Bill Gurley: 6 Out of 10 People Are Making This Mistake

If you're crafting your own personal career and you're high agency, AI is like a jetpack. We've taught children, young adults, how to grind. We've taught them to persevere for the sake of perseverance. And if you're stuck, you're stuck.

In order to like do these exercises of finding your passion, you sort of have to be like a ruthless asshole, you think?

Unless you're trying to find that edge, somebody else may be.

You have to understand the difference between risk and uncertainty.

People most at threat by AI are the ones that aren't continuously learning, that are just doing the same thing thing they did 10 years ago.

How many times when you were doing it did you want to quit?

I don't ever remember wanting to quit. Really?

Really.

What did the voice say when it was like, I found my calling?

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's try.

I want to talk about the book because there was this— there's a bunch of crazy stats in the book. I want to talk about the Nobel Laureate thing. That was interesting. But the craziest, like one of the craziest things early in the book, I think, did you run this survey? And it said that like 6 or 7 out of 10 people hate their job.

Well, the reason I was asking is like, I kind of want this whole, like, I'm kind of obsessed with this idea of finding your passion, not just because of your book, but like one of my favorite books is Mastery by Robert Greene.

Yes, I'm familiar with it.

Which changed my life. That changed my life. But the reason I'm interested in it is because like I previously had a company that I sold and it was like very successful in all the traditional measurements. I have a company now that's quite successful and I like what I do. But in the back of my mind, I think that it's normal. And maybe you could tell me if I'm wrong, that like even grownups like who are successful still are like, do I, am I, am I following like the right path? Like, am I following, am I going to be in that 6 out of 10 or the 4 out of 10? Do you find that like even when you were, when you left Compaq and then eventually got into VC, which I imagine that would be your calling, that you still questioned it?

After the engineering degree, I went to Wall Street for 3 years. So I—

You were like in research?

But you said something interesting. So like, all right, I thought the book was amazing. The best chapter, the, the best part was the early part about finding your passion. And you're like, that's the hardest part. And like you said that, uh, just now, you're like, it didn't seem clear to me then, but it does seem clear to me now that I was questioning that.

What was the exercise you did then? How old were you?

I would— the, the thing I did is what I already said. I asked myself, do I still want to be doing this 30 years from now? And I did it once when I was an engineer, so I was 23, 24.

But was that voice loud?

I think it was loud. I had no inhibitions whatsoever about walking away. Like, it didn't bother me. And I, I may have benefited in the back of my brain, uh, from the fact that my father went across the country. He, he took a flyer on a job. He got recruited from, uh, Virginia to Houston to be one of the first employees at NASA.

That's cool.

And, and I knew he had done that. And, and so I didn't come from— I think if you come from a family where multiple generations have stayed in the same town, it may feel really wild to just take flyers.

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I'm glad— I'm so glad you told that story, because, um, even though the person this book is written towards is the, the person on the career path, and, and I mean that we don't have a chapter on how to advise people. Like, it's not written for the advisor, but I think it will be particularly interesting to parents and advisors to test whether or not they're willing to help support people in a way that your parents did.

Well, I think that's a big deal because, like, for example, you go to the doctor to get, like, your basic stuff checked.

I go to college—

I go to school to get good grades. But at no point do they ask, like, are you asked, like, are you happy doing this? And I think that that's like, I think that's why I'm still— I don't think I've ever formally— I don't think we've ever formally learned how do you find— I call it ikigai, which I'm sure you're very familiar with. It's this Japanese term where imagine like a Venn diagram, but there's 4. It's what the world wants, what the world wants to pay for, what you're good at, and what you're passionate about. The goal is to find something right in the middle, but no one teaches that, right? And so it's interesting. The reason I like your book is because that's what it's about.

