# Why Microsoft Has Zero Safety Net—We Could Fail Tomorrow – Satya Nadella

*Mahmoud Khodor* · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkgNhgBXY9I

## Summary

Satya Nadella reflects on his 32 years at Microsoft and the idea that tech has no franchise value, meaning the company must reinvent itself in every platform shift—he describes the current AI wave as year two of his fourth such shift. He explains Microsoft's full-stack AI strategy, the OpenAI partnership, competition with Google, and views on quantum, gaming, and country-level AI. He also discusses the cultural transformation at Microsoft around growth mindset and empathy, drawing on personal experiences including his late son.

## Key points

- Nadella says there is no franchise value in tech, so Microsoft could fail tomorrow and must stay relevant every day.
- He frames the current moment as year two of his fourth platform shift, after PC/client-server, web/internet, and mobile/cloud.
- The OpenAI partnership was a 'shot in the dark' made long before it became conventional wisdom, and it brings competition to a field where Google might have been the default winner.
- Microsoft's AI strategy is full-stack: Azure infrastructure with Nvidia, AMD and its own silicon, a redone data tier, and copilots across GitHub, Microsoft 365 and business functions.
- He cites Diego Comman's research advising countries to import the best general purpose technology and build value-add on top rather than reinventing the wheel.
- Microsoft's social contract in each country comes from contributing to local progress, not from being beyond geopolitics.
- The culture change was built on Carol Dweck's growth mindset—being a 'learn-it-all' rather than a 'know-it-all'—and on empathy as the root of innovation.
- He shares that the birth of his son, who had cerebral palsy and passed away a few years ago, taught him empathy over several years.

## Notes

### No franchise value in tech
- Satya Nadella, in his 32nd year at Microsoft, says there is no such thing as franchise value in tech—every day you must work to stay relevant tomorrow.
- He describes the current moment as year two of his fourth platform shift, after PC/client-server, web/internet, and mobile/cloud.
- The lack of a safety net makes him nervous, but he sees this as the excitement of tech: you get to reinvent yourself again and again.

### Tech and the broader economy
- Tech spend narrowly defined is about 4–5% of GDP; the real opportunity of AI as a general purpose technology is whether the other 95% of the economy grows.
- He compares AI to the UK spending 10% of GDP on railroads during the industrial revolution—the point was the entire economy, not the railroads.

### The OpenAI partnership and competition
- Microsoft has worked on AI since Microsoft Research's early speech work in 1995, but OpenAI brought a new, ambitious approach.
- The partnership was a real 'shot in the dark', backed long before it became conventional wisdom.
- Google is a competent, vertically integrated competitor with data, silicon, models, products and distribution; the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership brings competition to what could have been a default Google win.

### Full-stack AI strategy
- Infrastructure: Azure for training and inference, partnering with Nvidia and AMD, plus Microsoft's own silicon and system architecture.
- Data tier: retrieval augmented generation, embeddings, vector search, chunking, and throughput between data and inference.
- Application layer: copilots—GitHub Copilot first, then copilots across Microsoft 365, service, sales and finance.

### Scaling laws and small models
- He will not bet against scaling laws, but stays open to model architecture breakthroughs that need less compute, citing the Phi small language model and 'textbooks is all you need'.

### Countries and geopolitics
- Citing Diego Comman's studies on technology diffusion, he advises countries to import the best general purpose technology and build value-add on top.
- Microsoft must earn its 'permission and license to operate' one country at a time by contributing to local progress.

### Culture and empathy
- The culture change was pattern-matching from Microsoft's own successes and failures, anchored in Carol Dweck's growth mindset: be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all.
- Empathy is not a soft skill but the root of innovation—design thinking is 'applied empathy'—meeting unmet, unarticulated customer needs.
- The birth of his son, who had cerebral palsy and passed away a few years ago, took him years to learn what empathy really meant.

