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[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone this is Jeff producer of conversations with Tyler a few announcements before we get to the show today first thanks to all of you who supported us with a donation at the end
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of the year we really appreciate it I also really enjoyed receiving your notes I know Tyler did as well including your feedback on the end of your episode which was good so we'll do more of those we'll answer your questions give you a
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University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at [Music] arcades.in conversations withth tyler.com we're here today with Reed Hoffman and I'd like to start more or less at the
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beginning on your Wikipedia page it says that you quote drove oxen in high school what does this mean uh well what it means is I went to this uh great High School in Vermont called the Putney School and part of the
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reason I selected it is because it was belief is the diversity of a human being so not only are we intellectuals and thinkers and you have to learn uh kind of how to think and how to study and how to write and how to speak and how to do
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math and all the rest of it but you also learn other aspects so you do art and blacksmithing and work and part of the work is it's on a farm and so some Maple shup farming some shoveling of CER and some driving of oxen and are you good at
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driving oxen what's the skill required for driving oxen uh partner with someone else who knows what they're doing and that's the school after the John Dewey model correct yes so if I think of your subsequent work on ideas of Civil
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Society plurality democracy does it all come from your time in high school probably It is Well informed but not foundational I would say that kind of probably the way that I tend to have grown thinking in networks and thinking of evolution of incentives and cultures probably didn't come from Putney but the diversity of Human Experience of thinking of human beings as complicated uh entities that have lots of different kinds of expression and
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lots lots of different motives probably did come from childhood and most especially boarding school at Putney and where did it come from in childhood then if not from Putney you know the nature nurture question which is always some
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blend of both you know we always have these false dichotomies nature or nurture and it's always kind of like actually how do they combine um I would say that it's probably the fact that both of my uh parents are lawyers and so
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when I would want to to articulate a desire for something I'd have to make a case and as I was thinking about the society as I found it I would think about how people are different and what kinds of ways you would need to argue to
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get what you want and then um my dad when I was I guess in 9th grade no no earlier than that when I was 9 years old um hired a babysitter who would entertain me by playing Dungeons and Dragons and Dungeons and Dragons made start thinking
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about life as a heroic quest in which you had a number of different players all of whom are coming together in order to accomplish something what is the early influence on your thought that you feel you have and other major figures in Silicon Valley maybe don't because a lot of people have played board games growing up right a lot have read early science fiction yep but you're different is it is there more New England in you
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or what what's the missing variable well it might be that the missing variable is that I uh deeply value intellectual work and public intellectual work um that I found but that's not fundamental right like what what's the temperamental
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variable the personality variable the thing that happened to you when you were nine that say makes you so different from Peter Teel Elon Musk and others huh that's interesting um I guess I mean it may be the question of how you
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respond to different circumstances so like Peter grew up in his high school at Foster City um my pre- high school was in Berkeley they're not that that far apart from each other but I guess what I would say is that when I encountered and
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saw suffering of people around me and so that would range anything from you know my mom was one of the first women through law school at uh Cal and joined Wilson zini and you know partners then were making jokes about you know now
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they're living the second secretaries become lawyers and so forth and seeing what impact they would have my reaction was how do we reformulate Society to be on a trend to less suffering and to more evolution of who we would be I don't
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know if there was a particular experience of it that was like this one catalic moment this moment of epiphany um other than that was the way that I was reacting to a set of things that I was seeing if we think of Peter teal and
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Elon Musk they could arguably by the standards of many people be called weird uh I've reviewed everything all the books you've written a lot of your public talks I can't recall you saying a single thing that's outrageous in any
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way whatsoever why aren't you weirder uh maybe I mask it better that's that's my straussian element is that I hide my weirdness I would say that a little bit of it comes down to a theory about um kind of what is the right way
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of evolving discourse and while I think I probably do have a variety of views that people would think is weird so I uh for example think of myself as a mystical atheist right which is neither the full atheist category uh nor a kind
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of any religious category but some blend um in the middle or uh the fact that I actually think that the notion of like kind of this capitalism is one of the world's leading interesting Technologies but it's not a particularly good philosophy and you'd
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think that's odd for a you know an entrepreneur an investor and so forth so I have areas where I would say I'm probably groups of people would think I'm weird uh I may not highlight it because uh I tend to always speak in a
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way to how do I think I help uh us make the most progress and I would only say the weird things if I thought that was the thing that would result from that so there are weird things that are in your mind yes yeah if I view your work as a
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complete Outsider I think of you as a kind of living embodiment of John Dewey and you went to a John Dewey inspired school so social communication is a critical idea a big emphasis on a certain kind of communicar experience of democracy uh pragmatism thinking in terms of large scale systems yet you don't site Dewey much there wienstein Aristotle you talk about and your philosophical background my take on you what is it getting wrong what am I
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missing so it's funny I don't usually tend to do I tend to be Outward Bound in my changes in the system so these are great questions are getting me to try to reflect on my interface point to it I guess what I would say is that I tend to
