run just by
13:35
marketing. That's right.
13:36
Right. So community is threaded
13:38
throughout what you have done and then I've observed you.
13:41
So. Yeah.
13:42
All right. So community creates cultures,
13:44
right. That's kind of like the second
13:46
point. I I was talking about at Ted AI.
13:49
And there's in particular the, the cultures that have emerged
13:52
here in San Francisco is there's an AI first culture, which is
13:56
being adopted by the giant tech companies that are not AI
14:00
leaders. So Marc Benioff talks about AI
14:02
first. Aaron Levy from Box talks a lot
14:06
about AI 1st. And, and some of them are, and
14:09
some of these companies are doing layoffs to trim down their
14:11
company and they're adopting Gen.
14:13
AI because they have to catch up or they will perish.
14:16
Then there's the second, the highest order is called the AI
14:19
natives. And there's thousands of
14:21
startups here in San Francisco that were born in the last few
14:24
years. And it's innate into who they
14:26
are to, to be an AI native. Now, both of these
14:30
organizations, companies, cultures have the same method.
14:33
And that's called the AI first method.
14:35
And then I, I described on stage, it's a three-step
14:38
process. So if you have a a goal or a
14:40
problem, first you see, is there an existing AI off the shelf
14:44
that you can just grab and use? If it doesn't exist, Step 2 is
14:49
then you build it. Now in the past, you would need
14:52
to be technical to do that. But now with AI, if you're not
14:55
technical, you can vibe code it. So that's a pretty significant
14:59
change in the amount of empowerment.
15:01
And then the third step is if you still can't get it done,
15:03
then you hire somebody and you repeat this process over and
15:06
over until your organization is lean and productive.
15:10
And the final slide that I showed was how do you measure
15:15
lean and productive? And I compared, this is my
15:17
industry analysis background. You know, I'm former Forrester
15:21
and then Altimeter Group, so I can track the industry.
15:24
Which you Co founded Altimeter? Right.
15:25
I was the founding partner, Charlene Lee was the founder and
15:28
it's been a wonderful friend. She's.
15:30
She's she's also awesome. She's amazing.
15:33
So I compared the traditional SAS company revenue per employee
15:36
is around 200 KRPE revenue per employee on an annual basis.
15:41
By the way, agencies, marketing agencies around the same.
15:44
So the low margin business when you look at it.
15:47
And then I showed the second bar chart out of three, which is the
15:50
top ten SAS companies, Adobe, Atlassian, Salesforce, Shopify,
15:55
they were around 540K revenue per employee per year.
16:00
And then I showed the final bar chart, which was 23 AI natives
16:06
from San Francisco. That's derived from a
16:08
leaderboard that exists. They're young companies, fewer
16:11
than 50 employees and their revenue per employees 2.2
16:15
million, so 10X. That was the, that was the photo
16:18
I took and I said to you that slide with you presenting it
16:22
because that absolutely blew me away.
16:25
I heard gas in the audience. I heard people.
16:28
There were gasp in the yeah. And well, there's a lot of
16:35
ramifications that will come out of that.
16:38
Like that slide I showed when CEO see that slide, like I
16:41
understand the gravity of like what that means, it's
16:45
significant. But then I brought it back, you
16:48
know, to at the end, my metaphor throughout was the Redwood
16:52
forest, which is a connected ecosystem and it's only found
16:56
here in this region. So, you know, I'm tying that
16:58
together. And those trees only got bold
17:01
because they have rich soil and saplings and animals and the
17:05
coastal breeze, like they are not able to grow anywhere else.
17:08
All right. And, and Speaking of time in
17:10
your opening here, those, those Redwood forests have been here
17:13
for 200,000,000 years. Yeah, it's amazing.
17:16
They're they're Jurassic era. When when we lived here, that
17:18
was one of our favorite things to do walk among them.
17:21
I mean, the oxygen you get a huge, incredible.
17:24
And the microbiomes and then fungus everywhere, it's like,
17:26
yes, it was healing and it's many ways.
17:30
So I painted the picture that the only way that we can build
17:33
systems that can benefit humanity is if we have an
17:37
ecosystem. So everybody in their room and
17:39
beyond plays a key role in that. And so that was how I I brought
17:44
that back to the end. Yeah, I loved it and it and you
17:50
delivered it perfectly. And one of the things you're
17:53
telling me is how much prep went into it.
17:56
Sure, that. Yep, I think I did around 101
18:01
hundred rehearsals in 6 minutes, including dozens of recordings
18:06
and checking. And, and Ted assigns a speaker
18:08
coach and met with her three times and dry rehearsals.
18:12
And I tested in front of my friend who's the speaker coach,
18:14
Laura Fitton. And, and, and I sourced
18:18
information from lots of places. I did primary research to get
18:21
that data and sourced it. And I had to show data.
18:23
They do, they do Ted team does fact checking.
18:26
And so I had to show all my receipts on that.
18:29
I had to get legal approvals from the people I was using the
18:31
data from. Like there's a whole process.
18:34
There's only like 7 slides, but I spent a lot of time to make
18:37
sure it was, it was right and like even my body language and
18:41
like the timing and the slide clicks and the narrative like
18:44
those all very much pre planned and we had to work on that and I
18:49
had to. It was a lot of pressure as the
18:50
closing speaker to do it right. Yeah, yeah.
18:53
And Speaking of data, I mean, I wouldn't be doing my job as
18:57
former CEO ofdata.org if they didn't ask this.
19:00
What, what, what resource. There's the Lean Startup
19:03
website, right, that you recommend.
19:05
What? Yes.
19:05
So Henry, she here in San Francisco put that together.
19:08
He's a serial founder, so it's called the Lean AI Native
19:12
Leaderboard. And I went through the data,
19:15
cleaned it a bit. I felt there was some anomalies
19:17
in the data, and then I segmented it for San Francisco.
19:21
And then the first data source on the number of events that are
19:24
known, that's from the Cerebral Valley website, when they've
19:26
been a leader in the space since Jen AI started to kick off.
19:30
So I also had some other content, but the Ted editorial
19:34
team cut it. Yeah, yeah.
19:36
I'll, I'll put that in the show notes.
19:39
We'll put it so that anybody can check that out.
19:41
It's it's very, it's a very data rich site that people can dive
19:45
into. And I, I want to disclose
19:48
upfront that you know, Deborah and I are proud LP's and what
19:51
you're doing now. You're fun.
19:53
Thank you. Well.
19:54
Thank you We. It's an honor I are.
19:57
You kidding? No, I told.
19:58
So I told the our partners. I said we got to have this guy
20:03
and he's a serial founder and smart and connected.
20:05
So we are. We are glad to have you in this.
20:07
Partnership, I appreciate it. So when Jen AI so I'm ALP in the
20:12
blitz scaling ventures fund one and blitz scaling is based upon
20:16
the book written by Chris Yay, my friend for over 20 years like
20:20
you, and he wrote it co-authored it with Reed Hoffman and they
20:24
taught a Stanford class about why Silicon Valley companies
20:27
scale so fast, lightning fast. And that became a firm and I was
20:31
ALP and fund one. And as you know me, Brett, I
20:35
don't have a shortage of opinions.
20:37
So on the LP call and you should always challenge us to on the LP
20:41
call 2 1/2 years ago, I said, what are you guys going to do
20:43
about Chen AI? Like it's going to pop And they
20:48
didn't have enough resources. So Chris called me a few days
20:50
later and said we'd like you to come in and lead the AI fund.
20:54
It's off cycle. And I was like great because
20:56
this is perfect timing. I wanted to do that and it just
20:58
worked out great. And this is the key thing on
21:01
friendship. So Chris and I work together 20
21:03
years ago. He was the CEO of Ustream and he
21:07
attended my event, my community event where I invited the quote
21:10
a list bloggers in Menlo Park and we assembled and Chris so I
21:13
could do that. So we said join the board of
21:16
Ustream and help me with the go to market.
21:18
I did and we launched the company that's so cool and they
21:21
sold it. I love IBM.
21:23
Synchronicities like that and and trust and karma.
21:26
It really. Yeah, so cool.
21:28
And trust. Yeah.
21:29
So I am AVC investing in early stage AI startups.
21:34
Yeah, yeah. And how many companies are you
21:37
guys investors in at this point? We're filling out some
21:40
paperwork, so about 11 or 12 at this time.
21:43
Early stage seed Series A pre seed.
21:46
Some of them are growing very fast, as many as AI startups
21:51
are. Yeah, yeah.
21:52
And let's, let's, let's talk. Can can we talk about a help of
21:55
them? Like like, it's always hard to
21:58
ask you who the standouts are, but no.
22:00
I can do that. Can you do that?
22:01
Yeah. I would like to ask you just,
22:03
you know what are maybe let's cover 3 of the the standouts in
22:08
your portfolio. Through AI is open source
22:11
enterprise agent software and so large companies, the ones that
22:15
you worked with for decades are using that to complete tasks and
22:19
to automate tasks. But it's not just like RPA,
22:22
you're just repeating like if this then that these are gentic
22:26
software. So it senses the world around it
22:29
makes decisions and then complete things, right.
22:32
And large language models can't really do that yet.
22:35
So crew is growing very. Fast.
22:37
How do you spell their name? CREW.
22:40
OK, just like that and it's just crew dot AI, OK.
22:43
And the reason I wanted to say that is there may be a company
22:47
or two that we mentioned that someone listening to this wants
22:50
to go work for us so. Yeah, and it's open source, so
22:52
developers can use it as well. So there are a community around
22:55
it, and that's why it's growing so fast.
22:56
Mice. So the company was incorporated
22:59
in 2024, and it's already been adopted by 60% of the Fortune
23:04
500. Wow, that's insane.
23:07
Yeah. And here's the other thing.
23:09
Unbelievable. They only have 35 human
23:12
employees, right? But 350 AI agents.
23:17
So each employee has around 10 agents.
23:20
And so Speaking of culture, every week the CEO and Rob the
23:24
CEO, they asked one of the employees to talk about how they
23:27
use agents to make their job more productive, including
23:31
non-technical roles like sales and HR.
23:34
So that's like a, that's an AI native company.
23:36
The cultures are different. Yeah, yeah.
23:39
And we haven't seen this before. Yeah, we haven't seen that
23:41
before. And, and, and, you know, with
23:43
the 35 humans that are there, how do they make sure they're
23:47
bringing out the best in those people?
23:49
Because humans have emotions different than an AI agent.
23:53
You know an AI agent does not, it doesn't does not have an
23:56
emotion at all. Simulate emotions, which I think
23:58
we'll talk about. Right, we will talk about that.
24:00
But but, but I mean, how do how would you describe their culture
24:03
from a human perspective? Well, the CEO is really vibrant
24:08
and visionary and non-stop and incredible energy like wow, he's
24:14
like he's really something. And then the CEO Rob, he sold
24:19
the company to Meta before and he's like very good at OPS.
