Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO Social Capital, on Money as an Instrument of Change

[Music] thank you so much for being here thank you for including me so excited to dig into that career and your thoughts on the valley and I'm gonna start us off

with one of the things that jumped out at me in my prep for this interview okay you are an extremely generous tipper

yeah I love that and I would like to know why I mean it's pretty I worked so

I mean it's well known and part of why I'm so open about this is that I think it gives permission for other people just to be honest I grew up in a very

kind of dysfunctional household on welfare and that compounded a bunch of [ __ ] in my life that was not great we

were very focused on money it was a huge point of pressure and tension in the family it created massive depression in my father drinking just it

was very dysfunctional and there was some point along the way where I was like okay is money like really important or not important and I feel very lucky

because I don't think if you ask my sisters they got to the same place that I did but I ended up not coveting it and I found it to be something that I could

use to really empower myself to do the things that I wanted to do and so in a situation where you know you go to a like a restaurant if you really empathize with the people that are

working there I see people who are like me brown skinned working hard creating these beautiful experiences and then I

can celebrate it by you know I guess giving a yelp review but you can't buy food for your kids with a [ __ ] yelp

review so I want a tip and it's it's so I mean on it gives me so much joy because it's like you know you'll have like a three or four hundred dollar bill

in some cases you know you tip five hundred bucks or a thousand bucks and you and they're expecting $40 and I mean

then I'll get a little motion about like they will come out to you and there it's transformational and so it's such a great it's so great it's just like little things like that mean a lot to

people and just to be anonymously generous like that I think is like it's a great gift that I have the ability to do that's why I do it I love it and it sounds like the experience of being seen

and get you are seen and the individual is seen and you're sharing and well I mean you know it's funny it's like 99% of the time they don't say anything because they they do the build thing afterwards and they for sure can't

pronounce my name and so they for sure have no [ __ ] clue who it was I gave them that it's fine it's totally fine but I love it I absolutely love it my friends freak

out now it's cause tension of she because now when I go out with my friends they know as well and I've just made it very easy which is like hey if we're going out just like let me just

[ __ ] pay just like it's just not it's it's not it's fine and it makes it simpler yeah I want to dig into what you were describing about your upbringing and this unique position

that you've gotten to where you don't feel that you covet money but you see its power and they use that it has in furthering some opportunities for you

how did you develop that how do how do you distinguish between luck and skill how do you how do you end up in that

position so I my parents craved money meaning they needed it because it was it my dad was unemployed for long stretches

of time my mom was a sole breadwinner she was a housekeeper then she was in nurses aide and so and you and I would just see how she grinded we didn't have

a car for a long time she takes the bus we all take the bus at you know when I've got my first job as a Burger King I take the money and I'd had to give it to my parents and we would buy bus passes

and you know I remember telling like some of my friends I went to a very good high school like kind of like the rich high school not the high school I should have gone to I got I was able to go to this different high school and I would remember tell I would tell

them like hey this is like yeah I you know I they I would be so ashamed that I worked at Burger King they would sometimes come by and I would just be like oh [ __ ] like and then at some point

it was just it was like this release moment where I was like this is my life like I just I can't do anything about it this is what it is right now and I kind of had a sense that I could figure some

stuff out later but I didn't really know and so I just accepted it and then the minute I accepted it I wasn't ashamed anymore and then when I wasn't ashamed I could start to actually be inside my head like what really matters so then

what happened was there was these massive racial riots in Los Angeles and not as if the [ __ ] American government did anything about it but the Canadian government was like [ __ ] let's get all these black and brown kids jobs

because we don't want the Rodney King riots in Toronto and Ottawa and parts of Ontario and so I was able to take all of my dad's rejection letters call every single one and one of them gave me a job

and I worked at this well-known telecommunications start-up in Ottawa Ottawa had a really burgeoning tech scene at the time and I worked in this organization that was run by this really iconic guy Terry Matthews and he was a

billionaire and I was like what the [ __ ] is that worth like I mean I didn't even know [ __ ] thousandaire like I was

like what is a billionaire and this guy was risk-on and he was just so dynamic

in the businesses he had started and how he viewed his place in the world and I was enthralled I was nine degrees away from him but the cult of personality

around him in that business the lore when it trickles down to you was not about you know his conspicuous consumption or anything else it was

about okay we're launching this frame relay switch now we're gonna buy this company okay we're gonna pivot the entire business to ATM and you were just

like it was an amazing time and so I took the bus to Newbridge complete luck

that the controller of Newbridge would go from his nice neighborhood through this shitty neighborhood to get on the highway and so he would see this guy standing by the bus and eventually

he saw me inside the office and one day he stopped he said your honor right you work in Newbridge I'm like yeah this guy