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think in terms of systems dwey was a system thinker but then I tend to think of in terms of our comedian levers by which you change the systems and I tend to think that there's a number of different types of aredian levers can
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range from ideas or memes can range from incentives or culture and it can range from leaders building organizations or institutions or reforming or renovating those institutions and I tend to think that you should play a tool set across
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the whole thing now to some degree you know dwey is a classic pragmatist and there's that pragmatism that is definitely one of the things that uh I have a as part of the institution and institution building think is super
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important but I also value that intellectual work in terms of just the ideas and including you know um far out philosophy like the audio class that I'm listening to right now is science fiction as philosophy as a Rel lens onto
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everything and just those pure ideas of the Bold ideas which maybe always incorrect are still important to be part of the mix early in your life what was the science fiction that resonated with you most and why early in my life uh
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that answer may be not that interesting I mean it oh it's definitely going to be interesting um I would say Dune with Frank Herbert yes uh because of thinking of the broad scale of of kind of the interplay of politics and religion in
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the evolution of society because it's it's it's science fiction is that by making these artificial future societies a lens onto our own I would say Isaac asimov's uh question around psycho history and the foundation series and
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then you know things where you start thinking about you know hind line uh moon is a Harsh Mistress um and and also you know Stranger in a Strange Land those were probably the early ones uh and then Ender Game was probably towards
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the end of The Arc of my childhood and that reflects the empathy emphasis and what is it that really bugged you in science fiction or you disliked or you rejected it's always a good window into what people really think yes um I would
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say that uh usually science fiction is too simplistic in its theories of human nature that the characters are some degree too unidimensional and this bugged you as a 12-year-old oh absolutely yes right because I mean the
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question is is that you know the motives are a complication like for example uh people say well be ego full or egoless and it's like well actually it's a spectrum like the way that our egos are shaped and get expressed is is a set of
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triggers and desires and narratives that we're telling ourselves about the story that we're living and what we're doing in the world and that's not like one simple bit and a lot of the you know like especially Isaac azimoff who has a
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bunch of interesting theories tends to be the the characters all tend to be these enormously like cardboard cutouts Avalon Hill board games how good were you at them I think you know the answer to this question which is uh I
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don't recall losing one and which of your qualities are responsible for your being so good at Avalon Hill board games I think what I did is I learned at an early age uh what counts as a strategy how tactics relate to a strategy and what counts as a differential strategy when you are in a conflict with another person and it wasn't like I was never as good at a number of people as chess and so forth and those games always struck
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me as inaccurate to real world because they didn't have a gap between epistemology and metaphysics they didn't have a you know the uncertainty the fog of War they didn't have Randomness elements to them a bunch of things that
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actually in fact very present in life whereas Avalon Hill games um had a you had to have plans B you had to have like if the die roll went against you what else would you do um what was your fallback plan for what you're doing you
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had to have a model of the other person was thinking about it and you had to be thinking about what are the ways that you might see things coming together in ways that the other person wouldn't within this fog of war and fog of
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uncertainty my favorite Avalon Hill game was Blitz Greek have you ever played it uh I don't think I've played Blitz cre I played tactics 2 a lot but also a bunch of the other theater War ones like North Africa and the other ones is speed of
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Conquest important in tactics too uh yes so it's like Blitz scaling right but early on the early version what kind of board game would you invent although by the way go to go back to that the choice is and I'm sure we'll get to this blit
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scaling is when to move fast and when not to move fast right like that it's not always move fast but be capable of moving super fast when you need to but unlike in Tech it doesn't depend on whether or not you have a network good
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it depends on something else yes like there's a competition and a bunch of other things now if I were to invent a board game actually I'm going to answer I'm going give you three board games because I think all three will be interesting so one would be is a political economy game of creation of companies partially because I actually think teaching the skills of Entrepreneurship is important for how do we make progress in society how do we
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solve the future of middle class future middle class jobs Etc second um is what would Life 2.0 be as a game right you go back to the Old Milton Bradley Game of Life 1.0 of course I know it well yes and then how do you say how do we choose
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a life now and what would be a board game about choosing a life and how would that be essentially refactored and then the third would be probably a game of think of it as kind of the future of humanity like what would be the kind of
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as human beings are evolving who would we choose to be you'd almost think of it like a World of Warcraft game but as opposed to Pure Fantasy it's that evolution of the human condition are you actually going to create these games
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I've thought about all three of them which is the reason why yes or or no uh probably probably yes and how actively will you be involved in that creation if so it's a question of time and prioritization now you have a master's
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degree in Philosophy from Oxford and there you won the Matthew Arnold prize what did you win it for so I won the I I now know this wonderful Oxford expression called Proxima casset which is I want it for the fact that I would
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have want it except there was one better essay than mine um so it it was a an award but it was a Proxima kessid award and it was writing a an essay on Matthew Arnold's relevance uh to modern society why was the other essay better than