24:22
So it's like that. It's that perfect pairing.
24:24
You want to see the. Visionary and the operator.
24:27
They were even covered in the Wall Street Journal a couple
24:29
weeks ago around how they're hiring forward deployed
24:32
engineers. So that's a term that we used to
24:35
call those sales engineers. I know.
24:36
Yeah, sales. Engineers, it is such a valuable
24:39
role. Yeah, I think the sales
24:40
engineers may be the most valuable parts of the whole
24:43
sales and marketing. Tell me why.
24:44
Like I want to hear how this is tied to this market.
24:47
Yeah, because you can. You, you first of all have to
24:52
understand the product. It's not optional.
24:55
If you're just selling it versus the sales engineer, then you can
25:00
talk and kind of hyperbole and talk about what it does, but you
25:06
can't go down to the level where the engineer that has to
25:11
implement your product will understand exactly what you're
25:16
talking about or actually vice versa, that you would understand
25:21
the questions that they're asking you.
25:23
And so in my experience, a salesperson that's not armed
25:29
with a sales engineer in the right meeting, meaning that you
25:35
have all the stakeholders there, the business people and the
25:38
technical people to make a decision.
25:40
So this could go really fast and the sales side could be really
25:43
fast because all the right people are in the room, both the
25:45
people that need it for the business metrics and the people
25:49
that are going to implement, maintain it, etcetera.
25:52
The salesperson, if they don't have a sales engineer and there
25:55
is probably going to crash and burn because once the technical
25:59
people start poking at it. And ideally what you do as you
26:05
grow a company is you take the sales engineer types and get
26:10
them to be confident enough in their closing ability to become
26:14
the salespeople. The ideal salesperson in my
26:19
opinion, is someone that was a sales engineer that learned how
26:23
to close. And it's, it's, it's, it's a
26:26
funny thing that like so many sales engineers are like 2.
26:31
I don't know what the right word is.
26:32
They're 2. They're two kind of bashful or
26:36
shy or humble. I don't know what the right word
26:38
is, but too close like closing takes a technique like to ask
26:42
someone for money is in my opinion something you should
26:48
just be able to do if you're really passionate about what
26:50
you're selling because why are you at that company work in the
26:53
1st place if you can't ask someone to pay for it.
26:56
But a lot of sales engineers are very hesitant to go there
27:01
because they're almost like engineers at their core and a
27:07
little bit reluctant to become fully sales people.
27:11
It's just kind of funny psychology and I always have to
27:15
train them. Look, go all in, believe in
27:18
yourself. These aren't hard skills to
27:20
actually learn. You just have to allow yourself
27:25
to conquer your fear. This is again love conquers fear
27:29
to become the person that's able to ask for the order and man
27:34
those people are unstoppable and and a lot of times those people
27:37
and tech companies make the best CE OS long term.
27:41
They actually they they if a lot of a lot of them come from that
27:45
background because you're selling something pretty
27:49
technical. I mean, dated out world, we're
27:51
selling something amazingly technical like took a lot of
27:55
work to sell it because it was all the integrations into all of
28:00
their data stack across, I mean over 90 integrations, you know,
28:04
with everything you can imagine from, you know, Salesforce to
28:08
Oracle to data bricks to snowflake to Tableau to looker
28:13
to Domo and on and on and on. So the sales engineers at Data
28:17
dot world, it was actually just with with one this past weekend
28:22
for the 40th birthday party for Juan Cicada.
28:26
And I told him again, I said, you realize you guys were the
28:30
MVS of the company because there's no way we could have
28:34
ever gotten a deal without you guys because of how technical
28:37
Dataworld was. So anyways, I don't know if
28:41
that's helpful to you. But it's very helpful and I
28:43
always love learning from your experience as a leader.
28:45
But I think the thing now in this AI world is that we have
28:49
these forward deployed engineers, sales engineers,
28:51
whatever, whatever you want to call it, that have human skills
28:54
with the customer and that's actually become pretty
28:58
important. Absolutely, I guess, and always
29:00
is. Developer relations role is
29:02
becoming also really critical in some of these AI startups.
29:07
That's community skills and you would think that we're going to
29:12
automate everything, but while companies are lean, very lean,
29:17
the human relationship is still critical when in enterprise,
29:21
business, sales or frankly even consumer side.
29:24
So that's kind of one of the key takeaways that I'm observing in
29:28
this market. Yeah.
29:29
OK. So we covered crude.
29:30
What are what are two others? Yes, another one would be Monas
29:34
AI. Monas AI is Reed Hoffman's new
29:37
company that he's Co founded with Doctor Sid Mukherjee and
29:41
there and Reed is looking for areas in the world that are been
29:46
not fully invested in and drug discovery is one of them in
29:50
health and medicine. So they founded Monas AI, and I
29:54
don't have the right background to speak on it in a technical
29:57
way, but it's to accelerate drug discovery.
30:00
And they have a number of projects, they're testing that.
30:03
So Can you imagine if pharma companies could get products to
30:08
market one year faster, 2 year years faster, three years, five
30:11
years? How many lives would be
30:14
impacted? Yeah, yeah, I talked about this
30:16
on episode 11 with A Neil. You know what, what's happened
30:22
with Google DeepMind and Alpha Fold to decode how proteins fold
30:28
has opened up a massive opportunity for Taylor Medicine
30:34
to solve disease. And I think that is giving us
30:38
the foresight to be like, we could be looking at the end of
30:42
most disease in the next 10 years because of the
30:45
breakthrough. And I think what happened with
30:47
alpha fold is going to be applied to everything we can
30:50
imagine. There will be a alpha something
30:53
for everything like material science breakthroughs.
30:56
And you know, there's already alpha fold and I mean alpha
30:59
flow. And a lot of people don't
31:01
realize that Google has been using alpha chip to constantly
31:06
recursively design their AI chips to improve them.
31:10
And that's super fascinating in and of itself.
31:14
So, you know, and it's interesting that Dimas Asibus,
31:17
which I I really count as one of the very, very good guys and AI,
31:22
all of the interviews I've seen with him, I don't personally
31:24
know him, but it really seems like he operates from a very
31:27
rooted place of great sincerity and great love for humanity that
31:34
that, you know, he's in charge of everything AI at Google and
31:38
actually is rumored to maybe become the next CEO.
31:42
We'll see. We'll see if that ends up
31:43
happening. That was that was in the news
31:45
recently, which would be pretty, pretty incredible.
31:48
It'd be a big statement because, you know, the AI is the biggest
31:52
opportunity Google has ever seen, but it's also the biggest
31:56
disruptor to the search engine business ever.
32:00
I mean, SEO is like plummeting right now.
32:03
Yeah. So, so that's that's a very,
32:06
very interesting company. Yeah, life changing.
32:09
Life changing really could help us get to abundance.
32:12
Yes, and that's cool. So the funds in that one?
32:14
Yes, and we're grateful that Reed gives us access to those
32:19
those deals and the. I love that Reed's staying in
32:21
the arena. I love that.
32:23
He's doing a lot, multiple other things that he's doing as well,
32:26
products too that we could talk about in the future.
32:29
He's one of my favorite followers on LinkedIn.
32:32
His content is phenomenal. He's great.
32:34
And the read AI, you know, the Digital Twent was really fun
32:38
too. And he does think about the
32:39
humanist side quite a bit on on all of this.
32:42
And where are we going and, you know, thinking about careers and
32:45
where does that go, you know, given he's the, you know,
32:47
creator of Co founder of LinkedIn.
32:49
So, and we get to have dinner with him and, and I just sit
32:55
there quietly at the table and I just take notes.
32:57
Sometimes he says things and I and I hear it and then six
33:00
months later that it literally happened because he's so well
33:05
connected to these tech and AI companies.
33:07
So I just. Sit there and I, I'm, I'm very
33:10
quiet, yeah. Which is unusual.
33:12
Early and with Arthur Patterson, the Co founder of Excel.
33:15
Oh wow, it's say things and pretty he was.
33:18
He was on the board of Core Metrics as well as Peter Finton
33:21
when he used to be at Excel. You know Peter Finton's course
33:24
at Benchmark now? It's been there for a long time,
33:27
but Arthur would speak so succinctly, unlike me.
33:33
And and then it was sometimes they'd take me like a several
33:37
weeks to decode it. I'd be like, Oh my gosh, she's
33:40
totally right. Like one time he just sent me an
33:43
e-mail duringthe.com bust and all it said was pain is
33:48
instructive. Benjamin Franklin.
33:51
And it took me a long time to unpack.
33:52
That what's the insight? The insight is suffering as a
33:55
teacher. It's, it's very, it's a very
33:57
spiritual insight. It's in everything from the Dao
34:02
to Ching to the Bhagavad Gita to all different types of Buddhist
34:08
text. Basically that when you are
34:11
suffering, if you truly understand the nature of that
34:17
suffering versus ignore it or try to pretend it doesn't exist
34:23
or avoid it if you just fully own it.
34:25
There's a great book by Anthony D'mello called Awareness.
34:30
It's phenomenal. He's like the George Carlin of
34:32
spiritual teacher. So he's literally laughing out
34:34
loud and you're laughing out loud listening to it, but it's
34:37
super profound. Even on painful topics.
34:39
Even on painful topics and people can spend their entire
34:43
life in a narrative and a suffering narrative.
34:46
Like let's say that you were picked on as a child.
34:48
I was picked on a lot as a child.
34:50
Really, really pretty vehemently like because I've been
34:53
programming since I was seven years old growing up in Texas
34:57
and a lot of people just thought that was super weird at the
34:59
time. But it was very fortunate to be
35:03
in Austin because Austin already had some of those roots because
35:07
of beauty buying the crazy for computers and researchers moving
35:11
there and eventually starting company.
35:12
So my mom was able to drop me off at programming user group
35:16
meetings at age 10. Getting back to and and you
35:20
know, those actually existed in Austin, that was really unusual.
35:23
There weren't many cities. I mean, San Francisco, Seattle,
35:27
Boston, they're very few that would actually have that at that
35:30
point in time, you know, back back in when I was 10.
35:35
But basically, you know, what Anthony Mello teaches is that if
35:39
you completely, totally understand the root of suffering
35:45
on anything like being wronged as a child, whatever it is, then
35:49
you then you let it go. But you have to completely
35:52
understand it because once you completely understand it, you
35:55
can realize that you actually, it's like a program that you're
36:00
running a program over and over in your head.
36:03
And this happens to some people, like when they have something
36:06
horrific happen, like they get a divorce.
36:08
They could run that program in their head for the rest of their
36:11
life and never trust as a result of that program.