Sam leg so in the car he was just he was in the front seat like beside Terry and he was able to tell me like how this guy thought about this I was like because I would read it in the paper and I'd be

like why is he doing this and like and he so it just completely rewired what money was for Terry Matthews money was an instrument of change right he had a market cap he's like wow that's eight

billion dollars of change ten billion dollars have changed fifteen billion dollars of change versus there was another guy building a company at the time his name is Michael Copeland who

ran a company called Carell also a billionaire and he was the exact opposite had a messy divorce married some trophy wife he took this obscene

shiny glass from his building and covered his house in it and so you had this this really dislike ah to me of two different characters at that time in the 90s building really interesting

businesses Corel which was a reasonable business Newbridge which was a reasonable business they were both very successful but they manifested money so totally differently and I was like I

want to be this guy you know I want to be this mega compounder swashbuckling around trying to do really cool [ __ ] in the world how do I do that and Sam helped me because it was just like you

you could understand from him what Terry cared about and then for me I just copied I mean a lot of my life quite honest he's just copying things that I see there's not a lot of original

thought here it truly is not I mean we can all pretend we're all [ __ ] geniuses honestly be good copiers do you know what I'm saying it's the best thing in the world like be

around high functioning high quality people and just copy the [ __ ] that they do observe the [ __ ] that's you know kind of crappy and then don't do that stuff

it's not [ __ ] complicated formula when did you use that best no all the time I mean look now it's funny like it's it's like you know like you have a

surface area of ways to spend your time now or I do and you know I'm in this midst now where we are really scaling up what we're doing as a business and I

meet these people that to me are so iconic that they were sort of like arm's length people that are now sitting face-to-face and they treat me like a

quasi periodic quasi pure but what I see is I see some amazing stuff and I see some utter dysfunction in some of the richest most important people in the

world and I have to decide how am I going to act what am I going to embody what am i copying what am i not copying

and so I get a chance to now refine my decision-making and discipline and it's so that that's how I that's how it plays

out I don't know if I answered questions I I'm I'm thinking very there's a deep connection between money as an instrument of change and what you're doing now so here's the thing there's about a hundred and fifty people that

run the world anybody who wants to go into politics they're all [ __ ] puppets okay there are a hundred and fifty in there

all of men that run the world period full stop they controlled most of the important assets they control the money flows and these are not the tech entrepreneurs now they they are going to

get rolled over over the next five to ten years by the people that are really underneath pulling the strings and when you get behind the curtain and see how that world works what you realize is it

is unfairly set up for them and their progeny now I'm not going to say that that's something that we can rip apart but first order of business is I want to

break through and be at that table that's the first order of business and the way that I do that is by proving that I can do what they do as well as they do it and then do it better than

how they do it because at the end of the day they are commercial [ __ ] animals okay and they'll open the door out of curiosity and they'll let me stay because I because I add value and then

once I'm there I can open the door for other people who can try to do the same thing so my entire goal now is that is to be in a position to aggregate enough of the capital of the world

- then reallocate it against my world view and I'm not saying my world view is the best or right but it is mine and at the end of the day there are a hundred and fifty other [ __ ] guys with their

world view and they don't give a [ __ ] what you think about their [ __ ] world view that's the truth and so why not me

why not why not one of you why not and so in my life now I'm just kind of like why not why the [ __ ] not

what can you tell us a little so you have these 50-year goals for social capital yeah three of them yeah can you

give us your world view in through those goals so my 2045 ambition for the organization this is as I see it right

now 2045 is I would like us to employ at least 10 million people through the businesses that we own I would like our businesses to positively affect at least

a quarter of the world's population and I would like us to have made cumulative Li about a trillion dollars that's my 2045 ambition I think if we do that we

are the modern face of capitalism for the next 50 years so how we do that now becomes really important so if you think about building businesses and today that

could do any of those three things you have to be technological you absolutely just have to be you are not going to build a brick and mortar business that gets anywhere close to those three

things number one number two is you have to think very broadly about building things that can stand the test of time those businesses are by definition hard

and non-obvious and so they compound in scale very slowly and that's really counterintuitive to the overriding logic of Silicon Valley which says quick fast