I think there's this like famous Mozart quote where someone was like asking Mozart, like, how do I find my way? Or how do I like, do I have what it takes to be the man? And Mozart was like, dude, if you're asking that question, the answer is no, because, because the conquerors just conquer. And I hated his reply to that because I'm— but I'm curious. So I don't even know all of the companies you've invested in because you've been doing it for so long. You've like I don't know how many unicorns have you invested in? I don't know. Dozens? Sure.

A lot.

Yeah. And you've been around all the movers and shakers, whether you invested in or you passed or not, you are somehow like touched all these amazing people. Did they follow a similar path?

For the founders, I think you'd find a lot of different stories and different pathways that got them to where they are. I mean, if you like, the Zuckerberg story is pretty famous. He's at Harvard doing messing around. And, and that's very different from the path, say, Gates took, or, or even, uh, Bezos. So I don't know that there is a pathway to that place. Um, I'll tell you, I, I once asked Jeff Bezos how he could possibly be good at angel investing while he's running this company.

What did, what did he do angel-wise?

Oh, he did, uh, Google, Uber. Like, it's a murderer's road.

He was on the, uh, he was in the seed round of Google?

Yes.

Wow, that's amazing. What was the evaluation then?

You— there's this cool book called Grit. We talked about it a ton here on this podcast and you cite it a bunch. Yeah, it's awesome. I forget the exact equation, but it's basically like she— Angela Duckworth, she's like—

I didn't realize it, but passion, I think, is probably— I think passion is kind of a bad word because like passion kind of implies that I'm gonna like everything I do. And if you like talk to like a lot of athletes, they're like, well, I love competing, I do like practicing, but there's definitely days that I hate doing it, but I'm a pro and I'm gonna do it no matter what, and like I love winning.

We highlight in the book that that word's kind of cliché-ish and overused. Uh, Seinfeld gave a talk at Duke where he said fascination was a better word. I think obsession's a good word. Um, we titled the chapter Chase Your Curiosity. Like, what— just what is it that you, you can't ignore? Like, what is this thing that you love so much that you always want to know more about it?

You know, what was your, uh You did a good job of like listing all these exercises to like find it. What was the, uh, most productive one that you found?

Well, I mentioned the one that Tito had used. Um, the, the team that wrote Designing Your Life has, has one that they say is most popular, which is, is battle carding. So like come up with 3 to 5 potential career paths, not just one, and let your brain roll around in them for a while. So you, you could do that, especially with AI today. You could Imagine I'm going to do this. What does it look like 2 years from now? Like, who are, you know, what might I like? What might I not like? You can, you can, and then, you know, you could say, well, what if it were this or this? So that's an exercise. Um, I think having the mental relaxation to not feel like some path you've been down is sunk cost. Like, I'm going to go try this and if it works, great. If not, I'll do something else. Just as your parents said, it's okay to quit college and go work there. It's okay to quit the job you're in as well. And I just fear we put so much weight on economic stability. You know, you mentioned some of those immigrant families and what they push, that there's this burden to do that above and beyond what might be fulfilling in your life. And I think it'd be better if we got out of that. And, or at least this way, Think of it as a, you know, a gauge. We've gone pretty damn far to one side. Let's, let's bring it back a little bit.

Have you messed up with your— like, have you had to pull yourself back with your kids?

Yeah, yeah. I think there is a— and having, um, they're all in their early 20s, so they're all trying to find it. Like, I don't know if they're all even there yet, but there is this intuition as a parent, and I, I think it's well-intentioned to, to, to worry, to feel like they're on a safe path. And safe is usually economic, but it's also, uh, it's just risk feels like your risk. Like, like, and, and I, I love the story of what your parents did, and I've got a few anecdotes I found since we finished the book that are great on— that are very similar to what your parents did. But I think it's the exception. I don't think it's the rule. I think a lot of parents would have tried to convince you to finish out and get your degree. I think that's built into most parents. And, and so there are other people other than myself that, that have highlighted that the— I'd call it like this industrial college matriculation path has gotten very rigid, and, and it's competitive and it's grindy.