## Transcript

[00:00] Sata, you're the CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world. What's on your mind these days? What's top of mind for me is twofold, right? One is I'm grounded in the fact that in our business, in tech business, now this is my 32nd year at Microsoft. Um I know that for a fact that there's no such thing as a franchise value. And so that means every day you have to get up and hopefully you're doing things that are going to be relevant tomorrow. Um, and so to me that's sort of perhaps the biggest lesson learned over all these decades and years. And so here we are on what is essentially a complete new platform shift uh that we are in the midstop right I kind of say it's my 32nd year but it's year two of my fourth

[00:45] platform shift and so what's on mind is like okay what is this platform shift really all about and as a company can we be allin and innovate right I mean at the end of the day when I say there's no franchise value it also means that you get to play for it all up again even the battles we won and the battles we lost are all up for grabbed again. And so therefore, um there's a freshness to it. So what's on my mind is, you know, that ability to ground myself back yet on another platform shift and it's exciting. The fact that there is no franchise value, does that make you nervous? Absolutely. I mean, it should make every one of us nervous, right? At least that's why I think tech is so exciting, right? It's sort of it's kind

[01:33] of like the two sides to the same coin, right? One is you're nervous and it's exciting. So therefore, you can't rest. Uh but at the same time, hey, who wants to be in in a business that you know where you don't get to reinvent yourself again and again? Absolutely. Do we think that we look at technology in very narrow of a sense? I mean, how technology can be the driver for the next economical growth? That's a great great question. I think a lot about that right which is uh in some sense if you think at a GDP level uh tech spend narrowly defined is probably four 5%. Uh so the question is what is happening with the other 95%. So one of the ways I've always thought about the prospects of any new technological

[02:23] paradigm or platform shift like take AI let's I if AI is going to be the next big general purpose technology for me the real opportunity is let's say tech spend goes from 5 to 10% over the next you know five years or what have you or 10 years then what happens to the other 90% and the pie does it become bigger right? Does the you know do we have a breakthrough in healthcare driven by AI? Do we have a breakthrough in material science and energy transition because of uh AI? Uh and the list goes on, right? So to me that is fundamentally the way I think about it, right? is I I think that one of the things that might be most important for us is to consider how a general purpose technology somebody was

[03:15] telling me this right which is in the height of the industrial revolution uh in the United Kingdom they spent 10% of their GDP building the railroads and obviously the railroads not just didn't is not about the railroads it was about the entire economy of the United Kingdom and so something like that I think is what uh that's the unit of analysis at least for me as to how tech and its future will impact the you know broader society and economy. I mean Google had all the top AI people but suddenly you got ahead with your partnership with open AI. How did that came about? I mean to me the way I came at this very simple which is obviously we mean like I think the very first thing Microsoft research did in 1995 when it was formed

[04:08] was some stuff around speech right in fact I think we hired a bunch of folks from CMU and so we've been at this AI thing in its variety of different forms forever um and so one of the things that when I met with the OpenAI folks and Sam and Greg and crew uh back in you know I would say when they were working even on the Dota 2 contest and what have you uh was to sort of say wow they have a new different approach to things and we wanted to partner I mean you know one of the things that I've always looked at over my years at Microsoft is look for high ambition um technology innovation companies right whether it you know and partnership like whether it's Intel and Windows came together and and that was

[04:55] successful. SAP and SQL server it came together and it was successful. So I'm always looking for partners that we can innovate with and that's what I found in uh Sam and team and uh and we you know at that time it was not like it was a it was a real uh shot in the dark right it is not like oh wow this is a sure sure thing everybody now talks about it as if uh you know this is the issue with tech right which is uh long before it's conventional wisdom you have to be all in and hope it works um and this is one of those things where we backed it long before it was conventional wisdom. Um, and here we are. But I don't take, you know, like there's going to be severe amount of competition. You know,

[05:39] Google's a very competent company and obviously they have uh both the talent and the compute and they have, you know, they're the vertically integrated player in this, right? They have everything from data to silicon to models to have products and distribution and there's others as well. And so yeah, we will have significant amount of competition and I think if anything Microsoft's partnership with open AI is bringing more competition to otherwise what would have been a default Google should have be the default winner. Uh and if we partner well and we innovate well we can bring some competition to that. So if you look three to five years where do you think Microsoft's going to be in the whole AI ecosystem? So to me I think

[06:24] about this in the fullness of the stack right so I want us to have first and foremost the best AI infrastructure uh so that means when it comes to Azure whether it's for training whether it's for inference to have fantastic infrastructure we'll partner with Nvidia we'll partner with AMD we'll have our own silicon uh we will have our own system architecture we will take the best system architecture innovation from Jensen and Lisa and others who may come along and make sure Azure is serving the needs of open AI serving the needs of Mistral uh serving the needs of FI that we are building right which is the small language model so that's kind of the first uh thing that we want to do which is the best work um in being able to