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yours I don't know I never saw it they didn't send it to me what do you think of Matthew Arnold today wow that's a question that I have not encountered since 19 is El no pretended to be a radical but was a fussy old white guy or how do we process him now um I am much more of the there's a problem with Elites where essentially incompetent people try to lock in their own position and strategy and power and that critique of elitism
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is is is a critique that I'm sympathetic to but the maximum expression of human Potential from whereever comes within Human Society is something I think is super important and the valuing of being extraordinary in a number of different
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ways including intellectual and a bunch of others is I think super important and I think Matthew Arnold's values of those sorts were very good and I think the primary thing that I was writing about in that essay was that one can
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articulate very good conservative values that are not trying to lock in the past against the future but trying to articulate principles that help guide you in your actually own evolution of thinking about Concepts like Liberty and others to whom do you give greater credit Socrates or Aristotle why Aristotle well um you know Socrates as you know uh we basically only know through the writings of a number of his students I found that uh Aristotle's
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intersection of studying the world and thinking was a much better form of philosophy this may get back to your Dewey observation earlier that says actually in fact philosophy is not the thing that you sit in the cave doing but
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something you do as you participate in society and you still want to have kind of theories of human nature theories of cognition theories of how you formulate um uh truthful or false theories of the world and theories of human nature but
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you want to do it as a kind of a as almost like one of the Expressions I used when I was an undergraduate to describe the kind of philosophy I wanted to do is Transcendental anthropology which is you're looking at what humans
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are doing but you're applying kind of conten you know kind of analyses to it in order to kind of derve good philosophy how did your interest in the late viken Stein influence the Construction and design of LinkedIn um I'm sure they ask you this
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all the time all the time that was the question I've always been expecting uh I would say that the notion of thinking about so a central part of later Vicken Stein is to think that we play language games that the way that we form identity and Community both of ourselves and as individuals is the way that we discourse and the way that we see each other and the way that we elaborate language and so that pattern of which ways we
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communicate with each other what's the channel we do and what's the environment that we're in come from insights from including later Vicken Stein who I think was one of the uh best modern philosophers in thinking about how language is core to
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the people that we are and that we become what else from philosophy influenced the Construction and design of LinkedIn well a few things um so one is uh philosophy allows you to articulate thesis with Clarity right so
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one of the things that philosophy tries to do is say well what's your actual argument what's your actual Theory what's your actual position and that actually ties into one of the things that I give advice to entrepreneurs and
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do myself which is to write out your clear set of investment thesis about what it is you believe the world is and is becoming what your strategy is and making it happen and why you can uh have a have a rare or unique position in so
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doing and then articulating theories around like for example having a theory of human nature so that if you say the reason why I think this product will succeed is because this is where uh Humanity will go when these kinds of
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Technologies and these kinds of products and services are made available to them within their cultures and within their incentives do you think of the LinkedIn page itself as strictly functional or is there an aesthetic principle behind it
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that comes actually from philosophy or the Arts in some manner well um one of the things that I uh am still working towards with LinkedIn is the the hope of what is the transformation of society that I would love to see LinkedIn become
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and uh so for example you'd say well most people encounter l say well it's your public professional identity and it's a nice way of uh finding new business transactions which might be a new job might be starting a business
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might be a business Consulting opportunity all of which is true but what I'm actually hoping to do is have all of the business world uh move in the number of uh single transaction games to thinking about their entire business
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life and relationship and work as multitrans action games can we actually move within the game theoretic framework to saying now my incentive is to always act when I'm transacting or I'm doing business with other people to think
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about it as a multitrans action basis because not only will I think that evolve a lot of productivity but I think that will also evolve U the society and Morality In the right way because we should prefer non-zero sum games the
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labor market recovery from the financial crisis seems to have been especially slow uh we had a president President Obama whom you you know think highly of we have all these social media including LinkedIn that ought to bring people
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together with the right jobs more quickly and yet the labor market recovery has been so slow why is this well I think there's two or three reasons one is I think um unfortunately while entrepreneurship is doing quite well in Silicon Valley and a few other places it's actually been on the decrease across the US I think we need to get back to the formulation of new firms entrepreneurship across the entire country because I think that gives you
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adaptive places where people can go I think another thing is you know I think it's it's a it's trite but true that Educational Systems that encourage uh What uh Ben kesa and I referred to in the startup R you as being in permanent
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beta which is always learning like kind of saying you need to be learning for the current modern networked age and how to be constantly learning and make sure you know as many kids as possible learn that and keep learning um because then
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you can adjust to the new jobs and some of that's also creating entrepreneurship and new firms those are I think among the reasons and we try to help that with LinkedIn but you know it's a it's a big rock so the aredian lever needs to be
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particularly strong what was the philosophy class at Stanford you met Peter thel in um mind matter and meeting taught by Professor Bradman and are you a philosophical dualist I know you're a mystical atheist but are mind and matter