Man, the, the cut— like, getting into college now is significantly harder.

Yeah, they've not expanded— they have not expanded the enrollment at these schools, but the number of people that want to go to college has gone way up.

It's crazy.

It's crazy. And, and starting around 6th grade, once again, well-intentioned parents start building the resume to get into college. And so we overschedule children today compared to when I was young, for sure. And so they're, they're scheduled from when they wake up to when they go to bed. There's actually a chapter in Jonathan Haidt's book Coddling of the American Mind called The Decline of Play. Where we've just— we've— we— it's harder, I think, for a child to explore and try on different ideas because they're caught up in this game to try and get into college.

You had this crazy stat. You said, um, I think it was, uh, the people who won a Nobel Prize in science— the scientists who won Nobel Prizes, correct me if I'm wrong, but they were 22 times more likely to participate in things like acting or dance class and things like that. What was that stat?

So this was work that Keith Holyoke had at UCLA, and it relates to a lot of the concepts in the back of Range, the book by David Epstein. But it, it was the people at the top of their field, um, are like much more likely to have a, a breadth of hobbies, um, speak more languages, do more things, um, and, and almost, I think, have a lens on the world that's broader because they were able to try so many different things.

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So I read this book, uh, Mastery, and like the premise is like being a generalist is kind of nonsense. You have to specialize in something, but once you specialize, then you become a generalist.

I think that's the right pathway. Like, I, I do think you want to get started in an area where you can differentiate yourself. And then, and then in many— in both the principal chapter on mentors and peers in here, and even in the learning principle I recommend, you know, as a more advanced level. Once you get, you know, up to this level, then go broader, like start to learn outside your field, find mentors and peers outside your field, and you'll get pulled in more innovative ways.

So tell me more about that. That like just kind of blew my mind.

Well, I think what Keith's work highlighted was that some of the people that are able to reach the top of their field are able to draw on mental models from much— from a variety of different places. And where a hyper-specialist— and David Epstein's book Range is all about this specialist versus broad thing. Like, that's really the whole point of the book. And he quotes Holyoke as well. But many different innovations in science have come from people who repotted from one place to another. A chemist who becomes a physicist, the person who's a lifelong physicist has mental models that are pretty rigid at that point in time because that's all they know. And so once again, I think this is an advanced skill. I don't— I think after you're succeeding, you start to do this. I don't think it's the pathway to the beginning of success because I think you'd just be too broad. But some of the smartest people I know, like one person profiled in the book is Danny Meyer, the great restaurateur. We were asking him about his mentors and one of the mentors that influenced him the most isn't from the restaurant industry, you know. And so it's— it is a more advanced skill, but it is where you will look. The whole goal, I think, is to differentiate yourself along the pathway. And that is a great way, more advanced way, but a great way to take yourself places you wouldn't have thought of.

I think the way you describe it is right. Like everyone talks about mentors and no one talks about peers. So I do have a chapter on mentors and I offer a ton of very practical advice about how to play that correctly. But the peer thing, the idea is that when you get on that first rung of the ladder and you're trying to climb it, if you could develop a friend group, it might be 4, it might be 6, that are also on that same journey. And hopefully, I think outside your organization, I think you could start maybe with one person in your org. But for all the reasons we just talked about, how breadth of knowledge might give you insights you wouldn't have, if they're outside your org, they're going to see different cultures, they're going to see different management structures, they're going to bring a different viewpoint to you that you wouldn't have had if they were inside. And then with today's modern tools, you know, create a— if you're adventurous, create a Slack channel. If you just want to do a WhatsApp group or a Signal group and share, you know, share your learnings along the way.

Yeah. And I think if there are people that are sharp-elbowed, that are climbers, that, that step on other people, you kick them out. Like, I, I think you need like-minded people who are equally gracious to one another.

Who's in your group now that's like a big shot now?