go right but that kind of premature ejaculation doesn't work if you're trying to [ __ ] be around forever like you've got to be in the flow for decades

that is hard it tests people's patience it tests people's resolve it tests people's really intellectual incision and this is where everybody gives up

everybody gives up I had this moment today just a total different way of describing this through the warriors I've met a lot of players obviously one

of them who I become unbelievably close to as David Lee David Lee just got engaged to this unbelievable woman Caroline Wozniacki tennis player anyways we were working out this morning okay

couples workout me and my wife him and him and his fiance so we're doing this thing this treadmill thing which my trainer would concocted and I mean I

mean I'm in pretty good shape and then you see what it really means to be extremely dedicated in their case to something which is physical fitness

because they're professional athletes when I give up but when the average human gives up their brain goes into [ __ ] overdrive okay and they're like

there's this next level burst and so like it's it's that it's like when when things get hard can you double down a different example we had yesterday we do these things every quarter called

quarterly portfolio reviews we're incredibly intensive review of our entire portfolio revisiting our strategy talking about all the things we're doing to make sure we're on the right track

and I had this observation which was I started a diabetes business my dad died of diabetes three years ago most of my relatives have it I expressed the gene that makes me disproportionately

susceptible to it so it's something that I personally care about but that business took seven years to get to a place where we even have a chance of

being viable and I think to myself in that example I embodied a bit of Caroline Wozniacki when things got hard I pushed through the pain now in my case

the pain was the fear of failure continuing to write more money a belief that I had that this business was going to work and today that business manages a million diabetics and I think there is

some kid out there whose family will be slightly less dysfunctional because their parents disease is better managed it's not going to go to a place where like you know they're getting dialyzed

or you know they're on an organ registry and that value for that kid in our world and all of you that benefits will never be connected the dots but that's okay

but it required just resilience and I'm proud of that yeah and so I want to bring back a little bit of that here so

that it's not quick fast five million users ten million flip it sell it great celebrate it's like hey let's work on some hard [ __ ] together let's like buckle down and look each other in the eye and say we're

gonna support each other here this gonna take seven or eight years but if it works it will really mean something and it's something that matters to you for something that's other than just simple

motivation of the social capital you get from your friends or money in the short term and winning bigger longer-term we're missing that and I think like part

of our success will be if we can stay focus on that our education portfolio is another thing it literally looked like a train wreck for three years where everybody has always said you never

invest in education and my thing was it's not about education this is about human capital development it's about for every one of you who's so smart that got into Stanford think of all the people

who could be as capable I'm not asking you to empathize with them but I as a capitalist want a starting line where all of those people can run a race so

that I can pick the winner no offense to any of you here and it took us three years we're now those building blocks exists and I'm like wow how many times

did have to look at my partner's is they know the easy answer is to walk away the hard answer is to double down we have to support this business that culture is missing here so part of what we're

trying to do to achieve those goals is like take really big audacious points of view on the world and then train ourselves to be patient and it's really really hard the entire society is set up

to not be patient anymore and I'm hearing also a conflict with this like fail fast and learn mentality where if

if you're taking a deep and big bet like you want it to be the right one how do you know when that's true I think that that's fail-fast approach works in

consumer internet businesses but I don't think it works for anything that really matters basically consumer internet businesses are about exploiting psychology and that

is one where you want to feel fast because you know people aren't predictable and so we want to psychologically figure out how to manipulate you as fast as possible and then give you back that dopamine hit we

did that brilliantly at Facebook Instagram has done it whatsapp has done it you know snapchat has done it Twitter has done it so there are great examples we chat has doing it there are great

examples of failing fast is the right path to exploiting psychology of mass populations of people but it is not how you solve diabetes it is not how you use precision medicine to cure cancer it is

not how you educate broad swaths of the world's population it's just not it's taking a point of view and being

methodical nothing heart no it's hard I'm glad that you're taking a stab at it by the way if it works it's where all

the money comes like if you talk about where all of the gains where all of the value will be created over the next 50 years it'll be in those heart things and

the reason is because those white spaces are so wide open the competitive pressures are non-existent for example today you have this weirdly academic

argument about climate change it exists it doesn't exist while we were in an ice age now it's one of course you're who care who cares what's undeniable is that

we're ripping apart the biodiversity of our planet what is undeniable is that we as a human population will be forced to concentrate because certain parts of the world will get basically you know