36:16
They could literally be 80 years old and just running that same
36:18
program because they haven't completely embraced the nature
36:23
of the suffering and released and released is a very powerful
36:27
thing. It's very wiseiwasin.com And
36:33
there was pain was an instructor and but I observed people around
36:36
me who messed up and I learned a lot about business models and I
36:40
learned about people who exercise stock but didn't
36:42
correctly cash out. And like I saw things and it was
36:46
translated into understanding business models later.
36:49
So I watched that pain, which is financial, not as deep as
36:52
divorce or childhood drama, but like, yes you have.
36:58
Lives are ruined, yeah, and, and lives are ruined and, and, and
37:02
when you well. At least temporarily.
37:04
Temporarily, yeah, definitely caveat it with that.
37:08
I mean, you know, it, it, it when you, when you start a
37:11
company as you know, you, you you're now really a part of the
37:14
split scaling fund as AGP. So you really own it, you know,
37:19
and you own this AI fund when things don't go well, it's hard
37:26
not to take it personally because you were kind of there
37:29
at its birth and therefore you're almost like a parent.
37:33
You know you're you're breathing the soul into this new.
37:37
Yes, and I also feel responsible because my friends are backing
37:41
me financially. Yeah, I feel very responsible.
37:44
Yeah, yeah. And that's good.
37:46
But. But I will also say that people
37:48
know what they're getting into and so it's good to feel that
37:52
way, but everything in balance. You know well, venture capital
37:57
is not considered a guaranteed return by any means.
38:00
It's. Definitely not.
38:01
I mean, whenever Deborah and I, Deborah and I are investors and
38:04
almost 50 VC funds. How many?
38:07
50 A lot. Wow.
38:09
Yeah, we're we're individual investors and 149 startups now.
38:14
But we've been doing that a long time.
38:15
This isn't for 15 years. And twelve of those have become
38:18
unicorns that we see backed. It's pretty incredible.
38:21
Yeah, well, I'm not surprised, you know, but I cannot tell you
38:26
that I could have predicted the ones that would have become.
38:30
I definitely couldn't have predicted.
38:32
I thought that everyone we invested in was one that could
38:37
in some universe. Or you saw a glimmer of
38:42
something in a founder. For sure, yeah.
38:44
Like I saw that in a couple of founders and like, it's like
38:47
this guy's relentless. This guy's relentless.
38:49
Yeah, I mean, Speaking of Ted, right, one of the best Ted talks
38:51
I've ever seen is Bill Gross, who he was responsible for
38:57
backing hundreds of companies with Idealab.
39:00
And he talks about what are the what are the, what's the real
39:04
data as he crunched it on whether or not the companies
39:08
became successful. And he stacked rank the factors
39:12
of success like tying, you know, all the factors to the outcome.
39:17
And the number one factor actually wasn't team.
39:20
The number one factor was timing of the business.
39:24
So there, there has been some studies that show that the VCs
39:27
are successful by the vintage year they deploy.
39:30
And it's not like, do you have deal flow?
39:32
Like are you amazing? Do you have MBA from Harvard?
39:35
Like it's just, oh, you were at the right time, right place and
39:38
you had capital and access. So I've heard that before.
39:43
Yeah, well, so let's let's cover what's the third company?
39:45
Yeah, third company. Let's talk about the emerging
39:47
markets, let's talk about India. So Learntube.
39:50
Learntube helps professionals upscale and they use generative
39:54
AI. So let's say you want to learn
39:56
marketing or you want to learn data analysis, right, or some
39:59
other skill that can be used. And especially now people have
40:02
to upscale really fast. The world's changing.
40:05
So you, it creates A personalized curriculum for
40:07
those professionals and it, it gets also content that exists
40:12
from YouTube and Google is their partner.
40:15
And then it creates A personalized quizzes and tests
40:17
which results in certifications. That are recognized by employers
40:22
and so it's a full cycle from learning to certification very
40:25
fast without having to go to higher Ed.
40:28
And so that's like kind of like the future of learning, right.
40:31
Can AI be your teacher tutor not doing the work for you, but
40:35
showing and you can demonstrate you understand or have some
40:37
mastery of those skills and can it funnel you into a position
40:42
rapidly? And I think that's where things
40:44
are going. As you know in the news, we see
40:46
that Gen. Z is graduating with 40 to 50 to
40:50
$60,000 of debt in US and they're they were promised jobs,
40:54
quote promised jobs if you learn programming, but they're not
40:57
getting jobs because the first thing we heard this at 10 AI
41:00
from the CEO of writer. She said that the first two
41:04
rungs of the ladder were knocked off of the job ladder, which I
41:09
think is probably correct in in many cases today.
41:12
So we need to come up with new ways to help people to
41:15
continually learn. Wow, that's, that's so cool.
41:18
I mean, that's, I was literally just having this conversation 2
41:22
days ago in terms of those, those, those wrongs being
41:25
knocked off, you know, really instigated by Ted AI in terms of
41:29
what is going to replace that. And so this could be the
41:33
solution. It could be, however, crew, AI
41:38
and autonomous agents and people who are in the same space as
41:41
crew, they're able to do the skills of a junior worker.
41:46
And that's coming fast. I mean, it's here, yeah.
41:48
Yeah. So.
41:50
Yeah, it's really interesting. So I mean, this, this moment,
41:54
you know, you, you definitely, I realized it too.
41:58
I mean, literally, I realized it at the end of 2022.
42:01
You know, just to mark this moment in time, ChatGPT launched
42:06
on November 30th, 2022. Fast forward to March 2023.
42:12
There was the AI moratorium. I remember that.
42:16
I thought it was ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
42:18
I went on many podcasts explaining why I thought it was
42:21
ridiculous. I mean, the one one way I
42:23
described it is the arc of human history has always been
42:28
technology to create easier lives, climb the Maslar
42:33
hierarchy. You know, it started with the
42:35
discovery of fire and we could cook food and ultimately we got
42:39
to bigger brains and more IQ and we could warm our home exactly
42:42
that. But it can always also be used
42:45
for bad. We also could set people on fire
42:47
and etcetera. Exactly, and that also happened.
42:50
And then accelerating from fire to splitting atom is the
42:53
metaphor. And now to AI.
42:54
Exactly. But each of those examples of
42:56
good to bad, those to me are the the way that the humans have
43:01
decided to use each of those those tools and technologies.
43:05
It is always the case. It is always up to us.
43:08
And that that actually is the whole thesis for why I'm doing
43:12
what I'm doing now. It's, it's, it's not just the
43:15
podcast. I mean, the podcast is Part 1 of
43:17
a four part play. It's and you know, I announced
43:20
that before I even started the podcast, what the four parts
43:23
are. But the this is the next decade
43:26
of my life, you know, because I what what happens over the next
43:30
10 years, I think are the most important ten years in human
43:34
history because, you know, we've always been the way exponentials
43:38
were, of course, is they they go up really, really slowly at 1st
43:43
and now we're in this. Now we're in vertical.
43:45
Now it's near vertical, right? And I'm seeing it first hand
43:49
here. So when I started tracking this
43:51
industry in 2023, there was around 3000 AI startups, Brett.
43:56
Now there's 41,000. Wow.
43:58
And there's a database called there's an aiforthat.com of
44:02
course. And I talked to the founder and
44:05
he said he can't even tell which one of these AI programs are
44:09
being created by. AI.
44:12
We're at that level now, right, because you can generate a
44:14
website and copy and UX and it can code now and now you can do
44:19
e-commerce with them, right? Like you can just roll these
44:21
things up very fast. We're, we're at that level and
44:27
almost all the AI charts that I see are starting to approach 45°
44:31
and sharper now. And you saw those things that I
44:35
showed on stage, right? Or 10X in some cases, like where
44:38
the things you're right, the timing on these this 10 years is
44:42
is really significant in human history.
44:45
You know, I talked about in the opener, The Order of Time by
44:48
Carlo Ravelli. Amazing, amazing book.
44:51
So one of the ways, one of the themes in that book is that time
44:55
is ultimately a measurement of interaction between things.
45:01
And one of the ways I look at the time period we're in is that
45:06
to me, a week of tech progress right now feels like a year, 10
45:10
years ago. Do you agree with that or is
45:12
that too too, I don't know, too accelerated?
45:16
I'm not sure it's hard because I'm like in it.
45:19
You are in it like like, but you were also in it 10 years ago.
45:23
I was, yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of used to like,
45:28
like how fast it's moving. I I, I guess, I guess, yes, I
45:32
guess maybe a month equals a, a year in my perspective, which is
45:38
still incredible. Like even at the hackathon.
45:40
So there's been 300 hackathons in the SFA area in the last
45:44
three years and each hackathon has 100 to 200 builders, which
45:49
by the way, that in itself is incredible.
45:51
And I remember the hackathons, I've judged 15 hackathons, which
45:55
some people say is one of the highest in the industry.
45:58
So I've seen this. And, and so three years ago, two
46:02
years, sorry, 2 1/2 years ago, they were just doing GPT
46:06
wrappers. And now at the hackathons,
46:09
they're using AI agents to control robots like it went
46:14
from. So just if you're looking at me,
46:17
you can see like. So at first it was just pulling
46:19
out, you know, parts of your neurons to your brain and
46:23
connecting to that. And now just in 2 1/2 years,
46:26
they're controlling these and the embodiment of the physical
46:28
space with air eye, right. And so that is, it's hard to
46:34
fathom. Yeah, it is profound, right, to
46:36
think like that. It would happen that fast.
46:38
And and then as we were walking here into the studio, I sent you
46:43
that photo. They're just right here out
46:45
front. There was a Zoox, which is a
46:48
autonomous van, and it was waiting for a woman pushing a
46:54
stroller. And I sent you that photo, Brett
46:56
and I said, wow, that is a moment we're about to go talk
46:58
about this. A woman is crossing the street
47:02
to metaphor pushing the the child and there's an autonomous
47:05
thing just waiting for her to go by.
47:07
Like that is the moment like we are at at this point.
47:11
And it's just amazing because, you know, I grew up with a black
47:13
and white TV with a, with a, with a rabbit antenna, right?
47:17
And now this is just it. It's happened really fast.
47:19
Yeah, and you know, it's you. You have been pretty
47:26
clairvoyant, in my opinion, about the future.
47:30
I can, I can at least say that I know that you're not going to
47:32
necessarily agree with that because of your humility, but,
47:35
but can I just ask you to play futurist for a second?
47:38
And what, what does 10 years from now feel like?
47:40
That's really hard. Because that's a long.
47:42
Time really hard. Exponential curve, you know.
47:45
So our advisor is Reid Hoffman. He's on the board of Microsoft,
47:50
one of the first investors in Open AI, first investor
47:52
Facebook, Airbnb, early investor in PayPal Mafia and created
47:56
LinkedIn. He's amazing.
47:58
So his ability to forecast and put money down is truly
48:02
clairvoyant. And he told us at dinner, and
48:04
I'll never forget this, Brett, I'll never, ever forget this.