Well, we— one thing I've, I've, I've discovered lately is setting up different like WhatsApp or Signal groups for different topics. I think for someone coming in early into a career, it's better to have people that are on that exact journey, and I'm not in that place anymore.

I have a company called Hampton. That's my main company. Are you from YPO? Sure. It's like YPOs. We have thousands of members all over the country and you, it's Chris' peer group. And then we have executive coaches who like lead the conversation. It's for CEOs. So you have like, the average person has like $30 million, $20 million in revenue or so. And it's been really cool to like watch these members like team up. And I'm in a peer, we call them core groups. I'm in one as well. And it like, you have this, a bunch of lines in there about peer groups and I'm like, oh, you're writing my ads for me.

Yeah. But, but, but, and those things exist with YPO and, and your thing for CEOs, but It could be done by anybody.

Sure. I mean, like my wife, when she was pregnant, she had one for moms. I've got a buddy of mine has one for Jewish dads. Like, like it could be anything, you know what I mean? But like, it really does like change things.

It does. It really does. I think it can. And almost all of the other principles are accelerated. So your learning is accelerated. There's a great story in the book about MrBeast that ties to that. There's, uh, your, your, your network is accelerated. So your network isn't just your network, it's now the network of the group if people are willing to share introductions and that kind of thing, you know, both for mentors and other peers. And, and then the group I think can be really helpful on bad days, and everyone's going to have bad days, and there's a support element that comes in into play that I think is really useful. And then also You, you may be at a shitty company. Like, your, your dream job may be the one you're in, and you might be at a shitty company. And if you're alone, you have no way of knowing if that's normal or not, like the, the stuff you're exposed to. Whereas if you had a group of 8 people that were all doing this in different companies, you'd get different perspectives on that.

What did the voice to you say when it was like, I found my calling?

There was a lack of that voice that kept asking Is this what you want to be doing 30 years from now? Like, that, that worry was gone. Like, I wasn't having those negative thoughts, if you will.

And what was the thing that you were doing? Investing?

Yeah, once I became a VC, I just adored every minute of the job. It, um, but a lot of that's fitting my individual personality, you know. There are people who, you know, are kind of— they go, ah, you can't be a VC because you're not the one actually doing the work. That never bothered me. You know, I'm someone who's really drawn to intellectual breadth. And so a service job, whether it's working in banking or working as a VC, gives me a window across way more companies than if I were working in one. And I also— I'm fairly certain I have ADD, and like, focusing on details is not something I'm good at.

Like, whenever you— when I've heard Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett, someone was like, I tap dance to work every day. And then you're saying you adored every minute of it. It's like, I think I found my passion, but like, I probably like running a company. It sucks like 85%. I get that. And like my last company that sold and it was great. Like if you talk to my wife, she was like, you laid on the floor like all the time saying, I can't do this. I want to quit. This sucks. Like, is adored every second of it the right? Is that—

I don't know. Well, accurate. I'm telling you the ex post kind of summary of it all.

But like how many times when you were doing it did you want to quit?

I don't ever remember wanting to quit.

Really?

Really.

That makes me feel horrible.

It's exhausting. In a world where, like, I've, I've grown to dislike the word and the idea of authenticity. It's sort of like when you're a young kid and you're trying to meet girls, people say, just be yourself. And I'm like, girls don't like myself. Like, why would I be myself? Like, I need to change and be better. And then people are like, be authentic. And I'm like, but I'm not a good leader. I need to be better, you know what I mean? And so there'll be like, be authentic, like be transparent with your team, tell them that you're not feeling great. I'm like, no, lie. Like you have to like convince them that like we're gonna figure this out and somehow you will, you know what I mean?