subsume by water we do not have food supplies that these are conclusively known to be true yet nobody's really working on a problem and part of it is

because the people won't have the ambition to try to go after it the capital markets don't reward that kind of decision-making but if somebody were to solve it don't you think that they

are in economic terms a multi trillionaire of course you think food delivery is where like the next great [ __ ] breakthrough is gonna come you're all hopped up on [ __ ]

marijuana and you need a [ __ ] brownie like what a joke okay go ahead go and look through crunchbase not that shitty useless idiotic companies that have

gotten funded doing garbage like that versus climate change think about that think about that think about that when you guys eventually find your partner your significant other your husband your

wife you get married you have kids you will not be able to hand off a planet that they can predictably live in you will not your generation and nobody is

[ __ ] doing anything about it so the capital markets work just completely completely out of their minds and so I [Applause]

want to bring us back to the point that you were making about exploiting consumer behavior in a consumer internet business you said that this is a time for soul-searching in social media

businesses and and you were part of building the largest one what soul-searching are you doing right now

on that I feel tremendous guilt I think we I think we all knew in the back of our minds even though we feigned this

whole line of like there probably aren't any really bad unintended consequences I think in the back deep deep recesses of

our minds we we kind of knew something bad could happen but I think the way we defined it was not like this it literally is a point now where I think

we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works that is truly where we are and I would encourage all of you as the future

leaders of the world to really internalize how important this is if you feed the Beast that beast will destroy you if you push back on it we have a

chance to control it and rein it in and it is a point in time where people need to hard break from some of these tools and the things that you rely on

the short-term dopamine driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works no civil

discourse no cooperation misinformation miss truth and it's not an American problem this is not about Russian ads

this is a global problem so we are in a really bad state of affairs right now in my opinion it is it is eroding the core

foundations of how people behave by and between each other and I don't have a good solution you know my solution is I just don't use these tools anymore I haven't for years it's created huge

tension with my friends huge tensions in my social circles if you look at like you know my facebook for you I probably haven't I posted maybe two times in seven years three

times five times like just it's less than 10 and it's weird I guess I kind of just innately didn't want to get programmed and so I just tuned it out

but I didn't confront it and now to see what's happening it's really it really it really bums me up like think about like there were these examples where

there was a hoax in whatsapp where in some like village in India people were like afraid that their kids were gonna get kidnapped etc and then there were

these lynchings that happened as a result where people were like vigilante running around they think they found the

person and they I mean I mean seriously like that's what we're dealing with you know and imagine like when you take that

to the extreme where you know bad actors can now manipulate large swaths of people to do anything you want it's just

a it's a really really bad state of affairs and we compound the problem right we curate our lives around this

perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short-term signals hearts likes thumbs up and we conflate that with Valley and we conflate it with truth and

instead what it really is is fake brittle popularity that's short-term and that leaves you even more and admit it vacant and empty before you did it because then it forces

you into this vicious cycle where you're like what's the next thing I need to do now because I need it back think about that compounded by two billion people and then think about how

people react then to the perceptions of others it's just a it's really bad it's really really bad it sounds like you're taking deep personal responsibility also in and

being a part of it I kind of look I did it I did what I did a great job there and I think that business overwhelmingly does positive good in the world where I

have decided to spend my time is to take the capital that they rewarded me with and now focus on the structural changes that I can control I can't control that I can control my decisions which is I

don't use a [ __ ] I can control my kids decisions which is they're not allowed to use this [ __ ] and then I can go focus on diabetes and education and climate

change that's what I can do but everybody else has to soul-search a little bit more about what you're willing to do because your behaviors you don't realize it but you are being

programmed it was unintentional but now you got to decide how much you're willing to give up how much of your intellectual independence and don't think oh yeah not me I'm [ __ ] genius

I'm at Stanford you're probably the most likely to [ __ ] fall for it because you were [ __ ] check boxing your whole goddamn life no offense guys

none taken so how I mean you've been outspoken about the Trump to administration's position on immigration on on a number I mean these things are gonna collide in

government and business right that's happening now yeah so what what do you want these future business leaders to do about it once they get into that spot

get the money get the money and then let's get around a table and let's create new rules literally that simple

get the [ __ ] money I'm serious do not get it it is gonna be made it is going to be allocated and you have a moral imperative to make sure that if you have

a point of view that matters and you want to reflect it you get it I'm gonna go get it other people are gonna go get it and then it will be about a

competition of views and don't wrap yourself in all this like you know liberal kind of [ __ ] about oh my god money blah no stop here's how the