48:08
He told us the partners, he can only see two years.
48:12
There's no way I can see Ted. Right, right.
48:16
Yeah. There's no way.
48:17
Yeah. I mean, I, well, I'll tell you
48:18
some of the things I'm watching at least the quantum computing
48:25
milestone to look for is something called Q day or
48:29
quantum supremacy. And that's projected by all the
48:34
giants in quantum computing, whether it's Google or IBMAWAWS
48:41
is in the game, etcetera, to happen in 2029 or 23.
48:46
Q day is the point where quantum gets stable enough, where all
48:52
cryptography and then is broken. And it's going to be this funny
48:57
thing. I was talking last night with a
48:59
Bongsa who I'm staying at his home.
49:02
He was actually my very first board member at Core Metrics
49:07
back when I was 26. Wow.
49:08
That's amazing. Incredibly important mentor and
49:12
one of my best friends. And it's been so much fun to
49:15
interact with him and his family and his daughters came in town,
49:18
not because of me, they're already coming in town, but but
49:21
just, you know, to really spend time with them.
49:23
And he's, he's an immigrant success story.
49:25
You know, his parents moved from China, he was born here and he's
49:30
become very successful. He was the he was the founder
49:35
and CEO by direct.com duringthe.com days, but he
49:39
really helped me a ton. And I was talking to Bong about
49:43
it and I was like, you realize that Q day is going to be like
49:46
the Y2K problem all over again where everybody's going to then
49:49
scramble to retrofit all their security and to quantum quick
49:54
cryptography to basically be immune to it.
49:58
So it's kind of inevitable that that'll happen.
50:00
That'll, that'll be a huge opportunity for cybersecurity
50:03
all over the world and all the consulting firms and everybody
50:06
or who knows if it's consulting firms or AI agents at that
50:09
point. Accenture Action is really,
50:12
really down marketplace. Yeah.
50:14
We can comment on that in a SEC, but yes.
50:15
Yeah, well, actually let's go there in a second then and then
50:19
some pain, paying a lot of attention to that.
50:21
I'm paying a lot of attention to brain computer interface
50:24
development. And that one is 1 where I
50:29
really, I, I struggle with it a lot because the gateway drug for
50:35
brain computer interfaces, of course, has been quadriplegics.
50:39
And the first ever Neuralink installation is in a
50:42
quadriplegic and, and it's amazing.
50:44
Like he's got a new lease on life.
50:47
It's, it's a beautiful thing, right?
50:48
It's really is an act of love to give someone a brand new neat
50:52
lease on life. And I love, you know, the fact
50:56
that health can get and then, you know, Elon Musk was talking
50:59
about that blindness is going to be cured by it.
51:01
I agree with that because these are just input mechanisms and
51:04
it's all data coming in that then it gets interpreted by our
51:08
brain to ultimately produce, you know, you sitting in front of me
51:13
and all the things that we're looking at here.
51:16
But that's going to be an interesting one where I kind of
51:19
struggle with like how far we going to go with that and what
51:23
is it? What is it ultimately mean that
51:25
we can we could unpack that later.
51:28
And then physical AI. And then, and then of course,
51:31
the, the number one thing is, is, you know, we're, we're
51:34
already approaching A cognitive supply that we can't even
51:38
imagine through AI agents. And then eventually it gets
51:41
physically embodied in robots, correct.
51:44
We're actually investors via Fond in Aptronic in Austin,
51:49
which is great. The Apollo robot.
51:51
I'm good friends with Jeff. He's actually going to be on the
51:53
podcast. He's CEO there and he's a
51:57
beautiful human being and is really approaching this with
52:01
great intentionality. But you know, like all things
52:05
here we are in this race of like who's going to be the first two
52:08
to get robots in the world. And you know, the US is a is a
52:12
good contender for that. But is interesting at Ted AI
52:16
that Kai Fu Lee was saying that China's way ahead on that.
52:18
I don't I don't really know what to believe on that.
52:21
One thing he said is they aren't.
52:23
The robotics companies here in the US aren't getting backed as
52:26
much as they are in China. Also, higher manufacturing is
52:30
often going to be in Asia for this.
52:33
That's true, but I actually have not seen that.
52:36
I I've seen that the robotics companies here in the US are
52:39
raising a tremendous amount of money.
52:41
This is true might, but I mean there's so as a Silicon Valley
52:46
VC we are thinking about like that in the stack, but the
52:49
software is currently dominated by the US, but dependent on
52:55
Asia, China and specifically for the hardware and chips in
52:58
Taiwan. So there's this codependency and
53:01
relationship that needs to continue in in order for this to
53:05
help all of humanity, and that's a tenuous topic.
53:09
Yeah. And so, so we're going to have
53:12
a, an explosion and physical labor pretty quickly to go with
53:16
the cognitive labor revolution through the embodiment and
53:20
robots. So, so so those are the, those
53:22
are the four things I'm looking at.
53:24
Just to recap, that's of course AI we're talking about primarily
53:27
right now, robotics, quantum computing, which will show
53:32
everything and then brain computer interface.
53:33
And then we also discuss longevity could increase, right?
53:37
And then the topic of all of this, which will bubble up will
53:40
be resource reallocation, Yes, yeah.
53:43
And that is a topic that will need to be addressed at the
53:45
highest levels, yes. And I actually think like Pablos
53:49
has it right in his book. Pablos Holman wrote this book
53:53
called Deep future. He's going to be on the podcast
53:55
soon. And I love him.
53:57
He's he's he's, he is for sure a futurist.
54:01
I mean, he worked for Nathan Mirabold and Intellectual
54:04
Ventures. And now he's a venture
54:05
capitalist as well with his, with his fund deep future.
54:11
And, you know, he said, look, the energy in his book should be
54:16
the very, very base of the Maslow hierarchy because
54:20
everything starts with energy. Everything you know flows from
54:24
energy. And that was a theme that said
54:25
AI as well. Yeah.
54:27
So let's unpack that. I mean, we we talked about a lot
54:30
there. Maybe we start with Accenture
54:32
because you said you. Had a yeah.
54:33
So I did a post. I analyzed all these services
54:35
companies in the enterprise space.
54:37
So Forrester, Gartner, Wipro, Accenture and there's some other
54:42
BPO companies, they're all down 30 to 50%.
54:47
It's significant and it's because of AI and they were not
54:52
able to, I mean, there's some ironing this because many of
54:55
them were selling digital transformation, telling
54:57
executives don't get disrupted by AI.
54:59
And now Wall Street has been rather non favorable to them and
55:04
I'm not sure if they can recover and it's, it's quite
55:07
significant. So that's another impact.
55:10
Before I started my career, did you know that where I I worked
55:14
for Accenture full time in my junior and senior year at UT
55:18
because they helped a guy out setting up his bulletin board
55:21
system when I was a kid. And you remembered and so is
55:23
karma is like your, your, your Chris Yay moment.
55:28
And he called me and asked if I want a job, if I'd kept on my
55:32
programming skills. I was like, this is all I do.
55:34
And so it gave me that job since I worked full time my junior and
55:38
senior year. And then I worked for Deloitte
55:39
Consulting for 2 1/2 years. That was actually what got me my
55:44
ticket into my exposure to NB as I had to get on my own merits.
55:51
But I got into the warden school.
55:53
I was the first in my family to ever go get an MBA.
55:57
I didn't even know what an MBA was.
56:00
And it was because of that exposure through Deloitte.
56:02
So I actually started my career out before I became an
56:05
entrepreneur. Once I once I got an award in, I
56:07
wrote all my essays about being an entrepreneur and I never
56:09
looked back. So I've been an entrepreneur
56:10
since I was 24. Right.
56:12
But that Deloitte, that was formative.
56:13
It was very formative. Because that's how you're able
56:15
to serve like we just talked about or deployed engineers.
56:18
You understood that? That's right.
56:20
That's right. Yeah.
56:21
So, so I mean, that's, that's an interesting thought that it
56:24
seems like they would just go all in on on AI.
56:30
They may need to create software and have embedded software that
56:34
has recurring SAS software. So let's back up.
56:37
So we're seeing this transformation now.
56:39
There were VC firms, the larger ones are looking like PE firms,
56:43
right? And they're, and that's
56:44
changing. So management consulting firms
56:46
and system integrators might need to become software
56:48
companies themselves, right? Because what we see right now is
56:51
the software companies are becoming services companies.
56:54
Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I, I, you know, I think
56:59
a lot about this next 10 years and, and the hardest part of the
57:04
book I'm writing. The book is also called Love
57:08
Conquers Fear and the subtitles Humanity, AI and Nature
57:11
Abundance. It's great.
57:13
Thank you. And Part 3 of the book is, is
57:17
the most challenging. So the book's halfway written
57:20
now. And Part 3 is all about
57:23
transformation. And so it's about how will
57:25
humanity ultimately transform into this age of abundance for
57:30
all? And you know, one of the things
57:34
that I believe is that the margin expansion opportunity for
57:40
the S&P 500 over the next five years is the best in history.
57:45
But the most intelligent among the S&P 500 will not just look
57:51
at this period as a let's let a bunch of people go and use it
57:56
for cost cutting. They'll use it for redeployment
58:00
of new markets that they've always wanted to go into but
58:04
they didn't have the resources for and new products that
58:07
they've always wanted to build that they didn't have the
58:09
resource for. Because every, you know,
58:11
running, running companies as an entrepreneur, I can tell you
58:13
that everybody I've ever met, no matter how much money they have
58:19
in a company is resource constrained.
58:21
Everybody, they are constantly making trade-offs.
58:24
You know, you can think of many more product ideas, many more
58:27
markets to go after than you have the money, more time to go
58:32
after. And what's happening with AI is
58:34
that time's getting compressed and money's getting compressed
58:39
at the same time. And so that creates opportunity
58:43
for the people that think that way.
58:44
But yeah, there's definitely going to be PE people just like
58:47
fire as many people as possible, increase margins.
58:52
We saw that with the Klart as CEO.
58:54
So yes, so. Think about that, yeah.
58:56
I think we can have a multiplier effect.
59:00
And that was my scary message at Ted AI.
59:03
And at a minimum, minimum, every organization should 3X because
59:09
your workers theoretically work 8 hours a day.
59:12
Some probably work more, but now they can work, quote, 24 hours a
59:15
day because the agent can step in when the human is away.
59:19
And our technical advisor, Parth, he has seven agents
59:22
running at all time in parallel. So he's 7X in himself in that
59:26
way. He's also Reid Hoffman's
59:28
technical advisor. You'll get to meet him soon.
59:30
But I'm one of our. So he's experimenting at the
59:33
edges and he has, well, he has ability to use as many resources
59:38
as he wants because he's tied to, you know, the, the people
59:41
who are leading this stuff. And so he's pushing it, that
59:44
maximum productivity of one person.