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the same substance or are they different wasart correct no uh I am what uh Buddhists refer to as a non-dist which is kind of entertaining because you think you just say you're like a A monist or something versus a non-dualist uh but the I think the the point of being subtle about saying a non dualist is you say well there may actually be uh some kind of spread of substances but they're not actually in fact disconnected so if you said well
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maybe there's a spiritual nature that involves something things that are not what we would refer to as the material plane they say well I'm not sure we wouldn't as we studied that just resolve that to materialism that could be one
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outcome but you're open-minded to the question I'm a determinist are you uh how are you a determinist with quantum mechanics quantum mechanics maybe it's just the micro scale but einsteinian general relativity implies the universe
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is this Frozen four-dimensional block of SpaceTime and there it is voila so what I would say is that we certainly don't know enough to be certain that determinism is true that was part of the reason the quantum mechanics question and maybe this is actually one of the ways that I tend to think is how we evolve our culture so one of my favorite handles when I join a new computer system is Qui exotic right chotic because if there isn't if it's all
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determinism maybe we should act as if it's not right even if it is course that's the Stussy intake yes right but the question is is if we're acting as if it's not do we have any possibility of creating a system and which is not all
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deterministic and should you remain optimistic about that or is that just a version of self deception and is a anara where self-deception is intelligent where usually self-deception is thought not to be and so I guess what I would
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say is I am acting like it is not all determinism but I don't know if that's actually the fact what did you think of Peter in that class how was it well so Peter's super smart and matter of fact I learned some of the crispness of my
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thinking through arguing and debating with him uh and uh I think we enjoyed the class as a way of being precise about thinking about things like you know is there is dualism correct or not for example how do you and Peter read
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Shakespeare's The Tempest differently huh oh boy so I think roughly uh our different readings of the Tempest would come down to the following I think that Peter's reading of the Tempest would view the importance of the Primacy of the individual the importance of uh Prospero and the magician being self-creating and that the individual is the primary focus of what matters and I would say that the uh my reading of the Tempest would say
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the individual potential and capability are super important but the reading of the Tempest is the importance of starting in this magical place and this other Island but then rejoining Society with the things you've learned and your
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contributions to the society as an individual are the macro reading of the Tempest what else from Shakespeare strikes you as especially significant so I tend to think that the reason that Shakespeare endures tends to be less the
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comedies and more the tragedies and I think it's because one of the things that we encounter as human beings we see suffering and we see tragedy around us and how we respond to that is the great question of how we derive meaning what
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is our character and uh Shakespeare has a enormously good job of crystallizing that into some kind of the relationship of individual psychological tragedy together with social tragedy what was it like in 1996 being on
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William F Buckley's Firing Line well that was my very first appearence on television Peter called me and said they're looking for a technologist who's willing to defend that governments can and should regulate speech on the
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internet and I said you would you be willing to do that and I said yes and so I found myself on uh William F Buckley's side him sitting to my left Ariana Huffington sitting to my right um and this is when Ariana Huffington uh gave
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an impassion speech who she's awesome I I think the world of her but that the internet was a poisoned well that our children were drinking from I remember that speech and the people I was arguing against were people that I like deeply
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respect like uh John Perry Barlo John Perry Barlo um Esther Dyson uh there was a number of like the folks on the other side like during the break they came over and said why are you on that side you should be on our side and I like
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look by the very specific reading of this thing which is can and should regulate speech on the internet that gives you truth and advertising that gives you liability laws that gives you a number of other things it actually in
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fact is illusion freedom of speech is something that we enable as a society to help us evolve towards truth but it doesn't mean that any lie will do you come across a so idealistic in that tape if you view it again today does that
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still feel like you the same Reed Hoffman I would say yes with maybe only the following asteris which is part of the reason I think to be 10 out of 10 idealistic is not to be naive not to be simplistic not to realize that tragedy
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isn't really possible but that is actually in fact the goal of our lives and what we should work towards and so ever giving up on optimism and idealism is I think a tragedy in itself of all the causes behind the success of PayPal
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what's the underestimated one see of all the causes cuz I would say probably well I'd say that most people didn't realize that when PayPal got started it actually wasn't paying any attention to eBay and so it was launching this new payment service and
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then it took off on eBay and the first week everyone was like oh we should get these eBay people off our system and then they' realized oh these action Factor are our customers so the the the point about it is is most people
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describe the success of PayPal as like deterministic based on the high quality of talent there the recognition of a market need the willing to be fast moving and learning machines in terms of how to adjust within this kind of
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decrepit banking system of payments and doing all those things and those all look like kind of just straight down the world you know kind of the road strategy and the natural quick evolution of product Market fit and if eBay hadn't
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existed PayPal would have never succeeded and what was your comparative strength on the PayPal team I think that would be an interesting question to ask other people including Peter I would say that my comparative strength was that I
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was willing to interface with these various massive platforms and institutions eBay Visa Mastercard government regulation other companies and to figure out how to to win PayPal a place within those platforms you know how to navigate
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their concerns how to not make PayPal be organ rejection uh to those entities and that ability to both tolerate very different cultures very different mind views very different conceptions of what's going on but also get PayPal a