[ __ ] world works okay it drives the world for better or for worse economic incentives Drive entire swaths of populations to behave in very very

predictable and then when you when you take it away unpredictable ways ask anybody in your class that's from a developing nation ask anybody in your

class like who has seen that play out from where they're from so that's what you have to do you gotta go and get it if you control the capital and you have

a point of view you can now then the question is don't be a sellout whatever your worldview is you should be spending time to think about what that is so that

when you control some of these purse strings you push that view into the world I will never judge you and you should not judge me for what that worldview is but the point is the more

diversity of those views the more rational actors we have and the more of a balanced fare system that is what diversity really means to me it

doesn't mean like let's manage back to a quota you know it doesn't mean like okay we need a black guy a brown guy we need a few that's not what it means this is

what it means right there are people in this audience that have probably dealt with the same kind of like life that I've dealt with you have a very unique

world view that matters and in the absence of capital you're irrelevant with capital you're powerful and then

you decide in small ways and medium-sized ways and large ways right and it just depends on the scale of capital that you have and so that's what's necessary now in capitalism which

is that we have to come back to like what is it really is it an economic system yes but it is a philosophy as well right and it's a philosophy that

says we will vote for the change we intend based on the views that we have and when you look at the most successful people that operate in these tentacles

that's what they do look at the Koch brothers that's what they do they have built a network of influence based on capital their world view is propagated

into the world at an unbelievably aggressive rate that has been compounding for decades that is genius it is genius it doesn't matter whether

you agree with their worldview the question is what's the counterweight to their worldview can you name what can you name a group of people that operate

in the exact same way methodically meticulously assembling Capital influence assets who believe the opposite irrespective of what you think

of the koch's you want both views out in the world at scale well right now you have this and you don't have this and

there are many examples of that and so get the money and don't lose your moral compass when you do you said that you

think VC is a horrendous allocator of capital so if we need to go get the capital how do we do it better well we're chipping away I think other

people will copy us you know venture is basically just a bunch of soulless cowards you know like they're all

they're all just kind of look they're well-intentioned but they're well-intentioned soulless cowards they

have fallen for what everybody else falls for which is not which is which you can't blame them for which is here is this gold star and they're like wow

I've gotten a gold star and then the minute you do that what you do is you start to just choke it really tight and you're like I don't want to lose this gold star and then what happens you go

risk-off and then what happens your behaviors are about protecting the seed of power that you have the social definition that that seat affords you and so now instead of being an

accelerant of a progressive worldview you become a retardant to a progressive worldview right your risk appetite shrinks the surface area in which you're willing to make decisions shrink you so

you you eat and when you are a critical part of the future again going back to how I started the most important part of capitalism is going to be the folks that are driving the technological change well as a class that's what VCS are

supposed to do but they're by and large in my opinion the wrong people so how do we do it you have to make it more systematic you have to make it more data-driven you have to strip out the

bias you have to be open 24/7 you know you can't have these dumb rules of like oh I only do deals if they're like within 15 you know miles driving distance like how can the most important

part of it I mean did you can you imagine if I walked in to Zach's office Facebook board I'm like I have a great [ __ ] idea Facebook is only going to be open for

business Monday through Friday 10:00 to 5:00 kids want to get home summers we're gonna take off and so the

pitch is going to show like a 404 page and if you make sense like over like Google you know you we only want you to

search during business hours and so you know you have so you have to be open for scale you have to be global you have to do all of these things so that you can get the money into the hands of the

people that deserve it and then help them and by helping them what you have to do is actually address the core structural parts of business building that are not done well today and the

best analog is AWS if you were starting a business 15 years ago I can even tell you a decade ago we were racking servers in our data center because the growth

was great and somewhere along the way Amazon said you know what all of that complexity is necessary but it's not sufficient to building Facebook or any

other great company so let me abstract that for you let me go and replace all of those good people with an API and I'll take those good people and they'll

be celebrated at Amazon and initially a few people said yes and you know people thought in 2007 AWS was a joke and we used to laugh at it we're like why would

anybody do this stuff and now see how fast the decade later you're on the other side of the fence if any come any of you guys start a business and you're not on AWS you would be at the joke

right so what did they do they basically said here's all this stuff that's necessary to building a business you need to do it you probably don't want to

do it you're probably not going to do it well and so let me just replace it all with an abstraction your company can be smaller leaner more efficient and now the money you raise can be used for

