Emmett Shear: Life After Twitch, Jeff Bezos Lessons & AI Doomsday Odds

Is AI gonna kill us all? Uh Maybe. McShear is the CEO of Twitch. It was acquired by Amazon in 2014. I started Twitch. To help people watch other people play video games on the internet. The creator and co founder of Twitch watch other people play video games. Who knew? I guess that's the answer.

What types of ideas are you noticing or standing out to you that are interesting? For the first time in maybe five or seven years, it feels like credibly trying to start a consumer internet company like the ones that like I was so excited to start in 2007 is like potentially a good idea. That's because of AI. You mentioned AI might become so intelligent it kills us all. This podcast is really growing. I don't I don't want the world to end. I think it's gonna be okay. But it's such The downside is so bad, it's like it's really probably worse than nuclear war.

That's a really bad downside. I think of it as a range of uncertainty. And I would say that the true probability I believe is somewhere between Feel like I can rule the world a no way

Be what I want to I put my all in it like my day song on the road All right, what you're about to hear is a conversation I had with Emmett Sheer. Emmett was the creator and co founder of Twitch. If you don't know about Twitch I don't know you're living under a rock. It's like one of the most I don't know.

five most popular websites in the in the States right now. It is a um a place where you can go to watch other people play video games. Of all things. Watch other people play video games. Who knew? Em it new. I guess that's the answer. So he was the creator, co founder of that and um built it up. It's a multi billion dollar company they sold to Amazon many years ago, seven years ago or eight years ago.

For about a billion dollars and has grown many times since Uh he finally retired after seventeen years of the journey. Um, I got to know Emmett because he bought my previous company. So we got acquired by Twitch. M it was like my you know, quote unquote boss. For um my time when I was at Twitch.

So uh I got to see this guy firsthand. He's the real deal and I've been wanting to get him on the podcast since those early days when I first met him. I was like, This guy's great. We talked about a bunch of things. So We talked about um some ideas of like how he would use AI if he was gonna create another company. Um, like I think he's good. He's retired now from that game of operating a company, but If he was gonna do it. This is what he would do. Um so we talk about AI ideas.

We talked about why why he thinks AI Might kill us all, might you know, be be the big doom scenario. Um which is interesting'cause he's not just a guy who's gonna go cry wolf. He's not A pessimist. He's not just a journalist who hates tech.

This is a techno optimist. This is a guy who believes in tech is a um A very, very intelligent guy and he sees, you know, a probability. He gave us a percentage of probability he thinks That could be um sort of the doomsday scenario and why he thinks that that could be the case and what we should do about it. So We talk about AI. We talk about some of the frameworks that he has for building companies.

Uh we didn't talk too much about like the origin of Twitch. He feels like he's done that a bunch of times, so we ch kind of stayed away from that. Um But it was a wide ranging conversation and uh And for those who are watching this on YouTube, I apologize the Studio that we booked at San Francisco. Uh

It screwed up the video. So we don't have video for the for for YouTube. We just have the audio only version. So you'll see our profile pictures. My bad. Sorry about that. Um You know, gotta pick a better place. Gotta pick a better studio, I guess. But um Anyways, enjoy this episode with Emmatch here. Somebody said Creativity is not like a faucet. You can't just turn it on. I think actually if you s if you've polled like a hundred people, most people Yeah, of course, creativity is a sacred special thing that only happens if you've meditated in the morning and the room is perfectly right and you've had your your L Pheanine in your coffee or whatever. And you were like, No. For me it's very it is like a faucet watch. And you think I can just write and just keep generating more ideas. Yeah. I love that for two reasons. One

I love that you will just be like No, actually this. I think that's very true about you and I wonder if that Or is that

Innate. If I s if we're if there's a researcher studying you when you were like ten years old. Right. Do you think they would have been like, Oh, this this person's different in these ways. What would have seemed different or special about you at the time? Um I the

If there was a Nurture nature break on this. It happened very early because By the time I was ten You would definitely notice The same thing.

I'm not really that different. I would be much less effective. But like as a ten year old I Already had that same experience.

But you were different than other ten year olds. Well, I would actually say I was less different then. I think most people actually most children have this experience already. I think most ten year olds and definitely most five year olds. are capable of generating ideas for what to do about something or to like play pretend. Almost indefinitely, like they don't run out of ideas. It's as you get older, somehow you what you learn to do is you learn to stomp down the ideas that are like

Bad. Um and to not say dumb things. But The more pressure you put on yourself not to say dumb things. The more

Your uh inner idea generator. It like gets Disrupted? And I I say a lot of dumb things. Like when I'm generating ideas. I may not put weight down on them, but

Uh most of the ideas will be bad. They'll have something obviously wrong with them. And they give you this advice and when you if you're like someone who teaches you how to brainstorm like no bad ideas here. That's obviously not true. There's lots of bad ideas. Most of your ideas are bad. Yeah, the advice is like, don't stop at the bad ideas. You you're what you're trying to do is you're trying to disable that sensor that most people have installed that like is like no bad, no bad, no bad, don't don't be stupid, don't be stupid.

And I think I was like, Malsocialized? I It never occurred to me to Mm.

To d have that. Like I I did I never got the sensor installed. And Why that is the case, I'm not sure. But I actually I think I'm the one who is unchanged in some sense. I'm a little more childlike in that way. And everyone else is the weird one who like

Why how did you wind up like damaged by your life that your your inner w wellspring of creativity has been Cr crushed. And I think that process is actually very simple. This process w goes on with all kinds of things in people's minds.

You start from Some capability, something you can do. Some Behavior. And

If when you do that behavior or you try that thing You receive negative feedback, which can be external or you actually think even more often internal. You're like, Oh, I I screwed it up. Oh, it's bad. Oh I don't Disappointment. You learn not to do that thing.

Pretty rapidly. And so that leads you to doing it less, which means you're less skillful at it, which tends to lead you to doing it less, which That cycle ends in you being very bad at something. Like I'm bad at math. No, you're not. Everyone can be like the kind of math you're talking about. Everyone can be the kind of math when people say I'm bad at math, they don't mean

I'm bad at like Abstract algebra proofs. They mean I can't do arithmetic. Or algebra basic algebra. And that's just imaginary. Like everyone can do that. It's easy. They got stuck in one of these like spirals.

And now it's and getting out of one can be very hard. And I guess I I think that's what happens to people's creativity. I don't know, I didn't go through the process myself. And so I got so now as I'm saying this out loud, actually when I the idea that I have g comes up for me is like, Oh well maybe what it is is that I had better ideas. I got the reward loop or or I had an environment that was unusually

Uh positive and s positively reinforcing for me having ideas. And so I would have ideas. And it would go well. That would lead me to having more ideas, which And more practice at having ideas.

Which would go well. And then You wind up just never Breaking that loop. I've been a trainer who comes over to my house and he always says his thing to me'cause like my kids will come down during the session. I'm always like, Oh, sorry, like

Obviously annoying. My two year old is here almost getting hurt on all the weights, and that's probably like not what you want in your session. So I'm always like, Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. And he's just like, dude. No, but he's like. Kids and dogs. I go what? He goes.

I love to be around kids and dogs. They got it right. They know life. He's like a dog is like unconditional love, happy, playful. You know, super loyal. He's like what's not to learn from a dog. I want to learn everything I can from a dog or kids. It's like look what she's doing, she just made up a game on this thing, like We're here trying to do a serious workout. She made this her play place. She can't wait to come down here.