I do. Leadership's really, really hard. I think one of the things that is often not talked about enough in the, the whole both Silicon Valley and just the, the celebration of the founder is that, that if you're successful and your company grows, you're going to go from 10 employees to 100 employees to 1,000 employees, and eventually leadership's going to be required and matter. And you don't have a place to learn that, you know. It's not— there's no book that teaches, oh, here, you're a founder, you want to learn to lead people, like And it's not discussed much, but, but the Zuckerbergs of the world— I know for a fact that Larry and Sergey— there's this gentleman named Bill Campbell who's unfortunately passed.

He was a trillion-dollar coach.

Yes, there's Campbell was there 10 years after the IPO. He was still running the weekly team meetings with Larry and Sergey.

Were they just bad leaders? I mean, what, what—

I don't know, Steve Jobs used Bill also, so I, I don't know that that makes them bad. I, I'm just highlighting the fact that there's no reason from a DNA standpoint that a founder should naturally be able to lead 1,000 people because there's a skill set required to lead 1,000 people and no one's taught it to you.

Can you learn it?

Yeah, I think you can learn it. I think certain people have. I think Zuckerberg's learned it. I think Bezos didn't have any leadership skills going in, like he had never run a large team.

But what do you suggest to someone to learn how to be a better leader?

Get to know Bill Campbell, but that's no longer with us. So, um, You know, I've, I've often said, um, get 2 or 3 mentors that have ran large groups. They will all have their leadership philosophy and patterns, and try those on and see which one fits you the best. So maybe that's maybe in the middle between, between the authentic and not. Like, you having a program and philosophy is better than none. I can't tell you how many Founders have gotten to like 200 employees and they're not running a weekly meeting, like they don't know to do it. So some structure is better than no structure. And therefore, rather than say one of those CEOs you talk to is absolutely right, find out what they're doing and see which one feels best for you and your org.

Well, you talked about that with Danny Meyer. Uh, Danny Meyer, I think probably most known outside New York for founding Shake Shack. You said that, I think he was gonna be a lawyer or something and he hated it, but he went and toured a bunch. His uncle was like, dude, what are you doing? You gotta be, you gotta get in the restaurant business. And so what he did was he did like a field trip to like tour restaurants and then eventually got a part-time job as working at a restaurant before starting his restaurant. Yeah.

He also did a tour through Europe as a stage, which is a fancy word for work for free.

But you, in the book, you're like, he still does that. So like whenever like they're opening up a new restaurant, he goes and like field trips, and then you're like, when he opened up, I think, a barbecue place, he like went back to St. Louis and like tested stuff. Is there a world where like a white-collar job, uh, person can take these field trips?

I think that, like, what I've been trying to tell a lot of— like, we have a lot of young people listen, particularly a lot of young men, and I'm like, you have to understand the difference between risk and uncertainty, and that risk is oftentimes a lot less than people think. But uncertainty will always exist no matter what, and you just have to get comfortable with that. And I think that in order to reduce risk, I don't think people realize how many things in life they can try before they buy. For example, I moved from Texas up here. Yeah, I rented an Airbnb for 2 weeks in a neighborhood that I wanted to see and like I tested it out and I actually realized I hated that neighborhood, but I like this other area.

Yeah.

Or like you could do that. I remember before I wanted to, I one time I wanted to buy a fancy car. I tested it on Toro and I was like, oh, I don't want to own this car. This is a pain in the ass. Yeah. And like you can email someone, you got to email probably 50 people and you could like actually shadow them. I mean, most decisions are reversible and there are ways to like reduce risk.

No doubt. And like, like when I was an engineer and before I went to Wall Street, it turns out I had read Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street. I was trading stocks in my spare time. So unconsciously I was testing that in this field that I would eventually go towards. And so, yes, like, don't quit your job tomorrow just because you're unhappy. Start figuring out that you're— what direction is the right direction to move towards.

Some of the people that you talk about, like, for example, in the book, talk about Robert Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan. And you're like, he found his fascination and he, like, followed that route. Like pretty ruthlessly and became Bob Dylan. And but then you also are like, he's also like, you barely mentioned this, but you're like, he's notoriously prickly. Like he's hard to like get close to. But then like, I know you've worked with Travis Kalanick, who's like a pretty wild guy. The people who, in order to like do these exercises of finding your passion, do you sort of have to be like a ruthless asshole, you think?