things that approximate core product value better okay now in 2017 asked the same question what's the next set of things that make sense and in my opinion what we

uncovered at Facebook is what every company needs which is how do you shift from an anecdotal political capital social capital oriented way of making

decisions aside a company to a very precise unemotional data-driven process and the way you do it is by building a bunch of data infrastructure by collecting a bunch of data itself by

helping you optimize your business in a bunch of obvious and non-obvious ways and so what we believe is that we should take that capability that that my team built at Facebook and abstracted for all

of you who intend to start a company so now in the future what should happen is you'll go to AWS you'll get some infrastructure you'll go to social capital comm and you'll get some insights and knowledge and it's all

interacting via api's it's all in interaction via endpoints and primitives and what happens is we can now learn from the feedback from your data how

you're doing we can merge those learnings across many many other businesses we can find things in some remote part of some company over here and translate that as value for you over

here wouldn't you want that of course you'd want that you know what if we could do more efficient customer acquisition what if we could figure out churn better what if we so all of these things now are what we are going to

bring to the market systemic capabilities and I think over time what that does is again it moves to a much more progressive view of what capitalism

should be it's not the few that matched a human driven pattern but it's more about taking big shots scaling up the money being able to support people in

structurally predictable ways and allowing them to build better companies those companies I suspect will be as profitable but they'll be smaller they'll be more efficient they'll have more revenue per head all the things

that you would want over time so that instead of having four or five mega companies you could have millions and millions and millions of smaller better run companies and that's my worldview

and I think if we do that we achieve our goals we kind of focus on hard product all of that stuff comes together if we enable that so what you're seeing from us is that it's really upsetting and disconcerting

to the established sort of venture classes because it up ends how they've defined their value it's a very classic inventors dilemma right they are like in

my brain is pattern recognition but we know that that's not true and the data shows you that that's not true you know simple question for all of you guys that love the lore of Silicon

Valley from the 70s when Microsoft was founded - now if you look at all the major companies that have been created major say over 50 billion over 60

billion what percentage of the series a investors overlapped you did the a of Microsoft and you did the a of Google or you did the a of uber right like we're

pattern recognition again you know it's non-numerical right it's about like wow I like the cut of this guy's Jim you

know well the answer is it's it's less than 2% so what does that mean everybody's bullshitting that's what it really means right

if you're in a seat and you have good deal flow and you have precious capital and there's a massive tailwind of technological change over time you

get one of the twenty hang you look like a genius that's basically what's happening and nobody wants to admit that but that's the [ __ ] truth it's the

truth so if anybody looks at you and tells you they know what the [ __ ] they're doing they're lying they're lying they are lying to themselves at a minimum and at

a maximum they're lying to you because the data does not support that claim and that's irrefutable so I don't want to be one of those people that stumble into a

company and look back and like oh yeah we were geniuses I want us to be systematic and I want us to be able to deploy tools and capabilities that get

us closer and closer to that and that is what if you're again a traditionalist freaks you out and that's what allows you to make these much longer-term

commitments to businesses that are going to address healthcare education no I've got that's just because I'm rich but no I mean is it to be honest like I

I don't need anybody else's money that's like look this is not like a popular view so the first [ __ ] billion dollars is mine and then I have to prove

it and then other people glom on but I mean many of them started by caring but I suspect over time if we end up with a hundred two hundred five hundred billion dollars

how much of that last 5060 percent really care that's okay I want the [ __ ] money I will play the goddamn

game you know win because I want the money because I want to extend my influence do you know what I'm saying yeah they want to return it's fine

he wants the money because I want to win I I so deeply want to win how I'm just

gonna say this exactly as it's coming how do you keep that power from corrupting you I have no idea that's the

honest answer I have no idea I've become increasingly isolated it's harder and harder for me to connect because I'm so

in my own mind like how does this all play out you know how do i how do i fundraise how do I make how do I help facilitate good investing decisions which really means how do I help this

great team think about a more platform eyes approach and in that I just get really isolated and so I don't have a

good answer I like things like this and I I like to say the things that I do and maybe it helps you in your own lives but to be honest it's very selfish it helps

me because like it reminds me of when I'm in a place like it reminds me of these stories like just reminding myself like I made 455 an hour Burger King I

would get a $50 check and I'd buy bus passes that's awesome I just I don't ever want to forget that and I'll go months and not remember that

but now as I say it I'm like okay I'm I was I started a good earnest person and I need to stay a good earnest person so I don't have a good answer and I'll tell

you of those 150 people maybe it's a little bit more but I've met a lot of them it's it's it's really hard you it's

very easy to end up really drunk with power it's really hard yeah I really

appreciate that candor because I don't think that we get it very often and you've laid out an incredible vision for money as an instrument of change so I'm

really grateful that you were here to share it with us today thank you and we're gonna open it up now to questions I'm sure that there are many follow-ups

on what you've explored but any feedback

[Applause] hi I'm Dana I'm second year MBA at GSP

thank you for being with us today but I'm not here to give feedback but I have a question for you you just took social capital Quito Sophia topic