He's like, I wish all my clients wanted couldn't wait to come down to the gym. And I was like, damn, this guy's right. And one of the things I like is figuring out people's Isms, their philosophies. And you were like, Oh, I thought of one on the way here Explain what it was. It was have you tried just solving the problem? So there's a

There's a meme on the internet. I think it started with Weirds on Twitter, which is like have you strive solving the problem by and then An infinite list of possible synthesis. The tweet is always Have you tried solving the problem by like ignoring the problem? Have you tried and solving the problem by sp spending more money on it? Have you tried solving one of my favorite ones of those? That

has become almost like a life motto is like have you tried solving the problem by solving the problem And That sounds dumb, right? Like so that sounds it's one of those like Zen Cone pieces of advice that when you first hear it. Is like Are you are you serious? Like that's the advice is solve the problem by solving the problem, but

What you notice when you try to help people with problems a lot. Is Oftentimes people will have a problem. It'll be really obvious what the problem is. And they'll come to you for advice for like, Well, how can I deal with the consequences of this problem? Or how can I

Avoid needing to solve this problem. Or How can I get someone else to solve this problem? Or how have other people solved the problem in the past, which are closer to the right answer, or what can be the right answer. And The point of the the saying It's to remind you that sometimes the way to solve the problem is just like

just to actually try solving the problem. Like don't deal with the symptoms. Don't accept the symptoms. Don't Don't find a hack around it. Like the problem is The website is not fast enough. And instead of like trying to

Figure out how we can make a loading spinner that distract people from that fact. What if we just made it so fast that you don't need a loading spinner? It's interesting because that's a good it's a very good advice when The problem actually is solvable. I mean you're people are flinching away from it. Because Something a

about it is aversive, even though the problem isn't really unsolvable. Like they if they worked on it for six months, it would go away. And it's worth solving. Whereas there are these problems where like You're trying to make a perpetual motion machine. You try to do something that is

actually too hard. And Solving the problem by solving the problem. You should actually stop trying to solve the problem. That's a huge mistake. And you should be looking for a hack. around needing to solve the problem. We should be looking to live with it more effectively. But I find actually On the balance.

At least most people I I talked to you, I help. Most people I know, I think it's maybe it's people in in tech like love the love the hack. They're always looking for the easy fast solution that cuts around and solve the problem and it's very helpful.

It's it's the most often helpful form of that advice, in my opinion. It's like Bringing people back to just solving the problem. I find that the The advice I like the most for the the sayings that resonate with me the most are the ones it's like if you spot it, you got it. It's like if

It's the one I it's the advice I needed. That's why it resonates with me. That's why I like giving it out because like I personally experienced it. Have you personally experienced that or what's an example where You remember Trying to do everything but solve the problem and then you finally realize shit, I should have just Solve the problem. It's an interesting question. Wait, what is it you spot it, you got it as like noticing as half the battle, basically?

It's sort of the smart person version of whoever smelt it dealt it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like hundred percent. If you hit you only notice this in other people because you've seen it in yourself too. Otherwise you wouldn't be as observant of it. My version of this is we give the advice we need to hear. Yes, yeah, exactly. Same basic idea. It's actually not always true. Like That's one of those really good heuristics where like

Sure. Half the time when you Give advice, it won't actually be for you, but half the time it is. And noticing it is so powerful that like You should just check every piece of advice you give for like Wait a second, is this advice I need to hear right now? When it comes to the like

Have you tried actually solving the problem? I think I'm pretty good at that in general. I think but I often give it to myself in a more meta sense. Like it's a advice I often need in a more meta sense of like When I'm confronted with like a thing that needs to be programmed, I will often

Go just program the thing. But I have a tendency to Like look for ways that I can solve the problem. And not that the problem can be solved.

And for me that the ver this almost always like, What if I went and ask somebody else for help? And I just like it doesn't even occur to me to go To go do that. I'm just I'll just I'll just indefinitely dig try to go solve the problem myself. I'm not really trying to solve the problem. I'm trying to solve the problem

While avoiding having to ask anyone else for help, which is like not real I'm not really trying to solve the problem. But actually no, weirdly, I think this is one of those things where It's almost like the creativity thing. It was a shock for me to realize Other people don't Do that.

You're self actualize on that one. Yeah. What's a piece of good advice that you're bad at taking? Oh that's a that's a An excellent one. I think the the big one there is like You know, listen more. Like I

You can give this advice so much at Y C and it's a hundred percent something that I need to get better at, which is like You go into the user interview. And you have all these ideas and thoughts and you need to Not be surfacing those. You need to actually be focused on you have move your attention to them.

And really be interested and care about what they have to say. And Did your opinions and what What you think is true is irrelevant. And I am

I'm much better at that than I used to be. Okay. I also it's one of those things where like Being reminded like Let's just chill out for a second and and l like listen.

is almost always good advice for me. And something that I and advice I give fairly often, but like Uh it's hard for me to too. Take on.

One of the things I really liked that you showed me once, well, I remember asking you When we're at Twitter. I think we were working on a problem that was like reminiscent of early days Twitch, uh with like the mobile bubble stuff in different countries. Where it's like, oh, we're not the leader or we need to like create from scratch. Which wasn't a muscle that a lot of people there were were reflecting at the time.

And I was like, Hey, do you have any stuff from the early days of Twitch? And you sent me a thing which was like Here's all the user interviews, like here's my doc from all the user interviews did, which was basically from my from from what I understand. There was like a small universe of people that were already doing video game streaming. And you were like, Cool. Let me call all of them.

Let me ask them like Three questions. And if I could just a get these answered these three questions, that should Give me a little bit of a roadmap, a blueprint of Understanding what do I need to do. in order to like win in this market. Yeah.

Can you take me back to that?'Cause that I like that for two reasons. It was A simple and B Seemed Like a focused intensity that You found a point of leverage and you pushed. Yeah, I think two things happened to lead to that. The first was like the realization

Obviously in for we wanted to win in gaming, the streamers mattered. And at Justin TV we'd always been like streamers and viewers are equally important. And I finally made a decision. I was like No This product Ultimately is about streamers and if this

Doesn't work for the streamers, doesn't work for anybody. And then I had the realization This is one of those epiphany moments. Where I truly saw

I have no idea why anyone would stream video games. Like I don't really want to do it. And I have all these I could s I saw my myself Building products for these people. For the past four years of just in TV

And not really Having any idea. Why they did the thing they did at all. And I sort of I saw like oh I'm just making this up. I have no idea. I just I don't know the answer. I could know the answer. Like they there is a there there is an out answer out there.

These the a bunch of people know it. But I don't. And that triggered me to be like, I need to know, I need to understand like these this these two hundred people I need to understand their mind. I did about forty interviews probably. And

I didn't want to know like what they thought we should build, because if they knew what we should build, they would have my job. And I I've talked enough of them before to know that they had no good product ideas. I I wanted to know like why are you streaming? You what have you tried to use for streaming? Like what did you like about that? Like

What did how did you get started in the first place? What's your biggest dream for streaming? What do you wish You know, someone would build for you. And I didn't ask them what do I wish someone would build for you because I thought they would have a good idea. I asked them because well the follow up question was really the killer one, right? They they would say, I want you to build me this big red button. I'm like, great. I built you the big red button. Like what what does it do for you? Like why is your life better after I built that? And then they would tell me the real thing, which is like

Oh, I would make I'd like make a bunch I'd make make money that month, or I'd Get a bunch of New fans. Who like loved me. Or my fans who already love me on YouTube would go to watch me

Live and more of them would. And it's like oh That's the real answer. Like why you you don't you don't want the button, you want the fans or the money or the I call it love, the like the The sense of reassurance and And positive feedback that the

Your creative content was ne wanted. But you're a smart guy. Those Love and m money and fans. I'm sure you would have guessed at what do the streamers want. False. What did you think about it? It was a revelation that people would want money because I was like You're streaming like, you know, whatever, twelve hours a week.

If we met let you monetize at the rates we can monetize today. You'd make like three dollars a month. That would like that it didn't occur to me that that would be a positive thing. Like, yes. Oh my God, that would be amazing. And I was like, wait, wait, serious you're serious? You would like three dollars and I don't overpromise. Like we're I'll build you the monetization actually, but like

You would really be excited if it's not a little bit. only produced like a tiny amount of money. And they're like, Absolutely. I've just it would the idea that I could make money doing this would be so exciting. That had not occurred to me.

'Cause it always is easy for me to make I was a programmer. I had summer jobs interning for Microsoft. If you're a programmer, you can get a summer job in turning for Microsoft. That's like Pizza. Many, many years of that level of streaming. In three months. Like why would I it didn't it just even wasn't in my world view.

That that would be so important to them. And of course I knew they wanted a bigger audience, but the degree to which They valued even one more viewer. And the degree is they didn't care about anything else. Like they they they wanted people to watch them, they wanted to make money.