I don't think so. I mean, Danny's one of the nicest humans I've ever met in my entire life. Even though someone like Bobby Knight, who we have in the book, is known as being that way, he's probably got the biggest coaching tree in the history of the sport, which means people have developed underneath him, and both as coaches and players, and become coaches. So even if, you know, this prickly guy you see throwing the chair is not the one that developed all these humans, you know, and put them on their way and on their path. And one of the things I love about a lot of the stories in the, in the book is that these people reach a place where they're touching so many people in their field. I think that's a more fulfilling test of were you successful than did you hit some milestone.

Yeah, but it's a lot easier to do a bunch of stuff like following your passion when you have hit milestones. Like sometimes when people, people say follow your passion. What I really want to tell people, I'm like, basically, this sounds like crude, but I'm like, if you can get rich fast, do that.

Some people get in a position where they spend right up to what they earn, and then they don't have— they don't have flexibility. And so you move from one town to another. A lot of the people in the book do that. And if you're stuck, you're stuck. You know, you might be— have to stay in a job because you've built an expense burden it goes right up against the top of it. I saw a ton of those people when I came to New York.

What did you see?

I mean, we were getting paid decent money, like, for—

this was when you're a researcher?

Yeah, yeah, for entry-level jobs. But they would run and get— they'd go get the place in the Hamptons, and they'd join the private club, and they'd run their budget right up to the top, sometimes above it. It's where if they don't get the bonus, they're underwater.

I know people that make 7 figures a year, $1 million a year, and will literally have $0 in savings.

When I early on, I used to use this app called My Weekly Budget and I created a budget and I had a spreadsheet that would track how much cash I had saved. So $10,000 to $20,000, it was like, this is how long you could live without any income. So the name of the game was to squirrel away as much cash while keeping expenses low. And it was like, what, anything above 6 months, that's like your FU number, meaning you could like go and like try and experiment.

It gives you flexibility.

Yeah. And it was like, but it was like ruthlessly disciplined to make that number bigger, even though I didn't make a lot of money. But I was like living very frugally. And I don't think people understand that. And like things like college debt, which I'm very privileged I didn't have, completely ruins it. And so like there's a bunch of these like irreversible decisions that can really screw you up when it comes to like being able to like chase down some of these things.

You know, I agree with that.

What do you do with the money once you've already made it?

This is a question Sean and I ask our successful guests all the time. And the reason we ask it is because if you are successful, if you do have a little bit of money information, on how to spend or invest your money, it's actually really hard to come by. And I know this because inside of Hampton, which is my community of founders, people ask this question all the time. People have made $10 or $50 million. How do you spend it? How do you invest it? And so to help solve this problem and answer this question, I actually interviewed 80+ founders, guys like Scott Galloway, Alex Hormozi, Bryan Johnson, people who are worth $50, $100, even billions of dollars. And we got them to reveal everything. So their net worth, how much they pay themselves, their monthly expenses, their portfolio, things like that. And we turn these 80 interviews into one document. And I don't think you can find this type of information literally anywhere on the internet, and it's completely free. So if you want to see behind the net worth of people who are worth billions of dollars and their portfolios, their expenses, everything, you go to joinhampton.com/reveal. Again, joinhampton.com/reveal.

Check it out. Last night was special because I sat across from Jim Cramer, and then next to him was Henry Blodgett, who founded Business Insider, just a lot of like crazy people. When you knew these guys when they were younger, was it clear that you guys were all going to, uh, succeed, or have you been surprised that someone has been as successful as they are?