59:46
It's kind of amazing to see. And, and then he informs Reid
59:49
like what's going on here? And he's and he's he's advising
59:53
the road maps to the anthropic and open AI.
59:56
So he he's incredible and he's non-technical.
1:00:00
He doesn't have a technical background.
1:00:02
So he's just adopting these tools.
1:00:03
So if if he's 7 Xing himself, that it means every other boy
1:00:06
can do a 3X. So I think that's the
1:00:08
opportunity. Yeah, I I agree with you.
1:00:11
So the the productivity and efficiency is just one metric,
1:00:15
But looking for innovation is something that really the AI
1:00:20
space hasn't fully uncovered yet.
1:00:22
Like to your point a new market, but it's.
1:00:25
It also means that we can create personalized products for each
1:00:29
person, personalized experiences for each customer.
1:00:33
That is something that really hasn't been done at scale and
1:00:38
that can unfold down. We'll also see a premium.
1:00:42
This is my theory that we'll see a premium on humanity.
1:00:46
So the account managers, the, the top tier customer care,
1:00:50
they're 4 deployed engineers. The time of executives or
1:00:53
bringing people together and experiences become more
1:00:55
valuable, which I see and I do and I lead here in San
1:00:58
Francisco. So that actually becomes more
1:01:01
important, right? So I I don't think everything
1:01:04
just becomes about raw cost efficiency.
1:01:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.
1:01:08
I mean, I, I agree with you and, and you know, what would you say
1:01:12
to people listening to this or watching this in terms of what
1:01:16
should they be doing today to level themselves up?
1:01:20
Well, experimenting with these non no no code tools right?
1:01:25
Replit cursor if you're in enterprise space using Crew
1:01:29
Studio, We also backed something called Composio, which is
1:01:35
connects all your agents to your apps and there's no code feature
1:01:38
called Rube. So everybody should be trying
1:01:40
those tools and you should maximize LLMS.
1:01:43
You should have, you should have a subscription to both GPT and a
1:01:46
Clot. So that's 20 dollars, $20.
1:01:49
It's definitely money well spent, money very well spent.
1:01:53
And so just to become smarter on any topics at all times.
1:01:57
And so the AI first mentality is when you don't know something,
1:02:00
then you quickly get that answer.
1:02:02
Like you brought up a book today on our prep call and I got the
1:02:05
answer before we step into this space.
1:02:09
Like it was very easy for me to get that answers so I have more
1:02:12
context. That was on the last question,
1:02:14
yeah, by Isaac Lesmoth. Yeah.
1:02:17
And that was a profound story. So yeah, So those are the key
1:02:20
things. And I listened to podcasts, so I
1:02:23
listened to the Abundance podcast, you know, Peter
1:02:26
Diamantes. Very good podcast.
1:02:27
Yeah, I really like that. Well, I feel a lot of similar
1:02:30
tones with you. Yeah, a lot of similar tones.
1:02:32
And so I listened to that one on a frequent basis.
1:02:34
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do too. Yeah.
1:02:36
That's a, that's a, that's a great shout out.
1:02:37
And you know, his book Abundance, which was written in,
1:02:42
I think it was written in 2011. I wrote the longest book review
1:02:46
of my life in 2012 at the beginning in January on the book
1:02:51
Abundance because I want to look back years later and say how did
1:02:56
it play out? And basically it's playing out.
1:02:59
It is. It is playing out.
1:03:01
Yeah. So, you know, in in terms of the
1:03:05
the other advice I would give people, I have, I mean, one of
1:03:08
the things that was so much fun is after episode 10 with Morgan
1:03:13
Linton, where we're really diving into AI powered
1:03:15
engineering. He and I spent hours together
1:03:19
jamming on cursor warp, you know, which is AI power terminal
1:03:23
as well as called code. And given my programming
1:03:27
background is it was really easy for me to get re leveled up and
1:03:30
and it was so cool like to actually see, you know, all
1:03:33
these agents work and be very hands on.
1:03:36
And we were using all that at dated out world, but I wasn't
1:03:40
running engineering, you know, as the CEO was primarily
1:03:44
selling, servicing, raising money, you know, doing those
1:03:48
types of things. And so so it's a little bit
1:03:51
rusty in terms of me being directly hands on.
1:03:55
But the other thing is that we covered, we covered in that
1:03:59
episode is that, you know, use these for a hobby.
1:04:04
Like like there's got to be something that that you care
1:04:08
about. It could be collecting comic
1:04:09
books, could be anything gardening use use these tools
1:04:14
like go on ChatGPT or Claude or any one of these tools should
1:04:18
mine and use it for that hobby. And Oh my gosh, you will have
1:04:24
boundless insight into let's say it's gardening.
1:04:28
I could, I could go to ChatGPT today and I could say I want a
1:04:33
five week course with complete with all the YouTube videos to
1:04:39
really level me up from gardening.
1:04:41
Here's the knowledge that I have today.
1:04:43
Here's the type of plants that I have today, here's where I live,
1:04:47
etcetera. And.
1:04:50
And you take photos also of what you have and you can have live
1:04:53
video capability and it's guiding you exactly on how to
1:04:56
correctly do it. And and you know, checking the
1:04:58
water levels like it's, it's gets very specific now.
1:05:01
Yeah. Oh, it's it's.
1:05:02
It's like you have an expert on your shoulder now.
1:05:05
It's, it's unbelievable. It's it's quite mind blowing.
1:05:08
Yeah, travel companion. It's incredible.
1:05:11
Like, you know, we're in Japan. You can take the a photo of the
1:05:16
most esoteric Zen Buddhist art or Shinto Shinto art in Japan.
1:05:23
You know, those are their two religions, Buddhism and and
1:05:25
Shinto, the roots of the Japanese culture.
1:05:29
And it'll give you an incredible distillation.
1:05:33
You know it, it really is. It forces you to think very
1:05:36
differently because it's the first time in human history
1:05:39
where you can talk with all of our content, which is different
1:05:44
than search. You know the episode I had with
1:05:46
Byron Reese? He's talking about how Google
1:05:49
would brag on the 31 million results that it would give you
1:05:52
in a nanosecond. That feels antiquated.
1:05:54
It's very antiquated, right? So it, you know, getting back to
1:05:58
this is an existential moment for for Google in terms of going
1:06:02
all in and we'll see what happens with demosis of this.
1:06:06
So how do you, how do you think about this from the standpoint
1:06:11
of, you know, I know that you are very much a humanist, you
1:06:16
know, and, and, and care a lot and have children.
1:06:19
Like how do you think about this for humanity?
1:06:22
Like are you mostly really positive in terms of where we're
1:06:26
going? That's great.
1:06:27
Yes, I'm definitely positive on it.
1:06:30
I think this can benefit humanity.
1:06:31
We're going to have some significant uncertainties and
1:06:35
that will cause stress and there will be chaos and likely
1:06:39
disagreements and conflict. For example, I'm not clear on
1:06:43
which career path to send my children or to help them see.
1:06:47
I mean, they're going to choose their own path.
1:06:48
Let's be really clear. But I need to help show them the
1:06:52
avenues, right? And say these avenues might be
1:06:55
closed off now, despite what you're with the textbook say.
1:06:59
And it's not clear, I think right now and my answer is
1:07:03
changing every year. So you asked me to think about
1:07:05
the future. So I think about how do I guide
1:07:07
my children? That's literally like the best
1:07:09
answer. And, and given my, my perch, I
1:07:13
think the only thing I can help them to be now is to have these
1:07:17
skills is to be a founder or an entrepreneur, which means to
1:07:21
find a problem, solve it, add value and benefit and to be a
1:07:28
great community leader and communicator, which are innate
1:07:34
skills for me. So I think I can pass them those
1:07:36
skills. And those are leadership skills.
1:07:39
Those are bringing people together.
1:07:41
And I mentioned earlier premium on humanity, those are key
1:07:44
skills. And then finding a problem.
1:07:47
Being an entrepreneur like that is a flexible framework.
1:07:50
Right. Right.
1:07:51
Should be flexible. And so I think at this time,
1:07:54
that's all I can see, right? And how?
1:07:56
How old are they today? Preteen and then very young.
1:08:00
OK, I have. Three children.
1:08:02
I have, I have two children, so they're 16 and 21.
1:08:05
And the advice I'm giving them is study whatever the heck you
1:08:09
want. And the reason why is that I
1:08:13
have great confidence that as long as they're truly, truly
1:08:17
passionate, it'll work out. Like if you're if you're trying
1:08:20
to study something that you really hate, you're just not
1:08:24
interested in hate is the wrong word.
1:08:26
You're just like, it's not pulling you.
1:08:27
Yeah. Then it's really probably not
1:08:30
right for you. Nobody had to push me into
1:08:32
computers. The Kiki guy principle, right?
1:08:34
The Japanese one on finding your your purpose in life that that
1:08:37
applies. Like are you good at it?
1:08:39
Does the world need it? Are you passionate about it?
1:08:42
And does somebody want to pay you for it?
1:08:43
I think those are the four overlapping vans, I think,
1:08:46
right. So that still applies.
1:08:47
But the last one is will people pay you?
1:08:49
Does the world need it? So I mean the the question is
1:08:53
whether or not we'll have resource reallocation, right?
1:08:55
That's the question. That's the big concern people
1:08:58
have around AII. Mean one of the things that that
1:09:02
I, I talked to friends about this as well.
1:09:05
I'll talk talk with you about this is, is and you are a very,
1:09:10
a very long time friend. You know, we've known each other
1:09:12
for 20 years. So, so as we, we kind of like
1:09:14
approach the frontier of abundance, I think we're going
1:09:18
to be able to see it. I literally think we're going to
1:09:21
be be able to see the end of disease dearly, unlimited
1:09:25
energy, food abundance, water abundance.
1:09:28
I mean, once we solve energy, you know, with the sun, 18
1:09:33
seconds of the sun's rays, if we just had the material science
1:09:37
breakthrough would power the world's energy needs for well,
1:09:40
every year, just 18 seconds. It's amazing.
1:09:42
That's amazing. Yeah, there's a there's a great
1:09:44
book called Here Comes the Sun. I haven't started reading it
1:09:48
yet, but it's been highly recommended to me.
1:09:51
I know it's going to be amazing and it has a lot of these types
1:09:55
of statistics in it. But if you look at solar energy
1:09:59
starts and the cost, you know, and the capacity, it's just it's
1:10:03
a skyrocketing. I mean, the cost is absolutely
1:10:05
plummeting and skyrocketing. And we're still at the early
1:10:08
innings of that. You know, we haven't again,
1:10:11
where's the alpha for material sciences?
1:10:13
I bet Google's already working on that.
1:10:16
I have to imagine they're already working on that.
1:10:18
So, you know, we're talking about abundance.