[07:14] build the infrastructure out for both training and inference and then the next layer up we want to have like the ENT entire data tier right so you can imagine as these models and model capabilities become uh you know more capable I think the data tier will be completely uh redone uh right we've talked with the retrieval augmented generation already you have all these things where whether it's embeddings vector search how do you chunk data such that retrieval augmented generation can work well so that's an entire layer or when context lens become bigger that's a different sort of data layer like what's the throughput between data and your inference fleet uh how do you sort of think about that so therefore we will

[08:00] innovate on the data layer and then of course on top of it is where um we will innovate on our uh co-pilots one of the first products we built was GitHub copilot in fact my entire confidence in this generation of AI started when I started seeing from GPD3 to 35 and that implementation in GitHub uh and so we now have you know not only GitHub co-pilot we have co-pilot for m all knowledge work in Microsoft 365 we have co-pilots for these functions whether it's service or sales or finance uh so we're going to innovate in our app layer uh on our own and so that's I think fundamentally how I look at it it's a full stack approach uh and each layer by the way we're we will innovate we will have partners we will have

[08:45] others innovating there will be competition even it's not like you know one of the of being a platform company is you got to be comfortable uh with many third parties competing with you on different layers because that to me is core otherwise you kind of try to you know do everything in a monolithic way and at least what we've learned over the years is the best thing to do is to keep each layer competitive on its own. You said in the beginning that we are year two in this paradigm shift. How do you see it compared to other technological breakthrough that you have witnessed? So at least the four I've seen is um I obviously PC client server both what happened on the you know PC and the server side that was my first that's

[09:27] kind of when I joined 92 we're at the beginning of that uh then there was the web internet um and then there was mobile cloud and so AI is the fourth um I think one of the interesting things is each one of these built on the previous right so I don't think the web would have happened if there was not a ubiquitous PC. After all, the first time I saw Mosaic uh you know was as a browser on top of Windows, right? So, and then Netscape came about and then uh IE and what have you. And so therefore, I think um you sort of see each one of these births the next uh and then it goes beyond uh what birthed you, right? That's I think the the real thing, right? Right now we're seeing that right which is the cloud um as we know of it

[10:19] and mobile uh and PCs on the edge have really birthed the AI age and the question is what happens next uh right which is does it go beyond that and that I think is going I mean there's going to be AI that is not just about cognitive work AI that is also going to accelerate science so I think that that's exciting space uh AI that is going to be embodied in the real world so what may happen in robotics is an exciting space and so there is a bunch of things that are going to happen over time. Uh but clearly yes this is year two of a complete new paradigm that obviously reinforces what happened pre or builds on what happened previously but also also is showing early signs of what happens next. If there is no shortage in

[11:06] chips would development have gone faster? That's a good question in the sense of scaling laws, right? So there are two sides to it, right? There's the the training side and the inference side. On the training side, clearly uh compute and compute scale and the scaling laws have proven to be very successful. U and the question is how long does that go? Is there going to be another model architecture breakthrough or what have you. Um I I think that one has to see. It's it's unclear. uh but we definitely are not going to bet against scaling laws and nor are we going to bet against uh or nor are we going to say that this is the last model architecture breakthrough. In fact, a great example of it is even uh what we we've seen even

[11:51] with uh our small language model innovation like FI, right? Which is we are able to create what is significant um capabilities uh in a small language model uh which uh doesn't require obviously the same amount of compute right which is uh like just like attention is everything attention is all you need textbooks is all you need. I mean that sort of intuitively speaks to uh how I think co you know learning can happen and so therefore I would say uh yes if more more more capacity there is in the world the chances are that we will be able to make progress but at the same time I wouldn't discount a real breakthrough uh in model architecture that doesn't perhaps require uh the same type of compute. So that's why I think um at

[12:43] least I want to keep myself open-minded about it. Talking of small language model, do you think a small country like the UEE should develop their own language model? You know, one of the things that I've studied, there's an economist out of Dartmouth, uh, his name is Diego Comman, and he did one of the best longitudinal studies, uh, of technology diffusion. Uh and the fundamental conclusion um paraphrasing was that any country that wants to get ahead should one first make sure that they don't reinvent the wheel which is they import the best general purpose technology that is available in and then on top of it build value add. So there are ways you can add unique knowledge, unique value on top of even what exists

[13:36] uh before you go off and say let's build all the compute all of it and do the same pre-training run u you know there's no nothing stopping any country from doing any of this uh but the question is what is the value ad and so therefore I think that you start from the value ad and then back into whatever is needed for it when you think about how important the big technology companies have become in geopolitics. What kind of reflections do you make? Well, I mean at the end of the day, um two things, right? One is I'm very very grounded on the fact that we are a multinational company that is a definitely in this case a US-based multinational company that has to earn permission and license to operate one country at a time. Right?