Well, I think he— I think it goes back to our discussion on peer groups, like, like connecting with— I've just always found, um, and I think I got more attuned to this the older I got, like, haven't— have a big tent mentality. Like, have as, have as many friends as you can. Try not to judge people too much. Root for people to be successful when you can, and, and it'll come back to you in spades, you know. And I guess I've never been surprised that the people that end up, you know, in San— in, in Silicon Valley, in the middle of it all, continue to move forward just because it attracts so many ambitious people., you know, and so I don't know, I haven't, I haven't been radically surprised by anybody's staying power. Keep in mind, I'm 59 years old, so I have the benefit of time to build that network. I had 25 years as a venture capitalist.

But I think you were on the board of, uh, what's the one with you and Danny Meyer? You're on the board of OpenTable. That was like 20 years ago.

Yes.

It seems like you kind of like hit it right up pretty early and yeah, into investing, right?

That's kind of key in venture.

What do you mean?

Oh, just to be in front of the, the, the wave or whatever rolls out. Like, you can't, can't be late.

With AI going on right now, is this— does this remind you of a different period in venture?

I've never seen it quite like this.

Really?

Really. I— one thing I think throughout my career, venture's only gotten more competitive. And now today, it's, you know, as I've— I'm hanging up my boots and watching the next generation, it's even more competitive. And the, um, the burn rates that the VCs are comfortable experimenting with are bigger and bigger than ever. Like, I thought our $2 billion a year burn rate at Uber was pretty frightening. OpenAI is burning way more than that.

How much are they burning?

I, I don't— I've seen different numbers.

I don't have access to their financials, but like, Uber was losing $2 billion a year.

Yeah, but OpenAI is at like $8 or $10 What did—

what does it make you feel when your company's losing $2 billion a year?

Scared shitless. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

How did you map that out? Like, how do you go to bed at night knowing that? Like, are you like— what do you tell yourself?

You're like, well, I didn't sleep much. There was a piece of it that was— that I think is, as the venture industry gets more industrialized, was a problem, which was I think the Lyft investors knew that they had to keep funding liquidity. And, and for a bunch of reasons that relate to network effects, it was always supposed to be kind of a single marketplace that would win. And but you, if you don't have the constraint of financial viability, you can lose money to create the perception of liquidity. You can pay drivers to be present when they wouldn't naturally be there.

Yeah, I used to joke, my last company in San Francisco, we didn't take venture capital, but we used to say we were still VC funded because, uh, Uber and all these companies would give like the craziest referrals. So like, I remember like giving my referral to everyone, I'm like, oh, I drive on Uber for free, or I ride on Uber for free.

That's how big it is now. That's insane. Did you— is that bigger than your prediction?

On— I made a prediction about the, the market cap. It had a bunch of ranges. I don't have it in front of me, but Dara got it to $200 billion market cap. And I don't know if that was in— I assume you're referring to the blog post I wrote.

No, I haven't read it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

What did you say?

Or what was the other one?

There was a professor at NYU that wrote a blog post that said it would only be worth $4 billion, and I pushed back.

I remember that. We did talk about that. Yeah. Did you see the blog post the other day about on Substack where they're like, AI is going to make the economy worse? Do you see how one blog post like brought down?

It's pretty amazing.

That's crazy, right? Yes. Did your blog ever do that?

Not, not of that scale, no.

Yeah, that was, that was insane.

You see all these interesting founders other than like, I mean, I don't want to hear like Travis or like some of the big name ones who kind of have stuck out as like being like particularly sticky and formidable.

Well, one of the most impressive people I know is a guy named Rich Barton. He founded Expedia and then Zillow. Expedia was acquired by Diller, so he knows Barry and all that. But, but Rich has this remarkable ability to be top 1 percentile as a product technology disruptor, but also as a leader. That thing we were talking about before, and I, I usually see people tilt one degree or the other and not both. And he's this rare person that, that does it on both. Um, and so I frequently lean on him for advice.

Do you have an example of like a story of like where good leadership changed?

