Reid Hoffman

Carlos talks to American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author Reid Hoffman about how LinkedIn came to be and his new book Masters of Scale.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Read. Hoffman grew up in Palo Alto, California, and had
an early interest in philosophy. After sending philosophy abroad, he
realized he wanted to make an impact on the world.
He was a member of the board of directors during
the founding of papal And Electronic money Transmission Service, and
would later co found LinkedIn, the business oriented online social network.

(00:24):
On this episode of the Carlos Wotson Show podcast, read
Hoffman reflects on how LinkedIn came to be and his
new book Masters with Scale. Hey, Read, Yes, it's Carlos. Hi, Carlos,
Nice to see you. Nice to see you. I don't

(00:45):
know if you remember, but James Manyika is a good
common friend of ours, and I think we've got a
few other good friends in common as well. Yes, and James,
James is awesome. I literally just spent a couple of
days with him last week. Oh Ice, where were you, guys? Well,
we have this place up on in the San Lan Islands,
and he came up and visited and we we talked,

(01:07):
you know, the future of work and artificial intelligence and
you know, all the things that James normally thoughts about.
Do you know what years ago. I worked at Mackenzie
and uh, I was leaving and I had a wonderful boss,
Bill me and who you may or may not have met,
and uh, Bill took me to breakfast at Stanford Park Hotel,
which you know well. And Bill said something like, you know,
you and I do have the same problem that James has,

(01:29):
and that he's a genius. And I was like, WHOA,
speak for yourself, don't leave me out, you quit yet,
I want to be in there. So but but but
you are right, James is a one of the world's
good people. Yes, Uh, you know if if if if I,
if I had a dollar for for every time I
recommended him for a board or something else, Uh, it
would be a lot of money, right right, right, right

(01:51):
right though. He is the best of the best. And
Sarah and I cannot believe that their son is in college.
It's frightening. I used to visit their house, uh, and
he would be asleep. He'd be so young that they
were like, you know, he's asleep. He's not even coming out.
And it's crazy to think that he's, however tall he
is and in college. So and the apple doesn't fall
far from the tree. And then m I t yes, correct,

(02:14):
right right, right right right. In fact, the tree may
have gotten bigger and stronger at this time around. So yeah,
he's a he's among the world's good people. Did you
guys meet at Oxford or where did you and James meet?
Originally we met um kind of uh in Silicon Valley. UM.
I wish we had met at Oxford. We were, we
were there overlapping UM. But UM. Part of it is

(02:35):
I was not I was trying to meet like he
would have counted because global, but I was trying to
not meet Americans. I was trying to meet global people.
And so I was staying away from the roads crew
because you know that's heavily US even though it has
Commonwealth UM. And and so I didn't actually meet him there,
but I was later, I think, UM at a conference.
I think it's one of the tech conferences. Okay, okay, yeah,

(02:58):
what a what a good soul to come acros oz.
And you're a Bay Area native, is that right? I'm
a fourth generation California and I was born in the
Stanford hospital. No way, And what was your what were
your folks doing over here? Were they were they techy's?
Were they what brought them to this side of the
side of the bay. So um. My great paternal grandfather

(03:20):
was a newspaperman for the l A Times and wrote
westerns um and um. And so that's kind of the
other side. And then my mother's father immigrated from Austria. Uh.
And then you know, the usual kind of things get
you oriented at the San Francisco Bay aream. And when
my when my father's father bought his house, it was

(03:44):
the first house in the in the orchard, right, because
you know, Silicon Valley used to be known for its
orchards and cherry blossom tourism arts. So so it's kind
of a long term California. And my father was a
law student at Stanford when I was born, so I
was literally born in the Stanford hospital. Oh, very interesting.
So he had an interesting class. Um a bit. Max Bauchus,

(04:07):
the former senator, probably was in his class, and a
few other interesting people were probably there at the same time. Yeah, exactly.
And did you ever think about law? Was that ever
on your your path or no? Uh? Uh, insightful question.
So both my parents are lawyers. Um, my father from
Stanford and my mother from Berkeley. And when I was

(04:30):
asked when a child what I want to be when
I grew up. The answer was not a lawyer, because
I had a bunch of upfront and close personal experience
with this and the law. The legal profession actually has
the highest uh percentage of people who, you know, go
get this the training, you know, the elite education, the

(04:53):
bar exam, and practice and then transfer because it's long, grueling,
tedious hours. You usually where you're kind of a paid
gladiator because you're paid to be the fight for me.
And so you know, people start that because if they're
smart and they're educated and they want to do important things,
and I go, uh, not this, And so I got

(05:13):
to see it up close and personal, and I was like,
you know, there's gotta be other things than law, right, Well,
you know what that is. That's good that you got
to see it. My version of that was I was
a copyboy at a law firm in Miami, and I
got to see up close and personal because they often
didn't pay attention to the kid who was coming around
bringing mail, and so they were very open about how

(05:33):
unhappy they were. And so I got to see that
kind of up close and personal in a way that
otherwise I would not have yes, yeah, And so how
did you end up how did you find yourself in technology?
Was that the next most obvious thing, given that you
were growing up in uh in Steve Jobs's backyard metaphorically speaking, Yeah,
well then that quite back close. Um the uh so

(05:56):
the benefit was I ended up going to Stanford, and
I probably wouldn't have thought about. I mean, like all
young boys in my age, I was programming the Apple
to E and I was complaying with it and technology
was very interesting. Although for me, technology has always been
a tool to how do we navigate better lives as
individuals in society, not and end into itself. And so I, um, uh,