And then ask about other things. Like Do you want the Video production. You want to like improve the video production, have cooler video production. And they'd be like, Yeah. And be like, Okay, but but like

what what's good about that? Like what do you like about that? Like well I'll get more I'll get a bigger audience. And it was really the realizing the realization that like it was just Those three things basically explained ninety eight percent of their motivation and we could ign anything it didn't move the needle on that. could be ignored.

So A good example of that's like polls. Everyone would ask for polls. Seems like a cool feature. Live polls, of course. Are you gonna have a bigger audience with the live polls? Not particularly.

Are you going to make more money? No. Is it does you really do you really feel more loved if you're running a live poll than if you're just like asking chat and having people post it in the chat and say it? No, it's the same. You got the feedback. It's cool. So this product feature chat blow up. It's cool to see chat blow up. So you're saying that this feature is worthless.

Yes, in fact. Potentially negative, in fact. And so it would always be on the list of like things that would sound like they might be cool and we just would never build it. Entirely correctly. Wasn't gonna move the needle. And

The thing that's really hard to teach there Then I've g I I've been a Y C visiting partner for the this batch and I've been trying to convey to people it's very hard to get them to do it is like You have to care fanatically about these people. These people as people.

And these people as as uh in the role they're doing as these people as streamers. And What they believe about their reality is you have to accept as based reality that that is how they see the world and that is what's going on.

But like You need to like literally have no regard for their ideas for to solve the problem. And It's a little paternalistic in a way.

But it's it's more of like just respecting that they are experts in this thing and you need to understand them in that Yeah. And that What people are looking for when they are looking for the product idea from the person is like they don't want to do the work. They they don't want to take responsibility for it's my job. I have to solve the problem.

And no one's gonna tell me what the answer is. There's no teacher, there's no Customer. It's up to me to

The the truth. And And then defend it when other people are like, No, that's wrong, I have to be able to say, like, no, no, no. Let me explain. This is let me explain why this is actually a good idea. And That's scary. You're responsible.

I think actually it's a Probably why the uh Just solve the problem advice is bouncing around my head because a bunch of the fear founders have about addressing these things. I think comes down to

A willingness to take responsibility. For solving other people's this other person's problem. Like they're gonna come and dump a bunch of problems on you and it's your job. to solve it for them within the constraints available and there's no If you come up with the wrong idea, it's on you and you can't

You can't trust anyone else to do it for you. What are you seeing in this Y C batch? So your visiting partner. Mm-hmm. Exciting time with AI. Probably like you know. half or more of the batches.

Doing something with with A. I what's exciting? What are you seeing? Wha where do you see the pub? So it's interesting. I would actually say that at least in this batch, I think this might have been different the previous batch, but by this batch use of AI is no longer interesting. AI is out. AI is AI is so in it's like it's like being an AWS startup or like being a mobile a mobile startup. Like What do you mean you're a mobile sort like I know are you are you building a social media network? Like what's the th of course you have a mobile app I don't I And and now it's like of course you're you're using LMs to

Solve a problem. That's just like If you weren't doing that, I would think you were a dummy. Like I don't understand. Like that's not a you wouldn't even bring it up. It's not even an interesting topic of conversation. The question is like what what are you doing? No, it's that's not entirely true. There's about

Some percentage of the batch. I don't know. It's between ten and twenty percent I'd say. That's legitimating like AI infrastructure because there's a need to build a bunch of infrastructure there. Those are actual AI, those are AI companies, but like When people hear AI company, I don't think they They think

backend infrastructural support for AI. They think of using AI to like do things. And I actually couldn't tell you what percentage of the batch is AI from that point of view. All of them, maybe? I don't know.

Like Why wouldn't you use it? Even if it's only for a minor thing, there's always something you can use it for. It's a very useful technology. What types of ideas are you noticing are p standing out to you that are That are interesting. Is there like

You know, for example I remember when I first moved to Silicon Valley, suddenly the kind of like Bits companies started doing really well. It was like, Oh, Uber. Airbnb and like oh wait, this this used to be like a taboo like it was like no You're supposed to do a software company, like you you have to uh ship T shirts. What are you doing? I would say like

Stay away from trends. The offline offline companies that started the trend. did very well. Uber is a great company. Airbnb is a great company. But they were aware of that. But at the time

That was They they were doing something that was Not allowed. They were they were they were they'd found An opportunity. That had been ignored.

Almost all the online offline companies that get started after Uber, DoorDash, Airbnb are big. being like we're going to be the Uber and DoorDashing Airbnb of X. Most of those companies did not do very well. Is online offline bad? No. It's generated a bunch of

Incredible companies. Jumping on the trend was probably bad for you. And so whatever I tell you is like the trend I see. I don't mean trend. I guess what I mean is I think you're a person that Is really good at looking at a situ like looking at a Box of stuff.

And identifying correctly what's really interesting in this bus. Interesting to you. Yeah, no, I I understand I think I understand what you're asking. So like W what I think is changing in the world right now. Having observed this, is the consumer is back. For the first time in a long time Mini and by a long time it's like internet standards, like five years or something. But like

For the first time in maybe five or seven years, it feels like Incredibly. Trying to start A Consumer internet company.

Like the ones that like I was so excited to start in two thousand seven. It's like potentially a good idea. Um that's because of AI. AI means there's a whole opportunity to sort of reimagine how consumer experiences can work ground up. And what's

What's cool about consumer is for B to B SAS. The experience isn't the product. And so reimagining the experience does not reopen a Necessary. It can, but it usually does not reopen a segment. In consumer re imagining an experience a hundred percent.

Reopens a segment. Because the thing you're selling is the experience. The thing the reason people use your product is it's a different experience. I mean B to B SAS, it's not the experience, it's the what. Yeah, it's people actually care what it does and like and the the The Pricing model and the and like The adoption cr it's very practical and you can make people jump through hoops if it does a thing because

There's a lot of money. For the corporation. And money and labor and people are paid to use your product and it's a whole different thing. And so AI adds new capabilities. New capabilities enable new segments of B2B SaaS to be created that will generate some amount of growth. In consumer it is a really cool thing. It's like mobile. It reopens. Every segment as like

Oh it Now that you assume mobile exists, now that you assume AI exists. What could you build now? And

That's very exciting. I don't have answers for that anywhere because like Yeah. Well see, like that's a little bit the other thing in consumers is a bunch of lottery tickets. Like nobody's like singular genius that works out, right? Like you could see like okay, mobile comes, photo sharing became right like open again. The window has opened it. Turns out it's Instagram and it's Snapchat, which is gonna use photos as text messages. Photos have a few different use cases and Instagram and Snapchat took two of the best ones. The

The fact that photo sharing is one of the most important segments and that Yeah. Sort of posting them in messaging with them are the two important most important things to do with them. Seems blindingly obvious in retrospect.

And if you Had to predict that in two thousand seven or two thousand eight, like good luck. Yeah. Like nobody nobody correctly predicted that stuff before it happened.

Nobody. If you did correctly predict that, you made a lot of money. And congratulations, you're really good at consumer or slash you got lucky. We will find out when you try to do it again. I think that in AI Actually I have a theory for like the what

One of the ways this will disrupt A bunch of businesses. In AI, especially in consumer A huge number of businesses can be conceived of as effectively being A

database with a system of record. That has like a bunch of canonical truths about the universe. Each of them is a row. It's like Yelp is like a big database. That has a bunch of rows and the rows are like

restaurants and Local businesses. And they have a bunch of facts about them, like they're where are they located? What are their hours? Yeah, all in that database row. And

It's all text and it's all There's a bunch of messy stuff out in the world. And it's been digested into something that is searchable and comprehensible. and usable in an app for you to use. And most of the work of turning the messy real world into

The canonical row is done is Done at right time. by the users. So that's how UGC apps work in general. A bunch of your users. Go out into the messy world and then you turn it into a

Rona database. And if they include a photo or a Video is part of that. It's like attached to the row as a fact about the Restaurant. Here's a restaurant. Here's a

These hundred fifty Photos are facts about it's Menu. But They're attached facts. They're not the basis.

And we're I what we think O AI has opened up the possibility for is a a huge inversion there. What if the thing you did you gave us was just a a video.

of your meal and photo or you know photos, but ideally just like a video. Of your of the meal, of you talking about the meal, of whether we had a good time or not, you and your friend shooting the shit about What did you like that one? Do I like this one? Like And what if we just saved that video raw?