Getting companies to pivot fast when they need to. I mean, right now with AI, any companies out there, you mentioned what happened with this report like that, that DoorDash is down 5% because the report said you could build DoorDash for free, which I don't believe, but you know, whatever.

Yeah. And that report, by the way, for the listener, it was basically like what happens in the world if AI is so efficient that we don't have jobs and if we don't have jobs and we're not buying stuff. And it was just like a story. It was, it was an idea.

But how do you get— so the thing that I was going to mention is just how do you make sure your company is properly aware of this new wave, and how do you get everyone super excited about figuring out what it's going to mean for your company? And that, that's not easy to do. And I, you know, I'm back on the board of Zillow, so I watched him do that recently, and it requires having both the conviction to make that kind of pivot and move, and then the ability to get the people to follow you.

That's funny that you said it was like being good at product and being a good leader. I think you also said— do you also say that like Jeff Bezos is one of those guys who does two things really well?

It would be a good exercise to— for someone to kind of write down the leadership techniques of Jeff Bezos, because Amazon remained innovative after it got to like 100,000 employees, and that's very hard to do. It's not one human, it's one human creating a system that reinforces whatever he thought. You see what I'm saying? And like, how do you make that system keep doing that even after, you know, on days you're not there? And him and Elon, I just don't think people fully grok how they're able to lead.

A lot of these people who are these, like, kind of the titans of industry that you know, do you think that there's any correlation or reverse correlation, uh, of, uh, happiness?

I don't know anyone that laughs louder than Jeff Bezos. If you've been around him, when he lets go one of his, his guffaws, man, I, I, and I think he really loves life. Um, I, I'm just saying that I don't think there's a correlation. I mean, I, I, every chance I get, if Tobi from Shopify does a podcast or something, I'm eating it up. And I find his attitude on leadership in life to be lighthearted.

You know, he seems like another one of these product leadership guys. He's got a very unique flavor of leadership. He has a very wise—

he's something wise about him.

Yeah, there's something wise about him. Do you see where he took screenshots of his computer screen every 10 minutes for the last 20 years? And, uh, because he was just— he's like, I'm a nerd and I just love like having this diary of like what what was on my, like he was tracking all of this. And he's like, I didn't know what I was going to do with this. Now that AI exists, I can like upload this and like it could like teach me about myself. But he's got this like really cool, I call it like nerd wisdom. Like, you know, Dharmesh at HubSpot?

I have met him, but I don't know him as well.

He's kind of the same thing where there's like, there's these groups of group of guys who are like very, like you need to have a leader. Sometimes you think of like a Napoleon, like rah rah, like rile people up. But there's this other group of like fairly introverted people and they're quiet, and when they talk, you listen. But I think they're both useful for someone who's like 18, 19, 20. They're listening to this. You did all this research for this book. Are there— what biographies do you suggest they go read?

I mean, I think it would be heavily dependent on what interests them, or rather what made the biggest impact on you. I don't know if I was reading biographies at 17. I really got into reading when I got to business school, and I— they're all listed in here. There's 35 books listed at the back of the book. So I, but it, I think the key is just to, and it, I don't even know that it has to be reading. There's, there's so many podcasts like the ones you do and, and YouTube interviews with people. Like it's so easy to go learn about something. So I'm just like, whatever it interests you, go learn more about it and see if that takes you somewhere. See if that makes you excited. See if it makes you want to pick up the next one. And if it is, I think you're probably in the right lane. If not, just pay attention to what fascinates you, you know, pay attention to what interests you. I'm a big believer that more people can chase careers in their hobby than someone else might say. Like, like if, if, if there's something you're just super passionate about, even if it's a hobby, you might be surprised. There might be, there might be a way to make a career around it.

Well, it's a lot easier now with the internet.

That's amazing.

Crazy, right?

Yeah. No, but there's never been a better time to propel yourself forward if that's, if that's what you're prepared to do.

Well, thank you for doing this, brother.

All right.

All right. God bless.

Take care.

Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

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