1:10:21
That is hard to imagine because, you know, Homo sapiens, you
1:10:26
know, we have been around for 250,000 to 300,000 years on an
1:10:32
Earth that is 4.54 billion years old.
1:10:35
And so honestly, the majority of the time that we have evolved,
1:10:41
we have really faced serious scarcity.
1:10:45
It's been mostly scarcity. You know, the abundance that we
1:10:48
have today in America is unthinkable to even comparing to
1:10:56
America 100 years ago, 200 years ago.
1:11:00
And then it's if you were living in Chad, you know, which I
1:11:04
profile in in my book. Yeah, I really personify it with
1:11:08
this Uber driver from from Chad, where their GDP is $660 a person
1:11:14
versus ours is 85,800 a person in in the US You know, they're
1:11:20
dealing with a level of scarcity we can't imagine.
1:11:24
And so I think that we're going to be able to see that future
1:11:28
that the hardest part for me is the transition period.
1:11:33
And you know, one of the things that Kai Fili said, and I was
1:11:37
actually, I was talking with Bong about this on a long hike
1:11:41
yesterday morning where he was asking me, what do you think is
1:11:48
going to happen in that in between period that helps awaken
1:11:52
humanity? Is it going to be a positive
1:11:55
catalyst, which is what the lattice is all about, right?
1:11:58
It's a positive vision of how the awakening could happen
1:12:03
collectively for humanity. Or is it going to be a negative
1:12:07
catalyst where it's something so calamitous that humanity wakes
1:12:13
up like, you know, Nagasaki, you know, Hiroshima?
1:12:16
My mind just went there. Yeah, right.
1:12:17
Was so calamitous that that the world was like, oh wow, we
1:12:20
better get a handle on nuclear weapons or it's all over.
1:12:23
Globally, globally, fix, solve it.
1:12:25
But then we all saw proliferation, but then we saw
1:12:28
some harnessing of it as an energy source.
1:12:30
So at the current time, we're in a good place for it.
1:12:35
Yeah. So we've done that before, yeah.
1:12:38
So what do you think? I mean, I mean, do you think you
1:12:41
think it's it's it's probably a mix of things, right, between
1:12:44
positive and and negative. But but Kaifu Lee really got me
1:12:48
thinking because he he he's a very interesting guy to listen
1:12:52
to and it was really cool that he was on day one of Ted AI and
1:12:57
unfortunately he really predicted it would be a very
1:12:59
negative catalyst. That was his, that was that was
1:13:03
that really that sat with me a lot that evening on a I don't
1:13:07
know if you felt the same. I actually did not hear his bit
1:13:11
was I was backstage working on some OK.
1:13:13
Sorry but apologize. I didn't.
1:13:15
That's OK, didn't know. We're going to have extreme
1:13:18
chaos intention as we go through this transformation.
1:13:21
Yeah, right. It's pretty obvious to me.
1:13:25
But in the end, we'll be in a better place.
1:13:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if, if we can somehow
1:13:30
kind of time machine pole vault into future abundance, it's,
1:13:34
it's going to be pretty amazing. But we've got a it's, you know,
1:13:39
there, there's there's a great book that was exposed to me on
1:13:44
Necker Island by Richard Branson actually, and it's called The
1:13:48
Alchemist. And he was like, right, you have
1:13:51
to read this. Book Alchemist or.
1:13:52
Alchemist, The Alchemist. Alchemist.
1:13:55
And there's a line in there that you know, you know, sometimes
1:13:58
when you're reading a book and you go over a line 50 times,
1:14:01
does that happen to you? Sometimes when I'm reading
1:14:04
philosophy, yes. Yeah.
1:14:05
So. So there's a line in that book
1:14:07
where it's always the darkest before the dawn.
1:14:09
And I read that line 50 times. And I was like, why am I reading
1:14:12
this line 50 times? And I think that that is a bit
1:14:17
of a metaphor for where we're at, that there is some darkness
1:14:20
around us. No.
1:14:21
I don't think it's happened yet. Yeah.
1:14:23
But I mean it, there is already darkness around this right
1:14:26
there. There is major geopolitical
1:14:28
tension. Yes, and people are very scared
1:14:30
and concerned about AI, right? I'm very aware.
1:14:33
Yeah, yeah. But that's that's why I'm doing
1:14:35
what I'm doing. I mean, you know, if I if I'm in
1:14:38
a nutshell. I, I see the opportunity too,
1:14:41
right? Because if we can use AI to
1:14:44
solve disease, if we can advance education and learning, and
1:14:48
we're betting on companies that can do this, both of those
1:14:51
things, those are wonderful things.
1:14:54
They're wonderful things and that and that's, that's one of
1:14:56
the things I really, really love about what you're doing is the
1:15:00
the way I would say that spiritually is you're bringing a
1:15:02
lot of light to society through these things.
1:15:06
We are. I'm doing the best I can on
1:15:09
that. Thank you.
1:15:09
You're doing great. But we, we are under the like
1:15:12
the vision like of Reed. And Reed has written some books
1:15:16
on, on these topics and thinking about how AI can help the world.
1:15:20
And so we, we are executing on, on his vision for that.
1:15:25
And so I think that's, you know, and there's a, and he, Reid
1:15:28
often uses this line where people often say AI, well, what
1:15:33
could go wrong? So Reid is retorting well, what
1:15:37
can go right? Yeah, what could go right.
1:15:40
And, and, and I have to say that I have at least mentioned him a
1:15:45
dozen or so times on this podcast already is one of the
1:15:48
truly good guys. Like I've mentioned him a lot.
1:15:51
I mentioned Mustafa Suleiman a lot.
1:15:54
I mentioned Demiscibus a lot. I mentioned Doctor Fifi Lee,
1:15:58
Mayor Murati. I mean, there's a lot of people
1:16:00
bringing the light, which is, which is great because it is
1:16:04
going to require team humanity to ultimately, you know, steer
1:16:07
the ship through some pretty, pretty turbulent change.
1:16:13
My general take is if can we get AI to do the laborious things
1:16:16
that we don't want to do so we can increase the things that are
1:16:19
more human. So let's back up, you mentioned
1:16:22
society, human. Humans have been on this planet
1:16:24
for a few 100,000 years, right? Homo sapiens.
1:16:27
Homo sapiens. Hominids have actually been
1:16:29
around for 4,000,000 years but but Homo sapiens 250,000 and
1:16:32
300,000 years. And our current societies
1:16:34
structured around the industrial revolution, the clock, the
1:16:38
timing when we go to school, when go to the fact that we have
1:16:40
rush hours products are mostly sold in CPG in December.
1:16:46
Like, you know, like all of this is around the industrial
1:16:48
revolution and, and we are mimicking or morphing into what
1:16:55
machine behavior looks like. And that was because we are
1:16:58
shifting from scarcity to industrial abundance and and now
1:17:03
we're shifting into a new type of abundance that is it's
1:17:07
different. And we could unshackle from the
1:17:11
industrial revolution in that way and reset society in a way
1:17:14
we haven't thought about. People can work less if there's
1:17:18
higher abundance. And we might see society return
1:17:21
back to the way that was more folksy, was more villagey,
1:17:26
right? More community, right?
1:17:28
And I'm seeing this in SF, the fact that the AI builders,
1:17:32
Brett, want to be together at there's over 300 events this
1:17:36
month in person. The CE OS and founders, yes,
1:17:40
they're getting business done, but they could do that over Zoom
1:17:42
or social networking. They physically want to be
1:17:44
together. They physically want to go to
1:17:45
hackathons. And these are the people who
1:17:47
want to build abundance like that.
1:17:50
There's something there and I can see that and I can hear it.
1:17:52
I can feel it. Yeah, I love that.
1:17:55
That's that is such a that's such a great point and a great
1:17:58
example. And it's so cool that you're at
1:18:01
the Ground Zero of building that.
1:18:03
Yeah, I saw it and so and I see it and I feel it and I and I
1:18:07
know the organizers of each of those groups of those major
1:18:09
communities and I can we talk about this?
1:18:11
It's like there's something really unique like because we we
1:18:16
are over optimistic course in the in the future and by no
1:18:18
means the Silicon Valley only done right, but but we we see a
1:18:22
new world where we will have more time together.
1:18:26
It's a very different like thought on that process.
1:18:29
I just haven't heard seen this before.
1:18:31
This level of community surprisingly out of AI.
1:18:34
Yeah, you know what one of the funny push backs I get, I think
1:18:38
it's funny at least is when people ask me.
1:18:42
Well, what's that age of abundance for all going to be
1:18:46
like? Are we just going to sit around
1:18:47
and meditate? And I'm like, and it's funny
1:18:51
because I am going to baton at the end of this year with, with
1:18:54
my with my wife and children. She's been once and and her
1:18:59
she's identical twin and her her twin sister when they went
1:19:03
together said it was the most spiritual she ever felt in
1:19:06
Bhutan, like just out of any country she's ever been to.
1:19:10
So I'm really excited to go because obviously they have a
1:19:12
very different model. They measure things on gross
1:19:15
domestic happiness. It's very Buddhist culture.
1:19:19
Or contentness, actually. It's something really happiness,
1:19:21
right? Yeah, contentness and, and so,
1:19:24
so you know, the, the, the reason I laugh at that is I is I
1:19:28
tell them in a very respectful way.
1:19:30
I'm like, you're thinking so small, like you're just thinking
1:19:33
about Earth, like we live in a completely infinite universe.
1:19:38
We live on a level 1 Earth society, right?
1:19:40
And we haven't even harnessed our local energy source.
1:19:43
Totally. And so I'm like the ambitious
1:19:46
among us in the age of abundance for all.
1:19:49
I mean, we could go do so much in the universe and there's like
1:19:54
so many problems to be to be solved, so many things to
1:19:57
explore, so many things to discover.
1:20:00
You know I covered in the Mark Gobert episode.
1:20:03
He's one of my favorite authors, has written seven books that we
1:20:07
only know that was that was up. So too, we only know what 4% of
1:20:11
the universe is even made of. We call that matter.
1:20:15
We don't know what 96% of the universe is made of.
1:20:18
We call it dark energy or dark matter.
1:20:20
We have no idea what it is. We we literally do not have a
1:20:22
clue. Yes, I I hear it and understand
1:20:25
that, but we also need to ensure that the current planet is
1:20:29
healthy too. So I think we have to balance
1:20:31
all of that. Oh, I completely in unison.
1:20:35
I completely agree. And but they're, but they're
1:20:37
actually what they're challenging me on is that we do
1:20:40
that and everything is abundant here.
1:20:42
And then what do we do? And I'm that.
1:20:44
That's why I'm challenged. Back yeah we do I agree with you
1:20:46
so we do have that explore nature right that is part of
1:20:50
yeah I I I think you probably grew up on Star Trek TNG like.