(06:19):
you know, and I was thinking about I went to
high school at the Putney School and Vermont, so I
got my independence, you know, the the the away from
home early um. And then I was like, okay, um,
Stanford looks like it combines this really elite education with
pragmatism with a with a kind of impact in the world.
And actually, in fact I chose Stanford because of the
first year, like I decided, I'm I'm a great student

(06:41):
of decision NG and have been my whole life. And
it was like, okay, how do you pick colleges, will
pick your first year. And I was like, there was
this program at Stanford called Structured Liberal Education, which was
this nine units two thirds of your of your freshman
year with a hundred and fifty people in in seminar
that included philosophy and his Tree and and politics and

(07:01):
economics and arts and da Dad and all together, you know,
from the Greeks to the present. And and I was like, Oh,
that's really interesting. I'm gonna go do that. But it
turned out that by going to Stanford, I also got
much deeper in the tech industry, and so I could
see what the leverage of tech is, how tech is scalable,
what how tech shapes the world, how becomes the platform
if you want to geek out a little bit to

(07:22):
Star Wars, it's the it's the tech is the mitochondrians
of the force that you know, kind of binds us
together and shows us mirrors of who we are and
allows us to do things and and makes us like
it's kind of like, you know, we say Homo sapiens,
but in some degree it's it's it's sapiens as you
know technologists, right, So it's kind of because as as
we we evolve ourselves through technology as we do this.

(07:43):
And I learned all that at Stanford, So I ended
up majoring in this thing called symbols Systems, which is
basically artificial intelligence meets cognitive science. And I want to
go back to the decision in question because I love
the fact that you call yourself a student of decision ing.
Whether someone's thinking about getting married, whether someone's thinking about
how to raise their kids, whether someone thinking about do

(08:04):
you quit a job? Where do you live? What are
the two or three most interesting things you feel like
you've learned about decision ing. Well, there's lots, because it's
you know, I'm a little older now and been you're
always learning. Um. Let me start with the first one,
which is kind of when people ask me, like, what's
the piece of wisdom that I got um for my parents? Um,
And you know, there's a bunch, but like one of

(08:25):
them is very early, and I think this is the
thing that caused me to start really studying decision things.
My dad told me the challenge about making decisions is
it reduces opportunity in the short term, but it's the
only way you get opportunity in the long term, because
when you say I'm gonna go do A not B,
then all of a sudden, B is no longer an option,
or if you return to it's a different kind of option.

(08:46):
And that's part of the reason why people tend to
emotionally want certainty around the decision, because you're giving up
stuff by making decisions, but that that is the only
way that you create really good, long term opportunity. And
I thought that was really good, and so I started
thinking about like, and that's part of what got me
to apply to and get into boarding school on my
own and then tell my parents I want to go.
You know, he's like, okay. Decisions about like what are

(09:08):
the things that need to happen and what are their consequences?
And then the other one is um similar reflex but
not quite the same, is that most people tend to
want to decide within call it a binary context. It's
like risk free or risk completely managed, or this is
like everyone tends to tell themselves, this is the absolute

(09:29):
best decision. The absolute best decision I could have made
in the world is to go to Stanford. The absolute
best decision I could have made in the world is
to start LinkedIn. And there is no such thing as
an absolute best decision, Like we're we're in Shakespeare where
these these these these these actors and actresses who are
playing this one act cold state upon the stage and
you're making the decisions and improv as you go, and

(09:53):
you have to kind of roll with it. You have
to learn and so and so so intentionally recognizing and
taking risk differentially. Right, So, um, you know kind of
like saying, hey, a risk can be a very smart
thing to do because you can have a an impact
or a meaning in the world in life that you
really want to take. And I think that's probably that

(10:14):
kind of of thinking is probably what you know before
I even knew what entrepreneurship was, that God have got
me into entrepreneurship. That is such a bold idea And
and if you haven't put it on something that that
phrase a risk can be a smart thing to do.
That actually could open up a lot of people to
the idea of risk who up until now, for good reason,

(10:37):
their parents themselves, that others have said don't do the
risky thing, or try and stay away from risk. But
you're reframing it and you're offering it as a door
into somewhere interesting. Could be Really that that could be
a really valuable phrase to a number of people. Thank you.
I may actually even because I may not have said
that phrase exactly. But my very first book called The

(10:58):
Startup of You, Um, when I started as a commencement
speech to my high school and at Putney, which is
what do I say, well, which is seventeen year old,
you know, internet entrepreneur and investor, I was like, well,
approach your life like an entrepreneur approaches their their career,
their work, their company, and be the entrepreneur of yourself.
And that was the thing. And I only write commencement speeches,

(11:19):
and people sat to write the book. So wrote the book.
And there's a whole chapter on intelligent risk taking because
that's the way that you can by by owning it,
by like steering into it, making decisions intelligently, you can
make a very big difference. The worst decision you've ever made, Okay,
how long do we have? Um? Probably? Well, it's it's

(11:43):
a funny thing. I mean, it's very hard with how
lucky and fortunate and serendipitous I've been in my career
in life to look back and say, boy, that was
a bad decision, because you're like, well, but maybe that
was important for you ended up and so uh and
so you know, the whole question is like I was like, Wow,

(12:03):
maybe I want to be an academic and I need
to test it. Those are good because testing is part
of risk taking decision. So you know, I'll go, I'll
go to Oxford and I'll study philosophy and maybe that'll
teach me about thinking and language and maybe I'll be
a public intellectual and and and academic. UM. And then
I was like, oh, that doesn't have any scale impact. UM.
And so what I did was I stayed there for

(12:26):
for kind of three years, you know, kind of completed
a degree and kind that even though I knew that
I wasn't I wasn't like, this wasn't the path, This
isn't where I was going. I was going to go
somewhere else. And UM, to some degree, it's the go
and start on those paths beyond the paths. And if
I had come back a year or two earlier, like