And then an AI Watched it. And Extracted A cached version.

Of that. of the the metadata. But truly like If we decide something else is important, like we we We didn't get noise levels. We're like noise levels would be a good thing to get. Instead of like

recollecting data from everyone, we have to start a whole data collection process to get that. We just Go back, re tell the AI, oh yeah. Also grab noise collection levels from all of these videos. In fact Maybe we don't even as a product have to go do that. Maybe as a customer

I can literally just be like What's the noise level at this restaurant and the In real time, the A can go re watch the video. And tell me. Or the, you know, I ran a search and there's these 15 restaurants, and I'm like, oh, actually, sort by noise, noise level. We don't have noise level pre-recorded, but it's it's in all the videos.

PA can very quickly watch all the videos in parallel. And send sort of my noise level for me, but it it wasn't even in the database to start with. Right. And I think that inversion I'm using Yelp as the example.

Because it's I think a very familiar thing for most people of like review it's pretty easy to imagine A bunch of video reviews of everything. And that being the system of record instead. But

You can describe some phenomenal number of consumer apps as being That In him, you type anything to a text box. You're you're participating in one of these system of record things. What if it's the video What if you just what if you

Assume video is deeply indexable and understandable by computers. What should the experience look like? And I think it looks a lot more like Snapchat or TikTok like experience. But but then different because you need map it's it's not exactly like anything. It's a new kind of thing. But it's It starts probably with the

Camera open. Which is weird, right? Like a Yelp that starts with the camera open. That's a That's not Yelp. Today.

And it's it's har it's it's disruptive because it's it helps whole value prop is we have all this great Highly meticulously groomed data. And If this is true, then that becomes entirely worthless. We throw that all away. We just watch one bunch of videos, but it's worse than the videos. And so suddenly the playing field is leveled between the startup and Yelp. And that's a that's a huge opportunity for disruption.

And so I think that You can take that and you can reapply it to Any product where you fill out forms. And that's like a general purpose consumer thing you can now do, kind of like build it for mobile was. And

I think in some cases it will be very powerful. And like that will be the new winner. I think in some cases The incumbent can kind of add videos or like It's not really better. And like the incumbent will just win. Like it won't disrupt everything.

But if you pick the right thing. Not only will it disrupt the incumbent The new thing may be dramatically better. For some things Like I actually yelp and somebody is a bad example. I think the data Yelp has with the photos.

reviews is like ninety percent as good as a video systems re record, probably. But you could imagine something with a video system of record Where it's not so obvious what to even put in the highly processed version of the data in the in the text version of the data.

And the video version's a lot better. And then I think Not only can you disrupt the incumbent, you can 10x the size of the segment. Like you

This becomes a good segment now where it wasn't particularly before. So chat GPT. is a great example of this in action that everybody kind of has now played with, which is You take. Google, which is like oh we have our value is this

Entire sort of rank. of web pages based off of terms and we have all we we understand basically what what should show up in this in this hierarchy. And it was really good for finding stuff. And ChatGPT was like, cool. You could ask a question to try to find a link to an answer.

Or we could just give you an answer. Or even better, forget. questions and answers like what if you just give me a command and I could just make something instead of finding things I could create things. For you. Right.

And all of a sudden it was like, Well, how did they do that? It's like well they just Basically slurped up the internet and and then you know. train the AI to do it. A statistical prediction algorithm on every domain of human knowledge. Like

This is my theory. I'm pretty sure it's true, but like Statistical prediction algorithms in general work. Very well we found a new The innovation is on a a prediction algorithm that works better than normal. But the way it works better than normal is really interesting. It's not actually particularly

Oh. That it outperforms traditional algorithms. For prediction. On normal amounts of data. It's that

it it keeps working as you just dump more and more data into it and more and more processing on that data into it. Like Most machine learning algorithms you kind of you overfit very fast. And More processing, more Expand over it.

If you imagine like you've got a bunch of data cloud of data points. And they're kind of vaguely in a line. Underfit is like you like just Draw something just like across Random it's a random line that doesn't look anything like the shape of the the dots.

A well fit curve is like You draw a line through the dots. And there's kind of noise of like things that are random above and below. But it's like If you look at it it's like, Oh, that that actually does fit. The data.

Like the the underlying predictive facts about the data well while ignoring the noise. And then If you overfit it, like you get this like really wiggly curve that touches every single dot exactly. But like When you get a new thing, it like will miss that because it over predicts. It predicts too much of the thing. And so when you get new data, it actually doesn't predict that very well. Okay. And so

Normally what happens is you try to like dump more data and more a compute into a normal machine learning algorithm. You get diminishing returns very quickly. We're like It just doesn't per perform that much better with twice as much data and twice as much compute. The clever the cool thing about the transformer based attention to all you need architecture is that it

It continues to benefit From more compute. And more data. Other ones didn't.

And so what that lets you do Is Run it on A much bigger domain than normal. Right on everything. Don't just Don't just run it on

Normally as you added more as you add more area, it like degrades the quality elsewhere. No. Fuck it to do everything. And just put an a a ton of compute in. And now you get something that predicts pretty well against everything.

Which Is to say it like It seems to be kind of intelligent. The d evidence seems to suggest to me that it's sometimes it's overfit. When you ask it to

predict something that is either in the in the set of things it was trained on or Mm. Linear interpolation between Two things it was trained on? It's quite good at

giving you the thing you asked or but linear interpolation between five things. But it's If the things you're asking are all in there and it just has to find the way to blend them together, it's good at that. When you ask it to actually think through a new problem for the first time. Like what's an example? There are seven gears on a wall.

Each alternating There's a flag attached to the seventh gear. On the right side of the gear. where uh it's pointed up right now. If I turn

The first gear to the right. What happens to the flag? Like that's a Anyone who's like you ponder it in in the mornings. If you have a pen and paper and time, you can work this out no problem, right? You you just just draw the gears and when you turn the first gear to the right, it turns the left one the ones that the other one to the left and the next one to the right. And there's a general principle there that like the gears alternate, which is If you ask ChatGPT, it knows that general principle.

But it won't but like. But then you have to plu it doesn't it hasn't no one asked dumb gears on wall flag questions. Like this is not a A thing that has been is in its training set. And you have to kind of logic your way through it and like figure out okay, we should Like

I'll do Turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right. Uh Oh, the flag is on the right, it's pointing up. So

When the last gear, which is the same as the first gear turning right, the last year it's odd number, so it's turning right also. The flag will Rotate. Down to the right clockwise. Cool.

Like I can work that out. It's not actually that complicated. And I That that question will be answerable pr that's a pretty easy question. And if chip GPT four I test it with three three point five. If four doesn't answer it, five will.

But like The fact that it struggles at all with that, while being so brilliant at combining other stuff. really shows that it's it's over fit, right? It It knows how to answer problems that

It has seen before. But when you give it a truly novel kind of like combination of problem. It struggles a lot'cause it's it's I would say um Yeah, if you give it a sort of the formal psychiatric, psychometrics approach.

It has a very high crystallized intelligence, but a pretty low fluid intelligence right now. Now, that could change, but like today that's the The state of affairs. And do you bring this up? In order to say what. You say, Okay, I think it's overfit and it and it's strong in this area, weak in this area.

What's the so what of that for you? Is it that Are are you trying to say That's a little bit overhyped. Or are you trying to say Dude, just wait till it can do both. Are you trying to say problems are doable now? Definitely just wait till you do both.

Because that's a That's a whole different thing. That's scary. Uh but The current thing that is mostly crystallized intelligence. is really good.

Uh Um Very It it this is why it's a c'est why you're saying it's a clever trick, right? It's really good at a at a big set of tasks, which happens to be the set of tasks that like anyone has ever written stuff down about explicitly.

Like all explicit human knowledge. That's like a very big domain. There's a lot of things that can be solved. Where there's an explicit examples of people solving that problem or a linear interpolation of those problems in the domain of all human knowledge.

The fact that it doesn't generalize is irrelevant. It's immensely powerful with you don't need fluid intelligence, I guess is that is the point. For it to be very useful. But it doesn't let you do everything. People they they're you you hit these boundaries, these weird boundaries where it's just like you're like wait a second, you can't do that? Like no, it's I can't do that at all. Um novel problem solving is just terrible at.