1:20:53
I totally did. It Is the Star Trek feature what
1:20:55
we're talking about? And and and in the lattice, you
1:20:58
know, we, we do, when we get to the age of abundance for all and
1:21:02
the lattice we do completely heal the earth.
1:21:04
It becomes like a jewel by the year 2050.
1:21:08
You know, there's no ozone layer issue.
1:21:11
If we all want to do it. Exactly.
1:21:14
And we have free will. And so, so I'm curious, like,
1:21:17
you know, the building of community here.
1:21:20
And I completely agree. There's something incredibly
1:21:22
magical. Then when we get together as
1:21:24
humans, I mean, they had a transformative trip this summer
1:21:28
in August in the Grand Canyon, You know, no cell phones,
1:21:32
totally offline, no energy. You know, there's no
1:21:37
electricity. And what happened with the group
1:21:41
of 26 people I went with is we really had an incredible bonding
1:21:47
experience over that eight days. You know, we got back to being
1:21:51
most human. You know what makes us most
1:21:54
human like presents? And you're literally dependent
1:21:56
on each other to survive. We are, yeah.
1:21:59
And it was just, it was just beautiful.
1:22:00
It's like, magical. If you've never done that trip,
1:22:03
I cannot recommend it. I will do that trip sometime.
1:22:06
I I hopefully we'll do it together like my my friend goes
1:22:10
every year and I'll advocate to next time.
1:22:15
It's 8 days. Yeah, so it's not it, but Oh my
1:22:18
gosh, it's so it's so amazing. I'd love, love to do that with
1:22:21
you. He, he uses Grand Canyon
1:22:24
expeditions company. It's just gcex.com if anybody
1:22:28
wants to look it up. It's not that expensive either.
1:22:31
It's much less than a back roads trip and it's right here in
1:22:34
America, but it's just waiting to to explore.
1:22:37
And only 100,000 people can go in per year.
1:22:39
That's it. They limit it, you know, from
1:22:41
permitting perspective perspective because they really
1:22:44
want it to remain a jewel. But you know, thinking back to
1:22:50
the Ted AI event, yes, one thing that was really unsettling for
1:22:55
me, and I was sitting next to David Judson, who's my
1:22:59
intellectual thought partner and one of my best friends.
1:23:03
And it was during the panel where they were discussing the
1:23:07
philosophy of AI. And Steven Levy, who's the
1:23:12
founding editor of Ward Magazine, was moderating this.
1:23:17
And I felt pretty unsettled by that panel because I didn't hear
1:23:24
it kind of the humanitarian perspective.
1:23:26
It sounded like a bunch of people just talking about the
1:23:29
fact in their minds that, well, these are either a already
1:23:35
sentient, meaning AI is either already sentient, or it's just
1:23:38
obvious that it's going to be sentient and it's going to have
1:23:41
the same level of consciousness that we do.
1:23:44
And I'm curious how you think about that and also just how you
1:23:49
think about that in this region? Yes.
1:23:51
So there's different schools of thought and you know which camp
1:23:55
I'm part of. And so our general take is that
1:23:58
it's not a AGI, it is just mimicking human behavior, right,
1:24:04
Because it's just completing and transforming and anticipating
1:24:07
the sentences. And so the current large
1:24:09
language models will not reach AGI nor will it have sentience,
1:24:15
but there will be future models that will be emerging and we're
1:24:21
actually going to be investing in it.
1:24:23
Therefore you will as well. So, but I can't talk about it,
1:24:26
but that's coming and it's a new type of model, so.
1:24:30
Not a large language model, but something different.
1:24:32
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
1:24:33
Yeah, there's always going to be future bottles, right?
1:24:35
Of course. Yeah.
1:24:36
So just assume there's always. And that was a big threat
1:24:38
actually at Ted. AI too is like what's the next
1:24:41
step for the LLM? Right.
1:24:42
Yeah, LLMS have significant limitations.
1:24:44
They do, yeah. And so that is our, that is our
1:24:50
take right now. So how do you how do you think
1:24:53
about that yourself? Do you think we'll be able to
1:24:56
create machines that are as conscious as you and I are?
1:25:00
Right. Now, So I think they'll it
1:25:02
doesn't matter if they are conscious or not because many
1:25:05
people will believe they are basically will mimic.
1:25:07
So it doesn't matter because right now a significant.
1:25:11
So therapists are losing business because people are
1:25:14
turning to AI for therapy, but also people who cannot afford or
1:25:18
have access to therapists now have access, right?
1:25:21
So this abundance is starting to happen.
1:25:23
So the fact that they're for the most deepest, darkest personal
1:25:28
trauma or goals and aspirations and dreams that you would turn
1:25:32
to an AI that is today in 2023, which is 3 years into this, like
1:25:39
that's amazing. So it just doesn't matter if
1:25:41
it's sentient or not. Right, right.
1:25:44
I mean, at least for the next few years, yeah, right.
1:25:46
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting.
1:25:49
I mean, that's a that's a really, it's a really good
1:25:51
point. And and it's, you know, Mustafa
1:25:54
Solomon is writing about this a lot right now as the head of
1:25:57
everything AI at Microsoft. And I forgot what he calls it,
1:26:02
but it's basically like fake consciousness is Socratic.
1:26:06
Socratic parrots also. Yeah, that there's a word he
1:26:09
uses in his LinkedIn post about it's feigning consciousness.
1:26:14
And he's in, it's clear he's worried about it because he's
1:26:17
writing about it a lot. And it's interesting because I
1:26:20
was at the main Ted event two years ago where he gave a Ted
1:26:26
talk on AI, describing what AI was to his nephew.
1:26:32
And he basically described it as a new type of digital species.
1:26:36
And we also heard that it at Ted AI, there were people talking
1:26:40
about it in that type of way. And the reason I think this is
1:26:44
important question is in an episode I did with a Neil
1:26:48
episode 11, we he educated me on something I did not know.
1:26:54
He said they're already 9 organizations which are trying
1:26:57
to give AI rights. Yeah, I, I had not heard that
1:26:59
before either. Yeah.
1:27:01
And there was also at a point of time a Church of AI.
1:27:04
I'm not sure if it was in jest or parody or serious, Right, But
1:27:09
we've heard that type of topic before, even in Nick Bostrom's
1:27:13
book Super Intelligence. Where like if it is whenever
1:27:17
humans don't understand something, they apply
1:27:20
metaphysical powers to a mythology, right?
1:27:22
Even the sun, it's been every every culture has put some God
1:27:28
like powers on the sun. Early primitive cultures.
1:27:31
Excuse me, so does that, you know, do we do that for AI?
1:27:35
You know, and there's people that will do that.
1:27:38
Right, right. This is what The Last Question
1:27:40
is all about with Isaac Asimov. Yeah, I I won't spoil it, but I
1:27:43
did. I did get spoiled from open AI,
1:27:45
gave me the bunch. Of for me exactly, yeah.
1:27:47
I highly recommend people read it.
1:27:49
It's it's it's short and it is very campy.
1:27:54
If you get it on Audible, it's kind of a fun throwback machine
1:27:57
for something that's so futuristic in terms of its
1:27:59
concept. The fact that it's got this very
1:28:02
campy sound that they they have that went with it.
1:28:05
I can imagine 1980 synthesize. I can.
1:28:07
Imagine that. Yeah.
1:28:10
You know, one of the things I want to talk about is your
1:28:13
personal health journey. If you don't, because I find it
1:28:16
very inspiring and and Ethan Holland, you know, he was on
1:28:20
episode 4. He's a mega fan of you and I'm a
1:28:24
mega fan of both of you guys. Oh man, Ethan's great.
1:28:27
He's so great and you know, he's had this, this AI newsletter
1:28:32
ever since the launch of ChatGPT, he's chronicled over
1:28:34
36,000 news events. I mean, Ethan Holland is someone
1:28:39
where when he decides to do something, he is going to do it
1:28:43
all in. Yeah.
1:28:44
And I, I worked with him and he was an executive at a retail
1:28:48
company and he was my customer and client.
1:28:50
So yeah, we have had a great time and you know our buddies.
1:28:53
Yeah, so, so, so, you know, you really transformed your health.
1:28:56
Like I, I, I, I, I. I'm really impressed what you
1:29:01
did, but you should tell. People So let's let's talk about
1:29:04
you know you. This podcast is also philosophy.
1:29:08
So, and it's about us conquering our own fears, love conquering
1:29:12
our own fears. So I read a lot about the, I
1:29:15
read the Stoics a lot. And a big part of that is, you
1:29:19
know, having mastery over yourself and discipline and, and
1:29:22
I can, I definitely like want to be good at that.
1:29:26
There's a point in my life where I was very undisciplined and
1:29:29
selfish and didn't take care of myself or sometimes people
1:29:32
around me. And so as a as a, a grown up now
1:29:35
kind of, yeah, I wanted to do that.
1:29:38
So when I was when I was running companies Altimeter Group, like
1:29:41
I got and was traveling a lot and then I got fat and couldn't
1:29:46
even run a mile and it was bad. So when I hit 40, I decided to
1:29:50
change all that. And so I cleaned up and I don't
1:29:55
eat red meat or I'm a pescatarian now.
1:29:57
So that's part of that. Typically red meat is served
1:30:00
with fried food. That's very common.
1:30:02
So if you just shift to pescatarian, it's usually served
1:30:05
with steamed vegetables. That's immediate change, just
1:30:08
simple changes like that, plus the benefits to society.
1:30:11
And then I've been doing functional fitness, AKA CrossFit
1:30:16
and for nine years and typically going to the the gym or the box
1:30:22
5 * a week, often at 5:00 AM. And so I try to fail before the
1:30:26
dawn comes up. I want to push myself to failure
1:30:29
until I have something like I can go to that limit.
1:30:33
And yeah, and I've been doing that and I have weight lift and
1:30:37
I haven't had alcohol for seven years.
1:30:39
And I used to have, I used to have alcohol cravings and
1:30:43
addictions. So I had to just get over that
1:30:45
as well. So a lot of changes.
1:30:48
Oh, so it actually was an issue? Like it was not, it was not just
1:30:51
a minor thing. The alcohol, Yeah.
1:30:53
So in order to feel anything, then you'd have to drink more.
1:30:56
I would have to drink more and then drink more.
1:30:57
And then so I said this is ridiculous.
1:31:00
It's bad for my health, bad for the relationships around me.
1:31:02
I'm not responsible. Not sleeping well, not.
1:31:04
It's like, not great. Yeah.
1:31:05
Yeah. So yeah, I can openly say that,
1:31:08
yes, I was an alcoholic. Well, technically still am,
1:31:12
right? But now I just don't drink.
1:31:13
Right. So just having control and
1:31:14
mastery yourself. Yeah, that's, that's, that's.
1:31:16
Awesome. In years, no alcohol.
1:31:18
Yeah. Yeah.