[14:18] So therefore, I I think of the uh we're not nation states are the ones that have power. we get to operate in any nation based on our ability to contribute to that country's progress right so whenever I am right whether I'm in Norway or I'm in Jakarta or or New Delhi or wherever I I am always grounded on uh fundamentally the fact is are we able to make you know look the local politicians and political leadership and society at large in the eyes and say that we contributed to their public sector becoming more efficient or large multinational companies in the region becoming more globally competitive because of some tech input education outcome health outcomes small businesses and their productivity at the end of the

[15:09] day you have your your social contract with the country uh comes from your ability to contribute to their local progress and that so I don't think we we can ever be beyond geopolitics will exist with or without us and our goal has to be how do you participate and have permission to operate in your book hit your fresh you talk about three areas um AI quantum computing and mixed reality what kind of opportunities do you see in the quantum computing it's fascinating in fact I I think of all those three still right for example when I think about um mixed reality I think of it as that's an embodied AI right effectively whether it's autonomous uh vehicles robotics or people with glasses they're all seeing the real world is the

[15:58] prompt effectively so your real world understanding so therefore I think of in the generation of AI some of these things become even more interesting and more important and we do need to broaden the aperture versus thinking narrowly of just one device or one form factor similarly quantum is a fascinating thing when I I me mention science right one of the things I look at it and say is in order to make progress on science You need great incilico simulation. Quantum is the ultimate breakthrough. Right? So when we have a complete new system architecture that go breaks free of the one nimon limitation. Uh you are then finally going to be able to simulate something like the dynamics of a cell or a molecule. Right? So that I think when

[16:42] you can do that then everything else even in terms of biology becomes more feasible. The interesting thing is AI is kind of like an emulator of that simulator. In other words, you can kind of simplify the search space. One of the things we did recently uh was um we have a of a model uh for material science which we used to generate a new uh novel compound which we then went and manufactured. We worked with the Pacific National Lab locally here to effectively go reduce the uh the the lithium content uh by 70% in a new battery material uh and produced it right not just conceptualized it but simulated it produced it and so to me uh something where like quantum plus AI I think can be the ultimate accelerator of science

[17:38] uh and we are making progress we will even On quantum we're taking a very full stack approach. Uh we have our software stack with uh you know our Q sharp which is our quantum programming stack. So we are excited about sort of the progress we're making on quantum and how it complements AI and where does gaming fit into this? Yeah. So to me one of the things in fact Microsoft was in gaming long before we you know we were into Windows. In fact simulator I think was launched long before Windows was launched. So uh we are very very excited obviously now with Activision as part of Microsoft we have mobile gaming we have cloud gaming we have console gaming PC gaming so we're a full stack game pub publisher uh as well as a game systems

[18:22] provider um and so our goal there is one we're in gaming for our love of gaming right so I always sort of say we should never be in businesses as a means to some other end it has to be an end otherwise it's not a business so to me gaming uh is something where we want to ing joy of gaming. That's the one pure consumer entertainment category. I love the fact that gaming on a secular basis is probably going to be if not already the biggest entertainment category out there. So that's one. And of course it has real implications on the rest of it. Right? If you think about even remember it's interesting I've not talked to Jensen about it but one of the greatest sort of successes of uh GPUs was fostered by innovation in

[19:09] gaming right DX which was the Microsoft graphics stack is what made GPUs uh an accelerator uh right after all the GPUs were created for PC gaming you know gaming I think as both a an application of AI in terms of like game testing. One of the first areas I'm very excited about is games are so complicated right now. One of the things that we want to use AI is to be able to find these bugs in these even closed worlds uh before they're out there. And so therefore we have some very great use cases there. Uh but beyond that I think gaming as uh data in the context of some of the innovation uh in our models I think is going to be important. Do you game yourself? I'm a, you know, a light gamer. I used