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seat at the table was probably one of my unique skills within the PayPal crew and how did you learn to argue to The Regulators that PayPal is not a bank so I have money in my PayPal account it sure feels to me like a deposit correct
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yep arguably there's a kind of lending that goes on so if you're taking deposits and making loans Etc how did you argue PayPal is not a bank well we weren't making loans so that's actually an important part of it we are they may
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be doing it now but at the time we weren't making loans well not formal loans but there's a transfer of money and there's well we're transferring money but like for example you know you could give me $100 in cash or I can give
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you $100 in cash and I'm making a loan but the fact that we're you know sitting here at at the LinkedIn office doesn't mean that that LinkedIn is being a bank while we're doing that right so the fact that you're facilitating a transaction of money doesn't necessarily make you doing a loan the realization was going twofold with The Regulators one was that there's a lot of things that store value uh back in the day you had phone cards
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you have gift cards you have a number of different things that store value you say look PayPal is another store of value but it's not a store of value in the way that a bank is a store of value EG making loans that's in the intellectual category but the more deep one was look their concern of banking Regulators is how do we protect the consumers and how do we protect the system so we figured out how to actually in fact have passed through
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FDIC insurance by putting our money in banks on behalf of the customers which gave them FDIC insurance which were predicting the system and we also presented our case to the FDIC and then later to The Regulators about why we
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were value and increative to the system versus destabilized izing and between those two things we persuaded The Regulators to wait and see as opposed to intervening Regulators will never tell you oh yeah you're totally fine but they
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will say great we'll study you stay in contact with us and you know as long as you don't screw up keep going let me give you a version of the Peter teal question as your reference group take the 10 people whose views you respect
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the most make it 20 if you need to if you're not sure who they are what is it you disagree with those people people about right oh an easy one so a broad cultural Mee within Silicon Valley is the most important ways to change the world which
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this I don't disagree with is uh the creation of new technologies and new technological companies as being the most effective aredian lever by which to improve the world and everything else is decidedly secondary or tertiary because
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that's the only lever that really matters and that's a meme that that go to go to we create technology companies we tell the rest of the world to go leave us alone not to talk to us about what we're doing we generally feel it we
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and that you agree with you're saying well I agree that the that the technological companies are a very important our comedian lever what I disagree with is that as those levers become more important to society I think that we can't actually in fact say we
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should not be in discourse with Society about what we're doing because actually in fact I think once you begin to have Society level impact not just a oh look here's a new you know a new social game or something else like
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you know here is a a new Zinga game that's fun to play okay who cares I mean it's fun people maybe hundreds of millions of people do it but that doesn't actually in fact the way that Society operates the fact is as we get to the way that Society operates we need to add in uh interaction with Society accountability on the design principles and the philosophy by which we are affecting Society we have to integrate in uh Ways by which s can give us
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feedback that doesn't necessarily mean always mean Direction maybe sometimes there's regulation and other things but an ability to be in conversation with them and so if you look at it you know my view would be is that as you have
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more successful tech companies that have an impact on society as a whole part of what you should start doing is deliberately engaging in discourse with the various institutions of society in a public way to say here is the kinds of
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things that not only are we doing now but what we're trying to create in the future if tech companies are such an important archam median Point why is productivity growth and indeed GDP growth been slower since the late 1990s we've had a lot more Tech right yes where is it in the numbers well my guesses my answers to you will strike you as the standard answers but I'll give them anyway which is uh you know one of the problems with the GDP
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measures you know is that it measures dollars flowing in the system not in value flowing in the system but more and more Tech is monetized there's Amazon LinkedIn gets you a job GPS you deliver more pizzas right well there's a bunch of those but if you also say that part of the value of tech is taking a lot of of flow of Economics out of the system and providing you with Goods that you otherwise would have had to pay for but you now get for free
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Wikipedia entertainment a bunch of other things that are flowing through the internet as examples of these say those substantially increase education substantially increase entertainment substantially increase other kinds of
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things but they take a bunch of dollars out of the system as they're doing them that would give you a net GDP that doesn't look like it's growing even though there's actually in fact more value happening for the same amount of
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dollars flowing in the system but if I can sit at home and read Wikipedia for free for fun which indeed I do that saves me money I don't have to go out to the movies I should then be able to spend more money on apples more on
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Healthcare GDP growth should still be robust well actually if you still have the same number of dollars that you're spending right and the same number of dollars is flowing through the system that would actually suggest to you that
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you're still spending your money and spending it on different thing but that wouldn't necessarily give you GDP growth why your business is so bad at certifying Talent so you've you've written on this we have a highly wasteful system they need to see you go through four years six years eight years of schooling before they know how good you are how can that possibly make sense what's the market failure and why haven't we fixed it so we have tech
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companies they're brilliant the smartest people run them and they can't fix this problem what's gone wrong so the general problem is as we rely upon we haven't yet established and I I'm hopeful that LinkedIn can do this at some point or others as well is we haven't established a dynamic set of certifications that we can use as signifiers that can then be deployed employed in a lot of circumstances that's one of the reasons why most jobs