(12:47):
you had wrapped up got you know, got the one
year degree or you know, that kind of thing as
way of doing it, then I would have been even
earlier in the beginning of the Internet revolution within within UM,
you know, kind of Silicon Alley. And this is the thing.
Most people think about bad decisions as oh I did
this and I had this really bad outcome. And by
the way, those are sometimes where those are the really

(13:09):
bad decisions. But the thing they miss is where's the
bad decision where you missed possibly huge opportunity, huge upside,
huge change. Like for example, people ask me as an investor, like,
what did you most regret investing? It's like, well, hey,
you invest you lose your money. The mistake is not
investing in pinterest, not investing in Snap, right, those are

(13:30):
the mistakes. The mistake is is the oh I should
have done that, not oh I did that and I
shouldn't go right. Interesting, So so what would you put
at the top of that list thing? Would you say,
it's it's pinterest in Snap or is there something else
that when you think about And I'm very purposely leaving
this open for you to define it however you want.
And I particularly think not only about your experience of

(13:52):
PayPal and LinkedIn and obviously Graylock, investing in lots of
companies and now at masters of scale, getting you talk
to lots of interesting people who have who have become
masters of scale, in one form or another. But given
that you've got all that context to use and to
put to work, where would you identify your biggest uh,
your your worst decision, or your biggest mistake at this

(14:14):
point understanding that hopefully you've got many more years to
make more. Yes, Um, well, so I always try on
every big decision, I post mortement. And it isn't only
in failure, right, it's in success or failure. I go, okay,
which parts of the decision were good? Which parts of
the decision A badge? Literally every single decision, every single investment,
every single pass on an investment, exceptera. And it's part
of the reason why I quickly realized the decision wasn't oh,

(14:38):
I invested in this, and I shouldn't have. I should
have done better. Referencing on the entrepreneur, I should have
realized that that this kind of investing in a difficult
space like education, even though it's a really good thing
to change the world, is very difficult because the customers
are difficult, and the capital flows are difficult, and and
so forth, um and and and you know, you kind
of all these lessons you learned, But what I realized

(15:00):
was actually, in fact those are in the noise. The
real question is is when you know, Like I had
met um Ben Silverman and and Paul Shiara early in
in the pinterest days and they came by my office
at LinkedIn and they said, hey, this was before I
was a VC. I was doing angel investing, and I said, hey,
we got this new thing. And I didn't realize it
was a new medium, that pin boards were a way

(15:22):
of of expressing themselves. It was just like an essay,
post or a picture or something else, that it was
a there was an important new composition. And if I
had realized that, I would have said, I want to invest,
like I want to invest as much as I possibly can,
and that would have been, you know, an amazing result.
And these are great entrepreneurs that I've I've become friends
with since and would have wanted to go on the
journey with and you know, and and and kind of

(15:44):
that as as portion of doing it. And so you know.
But but but by the way, I wasn't kidding when
I said, well how long do we have you said, well,
how many mistakes have you make? Well a hundred? You know, like,
how long do we want to talk about it? Take

(16:15):
me back to LinkedIn for a moment because I've read
about it and I've heard it secondhand, but might as
well hear at first hand from you. How did you
end up starting LinkedIn? And at what point in the
journey did you know it was going to be a success. So,
um so, I was part of the founding team of PayPal.
Um PayPal, all the vast majority of very good, big

(16:37):
tech companies have value of the shadow moments where you're like,
oh my god, we're gonna die. Why did we everything
was a good idea? Um, why do we think we
were going to succeed? Why do we think we would
write people to do this? And PayPal turningly had that moment,
So um uh, Peter Tiel and Max live Chin and
I um uh kind of went and did a little
off site in my grandparents cabin and and will I okay,

(17:00):
what should we do? Right? And and and and you know,
kind of charted the plan for becoming a master merchant.
And as part of that, I said, look, if PayPal
blows up, we're all gonna have a lot of tar
on us because we've raised hundreds of millions of his capital.
So we should we should we should talk about what
the next best idea is and I pitched a version
of LinkedIn then right because it was kind of like, hey,

(17:22):
if this doesn't work, I've learned from having done my
earlier startup social Net that there's this transformation of the
work world and people aren't thinking about it because part
of the the central lesson, you know, you see this
lot and Masters of Scale is being contraaring and right, um,
is how you break through the noise and create something
very large. And and everyone's focused on socialist like dating
or community, which are important, but like they're nothing about

(17:44):
work and network. And that's that's the thing. I think
that that that is a new platform could be really good.
And then of course PayPal worked, and so I was
working sold the d bay and then I said, you know,
I should take some time off, and I went, wait
a minute, nobody has done linked In. The time is
still this is this is the fall of of two
thousand and two, and it's still there. It could still

(18:06):
be built, okay, as opposed to taking a year off,
I'll take three weeks off, right um, and we'll get going.
And then when did you know it was gonna work
right out of the gate? Did you have that conviction.
And now you had um a couple of experiences under
your belt, and you had been around, you had money
in your pocket, and so you you felt the level
of conviction that it was gonna work, or even even

(18:28):
at the outset, even with all that in the background,
you weren't sure it was gonna work. So I'm one
of there is a class of entrepreneur, maybe even most
of entrepreneurs, who the way they talked themselves to risk
because they go, I'm certain is a good idea, I'm
certain I can make it work, and then they project
certainty in all quarters because it's how you get everyone
to come with you, investors and and employees and partners