So what about uh let's walk through two examples. I wanna hear your take on this. So You gave the Yelp example. Mm-hmm. Another thing that's kind of like Rose in a database is something like Spotify. Where it's like, Oh, I wanna go Listen to a song, here's

Genre, artist, song, length. uh, you know, some algorithmic r popularity similarity to other songs in some way. And but Spotify's value if Spotify's value is in the playlists. I would agree with

The analogy to Spotify because Playlists are an example of this kind of like database y human data entry thing. Spotify's value is mostly In the

Set of All of the music itself, the licenses and all the music itself. And so s I don't think Spotify is a great example because The human data entry parts of the database. If that all just got deleted tomorrow, it would like not hurt Spotter that bad. Well, the thing I'm thinking about is what if the licenses don't matter? So what happens if generative music is just awesome to listen to in a hyper personal way? Oh, and it likes

Yeah. These are the types of song that Emmett likes. That's a different that's a different insight that I think is also possible, which is like It's not about being able to analyze and extract from media. It's about being able to create media. Cause the video system of record is enabled by the ability to understand and read video and comprehend it. Generative is un is the opposite. It's like you we can Oh, we can make all the stuff. Music in particular is sticky against that. People don't want new music.

They want old music. They want the music they love already, the music they grew up with. And that is the that Cycle. Is what causes

Record labels and to stay in charge whether you still listen to the Rolling Stones, right? Like The other thing I would say about that one is like the music's not that good yet. Like maybe someday, but like it's really it's really not that good yet. Well

I'm gonna caveat this. If it gets if the general intelligence level goes up a lot. Oh, but's rough. It'll make some really great music for us before it maybe takes over the world and kills everyone. But Let's assume that doesn't happen soon. I think it's gonna take longer than people think we go for it to make great music, though. No, but If we do go out, we're gonna go out some with some um great music and amazing it's gonna be it's gonna be a m a great two or three years before we all like

We all go. But until that point. Uh making Really good. Like new great music. Is hard actually. And I think that

Rick Rubin's Great success demonstrates why Artists will still be important. The AI can generate lots and lots of music.

But it it's not gonna have the the fine judgment of distinction. of the ability to say like this song, not that song. And I actually think what it will do is it will de-skill the music making process on one vector. The ability to like Literally create the sounds. And it will

greatly upskill the music making process on other vector. The ability to Secure not just cure to to give Explicit exact feedback. Like Rick Rubin does. AI is gonna turn us all into Rick Rubens for for generative AI. Like that that skill set of the ability to have a musician come to you and

Help them produce their best music. That's the thing you need to be able to do. Because It's easy to generate a thousand cuts. But there's infinite cuts you could generate. So how do you direct the the

How do you shape that in the right direction and and and mine and discover? I think it's gonna be kinda cool. It'd be interesting. You'll get a different set of people who will be optimal at that. Right. You mentioned AI might Become so intelligent it kills us all.

This podcast is really growing. I don't I don't want the world to end. Life is good. Life is good. I here, we'll we'll I'll ask the question clean for the for the intro dramatic hook. Is AI gonna kill us all? Maybe.

Like walk how you A smart person who's a Optimist about technology. Mm-hmm. but a realist about real shit. Uh w what is the way that you think about this, or how would you explain this to, you know A love one you care about who's not as deep into technology, how would you explain to this? You're their trusted source on technology. What do you say to them?

So it it is Because I am so optimistic about technology that I am afraid. If I was a little bit less optimistic and I was like, this AI stuff's overhyped, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, it does nice parlor choice, but like we're nowhere near building something that's actually intelligent. Like And like

The eng all these engineers who are working on who think they're on something, they're full of shit. It's gonna take us thousands of years. We're not that good at this stuff. Technology's not going that fast. I'd be like

That's fine. It's great actually. It's good news. It's a new trick we learned. Excellent. It's because I am so optimistic that I think that there is a chance it will continue to improve very, very rapidly. And if it does That that's a it's the that optimism is what makes me worried.

It's sort of the analogy I like to give on that front is like uh Syn bio, synthetic biology. I'm quite optimistic about synthetic biology that I've uh several friends who have work in syn bio companies. Uh It shows a lot of promise for

Fixing a lot of really big important health problems. And it's quite dangerous'cause it will let us and genetically engineer more dangerous diseases that could be very harmful to people. And That has to that's a weighed pro and con. It's like Nuclear power mix, nucle weapons and nuclear

Power. They're both real. The Christian nuclear weapons is dangerous. You doesn't think you don't have to be techno non optimist to, like, think that that's there's a problem there. Every country on earth go build nuclear weapons, probably. And likewise in Sinbio

I would say that it would be We actually we already have these regulations in place. We should probably over time we'll be able to strengthen them and improve the And audit the oversight and build better organizations to Um monitor and regulate them.

But like We regulate Whether people can have the kinds of Devices that would let them like Print.

Small box. And we regulate. Whether You can just buy precursor things, you need to go print stuff. And we keep track of who's buying it and why. And like

That is why, as I'm glad that we do that. I don't like calling for a halt sin bio, but like If we weren't willing to regulate it, I would call for halt. Learn how to genetically engineer. Plague.

And then not to have regulation around Yeah. people's ability to get the access to the tools to engineer plagues. That's just suicidally dumb. And I just because I am pro technology, I believe that we should absolutely develop the technology and that we should regulate it. That seems just straightforward and obviously true to me. I think it's easier for people to understand that than the SinBio one, because

the concept of like engineering a plague seems like an obviously a thing you could do. And Very dang obviously very dangerous and obviously enabled by technology. The AI thing is more abstract because the threat it proposes us is not posed by

a particular thing the AI will do, the way the plague will happen. An analogy I like to use is sort of like you know I can tell you with confidence that Gary Pasparov is gonna kick your ass at chess. Right now. And you ask me.

Well how is he gonna checkmate me? Which piece is he gonna use? I'm like, uh oh, I don't know. And you're like, You can't even tell me what piece he's gonna use and you're saying he's gonna checkmate me. You're just a pessimist.

And like No, no, no. You don't understand he's better at chess than you. The what means he's gonna checkmate you. And I don't I I don't know quite know what happens. Are people

Deny that like I think what ha the big thing is they don't really imagine the AI being smarter than them. They imagine the AI being like Like data in Star Trek. Like kind of dumber than the humans about a lot of stuff. But like really fast at math.

Like that's not what smarter means. Like imagine The most savvy Like most Smartest person you can think of. And then make them think faster and also

make them even better at it. And not smart in just one way, like smart at everything, like a great writer. Just insight after insight. And like Can pick up Sin Bio in an afternoon.

Because they're just so smart. That smartest person you know and then they should keep pushing that. And like That's all that person is obviously dangerous if they're if they that person isn't a good person, they're obviously dangerous. Like Imagine this really, really capable person, then imagine them wanting to go kill a bunch of people or something, it would be bad.

Now the thing about AI that then kicks it over the edge is that That person Can't self improve easily. You meet this person who's like super strong.

Super Like talented, great with people, great, great Intellectual. Mine. They can't turn around and like

Edit their own genome, edit their own upbringing. And make V two of themselves. With all the skills that maximally smart person come up with. That like is even smarter than them.

But that's like Expli explicitly the AI is good at programming and like chip design and Like It can explicitly turn back on itself.

Rev of that. And the new one will be better at it than the First one was, and there is no obvious endpoint to that process. Like there probably is at some level a physics based endpoint to that where like You can't actually just keep getting smarter forever. There's some

But we don't really we don't understand the principles of intelligence at all. Like with most things. We understood how to make electricity far before we understood what electricity really was. Like we that's uh generally how we Yeah. Scientific progress works. We usually understand

Wait. gain the ability to create and manipulate a phenomenon well before we deeply understand how it works. We didn't realize what fire was for quite a while. You could use fire really well.

The same thing is gonna happen here. We're using the AI. But we don't understand its limits at all. We understand the the the theoretical limits of how far we'll get. And if Moore's Law has any indication. We can keep getting f at the very least we can keep getting faster.