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are described as must have a ba or a BS you know bachelor's degree whereas a lot of jobs don't actually need that but it's like okay what's the what's the simplest credential that everyone's aware of that I could throw on the table
37:13
that says you have some capability of learning right and you've been trained in some learning institution and one of the things that I actually wrote as an essay that's I think on both LinkedIn and Reed creating a uh a diploma that's not this
37:29
old sheep skin but actually is a modern set of kind of attributes and set of characteristics and if we could start looking at a uh these certificates as something that has a much richer language that can apply to different things I would hope that would then unlock a lot of paths and talents because of opposed to gating it on a very narrow and simple set of of credentials which are frankly coarse not particularly good and don't particularly
37:57
unlock talent in the right ways that we can do a lot more new things but why didn't we get this 13 years ago well part of it is is that you have to have people starting to recognize that these uh patterns of talent can be recognized
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in a relatively cheap way because right now if I go and say this is a great 16y old this is a great 18yearold this is a great 21y old this is a great 25y old as opposed to the you know there's only a few certifications that I can use I have to
38:29
do a lot of reference checking I may have to do a lot of examination or interviewing it becomes expensive to look through the thousand people for the one or two that I think might be that extraordinary talent for this you've once said that you're you feel you're operating at 60% of your talent or capacity at what percent are our top colleges and universities operating at this will be an unpopular answer CU I have a bunch of friends who are great
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leaders in these institutions but I would generally say probably about 30% 30% so they're at 30% and Silicon Valley can't beat them as Talent certifies uh well I think Silicon Valley is beginning to in some ways I think that there is
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you know various programs that kind of go to you know how do we do uh Network recognition of talent um whether that's like YC Village Global other kinds of things that say how do we have a network certify that Talent um so I think it's
39:29
beginning there and then we have interesting kind of coding camps and other kinds of way like I think we're just beginning to really experiment with the patterns that might be able to scale now you've had a very strong record with
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Angel Investing and also Venture Capital what do you think you understand about Talent search and identification that other people do not who would nonetheless be seen as quite skilled at it what's your unique Insight let's say
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I would say I I guess two things one is is the network uh validation and how do you get to those Network patterns so for example I would rather do reference checks than interviews uh as a way of like if you said I had to pick one I'd pick reference checks and I try to figure out patterns by which the network bubbles up the talent versus the oh I'm a picker right like if I can pattern the network the right way that would be a
40:18
much much better way of doing it and that's when you say p what does that mean pattern the network the right way well so for example take my role uh as an investor Greylock I almost never meet with an entrepreneur that doesn't come
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from an introduction from someone I trust and part of that introduction from someone I trust are I trust different people on different things so like for example there are some entrepreneurs who say oh this person is an absolutely
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great technologist and I go well that person doesn't really understand technology that well so that doesn't matter right whereas this person might say this person has a lot of drive and a lot of grit and I should pay attention
40:52
on them and they are good at that kind of thing and then okay well how does that fit with a project that they're working on and so I try to configure not so much like people would think because I write these books and do these
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podcasts like masters of scale and other kinds of things that I'm just trying to get the raw flow in I'm just trying to get that person to lob an email to me from some strange corner of the world actually in fact the way that I do
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investing is entirely through my network let's say you call up a reference what question or questions do you ask that other skilled people do not so one is um what's this person's greatest weakness and challenge but doesn't everyone ask
41:30
that well maybe I hope that they do but frequently what I will do is I will say and if you don't give me one that's believable I'll believe that the thing that is so bad you can't tell me about it right so I try to actually in fact
41:44
get a good answer to that question I also will frequently say things like you know is this person the top five person that you would choose to do a new Venture with or some relevant question of sortal right and if they would say
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top five then say okay who are the other four right you know like these kind of things in order to really sort out like how well this person thinks of this now sometimes they'll say no they're not top five but they're still really good well
42:13
that then gives a lot more credibility to discussion because that's part of what you're trying to assess of how much is this person actually giving me a good analytic point of view on this and that can be a perfectly viable answer how
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useful does five Factor personality theory to you I don't even know what five Factor personality not very useful well there's conscientiousness there's openness there's agreeableness and you categorize people I I would say that
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those are attributes of the attributes that I tend to look at but what I tend to be thinking about is which combinations of strengths and weaknesses are the right fit on this team and I tend to be looking for that set and so
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those would be attributes that would be within it but like for example is a person stronger is a team player stronger as an individual contributor um are they driven to seek teamwork or are they driven to seek uh kind of like a a
43:04
pure Excellence uh Vector are they high IQ or are they reliable in terms of of of kind of the the work ethic and what are they producing how much uh strength in the face of adversity do they have those kinds of things what I would look
43:18
at on the characteristics let's say you're looking not not for talent in the narrow sense but you're looking to spot a spotter of talent how would you judge a spotter of talent and evaluate that person so I would look I there there's there's probably three categories of things that I would look at one is do you have the basic competencies in how do you recognize does a person have skills is a person reasonably quick and good thinker
43:44
do they have persistence they have good work but everyone will look for that right what's the unique Element no no but that's like but you want table sticks right so you have to have the table sticks the next thing would be is
43:54
and then what are the ways is that you realize that the table Stakes can mislead you and be wrong where you can find really startlingly good talent where the traditional mechanisms don't work right so it's a little bit of the