(18:50):
and customers and all ways. I'm actually one of those
who sees risk very clearly. So when I started, I
was like, well, look, I got an idea. There's a
whole bunch of things by which this couldn't work. Because
I aways asking myself with this decision, with this path,
if it works wide old work, if it doesn't work
quite as a network, and then if you don't see
anything about why it doesn't work, then you're blind. You're
just not you're flying blind. So I had a bunch

(19:11):
of different like, oh, this could totally fail in in
my idea, but I had a specific kind of what
I call the theory of the game, like how it
is I'm going to play out against those risks and
why I know something that the world doesn't know and
and competitive entrepreneurs don't know, and what's what's the thing
that I'm playing in order in order to do that?
And I'd say where I knew that I had something

(19:33):
was when I got Viralty working, because the big risk
was could you build a network of people where then
the people are in this network? That's that's how do
you navigate your work career and find interesting opportunities and
match talent with opportunity. And I was like, Okay, we
got a big enough network now that we'll be able
to build something. And then when I knew it was uh,
that it was really something was when people started using

(19:56):
it beyond the use cases we designed it for. It's
part of platform. And the first one was this really
interesting and ocuous one, which was you know, people always
think of job searching as well. I decid, don't want
this kind of job, and maybe one of these companies
or this industry or this kind of a good job
at this company and then I find my way there.
And the thing that links in adds to it is
an ability to to get like like a connection to

(20:19):
someone who can help me, you know, kind of give
a reference in the company, and that kind of Well,
this this engineer decided to want to move to Denver
and they said, hey, I don't know what which company
is gonna work force. So I'll look at which companies
hire people like me, and then I'll look research those
companies and I don't decide which of those companies that
I want to be at. And that's a people professional platform,

(20:40):
you know, that's one of thousands and thousands of uses
in this and it was like, okay, now we're beginning
to get that creativity on top of the platform where
people are using it, and now it will become an
essential part of the tool set by which people live
their work and live their careers. When you look back
entering conversation with your friend Ron Conway a number of

(21:02):
years ago, and at the time we were talking about
what was a still young Twitter, and he said something
really unexpected to me, which he said, you know, Twitter's
huge success, billion dollars in revenue, you know, it's hit virility,
people use it for use cases beyond what people originally expected,
et cetera. And he said, and therefore, it's hard for
me to say what I'm about to say, Carlos, which

(21:22):
is it. It could be even way more successful. It
could be three times more successful. And he said, but
it's hard for me to say that to anyone in
a way that they can hear, because it's had such
outsize success that having a conversation with him about the
fact that it could be three x is not one
that they can easily get to. When you look at LinkedIn,
is there any part of that? Is there any part
of you that says, I'm enormously proud probably one of

(21:45):
the one most important and central contry companies in the
world today. It you know, I touched it today. Lots
of people touching, as you said, touching for variety of reasons.
So we're grateful to you. It. It introduces us to people.
It it inspires us because we see other people's thinkings.
Sometimes it helps us find a new job, move to
a new city. All sorts of things happen. But is

(22:05):
there any part of you that, as proud as you are,
says you know what we could have been bigger, more impactful,
different and I wish we had done X. Well, there's
a whole bunch of things that I'm still hopeful that
LinkedIn will do. I mean, part of the um the
combination with Microsoft was UM, I think the best way

(22:26):
to approach companies and you'll obviously see this than lots
of the Masters of Scale episodes and the book emails
is we're all servants to the mission. Like there's a
mission that this company is on. It's it's a transformation
of the world that we are making and UM and
so part of the decision was LinkedIn will have a
bigger and stronger transmoration of the world. Combined with Microsoft UM,

(22:46):
it'll be able to integrate into all the work platforms
that Microsoft has and bring in that expertise to finding
other individuals. It will be able to bring in technologies
that are super expensive to invest in, like artificial intelligence
that Marcus Off as one of the leaders in the
world in and bring that into it. And you know,
I never would have of engaged in the transaction if

(23:06):
I didn't. I haven't hadn't got to know Sacchia for
years before, and I knew he was special right, um
even before now everyone in the world knows it, but
like like I had gotten to to to know it early,
and so that was kind of all the decisions. So
I don't have a regret on the combination. But on
the other hand, there's tons of stuff to still do.
I mean, I'll give you a tiny little example that

(23:28):
I'm still hoping for to see, which is so everyone
knows who thinks about reference checking that that LinkedIn is
a great way to check references, Like you want to
hire someone or do business with someone or anything. I
was like, hey, is this person ethical, reliable? A good
partner knows the stuff that they're doing all the rest
all that time, I would love to have employees reference
checking their managers would because you know, part of your

(23:50):
success and happiness and everything else is is the manager
like a good manager. Well, LinkedIn allows you to do that.
I have yet to hear that asked in an unaided way, right,
but but like that kind of thing, and so there's
and there's just tons there's there's there's so much to
still do. Um that you know, and and Ryan Riss
Landscape is the new CEO is a product guy, and

(24:11):
so I have confidence that he's working on it, and
we talked about it every so often. But like, you know,
like the like I suspect that I like when I
when I am beginning to shuffle off this mortal coil,
I will still be looking at LinkedIn, going oh, there's
still a lot more to do. Um, a little bit
of a turn in the road here. Um read most

(24:32):
of us will never get a chance to be a billionaire.
When was the moment you became a billionaire? And what,
if anything were you surprised about when you reach that
unusual place in unusual status, Because I assume when you
were studying philosophy in the UK that was not necessarily
number one on the list, right, so I assume that

(24:53):
you weren't someone who was always plotting planning that. So
so what was it, when did it happen, what was
it like, and what would you tell to the rest
of us? Is true about when that happens? Well, so
unlike some people because a lot of people who who
become you know kind of who who go from middle
class too uber wealthy or very focused on getting wealthy.
I've never really been focused on it. I am focused