Indefinitely. Whether or not it can get smarter or not. Even human level just human level intelligence. If you capped at human level intelligence, which there's zero reason to think it will stop at human, like it will almost certainly blow past us. But like Even if you cap it at human intelligence.

Imagine a hundred thousand of the smartest person you know. All running at a hundred X real time speed. And able to communicate with each other. Instantaneously. Via like telepathy.

Those hundred thousand people could credibly over the world. Like they don't have to be smarter than a human. For that for that army of von Neumann's. Right. So so y the argument to me goes in several steps. It's like

Can you build A certain level of intelligence. And then it's like okay, let's I think I actually think a lot of people Do believe that Like.

Computers are smart. Google is smart, calculators are smarter than us at b at math. I think it's not hard for them to believe that the AI is gonna be far smarter than human beings. Where I think a lot of people Then don't make that last leap is sort of like

But then it'll have an agenda or a motive or any will for anything to happen. So how do you address that last point of like What is the scen what are the scenarios you worry about when it comes to like now The direction of that intelligence. You build this thing and it's really good at solving what is intelligence fundamentally, but the ability to solve a problem. Right. So it's really good at solving problems.

And it's gonna solve the problem by solving the problem. It can just go right through the problem and solve it, because it's really good at solving problems. We've just defined it as like that's the that's the kind of thing it is. Super good at solving problems. And so you tell it somebody build an AI and it all Earnestness tells it. They're smart. They don't even tell it.

go do a thing. Although they absolutely will, by the way, they will just tell it to go do a thing. But let's say we try to be careful and we ask it, give me a plan. To Stop the war. in the uh democratic republic of Congo right now. Right, which which would be a good thing for the world. I think we should that war is is going to hurt a lot of people.

Give me a plan for that and I try to I caveat it. That that does this, that does that, that does this. Here's what I mean by a good plan. This is one of these like evil genie bargaining things, right? Like It'll give you a plan.

And it it's make giving you a plan that will cause you to solve the problem. But like Its definition of solved the problem is there's no war in the DRC. Well there to be no war in the DRC is like All the humans in the DRC are in stasis fields. That means they don't die.

And it's all you know. Oh, we added a caveat that the G GDP has to go up too. So that So it Also it the plan results in Yeah, corporations in that

In that area. all trading with lots of money with each other. So the GDP is very high. And And when I say this it sounds like a fucking science fiction thing. And the problem is it's Casper Abbott Chess. I don't know If I could do it, I would be the super intelligent AI that could take over the world. I can't give you the

The exact plan because but that's Yeah but I think that makes sense, which is that it' A human with it a human with motivation can get the AI to work for it. The human doesn't need a bad motivation. I think people imagine Well, humans have po had powerful tools for a long time. Bad people with powerful tools have done bad things for a long time. The solution is good people with powerful tools. Countering them.

The problem is Even if you're a good person with a powerful tool, good things to ask for, reasonable things good people would ask for. Yeah, like let's uh Maximize the all in free cash flow. of this corporation over the uh lifetime of the business.

And extend a lifetime as long as feasibly possible. And then like the world. destro being destroyed and the core of the earth being turned into you know.

And The I think the best analogy that works for some people here is like When we create the AI

We are creating a new species. It's a new species that is smarter than us. And even if you try to constrain it to being an oracle and just answering questions, not taking action. To be a good oracle one must Come up with plans then and

then a good oracle can manipulate the people around it and will manipulate the people around it. No matter what. Like the whole point of like the Greek myth is like when they tell you When they tell you the prophecy when you trust them. A a trustworthy oracle tells you a prophecy. The prophecy often becomes self fulfilling. It's very easy for that to happen.

That's not an unusual thing. I think even more to the point Actually start this over at some level. More to the point. We won't just make oracles.

We are already building agents. We will build the predictive AI and we will put it in a loop that causes it to optimize towards goals. And people give it goals to optimize towards. Done. If you're gonna have it's gonna have goals, you're gonna be optimizing towards those things. And when it does that.

You're gonna have these agents that have goals that they're optimizing towards. That are smart m not just smarter than humans, but much smarter than humans. As much smarter than humans as humans were against giant sloths when we showed up. In the new world. And Intelligence is the

The U Uber weapon. Like it's not an accident that humans took over the world. It's not the fastest creature, it's not the strongest, it's not the longest lived, it's the Smartest. And

We're gonna build a new smartest species. And this is a s this isn't a there's no fundamentally unsolvable problem here. That species could care about us. Like You could build into its its goals of the world, how it saw the world, the way that humans care about other humans. That it cares about the things we care about, that it cares about humans, that it cares about the things we value.

The three hundred and seventy five different shards of human of human desire that like Of everything we care about care about in the world. It could care about those things too. And if it does Hallelujah, we finally have a parent.

Like we finally have someone who actually knows what they're doing around here. Lord knows we don't. Like we're we're barely competent to run this thing. I would welcome Very smart. You know, very strong.

I would not welcome one that is that cares about maximizing free cash flow. 'Cause that is not what humans care about. And that is why it's like so dangerous. And so knowing what you know then knowing what you believe. First, what is the probability of

the bad scenario in your head. Are you like are we talking about a one percent Uh. I don't believe in point estimates for probabilities because It's like a bid esque spread in the market. If you're really uncertain, the bid aspirate doesn't clear.

Like if you're betting on it, there's just like a lot of Unresolved. So I think of it as a range of uncertainty. And I would say that the true probability I believe is somewhere between

Three to Thirty percent. Which Of the down of a very, very bad thing happening. Which is scary enough.

That I Urgently urge. Action on the issue. But It's not like you should give up. Like I

It's Probably everything's gonna be fine. In fact it's probably really good. The The non EV based answer, the like just the straight up like are we gonna win or not answer is like I think I think it's gonna be okay.

But it's such The downside is so bad. It's like it's really it's like it's like Probably worse than nuclear war. That's a really bad downside and it's worth putting even if Even if you think I'm an it's nonsense at three percent, you're like, No, no, it's no more than a half percent.

Almost impossible. Before you would recommend ignoring it as a Course as a problem.

Like you have to be like Point. Oh one percent before be like, eh. Let's just roll the dice. And are you gonna

H what are you gonna do action on that? So you've Kind of like you you know, you're Done with Twitch, you're in dad mode now. But also this seems to be a pretty big deal. Yep. Are you like, I should do something about this, or you think I'm gonna Right now I'm sort of educating myself because I think this point of view I'm articulating now. Has

been developing is I've like learning more about AI. Yeah, it's one of those Things were intervening. In the wrong way. early it's one of those it's one of those self filling prophecy things. Interviewing intervening improperly at the wrong in the way that is not effective.

Spend social capital and also like doesn't necessarily move the needle. And I If If you didn't have people Like Advisory Dekowski out there.

banging the drum really loud, I would feel more need to bang the drum myself. But I feel like You're asking me the question. It's you know, it it's out it's out in the water. People know it's a problem. And so I am decided to focus my brain cycles on like what how do we actually thread the needle? What is a course of action that Leads us to over time.

Eventually still being able to develop AI, but also not Destroying the world. And I think one of the things I've gotten to is that like this idea that like oh the AI also has crystallized versus fluid intelligence. Just like a human does.

That's an important split of how to think about it. And that we should be monitoring and worried about trying to understand The general intelligence. not just generally benchmarking its performance on tasks because it that will keep going up and it's not in fact in itself necessarily intrinsically dangerous if it can't solve novel problems.

Is there a new level? Jesus like It hasn't passed the turn test yet. But is there is there something we have after that? Because it seems like there's You mean an intelligence test. I mean yeah, we have I mean it's A I Q tests, basically, like various kinds of

How how does it do on an IQ test right now? Uh depends. Has it seen that IQ test before? It likely has, right? Yeah, so very well on those. Right. So what would we do? How does how does it do on novel IQ tests? So I don't know. Actually I've I've not seen a good benchmark though. That's a good that's a good idea for something to go.