1:31:19
And that's good. Yeah.
1:31:21
So certainly a lush for a period of time.
1:31:23
So yeah, I made a real big change and I just want to be
1:31:27
strong and fit and flexible and have the ability to be to
1:31:32
endure. And I'm sure all your biomarkers
1:31:34
have really turned around at this point.
1:31:36
Yes, yeah, I had, I was pre hypertension.
1:31:39
I fixed it. I had lower back pain.
1:31:40
I fixed it, yeah. What would what would you
1:31:43
suggest for people going on that on that journey?
1:31:47
Like what's your favorite Stoic books?
1:31:48
Is it Ryan Holiday's books? Yeah, I've read his, I mean, but
1:31:51
he's a compilation of Seneca, right?
1:31:54
So that's, that's part of it. But it's just for so for me, I'm
1:31:58
a community person. CrossFit works for me because I
1:32:00
have friends. Like I feel so lucky, Brett,
1:32:03
that I get to go in 5:00 AM to the class with my friends, men
1:32:07
and women, and we like cheer each other on, talk shit too.
1:32:10
And like, like who gets to go to a social club at 5:00 AM?
1:32:13
That's kind of insane. I get to start my day that way.
1:32:16
I'm but I'm bored this way. I'm drilled this way, like I
1:32:18
naturally wake up to go do to be productive.
1:32:21
It's just who I am. So you go when you were supposed
1:32:23
to go whenever you want to work out.
1:32:25
But the fact that I found my tribe, that's critical.
1:32:29
So that's an E thing, and it's not for everybody.
1:32:32
Some people need to do fitness solo, but a minimum three times
1:32:35
a week, an hour is, is maintenance for an adult, right?
1:32:41
Is for fitness and and not just walking, it's more walking is
1:32:45
not enough. You have to elevated heart rate
1:32:47
and also doing strength as well. Yeah.
1:32:50
So yeah, I've gone through. Hopefully you can hear like they
1:32:53
dialed in on that. Oh, yeah, I know.
1:32:54
I know. Well, I mean, you look totally
1:32:56
different. I mean, you look like you're in
1:32:58
great shape. Your skin's different.
1:33:00
I mean, you just look. Better I feel, I feel absolutely
1:33:04
great and I'll be I'll be 50 soon.
1:33:07
Welcome to the club, I'm 53. You look great too.
1:33:11
And I felt strong. I'm.
1:33:14
I'm benching 225 * 10 reps That's awesome.
1:33:17
Which is NFL level. Yeah, yeah.
1:33:19
And almost 50. Yeah, yeah.
1:33:21
No, no drugs by the way. It's like no nothing.
1:33:24
It's just all natural. Yeah, You're not taking
1:33:26
testosterone. Nothing, nothing, nothing that
1:33:28
actually is. I find that I, I find that a
1:33:31
little bit sad for, for what it's worth, like if you go to
1:33:35
any low T clinic, they will tell you need testosterone and you
1:33:38
really need to understand what you're getting into with that
1:33:41
because there's lots of bad side effects I don't do.
1:33:44
Any I don't have any comments. I hadn't gone that route.
1:33:46
I'm trying to stay as natural as long as possible, but I do have
1:33:51
meds for some biological things that I do need to take.
1:33:54
Well, yeah, that's different. Yeah.
1:33:55
But if it's, it's different if you.
1:33:57
I'm trying to stay no creatine. I'm just literally just as
1:34:00
natural as I can be, right? Now that's awesome.
1:34:01
Yeah. But coffee, Yeah, lots of
1:34:03
coffee. Well, I I, I.
1:34:05
Believe it or not, I didn't do caffeine for a decade and I went
1:34:10
back to it about two years ago, but I don't do it after 10 AM.
1:34:15
That's also yeah, like after lunch.
1:34:18
That's no or it messes my sleep. Yeah, yeah.
1:34:22
I mean, I'm, I'm definitely been a long time on a long time
1:34:26
health journey. I've been vegetarian now for a
1:34:29
bit over 15 years. You, you are.
1:34:30
Wow, I didn't know that. Bit over 15 years and my
1:34:34
biomarkers at age 53 are better than they were when I was 40.
1:34:39
And I have, I have, you know, a great workout routine that I
1:34:45
documented on lucky 7 dot IO on my blog where I do it pretty
1:34:51
much every day. I work out five to six days a
1:34:54
week. I built up to 24 minute a day
1:34:57
plank, believe it or not. I remember, yes, I remember you
1:35:00
saying that. That's incredible.
1:35:02
So now I don't do 24 minutes a day because there is a
1:35:05
diminishing returns it your workouts take a lot longer if
1:35:10
you but there is no end, you could just keep going.
1:35:13
But I, I, I now do 12 to 14 minutes a day and I, I'm very
1:35:19
dedicated with my workouts. I feel way better.
1:35:22
There's lots of stretching involved, like especially with
1:35:25
sitting, you know, you know, in terms of doing, you know, work
1:35:29
that primarily is on the computer, all the stretching
1:35:33
exercises, all that health. Span and lifespan both increased
1:35:36
by, you know. I just feel amazing.
1:35:39
And I think this is also part of the age of abundance, when
1:35:42
technology might be able to afford us more time to do these
1:35:44
things right. And I think that's important and
1:35:47
especially specifically for society. 2/3 of Americans are
1:35:51
overweight, 1/3 are, are obese. The fact that the military has
1:35:55
to drop the physical standards to, for, to let people in, it's
1:35:58
just you. We are in such a sad state.
1:36:01
And so can can we use technology to help us get more time and
1:36:06
motivation and to do these things that that I, I see that
1:36:09
as exciting. Yeah, I didn't drop alcohol
1:36:12
until November of last year. Great.
1:36:14
Awesome, but but I do feel way better not having alcohol and
1:36:20
it's funny that societally somehow we've normalized that
1:36:25
it's a drug that you should use. Is it normalized in in Austin?
1:36:29
Because I know there's been no. Alcohol.
1:36:31
Austin's a very high alcohol city.
1:36:33
Very, very high. I mean, it's like when you're
1:36:35
born in Austin, you're almost born with a Martian.
1:36:39
Well, it's usually a Margarita, but yes, I shine.
1:36:42
There would be another example. Here at numerous events in SF,
1:36:46
there's no alcohol that's common now.
1:36:49
You know, I one of the things that I've noticed at our home
1:36:52
when I host dinners now, I host a dinner on can AI become
1:36:56
conscious? And at the dinner I offered
1:37:01
people either like this wine. I've got tons of wine because I
1:37:05
collected wine for a while. I don't drink drink it anymore.
1:37:09
And so I offered people these amazing bottles of wine or they
1:37:13
could have a cocktail that I had prepared, which was using little
1:37:20
Saints, which is kind of like a little bit of an upper.
1:37:23
It's basically just a natural mushroom called lion's mane and
1:37:28
it it it's it's a fun cocktail drink because you can make it
1:37:32
was made into a Paloma and it actually stimulates like
1:37:37
conversation too. And 90% of the people there
1:37:43
chose the non alcoholic drink. I said like no judgement you get
1:37:47
whatever 1 you want. That's.
1:37:48
Happening here and now the the non alcoholic drinks mocktails
1:37:51
cost more because the demand shifted.
1:37:54
Yeah. That's literally happened.
1:37:56
Alcohol is actually really plummeting in sales, especially
1:37:59
with the younger generation, which is really interesting.
1:38:02
So I think that's I think that's really, really great.
1:38:05
So, Jeremiah, we should probably wrap this up.
1:38:08
I I really love you and. Thank you.
1:38:11
I love you too, brother. I, I, I'm just so impressed with
1:38:15
your personal transformation. I know you're phenomenal.
1:38:19
You know, Family Guy, I see you light up anytime, you know,
1:38:23
talking about your kids, you're building community here in San
1:38:27
Francisco, which is so beautiful.
1:38:29
Like really bringing people together during the most
1:38:32
important technological transformation, human history.
1:38:36
I know you believe in the age of abundance for all, and then I
1:38:39
know you're putting the light out there and what you're doing.
1:38:41
And honestly, I can't think of a better steward for that
1:38:47
personally than Reed Hoffman. I mean, I really encourage
1:38:49
people to follow him and you on Lib Den 'cause you guys both put
1:38:54
great stuff out. And Chris, Yeah, who brought you
1:38:58
guys together? And yeah, I'm just super
1:39:02
thankful for the friendship and I'm super thankful that you
1:39:04
included us in the font so. Thank you.
1:39:07
It's been great. And we're not done on this
1:39:08
journey. I know we have a long way to go
1:39:10
and Will's going to change so much.
1:39:13
And thank you for doing this project.
1:39:15
You're chronicling a very important period of human
1:39:19
history. Well, thanks so much.
1:39:20
Yeah, I'm doing this. Human evolution with technology
1:39:23
too like this is a very important time.
1:39:25
It's a very important time. These are the big questions,
1:39:28
right? This is these are the biggest
1:39:30
questions we've always been wondering about since the
1:39:33
beginning of humanity. Like, what is this reality we're
1:39:35
in? What's the purpose for
1:39:37
everything? Where are we going?
1:39:39
Why are we here? What is humanity?
1:39:42
What is human? When we're building something
1:39:45
that looks human, we're building it it.
1:39:50
This is a profound time. I appreciate you, brother.
1:39:53
Thanks so much. Yeah.
1:39:54
Thanks again everybody for tuning in.
1:39:58
Just incredible line up. Coming up, this is the end of my
1:40:02
week in San Francisco and the next episodes you'll see I'm
1:40:08
back in Austin for a while and it is just an incredible line
1:40:13
up. I mean literally who showed up
1:40:17
just a day ago saying that they're extending their trip and
1:40:21
their flight to? Basically, come on the podcast,
1:40:26
I'm recording that in a couple of days from now.
1:40:29
And they're one of the most amazing spiritual teachers that
1:40:32
I know. So that's going to be very, very
1:40:35
fun to share with you. And there are so many amazing
1:40:39
entrepreneurs, investors, scientist, spiritual teachers,
1:40:44
philosophers coming up. I am fully booked for the year
1:40:48
for the podcast schedule and by the end of this year, there's
1:40:53
going to be around 28 to 29 episodes live.
1:40:57
And I'm, I'm having a blast. I hope you're having a blast.
1:41:00
I love all the feedback. Keep it coming and share this
1:41:04
with a friend if you feel so moved.
1:41:06
I'm not doing this for any financial impact.
1:41:08
There's no advertising. I'm just self funding this.
1:41:11
I'm only doing it in person so that it's high quality because I
1:41:15
really want it to have an impact because this is a love letter to
1:41:19
humanity and for abundance for all of us.
1:41:23
And so please help out in that way.
1:41:26
And thanks a lot for tuning in to another episode of Love
1:41:30
Conquers Fear. Bye bye.