(25:16):
on the value of money first for independence and freedom
to be able to have my own time and choose
and then to have money to do projects and influence
in the world. And then you know, I've become, since
moving from academia business world, a great student of what
are the the great things and the challenges around capitalism?
How does it need to be reformed and and and
improved upon? Generally the critics I'm generally on sympathetic too,

(25:39):
because they're not They're not proposing a better alternative. So
the best thing is how do we improve it? Right?
How do we make it better? Uh? And what are
the ways to do that? And um? And so for me,
like like I don't I can't track an exact date
because I wasn't really paying attention. I was paying attention
to what kinds of things I'm building and what kinds
of influence in the world I'm having, and what the
mission of the company is and what you're doing. Um. Now,

(26:01):
I just as I also was kind of not thinking
myself as like an entrepreneur or a business leader. I
was like, I'm just trying to make stuff happen in
the world. And so then it got reflected and so
it's like, you know, like I get this question and
the short answer is, you know, I refer to this
as spider Man ethics. With power comes responsibility. And if
there was one thing that I could wave a wand

(26:22):
and improve in the American psyche is to not believe
that wealth is only my own individual thing like that.
When you get to wealth, even when you go from
middle class to to building it all yourself, it isn't
the system allowed you to do it. The the the
this this great place in Silicon Valley with venture capital
and talent and rule of law and and and and

(26:44):
and technological platforms and all the rest of stuff, the
invention of the internet, all the stuff is the stuff
that allowed you to do this. And that's a social infrastructure.
So really what you've done is you've earned the custodian
rights right. And as part of custodian of course, if
you hey, I wanna I want to I want to
have a occation and go to Fiji, of course you've
learned that right to um. But with power comes responsibility.

(27:05):
With great power comes great responsibility. And so it's to
think it's not just mine. Everyone piste off. It's okay,
I'm the custodian. What's my role in society, what are
the things that I should be doing? And that's part
of the reason why I, you know, later become friends
with people like Bill Gates and so over, because you know,
as that as that template of we should go and
contribute to the world in directed ways that apply to

(27:27):
our capital on to our knowledge is something I think
is is really fundamental. You know. One of the things

(27:49):
I've been thinking a lot about, particularly over the last
year and a half read with some of the conversations
around social justice and where do we go from here?
Is if we were at a moment where we not
only thought about out the next year, but we thought
about the next fifty years, and we started to think
about what could America two point oh look like if
we took this as the first chapter and we said,
you know, there are lots of opportunities to be better,

(28:10):
and and if we had a new constitutional convention and
not only had you know Washington and Hamilton's and Jefferson,
but we had you know, Hoffman and Minnika and Coats
and Gladwell and Laren and and um duvern At and
all sorts of people. What would you put on the
agenda if we were having a fresh convention, and we
were saying, lots of stuff we're proud of from our

(28:31):
first two fifty, lots of stuff we think could be better. Now,
let's look freshly forward, not just for a year, but
for the next journey. What would be two or three
the things that put us in Philadelphia again? If you
want UM, you know, you know what, what would you
put on the table for us to think about in
terms of building that next America? Well, one thing I
think UM is America's I have a phrase that I

(28:54):
use permitente beta, which is you're always improving, you're always iterating,
you never think the finished, you're always learning. UM would
be kind of like to have that kind of constant revolution,
right is and and renovation really more than because we
should all be institutionalists and we should all be renovating
the institution, because you know, revolutions where you say declare

(29:15):
year zero, those like everything from the French Territory to
the Cultural Revolution, those are terrible. Right. So it's it's
in some nights everyone's frustrated by how slow it takes,
and they're frustrated, like, oh, we've got to reform this
institution for fifty years and it's still racist, sexist, you
know whatever, and he's like, yeah, yeah, keep working on it, right, Renovate, renovate,

(29:36):
renovate because the declare year zero all students, everything in
history is catastrophe and so um and so that kind
of thing and building that into the constitution, building that
into like, you know, we have this weirdness where while
the popular vote doesn't dictate the president, like obviously it
should be the popular vote. Um, like you know, one person,

(29:59):
one vote. Uh, you know, we have this weirdness around
you know, not instantiating the every single citizen. It should
be easy to vote. Um, we don't have kind of
the notion of the society needs technological platforms, right, so
like for example, you know, um, making it easy to participate,
like like nope, nope, we have to go down to

(30:19):
the wait latent line for the d m V versus
just being you know, like like having it all by
you know, on online platforms for example. I mean, you know,
some of these things are very serious and some of
these are little microcosms. But like all of this stuff,
and like I would love it if every fifty years
we had a new constitutional convention. Now you wouldn't throughout
the constitution as much where you get around to creating

(30:40):
a new constitution, but you would say, we have a
referendum on what are the things that now need to improve,
like what are the things that that need to be
as part of this to to to to to revivify
and restore and renovate the American dream each time, because
that American dream that is the thing that we say
it's not it's it's what we aspire to be and

(31:02):
what we aspire to learn to become. That's part of
the thing that I think is the the the genius
of America and the reason why it's worth trying to
own patriotism, even when you see these other people trying
to own patriotism by you know, like like propagating hatred,
and you're like, that's that's not the America right that

(31:24):
we work for. I I love that, and I love
so much of that, including permanent beta. I really like
that too. And I love that notion of renovation, which
I think is actually very tangible and relatable idea. I
think there's a lot of richness to that. Talk to
me about masters of scale. What made you decide to
do that? I could guess, but I don't want to guess,
and you're doing it with some people who I really

(31:46):
really like, including Darren. So you're doing it with good people.
I know that there was that involved, but but how
did you end up deciding to do what started as
an innovative podcast and now is also obviously going to
be a book as well. Yep so um so the
three books before Master Scale I've written have all been
like the business world as I found it, individual careers,