44:05
contrarian question where You' say hey actually in fact looking for the person who dropped out of school because school was boring and they wanted to achieve something really interesting but they were still driven by curiosity and
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interest and these sorts of things as a way of doing it where people would be not counting their work in a good way because they just hadn't achieved success yet cuz people tend to proxy to success versus the capability of the
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work right those kinds of things in the third category and then the or second category and then the third one is how do you do it differentially well like what is the way that you say and that's obviously part of the second category
44:42
but what is the way that you spot talent in a way that you have a active theory that you're improving about why you're differentially good so you look for people with a good active Theory or just a different active theory yes well
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theory that is both different they have a theory why it's good and they have a mechanism for improving it and how is your background in philosophy affected how you view Talent search on identification I don't know if I've ever
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put those two things together but what I would say is that I tend to think that so for example one of the things I disagree with Aristotle on is this kind of theory of the metals where he did a hierarchy ranking of kind of like gold silver
45:24
bronze within a society I think those kinds of hierarchies tend to be simplistic and tend to be under deploy the possibilities of talent what I would say is that kind of the question of saying the fact that you have a lens where some people are really good at certain kinds of tasks playing in certain kinds of teams weathering certain kinds of challenges and what's the combination and the fact that you have an active theory that fits between
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the task that you're trying to do and the game that you're playing in order to accomplish that task I think the the fact of pulling that together as a theory is probably one of the things that philosophy has shaped my thinking
46:05
on and how has your background in board games influenced how you view finding and identifying Talent well one of the things that I like about board games is a lot of life is you want to have a preference for non-zero sum games but there's a lot of
46:24
life that is competitive saling and so you have to think about how do you win the competitive game as you're working towards a non-zero sum game and so frequently not all the time and not all talent but the a little bit like the
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answer to the earlier question is the active theory about how you're a good competitor when you need to compete and by the way I think it's also important to choose when you compete right which is frequently an error I'd say that some
46:54
of the patterns of how you do do that is probably most is is is at least very well described within a board game context on many days as you know the most valuable tech company by market cap is Microsoft and Microsoft is about what 50 years old what should we infer from this is this the world of the startup of you um well I do think you know as as you know that the so-called topple rate of the S&P 500 is increasing by which
47:23
the number of of companies that were previously in the S&P 500 in the last decade are now dropped out of it all together and so part of the acceleration of the Modern Age of the network age is that there is much more revolution in
47:38
what the top firms are now and I think that's a good thing I think it's both good to have enduring institutions and it's good to have new blood and and new innovation uh because that suggests that there's a point of competing and
47:50
building new things and and having new technological platforms um I do think that one of the things that the untold goodness about the renovation of the Microsoft story which which SAA is doing such a great job of the fact that you can build the greatness can be challenged and can rebuild is as important as kind of the entrepreneurial story because like persistent uh institutions at scale that do the inventions innovations that only scale
48:19
can do like building massive new platforms like um like Cloud comp tends to come from the big companies not tends to come from startups those kind of things I think super important if I talk to political scientists most of them
48:33
will tell me that money and campaign Finance don't matter that much for elections uh we see Donald Trump having been elected he didn't raise a lot of money early on or indeed at any point so what's your underlying theory of how
48:46
money can influence or improve politics given that you have a role in this process yourself well I would prefer a I would prefer democracies where money has a more muted influence I actually disagree with the view that money doesn't have an
49:02
influence um that view is uh kind of like saying like marketing doesn't work and it's clear that marketing can work now there's all but you can do marketing without a lot of money uh yes uh certain kinds of marketing not all marketing and
49:18
by the way you know would we like to be a democracy where the only ways that you could succeed would be by being like a Kardashian right like you actually have to be you know like you have to be a celebrity of some sort in order to be a political leader I think we would actually prefer patterns that get to success not by being a reality television star such as our current president but actually in fact uh success and attributes in the things
49:48
that lead to the good governance of a state are you worried about dynastic rule in American politics so we have the bushes the clintons yep maybe something from the trumps yes another another thing to give people nightmares I would say absolutely
50:03
yes and that that's the the Kardashian problem that I was generating and it's one of the reasons why I don't think zero money in politics is the right answer um I do think that the notion of saying how do we shape our system so
50:15
that competent governance leaders are then we as a society are made more aware of them is I think the way we need to solve that problem why did you help make a video on Alexander Hamilton versus cryptocurrency well one macro reason it's fun another but what makes it fun right that's indous yeah but it is also fun I uh argued in a wired article that I wrote in 2015 that the world will need one or more cryptocurrencies I tend to find that the
50:45
the bankers were all like oh all the crypto guys are just kind of hustlers and and not really trying to build a good new Future Vision of the world which they are and yet the crypto folks don't realize that the banks and the uh
50:58
sovereigns also need some interface point on how monetary systems work so what I wanted to do is present uh the kind of debate between them in a way that both sides could uh listen and learn and then people who didn't weren't
51:12
aware of it could also listen and learn and so that's the reason when I was thinking about that I thought about the magic of Lin Manuel's uh Miranda's Hamilton and I thought that might be the way to do it and the significant cryptocurrency we end up with will it be Bitcoin will it be the Chinese e-currency or something that doesn't exist yet so I think there will be Bitcoin don't yet know on the e-currency but I think it's very possible
51:39
especially because you know there's such a large Market within China that if it builds there that's how networks start and my guess is it will be at least one more additional why does the East Coast establishment hate Facebook so much but
51:52
not Google so I think that part of the East Coast establishments that I think there are some good challenges and some bad challenges I would say the bad challenges are kind of almost like an emotional response of people should be
52:10