[19:59] to, uh, do a lot more of Civ was my favorite game. Age of Empires is a another great game that I enjoyed. I wish I could play more. Uh, but, you know, from time to time I slip into it. You have really changed the culture in Microsoft. When you look back, what are the most important changes you have made? Look, I mean, first of all, I've, as I said, I've grown up. All my professional career for most part is all Microsoft. So, uh, you know, when you say I've been at Microsoft for 32 years, all the good, the bad, uh, I was part of it, right? So, I don't sort of somehow think that I'm I don't represent all errors of Microsoft. Yeah. Which even makes it more incredible that you have made all these changes. Yeah. And and the way

[20:45] though I came about it is quite frankly as a consumate insider I basically pattern matched as to hey what were the thing when were we at our best uh what was the cultural set of attributes that helped us succeed and then when we failed what were the cultural attributes that caused that failure and then you know dampen this ladder and amplify the former that was as simple as that. So one of the things I look back even in my you know career at Microsoft when we first became the largest market cap company I forget I think in the early 2000s I think we crossed GE you know people on our campus probably were walking around including me thinking oh we must be God's gifts uh because we're so brilliant and what have you except

[21:31] what we needed to be grounded on that day was to say wow we now have a real responsibility to regground ourselves to innovate again uh so that we are relevant in the future right and so that's why I I was lucky enough to have read Carol Dwek's book on mindset which is around child psychology called growth mindset and I love that book I read it more on the context of sort of our children's education but I must say I got educated because I felt like this is uh what makes uh individuals children in school it's very clear right it's better to be a learn it all versus a know-it-all because even if the knowit all has great innate capability uh the learn it all you know even if they start from behind they will surpass

[22:21] the knowit-all right that's sort of uh you know true for children in school it's true for CEOs in my seat uh it's true for companies and so we took that approach we said let's be a learn it all versus a know-it-all uh and the A you say you've achieved that cultural transformation means you're a know-it-all. So therefore it is a good way to sort of say every day you make a bunch of mistakes you at least have the courage to acknowledge them and continue on it. And so it's a it's not a destination you ever reach. But how do you get the organization to buy into it? It's a beautiful it's a great point. So I think the way I I I think see the problem of corporations especially for non-founder companies right founders

[23:09] have great power and great followership and that's why I think they're so successful or at least you know at least we only talk about the successful founders but if you set that that class aside for me mortals like me uh it can't be like okay new dogma from a new CEO and more corporate speak it has to appeal to us as human beings that's why I you I credit more of this work uh by Carol and team and so on because it's not like it was not like I don't think anybody at Microsoft views growth mindset as some Microsoft dogma or definitely not Satia Nadella dogma it is something that speaks to them as humans right which is it's good for them as friends colleagues partners parents neighbors it integrates work and life

[23:58] they can bring their own personality and passion to it uh and benefit from it, right? I I always say like you're not do like this Microsoft culture of growth mindset is not for Microsoft, it's for you. And if you you should only practice it if you feel like it speaks to your own thriving at Microsoft and in life. Uh that's I think what I attribute it to, right? It wouldn't have taken off if it was just another thing that is a top-down slogan. uh it is ultim I always have believed that which is ultimately people work um and find meaning in work uh only if they can find some true deeper meaning for themselves and so that's I think what I've been always trying to invoke and well they clearly also found a true

[24:46] deeper meaning in the concept of empathy because you talk a lot about it and you say it's the key for innovation and leadership and why do you think it's very important to you I think Most people think of empathy as some kind of a soft skill that's interesting in the context of your family or personal life and work's all about hardcore you know whatever right but that but I I look at that and say again what is where does innovation come from right innovation comes from us being able to drive the solutions to unmet unarticulated needs of customers out there right so the key being unmet meta and unarticulated. So that means you have to have a better sense when you're even looking at some log data or you know some customer

[25:35] interview data or whatever you it's not just the words that they're saying but you got to be able to walk in their shoes. Uh and the good news there is this is innate in us all human beings. We have uh the ability to empathize with the other person. Um in fact design thinking is that right? So when people go and say let's do learn about design thinking design thinking is applied empathy. Uh and so to me uh that's what I pulled the thread on which is let's not think of empathy as something that you know is just a soft skill that you reserve for your friends and family but it's I think it's at the root of all innovation. Uh it's about being able to meet the unmet unarticulated needs that comes from your unique I mean your

[26:21] innate ability to have curiosity to learn about others walk in their shoes innovate on their behalf uh and that I think is I think what we have to do and that's why I I think empathy is an important important skill for all of us. When did you first discover the power of empathy? Yeah. And you know, I think that one of the things that I I feel like all of us learn how to turn on this bit of empathy through life's experience, right? So, in some sense, every day you get confronted with different circumstances, not just yourself personally, but people around you. Uh for me obviously the birth of my son uh for both my wife and me was uh was a life-changing event and it was something that uh you know over the