(32:09):
the startup view, UM, entrepreneurial people, UM joining and belonging
to be managed by corporations, the alliance and then blitz scaling.
Why is half the NASDAC created in the Bar area
which has a population of three and a half billion people.
That's not the tech industry, that's the entire population. Why
is that? And what are these patterns of scale? And

(32:30):
what what do we learn? And then what can we
be learning and improving improving and so scale had been
the thing that I had been focusing on, and uh,
June and Darren, you know uh awesome people change agents
in the world called me and said we have this
idea for a podcast, and I was like, oh, podcast,
that's a good idea. I've been thinking about other medium
and you know, addition to books, and they were much

(32:51):
smarter than I was, Like podcasts, they were identifying this
moment of revolution where that kind of thing. And you know,
so I was on the talent. I was along for
the ride on that. But it was like, look, I
understand scale and every major problem, literally every major problem
is a scale problem. And by the way, it's also
a technology problem. So that goes to how do you
do scale and technology? So that's the kind of thing

(33:11):
that we should really focus on, because whether it's climate
change and fixing that, whether it's economic justice, whether it's
criminal justice, you know, all of these things, whether it's
it's racism and society, uh, the new needs of education,
all of this stuff, it all comes down to problems
of scale. And by the way, obviously some of it
ties down to especially in America, but generally is is

(33:32):
where does the business world also play into this? So
let's let's do this um and and you know, I
thought I was gonna just do him interview as a
bunch of smart people, We're gonna polish interviews, and there,
of course creative geniuses, so they got to you know,
like original music and all the rest. I was like, really, okay, right, Um,
and then the reason why we got to the book
was because, um, there's a couple of different things. So

(33:55):
audio is great in all kinds of way. It's personal story,
it's it's a it's a direct connection. Books create a
different way of learning, a different way of system tizing. Uh,
Like a team or a company can all read a
book together and cross check it, uh, kind of more
easily than kind of like even when I've learned to
listen to the podcast at some point and then come together,
some people learn that way allows you a density of

(34:16):
information because in audio, you really need to be having
a conversation, so you're not speaking absolutely fastly you can
and and you're not calling point point three point three
more for me. You know, you're you're, you're, you're, you're
kind of having a conversation, you know, even though it's
a broadcast in it. Where's a book much more dense.
And so it was like, well, we should add the
book into the mix. And you know, we also doing

(34:37):
courses and other kinds of things to maximize the democratization
of entrepreneurship. So if the people because entrepreneurship can be learned, right,
I'm not sure it could be taught fully. So what
we're doing is we're creating the environment by which people
can learn it. Right, But but how do you how
do you? Um, how do you enable that? That's part
of the reason why the book. What's the most interesting

(35:00):
thing you've learned doing Masters of Scale? Because again, you've
written three books, you're a graduate student, you've been an investor,
So someone could argue that in some ways this is
a harvesting as opposed to kind of a growing period
for you. But but what, if anything have you learned
over the course of doing so many interviews and now
writing the book. I'll say three things? Um uh so

(35:24):
one UM, I used to be a kind of a
boring public speaker because I was like, I write a
speech and I read the speech, and I go, I'm
a little bit bored by reading the speech. And one
of the things that that that having June and Darren
kind of coerced me or tricked me into being talented
performing this is something you know very very well, is Hey,
if you don't show your interest, your passion for this,

(35:45):
you're like your your dynamism, right, Well, then why should
the other person be interested? So that's a kind of
like a personal lesson that was a surprise. The second
on the podcast was that, um that even though I
know entrepreneurship very well, I know scale very well. Um,
there is always learning and refinement even on how you
build culture, and and you can find it in a

(36:07):
surprising places. You can find it in the the um
you know, like in places you wouldn't have necessarily expected.
So like, for example, UM, when I was talking to
Tyra Banks, you know, part of the thing that I
that I kind of saw there was she approached her
supermodel career as an entrepreneur like she was thinking about
competitive differentiation. She was thinking about what is what what what?

(36:29):
What do the models do? How do I play to
my customers? What am I doing? It wasn't just that
she was obviously beautiful, but she was smart and strategic,
And I was like, wow, that that that like the
cup plays everywhere and you see that across things. Franklin
Leonard as a systems thinker in Hollywood with a blacklist,
you know, like these things were like really amazing and great.
And then the third in turn of doing the book

(36:51):
was you always have this this effort to try to
and we'll see, we're gonna this is we're gonna have
a test, uh and see this works. But like trying
to distill mindsets, frames, provocative, catalyst questions to be contraying
and right to be, how can you and stimulate a
certain amount of innovation and creativity? And how you approach

(37:13):
these things by like such things as why is hearing
no important? Because you normally no, I want to hear yes.
I want to be able to be able where it
is important? And how do you make that part of
your daily activity? And when you're investing and you're hearing
those why can that be a good thing? Um? And
and that kind of thing to help people learn this

(37:33):
stuff and and so for me, the test here in
the book is will this? Will this be a mechanism
that will help people? Because that's like part of creating
entrepreneurship is how we're going to create the future. When
you think about your episodes, I know you just mentioned
Tyra and and and Franklin, but give me a couple
of other episodes that, for whatever reason stand out to you,

(37:55):
either because you enjoyed them, because it was a big lesson,
there was a surprise because that's where you would start
a high school Uh. Set of students off on. Give
me a couple of episodes that stand out for you
in addition to those two. All right, UM, so one
that I learned something from it was very funny. It
was when I it was I learned not to have

