WEBVTT

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So, you were once a young 19-year-old

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founder in the AI space.
Uh, and you're a whole 25 26 26

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>> 26. >> You're all of 26 now.
I mean, you're

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basically a seasoned veteran. Um,
but there are more and more founders every

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day starting AI companies uh right now
and you've been through that. what's

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some advice you would give them about

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starting a company in the space? [bell]

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>> Yeah, so in general my um one of my

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observations from studying you know

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successful companies is that most of the

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time um you start companies long you

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know in an area or in a trend long
before they become cool and the thing

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that allows you to actually win is that
by the time the thing becomes cool or

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interesting you've had this like head
running head start to be able to take

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advantage of the opportunity.
Y >> um so that might cause founders to be

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slightly dissuaded
from starting [laughter]

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AI companies today. Another way to think
about this is like you know for founders

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starting AI companies
today there's just like

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>> an incredible amount of competition you
know I think um there was a uh um a few

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friends of mine were working
on an idea for um AI powered sales.

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>> Yeah. >> And there are
probably literally 50 if

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not more companies working on AI powered
sales. The other thing on the flip side,

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there's a founder fantasy which is, oh,
I'm going to just like hire a bunch of

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incredible execs. They'll do all
the stuff I don't want to do and I'm going

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to be able to sit back and like just
sort of watch the cogs happen and watch

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the machine work. And that's also
extremely unrealistic because the reason

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that you are a good founder CEO
is because you make very good decisions

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over and over and over again um over
a extended period of time. And to pull

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yourself out of those decision-m loops
is you know would be kind of crazy.

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That's a pattern we've seen a lot which
is I'm going to hire executives. I'm

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going to step back a bit and then
it's like oh realization that like hey

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some big decisions go wrong and like
wait this is the point of me being here.

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>> Yeah. I think that
a lot of startups and

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a lot of companies are valuable because
of an innovation premium. You know,

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investors believe that that uh founder
companies are going to out innovate the

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market and so your job
is to out innovate the market. So

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>> you better be
in the strategic decisions

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and innovate. Yeah, for sure. Uh it was
an article by Paul Graham or an essay by

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Paul Graham I should say uh called Schle
blindness and uh you know I encourage

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everyone to read it if if you get
a chance but um basically the idea was

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that like you know most people avoid

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thinking about you know the really sort

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of just like hairy ugly difficult
annoying problems that exist in the

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world but they're really really
important and he actually uses Stripe as

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as one of the examples in his in his
essay but um there's there's these

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problems are everywhere you know the sort
of like ugly hairy problems that um

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that uh everyone knows are important but
like aren't sexy to work on. And if you

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can identify what those problems are,
then those generally make really

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exciting um startup ideas. So I wrote
this post many years ago called hire

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people who give a And it really
is pretty simple. You notice I noticed you

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know when you interview people or when
you interact with people you can tell

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people who are just sort of like phone
it in versus people who sort of like

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they like hang on to their work as like

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you know it's like it's like the so
incredibly monumental and forceful and

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important to them that they they do
great work and it sort of like eats at

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them when they don't do great work and
when they do great work they're sort of

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so satisfied with themselves.
And so there's sort of this like um the

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magnitude of of care. And one of the
greatest indicators of like a just like

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how much I enjoyed working with people
or like frankly how successful they were

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at scale was really just this like what

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is what you know to what degree of their

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what degree their soul is invested in

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into um uh into the work that they do.

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And so I think that that you know if
you were to pick one thing that that

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probably is the sort of like unifier in
some way. It's like, you know, um I care

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a lot, uh I care a lot about every
decision we make at the company. Um you

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know, I still review every hire
at the company. You know, I I we have this

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process why where I approve or reject
literally every single hire at the

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company. Um uh and and so I care
immensely and then this and then like I

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work with all these people who care
immensely and then that enables us to

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really sort of like we um we feel much

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more deeply what happens in the business
and as a result we sort of like uh you

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know we'll change course more quickly.

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We'll learn more quickly. Um we will
uh we'll take our work more seriously.

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We'll adapt more quickly. And I think
that that's been quite important to the

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to the success that we've had.

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>> Let's go back just a little bit.

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>> Okay. So you you go to San Francisco by

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yourself as a 19-year-old kid who had

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just dropped out of MIT. How do you

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but you're immature at that point. And

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so how do you develop leadership skills?

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And I mean how do you have how do you

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have the knowhow and make the

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connections to build a company as a

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19-year-old kid?

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>> Yeah. you. So, um

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let's see what happened. So, basically

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early on like um it's about who you
get investment from. And so, if you get

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>> So, it was just you with the

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competition. There was no team.

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>> No team. No team. And then, um and so I

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and I was coding every day. And then I

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got um we got Y Cominator to invest in

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us. And then we got um this this
investment firm called Excel which was

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were one of the early investors into

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Facebook to invest. And so we got um

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some some good investors and then they

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helped me build the team like find

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people to hire. I also hired you know
what actually happened is I mostly hired

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people I knew from school. >> Really?

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>> Yeah. So like >> cuz you
could trust them. I think more

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that they could trust me because I think

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if like at the time if I went to like a

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a 25year-old engineer in San Francisco
and I was like, "Hey, we should we

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should work together." I had no
credibility. Like um I remember I w I

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like I would get coffee with these
people and I would say like, "Yeah, this

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is what we're working on. It's super

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cool. You should join us." And then they

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would all just be like, "Okay, um cool.

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I guess I'm going to go back
to my job now. [laughter]

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Um, so early on I had no credibility

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except for with people I went to uh

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college with uh who we were just like

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friends and we liked each other and so I
managed to recruit a bunch of them over.

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Um, and >> they dropped out too.

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>> Some of them dropped out. Some of them
[clears throat] just happened to, you

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know, were like seniors or whatever,

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finished school and then joined. Um, it

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was like a mix. It was a mix. Um,

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>> [music]