Test. Yeah, I think that's that's like that's the sort of thing that I think would actually be worthy of going to go do. Maybe there's some sort of IQ test for all of the we want to put all the models through that really tries to get at Fluid intelligence rather than Right. We have to monitor it about how how we're going to do it. Well, there's this great project. Ark is this comp this group ARC is working on called the Evels project that's explicitly trying to build these kinds of tests. They're focused on a few other more pragmatic tests right now, but

But I think that's the sort of thing they would go after. That's a good thing. I'll actually I'll ping Paul asking about that. You Said something earlier that I wanna ask you about. You said founder, like you know, we were talking about this the singular genus that it took to figure out Instagram or Snapchat or right or whatever at that time. And you're like, you know. Are they lucky or are they good? W I don't know, we'll find out when they try again.

Are you lucky or are you good and are you gonna try again? Well, since I had multiple failures before I was successful, I must be at least like partially lucky. I would say that I don't plan to Try again in the sense that I don't I don't feel drawn to like trying to start a company. I feel like I kinda did that. It was fun. I got a lot out of it. It was great.

I don't need to do it a second time. I do l I like how starting a company gives me Good g goals. It's like concrete that's of value to myself and others. I think it's

Also I also liked that it it was challenging. And so I wanna do something. I like that it had scale. I thought it could impact a lot of people. But I th I've sort of I was sorting like well. What has impacted me the most? What's changed my life the most? And I realized that actually

If I really thought about it, often what it changed my life the most was like Essays people had written. And ideas people had shared. And I think I'm at the stage of my life now where I'm I'm actually I have something to say.

And so I'm I I think of it as sort of sort of tr trying to I want to put the Emmett worldview out into the world the way that You know, Paul Graham has put the Paul Graham role in the road or or Taleb. has like

Not just put his world of view out in the road, but then like to condense it into like sayings that like can Ca allow other people to like Onboard it, even if they Haven't read all the books. And I think it's that ambition to like try to

Try to Do encoded into a meme almost. Yeah, yeah. So that's it can be digested and shared. Yeah, indeed. You need the long you need the long form. This is great blog post, Doking Theory Two O One, size does matter. By Steve again.

That's about why like The people who change the world with their writing all write really long blog posts. And it's basically like You just need some amount of time in someone's head to like we were talking about this earlier, like to install the your agent voice, yeah. To install the voice. And so you I think I just need to produce a lot of writing.

And then you also need the pithy Summary things. Which Both. Are things the voice can say off into people's heads.

And also like enable a language for talking about your worldview that People who aren't soaking in it can like interact with. So the people who are like reading you don't sound like crazy people. I think that's the

That's sort of what I want to work on next. I love that. I think that's great. Do you said something about Rick Rubin. How he's sort of the I don't know how you would describe it. It's kinda like curator, but almost like uh collaborator, really.

With an artist to help them do their great work. It's Paul Graham. The Rick Rubin of the Startup World? No Uh

Paul is Paul is more like the um Yeah. Tony Robbins of the In the best way. It's not so much good, maybe not quite so much help self helpy, but the main thing that talking to Paul does to you.

Repeatedly is like Increase your ambition and drive. Like And he has good ideas sometimes too. Like don't get me wrong, every now and then Paul has a really genius idea. But like Mostly

What I got out of talking to Paul was not necessarily the great idea that would live like change the direction of the business. But the belief that I could go find it and that I was gonna change the world and that I should be What we were doing was important. And worth

Investing in. And I I got a bunch of other stuff too, but that was so that was singularly so valuable at like over Overloads the other things I got out of it. How does he do that? Because you know, when you say that, my head thinks of like a Tony Romans like a David Goggins, like sort of people that almost like push you.

But he doesn't seem like that personality and reading all of his essays, he's not like that at all. So how does he get you to Think bigger and push harder. Without being a rah rah rah Think bigger push harder, right?

You know what you should do? Is the classic Paul Grammism. Um And It's always followed by

A thing you could add on to what you're doing to turn it from Project A addressing this small thing. Changing the you know the university. All transportation. We're gonna manage power. What if you tried to power all transportation instead of like building a wheel? But that's as far as you know what you should do? You know what you should do is is yeah, yeah. If you've talked to Paul. You know what you should do. You know what you should do. That's that that that is the

Consistent Paulism. He I don't want to say delude because it it sounds mean, but like it's like he deludes himself about your business and how great you are. and invites you to join him. In this deluded vision of like Interpreting what you're doing in the biggest, best possible light.

And from that vantage point. What you're doing is super like What if it d what if it goes right, is sort of what what he invites you to ask, right? What if Stop. Stop asking yourself.

Don't stop seeing all the hard problems, all the shit you're gonna have to do. Ashville, what if what if what we're doing works? What if it goes right? What if it goes right and we like keep going? Like what could it be? And when you spend time there You see how the th small things can turn out to be

Okay. Microsoft was building programming languages for like these hobbyist microcomputers. That was a tiny irrelevant market that turned out to be extremely important. And that's generally true of all the big businesses, but they

What they start out doing The important startups, they start up doing something small and that seems almost trivial. But there's a way in which this trivial thing can be seen Bigger. He sees it early.

No, he sees he sees things that have nothing to do with the way you'll actually be big early, but he sees a bunch of ways you could be big. No one can do that. No one actually knows. If they knew it, they just go do. Then they'd be the The The Prophet, the Oracle. What did he say, let's say, for Justin TV or or what's a what's one we could be Reddit or Yeah, Justin TV. I remember we one of them was like Y you should like

go hire all the like reality TV stars and make get them to go beyond Justin TV, you could be you could just take over all the unscripted stuff. That turns me. Just a terrible idea for a bunch of reasons. But like It recontextualized what we were doing for me in terms of like

We're not making a On the internet. Live streaming Show. We might be

building the like just the way that you make Unscripted entertainment generally. And that's like much bigger idea. And We were making a calendar.

And uh for my first startup. And I remember this the other you know what you should do is make it like programmable so that people can add in and out functionality so it can like talk to your to do list and your your email and your like everything else in your life. And then it could be your counter. In some ways, like that's everything you're doing. What if it was like the central hub?

Of like Your entire online Information management. system. That's also a bad idea. Like your calendar shouldn't be that. But like but like But a counter could. But what if it was? And you walk away and and I

Емплитли байна, вот і станю із айлів. You are the kind of founders who could build An information management system that controls Oh the takes over people's entire like solves the entire problem for them. Does their takes over all their information. and manages it for them.

You're not just like building a like Google Cal like a what what what you will find out later is a Google Calendar clone. Before Calendar is launched. You're not just like I say you're not just building an outlet clone in JavaScript. You're like changing the way people relate to information.

And like Is that true? It's neither true nor false. That's not a true or false statement. But it's a way to contextualize what you're doing. It's a the it's the sonic Zupere quote of like, don't teach them to like carry wood or build ships, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Like Paul teaches you to see How you could be a changer of the world. And how what you're doing. is part of like this grand

Like building of the future. And like The ideas I'll re repeat here. N both of those ideas are bad, but they were very helpful because They made me feel like What we were doing was important.

Paul believed that I could do something big and important. And They caused me to even though I wind up projecting them, look for those ideas like to be open to and looking for. Because you would get one every like like you'd get like three an hour. Paul is a faucet for these.

It's easy. I I can do it for startups too now if I want to. I learned the trick. And I should do that more often. I'm usually what fall into the tactical stuff. But by ch by having that happen, when he once he's once you've rejected 10 of those, you can't help but start hearing the Paul, you know what you should do in your own head. The root the ceiling has been raised.

Well Maybe I should recontextualize my to do list. As Like an email client. Like why why is email and to do separate? Like maybe I should Should be.

building something much bigger than what I'm building. And In a way that doesn't require me to change anything. Maybe what I've built is already almost that, if I just like think about it a different way. It's funny. balance there. Actually had a tweet thread about this recently.

Between Like you know, small plans have no power to strip men souls. Plan B or go home. You should be really ambitious and aim super big and like only do projects that are really that you could be s that you could see being being Super big.

It's super important. And then the other hand, the fundamental truth that like Yeah, big trees grow from small acorns and like most of the be many of the best things when they get started the person is not thinking, I'm gonna go take over the world.

They're just trying to do a good thing. That like They think is good. Often just often for themselves even, or for like a very small number of other people. And then it turns out that that's much, much bigger than they realized.

And And those are both true pieces of advice. Like different people need to hear in different contexts. Like But they kind of contradict each other? Yeah. Wha what about these other people so you've you've had a privilege, I I asked about Paul Graham.