(38:16):
not to listen to so called common wisdom and bias
would be very careful about it because common wisdom usually
is in wisdom maybe common, but not wisdom. And UM
and so I was interviewing Mark Zuckerberg, and I had
even though I've known him, I was one of the
earliest investors in Facebook. UM and Greylock was an investor,
and you know all the rest. Uh, I had internalized

(38:38):
the buzz and Silicon valley that Mark Zuckerberg had finally
grown up and learned and he had changed his principle
from move fast and break things to move fast with
stable infrastructure. And that's because he finally learned. And that
was kind of when the backdrop of my head because
everyone had said it, and so I asked him about it,
because you know learning, and he said, no, no no, it's
the same principle. Speed is what really matters entrepreneurship. Speed scales,

(39:00):
that's what really matters. UM. It's part of how you
run this race and you in. But the question is
is if you stay at they move fast and break things.
You're breaking things, You're moving slowly, so you have to
make sure you're moving fast, but you have stable infrastructure.
That's what still causes a fast learning curve. And I
was like, right, you're totally correct. And I had allowed
myself to be blinded by everyone else's little bias about

(39:21):
finally the young person has learned. I was like, no,
no, no no, the young birds and smarter than that common
wisdom about how these things play out, you know, kind
of early kind of thing and thing about blit scaling
ever else. And then as another um you know episode,
I'd say, you know, maybe um Bob iger um on,

(39:42):
you know kind of branding because like my interview with him,
you know, I've known Bob for years. You obviously stored
ceo um you know, love him and these great and
all kind of things. It was like a master class
in how to think about brand right, because I'll give
you a classic common wisdom thing that they didn't make
mistake this time. It was like, why does Disney to
do cruises? Disney News does cruises because it's a way

(40:03):
of making more money off their brand, because that's why,
you know, an average person street things about Bob thinks
about it entirely differently. He doesn't engage in any piece
of business in Disney and obviously he's not seen anymore. Um,
but doesn't gage in any piece of business without thinking
how does that increate attach rate across all the properties.
So if cruises don't have people coming off and going, oh,
I really want to go to the theme park or

(40:23):
I really want to watch more Disney movies, he doesn't
want to be in cruise business. So each thing causes
you to love the thing more. And that's a very
good way of thinking about a portfolio when you're doing brand.
And by the way, it's part of why, of course
Bob has this genius about his acquisitions, because he goes, well, actually,
in fact, we buy Pixar, we buy Marvel, and if
people go, oh, I love this, and this will actually

(40:45):
in fact, you know, be um, um, you know kind
of um uh you know, um, you know, kind of
like cause me to love it more and cause me
to identify with it more. And Kasman want to see
the other things. Then do the experiences, and then that's
the thing I'll do. And that's say I think a

(41:06):
very good thing for brand, and you know, instances of
things I've learned. M ounce per ouns the best entrepreneur
you've ever met. And again these are the Hoffman rules,
So it's it's it's however you want to judge it,
but ounce per ounds best entrepreneur you've ever come across.
So the short answer is, there isn't such because what

(41:28):
I think of I usually talked about these things. I
talked about them as CEOs or executives or entrepreneurs as
world class e g. There's none better. But there's a
class of people there. Because I could easily say Elon Musk,
who has done magic in creating super hard projects, Tesla,
space acts, et cetera. I can easily say you know
Zuckerberg as a person who you know just like Bill Gates,

(41:50):
another amazing corn who dropped out of Harvard and created
a platform in a small number of years for the
world with literally never had a you know, I had
a full time job before, right. You know, as an instance, UM,
you could say you know folks like um, you know
Miriam Nafisi, who thinks about marketplaces and networks in really
really interesting ways and so um, you know, so all

(42:13):
of this stuff is is is is like I kind
of go to world class and then I don't compare
them within them. I just go these are the people
we should learn from. Of course, why it is we
select people to be on Master's scale. Let's play crystal
ball for a minute. Look forward for me once U
by a time we love futurist Alvin Toffler and the

(42:35):
rest who I'm sure you you know of and and
may have future shop future shop. Um, this is a
Reid Hoffman edition. Look forward for me twenty years, fifty years,
hundred years, whoever increment you want, and tell me and
everyone else who's watching two or three interesting things that
you expect that we will see, watch, enjoy, experience, Uh,

(42:55):
you know, come to know. So two things I say
about the kind of prediction in the future. One is
it's the greatest way to seem like a fool because
you make specific things and then it's always different, like so,
for example, in the fifties and we'll have flying cars,
but actually we got the internet. Now we're getting flying
cars obviously with Jovi. Until you kind of make those
kind of mistaken predictions and then The second is the
future is sooner and stranger than you think. It's another

(43:15):
part of that, which is it's things that start happening
that you weren't quite anticipating that suddenly have a big
impact on the world. And so you know, I think
that for example, you know, one of the things that
you know maybe maybe happen because of the pandemic and
all the rest, is that intersection of software and biology
may suddenly make you know, the just in time manufacturing

(43:37):
of vaccines and other kinds of things suddenly like very present.
Like that intersection of a biology and software, I think
is suddenly going to be like people aren't really looking
at it, and something's gonna be huge because it wouldn't
have been without a global pandemic where people said, well, gosh,
like we need this kind of stuff. We're willing to
take some risk, We're willing to the ease up on
some restrictions on innovation in order to make this kind

(43:59):
of stuff because we need that in order society to function.
I think another one is is like people don't realize
the speed of acceleration. So you get to kind of
artificial intelligence and and you know, part of how software
and data is transforming the world. Well, it's gonna touch
every industry. Every industry needs to have a software, data
artificial intelligence strategy, and you're gonna see all kinds of