I wonder what's your plan to run this public fund how would that be different from running a private fund or it's just another way to get money

so awesome yes but no uh so one of the things that I think about a lot is if I am in a position to reshape I've been in

a position where I was a part of a group that helped shape psychology of society that's been a great experience and and and I learned a lot and so now in this position what I say to myself is what

are the psychological things I'd love to change now and one of them is around this idea of patience and what's counterintuitive and I said this earlier when we were just talking is that I

think bringing liquidity into companies sooner will actually allow companies to bake longer and more patiently and so part of what this vehicle is is about

bringing liquidity sooner in a company's life cycle because if we can take this company use it to acquire something else and that CEO is now able to compensate their employees as counterintuitive as

it sounds I suspect that they are less likely to leave and so now you could have employees stay at a business for seven eight nine ten years which used to

be the historical norm and now it's not most of you probably are thinking to yourselves well I'm gonna get a great job at the JI after the GSB but I should

probably portfolio manage my my career for the next six or seven years 18 months here 18 months there 18 months there and then I'll decide what I really want to do and part of it is because

there's an incentive to sort of like build this kind of portfolio approach but I suspect if you knew that liquidity was sort of like a more traditional predictable thing many people would

actually say you know what I like these people here I like the mission of the company I want to continue to help advance their goals and now that you've actually you know solved my compensation

problem I'm willing to commit so part of this vehicle is trying to turn back the incentives towards people staying at companies longer which i think is going

to be required if you're gonna try to solve hard problems because if right now the Silicon Valley attrition rates in most companies twenty percent that means every five years your entire employee base is turned over think about that how

do anything valuable if everybody is new every five years how is that possible it's probably not possible so that's what I'm that's what I would try to

change and get the money hi I'm Carolyn I'm also an MBA - your sports analogy of kind of buckling down and going into hyperdrive really resonated with me I

also realized that that can go too far so I'm curious to hear how you make some of the tough calls on whether it's not to participate in the next round of fundraising or whatever that looks like to you how do you make those decisions

this is honestly this is that so yesterday it's we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about this we've made a bunch of decisions that I deeply

regret because they were entirely monetary in nature and what I said to the team was I'm fine with us making purely monetary decisions but we didn't even do those well it's not as if we

like had a predictable rate of return on that that said yeah you know what we're just gonna kind of like close our eyes here you know double our money and walk away and so the reason I brought that up

to them was I was like our decision-making can't bleed over time and right now it's very hard for us as

an organization to know how much it should be mission driven how much should not when should we really double down on things that are not working when should we not when should we just give up because it's just either the timing is

not the right time and quite honestly I don't have a very good answer but if it is the thing that we are now I would say

the most emotionally sensitive - because for example the opposite may be true so if the diabetes business turns out to work does the hundred and first person that works at social capital say [ __ ] it

we're just gonna buckle down and you know when they're writing checks all of a sudden were 50 million deep into something that is clearly not going to work was that it so I don't have a really good answer but it is the thing

that I think about the most when do you know how do you know to keep going for it when do you know that it's just too much when do you know that your decision-making is bleeding into a vein

that is not constructive I have no idea so Billy's a great question it's it's I think about that a

lot probably a lot of things like it's really powerful to be able to say I don't know I mean I would just encourage you guys all to just be like I don't

know like this culture like American culture it's this weird thing of like know-it-alls everybody has to know everything how the [ __ ] can you ever learn how is when is that gonna be

valuable don't be the just own own that that one line I don't know it's so powerful and

as I kind of like get more abstracted when I meet people and I ask them things it is so endearing to hear I don't know because behind that it's just like just

a self-awareness and confidence that I think is increasingly rare now you guys are like I'm gonna [ __ ] grin [ __ ] this guy and just keep telling everybody