listening to me and yet they're off doing this Facebook thing and not listening to me so the fact that attention flows in a different way and that's both economics and everything else I think is part of what causes a bad response because part of Facebook is
52:24
saying hey we're neighbor in every individual to speak and connect and follow what they want I think the good response is that once you become social infrastructure you should also be responsive to society and so let me put
52:38
that point a little bit more bluntly which is if you have a system that's designed for velocity as its measure velocity is more likely to be things that you negatively react to it's more likely to be you know anger it's more
52:53
likely to be uh outrage it's more likely to be fear and so just as the dynamic is that most people tend to share links before they've even read the thing that's in the link as a way of doing it which leads to a circling thing of title
53:08
bait and everything else as a way of doing it I'd say that increases an overall agitation in society and we say well that's not necessarily good even though each individual is following their own reflex that overall increase
53:21
in that agitation is not a good thing and we need to figure out how to do better there but if I think of a lot of people in other countries often they will hate Facebook less if I think of radio people uh they might be skeptical
53:33
about Facebook but they rarely hate Facebook but newspaper people seem to how much of that is just Flatout competitive rivalry and the newspapers have been losing well that was my first area whereas the newspapers go you
53:44
should be listening to me and you're paying attention to this Facebook thing instead and I have less career prospects because Facebook is taking more of the economics than the newspaper worked and actually in fact the thing that I'm always unsympathetic
53:57
to people on this is they say well I'd like to return to the Past right so I'd like to go I'd like to go back to the Golden Age of newspapers and you're like no no actually in fact how do you design a better future like what's the way you
54:08
say well we want the functions the Civil function that newspaper is doing what's the way we design it in the modern framework what do other people most commonly misunderstand about friendship I would say that people most
54:22
commonly misunderstand about friendship that they think that it's it's strict loyalty to the other person so if you ask most people about friendship they would say well I'm loyal to Bob or to Sue and actually in fact I think what you are is you're loyal to the person's aspirational better self um and so for example you discover your friend is a Serial murderer right are you they steal your friend oh no no I'll I'll help hide the
54:51
body it's like no no of course not right it's who they are in the world and what they're doing that's actually in fact where the where the Loyalty should lie if God does not exist where does the mystical indeed come from why not just bring God into the
55:06
picture well the problem is is God is this classic way that we put kind of human Narrative of saying oh well there's this entity in the sky that's just kind of like a an amplified human being now of course sophisticated
55:20
theologians always say well it's all the mystery and that's a wrong understanding of God and blah blah blah but I actually think the question about keeping mysticism in the picture is to say don't be overly certain about
55:34
your current theory of the universe right if we look back in history and and know anything what we know is there are certain things we believe today that 50 or 100 years from now will be thought to be stupid and crazy and by the way you
55:47
might say well okay is there a some kind of Mystical Force creating the universe the answer is Poss possibly right now you say oh it's this particular entity who left this particular book or had this particular profit you're like well that seems less likely but but the fact that there might be things there you should stay open-minded to which books do you still hope to write it's enough to name one I definitely hope to write a book on
56:17
friendship I think that's one of the things that's super important in our lives and then can friendship be learned or taught through books at all I think so uh in part because I think that one of the ways that you learn is by asking
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questions and so if a book can put the question in a good way that you can start thinking about it then that creates the basis in which you can by interacting with other people as well learn better friendship like friendship
56:49
is a skill among other things any other book you might plan on writing well I am thinking a lot about whether or not we should be creating some new forms of Science Fiction and the reason is I think we have two failures of of current
57:05
science fiction uh especially in the video form there's too little utopic science fiction and yet if we have a hope for the future it's through technology it's through change and so we need to make sure that we are keeping
57:18
that kind of utopic possibility the optimism for it and how do we get there and then the second is if we look at current technological Trends today there are things that we know that are coming that science fiction isn't addressing
57:32
for example uh we know that's what's coming is even if we don't get to artificial general intelligence the ways that artificial intelligence will affect all systems in the world is going to radically evolve and how does that like
57:46
change our notion how do how do we have a progress of humanity in that system which I believe is possible but we need to be thinking about it and direct in ourselves to it and maybe the science fiction narrative form is the right way
58:00
to cause that discussion and that reflection and that thinking I just saw the new Terminator movie Elon Musk is very worried about Skynet goes live are you and what probability do you assign to that scenario well this is you know
58:14
kind of entertaining because within the Tesla uh no I think it's within the SpaceX headquarters there's a little Skynet server room so it's kind of entertaining but the I would say that I don't have a 0% worry there but is not
58:28
my most macro worry do do I think there's possibilities that AI could get to something uh bad is yes but by the way we all discount nuclear war now because we haven't had it for 70 years and yet there's still a bunch of armed
58:44
Nations some of whom are kind of crazy so the fact that it probability doesn't go to zero it doesn't mean that I go oh my God I'm deeply worried about it so overall it's say like attentive but not worried but say a 3% chance doesn't that
58:59
mean we still should be obsessed with it because my goodness a 3% chance of Skynet goes Live Well I'm not even sure it's 3% but like example you say okay we take a pseudo artificial intelligence systems we tie them to a nuclear defense
59:16
grid and something that's an unintended consequence that isn't necessarily the evolution of of intelligence but some set of triggers cause something to happen that would be the category of thing that I would have more worry than
59:29
you have a malicious evolution of a super intelligence last question what makes for a good aphoristic thinker what makes for a good aphoristic thinker is how do you string together a set of aphorisms such that a reader or a
59:46
a consumer of them comes to it catalyzes them about how to think about something and so Pros is is usually like here's an argument of a thesis and a set of arguments and a conclusion and evidence within that an aphorism is to say we're trying to change your mindset uh the German valan Chang the kind of worldview the way you're thinking about this and it's not to a deterministic move you from point A to point B but to catalyze
1:00:16
you from moving out of your local Maxima or Minima and when you write well in aphorisms or you present apis well that's what you're trying to do Reed Hoffman thank you very much it's a [Music] pleasure thanks for listening to
1:00:33
conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the [Music] show