(44:20):
different things. And obviously some of the bets I've been
making as an investors automous vehicles, you know what kind
of aurora, neuro because you know that's part of the
need as an investor, you know, having those thoughts and
going and doing things. And then I guess the last
thing I'd say is, you know, there's obviously a bunch
of storm and drawing around cryptocurrency. UM. I wrote a
piece and wire UK something around there, which is we

(44:42):
will have global cryptocurrencies, which will be a good things
and even a good thing for government, and we're iterating
our way to them because it's just an extension of
the platform on the Internet. And I think those are
all things that will be components of the future. UM
that will be strongly there. Um. But I'm certain positively
certain there's gonna be something I didn't mention here that's

(45:02):
gonna be huge. That was just like, oh, that's the
sooner and stranger interesting. So we're gonna have data infused
just in time vaccine that you pay for with crypto. Yes, okay,
that that would that that's probably a more elegant way
of of of my little like well there's this and
that that. No, but but I love those and I
feel those moving in different ways. Can I do a

(45:24):
little rapid fire with you? You mind if I hit
you with a variety of things? Okay? Your favorite movie
of all time? Oh, all time? Hudsucker Proxy, It's the
fairy Tale of entrepreneurship. Although just because like certain movies
that I totally love MOUNTI pathon Life of Brian, King
of Hearts eques. Anyway, your karaoke song, I don't have one.

(45:46):
I sing so poorly that I actually have never done karaoke.
Most interesting thing you've learned in this life about dreaming fearlessly?
Uh well, we mentioned it a little earlier, which is, uh,
take risk deliberately, like like like go, where is a
risk that I could take that could be big? Because
that's a risk that's survivable, etcetera. And I think that's

(46:08):
probably the It enables you, you steer into. It enables
you to dream, you know, huge and fearlessly. Your next
big dream. Um. I've been playing around with I've had
some ideas for utopian science fiction plots, because you know,
the world is what we build it, and we shouldn't
be fearful of this future. We should be building towards it.
And so you know, I have a bunch of friends

(46:30):
who are much more talented in this than me. But
you know, maybe what you learned from Trump, what I
learned from Trump is that UM a couple of things. UM.
So one not the obvious stuff, you know, public reality star.
You know, democracy is selected, it's a problem, etcetera. But
sometimes by the way, being bold and crazy can enable

(46:51):
kind of good things, whether it's interfacing with Korea or
other kinds of things. And that there is there's stuff
that can come out of that UM and that UM.
And then unfortunately we're still even though we'd hoped, like
post World War two, where we think that people would
realize when do you stand on moral principle and take
some personal political pain, we still have too many people

(47:11):
who are just playing the political game. You know, they
know that that that he had terrible governance, but they're
still playing that game because that's the purpose. And we
should always say, well, what are your values, what do
you what do you stand on? When I say no code,
you you say what, Um, Well, there's a bunch um
but it's the modern AI platforms for generating code. And

(47:33):
do you believe that we are in a no code
era which will allow a whole broader set of innovation
versus previous times. Yes, uh, And it starts with accelerations
like Microsoft's code Pilot or open Aiyes, codex, But it
starts with those innovations. And then it isn't the coding
goes to zero. It's the coding gets amplified. It's now

(47:54):
this code or can do what five years ago, They
can now do ten times what they could do five
years ago in a in a day. And is it
just coding or receive? And I was having a conversation
with my friend, uh Mark Mayder, who runs smart sheet.
I don't know if you know a smart sheet, but
but we were having a conversation about other kinds of tools,
like project management tools that may in fact do some

(48:14):
of the acceleration totally. And like one of the ones
that I've invested in is called koda um as a
kind of a platform for doing this. And so like
the the new platforms for enabling everyone to create new
kinds of productivity. It's like the coda thing is where
docs have the power of apps, um, in order to
do this, and I think that's that's part of the future.

(48:35):
The last two questions, if you could have dinner with
anyone dead or alive, who would you love to have
dinner with? Well, to some degree, Dad's much more interesting
because you know, like that would be you know, stunning.
And you know whether or not it would be you know, Socrates,
or or Marie Curie or you know any number of
you know, the Buddha, right, any number of of of

(48:58):
interesting people. If you said, you know today, um, you know,
I have dinner with a lot of really fascinating people. UM,
that I'm fortunate to do. You know, probably um, like
a really interesting artist or or or somebody that I like.
I don't know who they are yet, um, but would
would show me a different lens on the world. Final question,

(49:21):
most fascinating political leader you've ever met personally for me,
President Obama. UM. One of the things that I frequently
do when I'm talking to people generally across not just politicians,
is asked them essentially first principles questions and so I
you know, when I was having dinner with UM President Obama,
I asked him. I said, look, if you could wave

(49:41):
a wand almost like your constitutional connection earlier and change
three things in the system, what would you do? And
it was like, well, eliminate the filibuster because it causes
a lack of progress in the US and causes one
party to hold up the other. Um, you know, kind
of incentivized voting to get everyone to vote and feel
like their owners and the democracy and the fact that

(50:01):
he had these answers on the tip of his tongue
meant that he was a first principal thinker about our
constitution of our society, about how we we come together.
And that was like that was like great constitutional law
professor exactly. Indeed, UM read what an absolute pleasure, As
I said, our mutual friend James Minika is a song
your praises for the longest time. And now I'm happy

(50:23):
to text him to say that I've gotten a gotten
an experience myself. It's a real, real pleasure to meet
you me as well. I look forward to our next
conversation me as me as well, me as well, have
a I have a great weekend you too, Okay, take
care of thank you for listening to this episode of

(50:51):
The Carlos Platson Show podcast. If you enjoyed this episode,
please tell your friends to find us on the I
heart podcast app or Apple podcast