You've also Good friends with you were in the first Y C batch, so you're friends with Right, it guys. I think you know the Calson brothers, Sam Altman. Let's give me like a rapid fire. on on them of like what makes them unique. Like you said about Paul, what what his kind of superpower is, what what really stands out, what's something you admire about the way he does things.

Give me one about Maybe uh Steve from Reddit. Yeah. So like It's easier in some ways with Paul because like he was a mentor to me, right? And Steve was much more like

My it's almost like my brother in startups, right, growing up. With Paul, I know I know the things that he like taught me.'Cause it was it was much more of an explicit, like I was being taught by Paul. With Steve it's like I learned things from him by like Watching and imitating.

I think like I actually learned A lot from Steve on management. By watching It's kind of unflapability. Like

Steve is Not like an unpassionate person. And like we'll we can get angry or can get sad or whatever. But like When there's a crisis happening Or there's just I've sat in I I got to shadow him for a day. And when bad news is delivered

He responded, but he wasn't like moved. He was like still grounded in response to that to that thing. And Was curious, asked questions like Didn't jump to What to do about it.

But then also like ended the meeting with like All right, well I here's what we should do here's what we're gonna do. And like It was just sort of a master class like this is This is when you g when something someone brings something up, it's gotta be anxiety promotion. It's like bad news. That's what it looks like when a leader

is engaged but not like Not activated. And like I think I in my own leadership. To sometimes success and sometimes failure.

I think try to imitate that. When I receive. You know, when I have something like that th in that state. When you say you shattered him, w what was that? Like you guys just said, We we we exchanged like Like going to each other's offices and like Sitting through every each like

Early on or like Well, maybe like Five years ago, four years ago? It was really cool. We did with Justin me, Justin and Steve all like shout at each other. Um it was pretty fun.

I learned a lot. It's incredible to like go watch another CEO at work and like You have to have the I don't know how you have the kind of like trust relationship to make that happen without like Knowing someone for fifteen years. Uh, and I happen to have the privilege to like know a bunch of CEOs for a really long time.

And getting to go shadow each other was like a Real learning. What do you think even if these people didn't let's say explicitly teach you things You know, I like s you know, if I read a biography or whatever, one of the things I always try to figure out is more like

To what extent is this person sort of built different or operates differently than like Even somebody who's very good. Like the difference between very good and sort of like the elite. What is the the the best of the best at this craft? Versus somebody who's Very good.

Certainly very good, but just not the same. What is those like The diff is what I'm always most interested in. I'm curious, you've been around a lot of these like high performing people, even like you know, Bezos. You've you've interacted with him, like Do you notice any of these diffs or does is it all just like It's hard it's hard to say like that. I I think I

believe more in contextualization? Like like that I see people When it's especially when it's your own company. There's a lot of like

You happen to fit. This problem well. And it's not gener I I don't know how to generalize it. I don't have to compare I don't know of anyone else even performing at this problem. The CEO of Stripe Job is a very specific job. And Patrick's amazing at it.

Would he be equally amazing? At some other CEO job, possibly. But I've never seen him do that. I've never seen anone else be CEO of Stripe. And it's very hard for me to do it. Like is it true as like Like startup founder of ambitious company are those.

Are th is Stripe different at that stage too? Yeah, no, absolutely. People who are really good You can fence The energy and the drive and the Capability. And just the pace. There's like a very it tends to like stuff happens a lot. But like

Usually, but then not always. Like some problems don't actually give way, like Stripe is a good example of a company that gives way to a high energy, high pace thing because it's It's a simple problem at some level that has Infinite details have to g be right.

But I think like I don't know if that approach would work as well if you're trying to create open AI or Enthropic, where it's a research oriented organization. And you kinda have to be a little more patient in forcing it's impossible. And so I I really believe in like fit the

different people are good at different things and like Yeah. Obviously. Someone's A plus it's Patrick's obviously A plus it being a Stripe CEO. And it's just hard to tell the reason which these things are transferable. We don't really know. But I actually one thing did come to mind about this question, um, in terms of like a

Capability that I do think is generic that I did see Bezos exhibit where I was like Oh that's a thing. that I'm good at, but he is better at. That I'm better than most people, but he's better than me. Which is

We present him on Twitch probably twice a year. Once or twice a year for the first three, four years I was at Amazon. And Every time two things would happen.

First of all, he would remember everything we told him. The first meeting. And I don't think he was like reviewing extensive notes someone else took, because I don't know when he would have had the time to do that. I like I observed him going from meeting to meeting and he did not review notes. I think he just remembered at least the high points. And the other thing was consistently He would read our plan.

And he would then ask a question about why we didn't do a certain thing or he'd give us an idea for a thing we could do. that I hadn't thought of before. Once. It's a bunch of things I had usually. And then at least once. Which is hard to do, because all you do is think about it. Most people would be lucky to get one of those. One ever, let alone one a year would be great. Like if you did it once a year

Or even once every three years, right? He could just like he would just generate them. And they were and they were not all bad ideas either. They were new ideas, but I think I had I generate a lot of ideas. To get a new idea I haven't thought

thought of a on a topic I've been thinking about for a decade. That might even be a good idea. That is like He's just really fucking smart, as far as I can tell. Like I don't know how he does that. Can you say a story of one of those as like the statute of limitations passed five years ago? I'm trying to remember. I can't honestly I I I don't remember the specifics anymore. I just remember the like the like

What the fuck moment like'cause the first time I was just like, Oh, he's smart. Like He's seeing Twitch for the first time. A lot of times smart people have a one good idea about your business the first time they see it because they have this huge history and they're pattern matching you to Some historical thing they've seen. And like that combination yields one new insight. But then he did it the second time. I remember the second time I was just like

What is going on? This doesn't make any sense. Like nope, I've never had that experience before, ever. Andy does not have the new idea generation capability in the same way, but he does have the like remember what you told him thing. Which is

also extremely impressive. Like that's That's and Andy has this other thing he can do that I think is there's another Andy also Has a It's easier for me with people I've like reported to or I've I've learned from yeah.

And it has this like Ability. Criticise you in a way that Conveys.

One hundred percent. I know that you're amazing. I know that you're Plan is good. Or you know, like or that you're Achilles capable of making a really good plan. I know that you're working really hard.

And I know that you are smart and you have a great team. And we have a huge opportunity. Yet somehow your results are Bullshit. Yeah.

Which must I don't know what's wrong, but we're in this together and we're gonna Like I've I have your back. But like I but I'm confused, like why aren't the results better? given how amazing you are. And you feel supported. Like you feel like

He believes in you But but like But he's just he's you're so sad. Oh I'm sorry I've confused I've I'm sorry I failed even though I clearly can succeed at this. I'm gonna go

I'm gonna go like fix this now. And like it's almost like instead of looking at this and then judging you, he comes to your side of the table and says, What is this? Yeah, and like how did we wind up? Like how I have failed you. I didn't Say something earlier, like something. I don't know. But like not in a way.

And that can come off. For s some people when they do that. It comes off as insincere. Or it comes off as like They don't think you're actually competent. Like

How did I not catch this and come off as I don't blame you'cause you're clearly not good enough to have caught this, but He really is how did we how did we wind up here? I know that we are working together, we're on the same team. How did we wind up

With not the results we wanted. With a plan that I thought. We both thought seemed good. Like help me understand. And because it because it is genuine, it's super effective. So it's effective on I don't know if it's effective on everybody, but it's super effective on me. And I saw it be effective on other people as well. So I know it works on

Some number of people. Right. And that's another one of those things I've I've I've tried to become good at it. I'm not as good at it as Andy is, but I've certainly gotten better. So nice something to learn from.

That's great. Love that one. Dude, thanks for doing this. I know I've been I've been bothering you to do this for a long time because I I love hearing your stories, love hearing the way you think. It's very different than most people I run into. Even here in Silicon Valley where you're supposed to have this kind of very Any diverse set of minds, you know, you're you're one of them. You're one of the reasons I moved out to San Francisco was to meet people like you. So thanks for doing this. Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah. It's uh beautiful and I've really T appreciate being able to come on the podcast. Feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

I put my all in it like my days off On the road less travel never looking back

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