I don't know don't do that I mean really own it if you're gonna say it really own it but I really think it's a very powerful thing to be able to say I don't

know hi my name is Venusian and I'm a first year MBA student I'm also a Canadian who went to Waterloo and my first job was at Burger King so I really

see you as a role model my [ __ ] brother you look like me - it's crazy to think are you planket or good actor I

swear I swear to God well you're really freaking me out right now

what do you want so my question for you is a couple years ago at an event in HBS you mentioned that MBA students are

typically at a disadvantage with respect to getting capital if they pursue entrepreneurship do you think that still holds true today if so that's a perfect

example of me before Cass which team haven't talked about expressing my bias and I think part of my bias came from my insecurities about not having a grad

degree part of my bias was like looking at people like you saying wow I just feel inferior to folks like you I've had felt for huge amounts of time and so

it's a perfect example where even though I can say it my what I said at that HBS thing was me just spouting off making myself feel better about my biases and

what I would tell you today is it can matter it doesn't matter I would rather say that there are ways of figuring out how valuable you are that are independent of those traditional signals

whether you have them or not so I would say today I've changed my mind that's another thing changing your mind is so

powerful I mean [ __ ] change your mind it makes for really really really bursty difficult marriages at times my wife

will tell you but man is it powerful in business change your mind all the time and it's amazing again where you'll find like really good scaled leaders want the

right answer and they're fine with capitulation they're fine with change they really are because they just want the right answer and then you just get so invested in an answer and then you

build up all of this superficial logic to reinforce it versus saying I don't know let me oh you know what I changed my mind Wow another powerful thing I think

I show you my mind all the time I think this is gonna be our last question I saw some of the venture world at South Bank some of the tech world and you said

something about amassing capital today what do you think one of the best ways for us to amass capital on a risk-adjusted basis I mean

the last part is just such a sellout a risk-adjusted base I don't [ __ ] buy some bonds I mean I don't know here's

what I would tell you man I think I think if you ask me who's building the most important indelible company in the world I've been very public about this I think it's Jeff Bezos part of what he

realized was the value of slow compounding so here's my little theory about company value creation the faster you build it that is the half-life it will get destroyed in the

same amount of time and so when you think about a lot of like social businesses that's played out but and when you see sort of like what the sort of like the tops are like you know does

it take eight nine ten years to build a really great consumer business it'll take 8 9 10 12 years to destroy it and we may see the tipping point on a couple of these businesses right now we

may be seeing it in front of our eyes regulatory otherwise so why is that an important statement amassing capital to me is about finding a smart useful

solution to a very hard practical problem and being slow and methodical and again this what I'm saying you have

to rewire your brain for that to be okay how do you in year two or year five come

back to this room for your what is it called when you get reunion and say I'm still working on the same thing and when

somebody says and how's it going you have the courage to say it's hard I haven't figured it out yet I don't know but if you figure it out and you have

this moderate growth moderate compounding that that is the key that is like that's gold you know I look at like our returns and it's so funny because

it's like you can get so enthralled by IR ours in our business and like you know I have I have friends who run other

organizations and they're like we posted 92% pi RR and I'm like well you can't eat what does it really mean and when you unpack it what you realize is like fast

money returns can completely really decay long-term thinking and sound judgment and so I'm like wow I would really love to just compound at 15% a

year and the reason is because if I can do that for 50 years that's 250 [ __ ] billion dollars like some crazy number like it's just enormous so it's like

slow and steady against heart problems start by turning off your social apps and giving your brain a break because then you will at least be a little bit more motivated to not be motivated by

what everybody else [ __ ] thinks about you do you know what I'm saying it's hard think about how all this stuff plays together how does trying to get you know posting your [ __ ] waffles

online relate to me starting a business and accumulating capital this is wiring your brain for superfast feedback it's the same brain you're using to build a company don't think

they're not the same do you know what I'm saying no yes give one break so

you're training your brain here whether you think it or not whether you know it or not whether you acknowledge your not acknowledge that these things where you're spending hours a day are rewiring

your psychology and physiology in a way that now you have to use to go and figure out how to be productive in the commercial world so if you don't change this you are going to get the same

behaviors over here change this there's a reason why Steve Jobs was like antisocial media I am Telling You I'm not on these [ __ ] apps I'm not him by

any stretch of the imagination but I am proactively trying to rewire my brain chemistry to not be short-term focused

I'm telling you they're linked come on thank you so much for being here and

[Applause]