[27:14] years I at least learned a lot because I I I remember in the early days it was all about sort of my son was born with cerebal palsy. He passed away a few years ago. Uh and um uh but you know in the when the when he was born it was a lot about what happened to me. I was sort of you know essentially quote unquote um you know in you know all about why did this happen to us, why did it happen to me or how and then I realized after watching in some sense my wife uh who was there as a caregiver, as a parent uh you know taking him up and down Seattle to every therapy possible. Uh quite frankly you know it took me years not you know days or months or weeks. Um and um and then I realized that it nothing had happened to me but

[28:04] something had happened to my son and I needed to be there for my son and that is the experience I talk a lot about but there's experiences like that every day right some colleague of mine comes with some you know parent of theirs who needs care right that sort of you know I learn from it I or at least let me put it this way I am more attuned to learning from other people's experiences today than I was in the beginning of my career and I think that happens to all of us right which is life's experiences if they they acrewue uh that ability to build a deeper empathy for other people and that also helps you be a better manager a better co-worker a better uh innovator thank you for sharing but do you think

[28:52] there's a contradiction between empathy and execution I don't right I think that at the end end of the day to me you have to take accountability right so this is one of the things that uh in business um like in life too right uh you have to be accountable for making real progress uh one of the things I think about why do businesses exist businesses exist at least I like this colin mayor definition that you have to create profitable solution to challenges of people and planet uh because that's at least a good way to allocate the global resources that are available, right? The profit motive is a good motive because it means you're competing and allocating resources in the most efficient ways and

[29:41] uh and face competition and so therefore you have to have great execution. have to have great accountability. And so I think of empathy as a necessary condition to create great solutions that are profitable and that are competitive solutions that are winning in the marketplace as opposed to somehow this being a trade-off. When you look at your skills and personality as a leader, what do you think that makes you most effective as a leader? I mean, first of all, right, I I I don't think of this as I I I don't know. I have causality here well understood because quite frankly it's so much easier for others to opine on this than or rather it's it's just really for others to judge and assign uh causality there but the way at

[30:27] least I come at this is I don't start with uh what am I good at I am very keenly shaped by what am I not good at uh in other words. I'm always looking what can I learn from someone else. So if there's one attribute I have I don't start each day by thinking oh all the stuff I know and I'm good at. I'm like wow what am I weak at whom do I talk to whom do I meet? How do I really shape the colleagues around me who have better skills than me on many fronts? uh that's what I'm wired like maybe that helps but I don't know whether that's the causality but I don't start each day with saying wow I'm so good at this so therefore I'm going to go do this is that something that you learned from Bill Gates because he said something

[31:17] very similar it's a good point both Bill and Steve uh there is uh there's a sense at Microsoft I think that that's an interesting thing there is you know what Andy Grove would talk the paranoid survive or what have you um and I don't come at it though with paranoia right I I mean I don't like paranoia. I like this just that's why I go back to my own words for this is that's why the the growth mindset or confronting your own fixed mindset having confidence that wow what an unbelievable world we live in that every customer can teach me every partner can teach me every colleague can teach me like what more can I ask for in life uh so it's not paranoia it's not like oh wow we have to go in every day

[32:01] uh that if I don't learn something I'll you know fail I'm more about like what do I learn so that I can innovate maybe uh that's how I come at it and that's right Bill and Steve in their own unique way uh had that mindset and so I've grown up around it how do you solve this in an organization you know humbleness is an interesting word right I I always say that you you need confidence um and uh humility uh and not hubris right because there is sometimes confidence with humility can allow you to really make great progress but confidence that translates into hubris can bring you know it's a downfall of you know civilizations empires and individuals right and from ancient Greece to modern Silicon Valley

[32:48] and so that's why I think uh you have to sort of really get that calibration that you got to have some confidence in your own capability you said in a podcast with Adam Grad that your father has a list of people that he met and a list of ideas generated do you have a list of people that you would like to meet. you know he had this note you know his diaries were full of that schema uh which is uh people met uh ideas generated and tasks completed which I love which is a beautiful way each day to keep a count of uh and absolutely uh so that's sort of like I I took that u to heart and that's essentially how that's my framework for life as