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that's not important now a lot of people out there think that you know you need to have this revolutionary idea because there's so many ideas floating around now do you think Founders need to have revolutionary ideas or is it the execution of a normal idea Revolution starts in evolution so you could have the biggest craziest audacious idea in the world but unless you can put one foot in front of the other and make that first step you're screwed and none of it matters and again all it does is um it may allow you to you know wrap yourself in some really elegant rhetoric maybe it allows you to you know be really followed on Twitter and appear at Tech conference none of that matters all of that crap washes out in the end because if you suck you suck right and you may be articulate but if you suck it don't matter and you'll be revealed to be a sham what matters there is again it's just that ability to understand what that first specific set of things need to be um with that broader bigger goal in mind but if you can't put your first foot in front of the other and you know what's amazing most people can't because they get wrapped up in the rhetoric of the vision and the mission and all of this you know grandiose you know Blobby blind that they screw up and they're their own worst enemies I I like Revolution like I like disruption right um but I'm skeptical that that things start that way I think things let's just say ultimately five years from now we look back and we think that there was a massive sea change politically in the Arab world uh because of the Arab Spring that fruit vendor self-immolated because he was frustrated now maybe he started a revolution but you know that took courage to do what he did that's not right nor wrong in my opinion but my point is you know that's an example of how a revolution started with you know a small or not a small thing I mean it was a big thing but um one thing that was tractable within him and I think these broad-based kind of like you know I don't know gnarly expressions of like how all of these huge crazy things can happen they happen over many many many many many years these are massive tectonic plates it all boils down to one person doing one thing and I think that for a lot of people that's hard still you sometimes like to take on a more Hands-On role with the companies that you work with or is that normal of an investor or a VC to do I think it's probably atypical um I mean that's sort of why we've constructed the space that we've constructed which is to have a lot of these really interesting companies here very early on and what it allows me to do is sort of transfer knowledge I mean look right now I've come out of sort of like you know 12 years of operating some of the most interesting consumer businesses that have been built on the internet and I've been a part of now three massively seminal interesting products when at Eamonn icq Facebook and so there's a body of knowledge there that's really relevant but it's only relevant for a short period of time four years from now I'll be as dumb as any other VC but in these next three or four years I probably have some reasonable knowledge to transfer and so the best thing that I can do is make sure I'm in a position to get that into as many people as possible because then at that point I'm what I'm hoping is then I'll be able to learn from them right because they'll really understand the rules of how the next 10 years will evolve and then I'll be able to learn from them and they'll feel you know a sense of um not necessarily obligation but like you know that maybe hopefully a little bit of you know gratitude of combined with a little bit of um you know pity and then they'll want to sort of you know teach me right um so now how how should someone approach you as an investor of easy and I mean you don't have to possibly talk about specifics on how you you know find companies that you work with but in general if someone has an idea and is down the road with a startup and is looking for a VC what do you think is the best way to approach I mean this is unfortunately the standard Corporal response that every VC gives you and I don't really have a better one um but the way that this culture works you know in many ways sort of similar to how American Idol works for better or worse which is there's all of these intermediate levels of selection and filtering that happens um so for example you know somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody that knows me or any other VC and typically what happens it goes through this chain and people ask this question hey does it pass my sniff test and if it does they pass it to the next guy because they want the next guy to not look at him and say why did you send me this thing right you know so it's like you know if your idea is for like you know chocolate covered dog biscuits you're not probably going to go and try to pitch that decline or Sequoia and so somewhere along the chain someone's going to say you know what there's a more appropriate Avenue of capital for chocolate covered dog biscuits now if those chocolate covered dog biscuits had some sort of like you know biosensor built into it so that you can now map the intestinal tract of the dog and like you know prevent parvo and nine other diseases maybe right and so there's all of this filtering that happens and so uh by the time that it gets to these guys it's it's at a point where they can make um relatively straightforward decisions and so that's typically how it happens is you know somebody who knows somebody who knows a VC and it kind of goes through that cycle that being said there are still many many people who in my opinion should have access to Capital to pursue their ideas and don't and that's why I think there's some amazing things that are happening right now again in this sort of financial services ecosystem that is in my opinion transformational for capitalism and capitalism by individual you know entrepreneurs so specifically you know a company that I think is doing amazing things Angel list right so you know I mean you could be in you know some some small little town somewhere and it could be you and three people who just have a really great technical idea and if you can sort of explain that well and you can start to sort of you know put out a beta version of a product and you know be out there in the ecosystem and have credibility I mean like you could raise money there so to me like that's that's amazing so if I was an entrepreneur that didn't know anybody I would first try to go this path of Angel list and try to build some technical credibility and product traction and use that as a conduit to sort of get introduced to people via that chain okay now this is a long pretty long question so bear with me when you left Facebook you wrote a pretty inspiring message that's on TechCrunch right now and you can since then you've gone on to invest and Mentor many entrepreneurs and companies as an investor when you encounter a Founder who has had passed failures do you view that as Battle Scars that make him stronger now or is it you know proof that that founder doesn't have a good track record it depends it depends on how they failed but I would say like I still believe everything I wrote in that departing note that I sent to the people of Facebook I did the you know so I mean I had I had a functional role but part of my job at the end was probably to be this like kind of like curmudgeonly old-timer who made sure that we never kind of veered off of our Northern Star look when companies work the biggest thing that happens is you revert to the mean and what I mean by that is the mean is is every crappy company out there and we all work at crappy companies we've all done it we all look at our boss and think this guy's an idiot how does he have this job you know this company is so stupid I hate my job is it time to leave yet we've all been in that position and so the real question that I was asking myself at Facebook was what happens and how do companies end up in this situation and my realization is every company gets there eventually but that last word is the most important and so the challenge of a senior executive team is to prevent that regression to the mean and culture is the only thing that does that and so I would always speak to all of the people that we hired every Monday and you know part of it was to scare the living out of them but part of it was to you know be Unapologetic about a culture that valued transparency openness authenticity and value over perception so it's not about politicking it's not about managing up it's about doing good stuff and that the the engineer that could be the most Junior person has as much or more power than me and that's an awesome dynamic right because it allows the smart people who are capable to do I think so that's what I talked about so when I left that note was meant to encapsulate all of that I think I've realized that all of that that is still the same so when I meet an entrepreneur and they failed the thing that I'm trying to figure out is like how did they feel is it again and this is going back to what we talked about earlier did you just not listen and keep battering your head because you heard something or read something and you just you know didn't refuse to Pivot that kind of stubbornness can be good but it can also be extremely destructive you know did you fail because you got the market wrong but you built a great product that's actually not such a bad thing that happens right happens to the best of us I mean I failed more times than and then the last thing is you know are you comfortable with that failure so the people that can own it in my opinion um that's a very special class of person and and part of it is just being around enough people that's why Silicon Valley is so great because it celebrates failure as much as it celebrates success and I think that's awesome like I grew up in Canada I love Canada but what's frustrating about being Canadian is we don't celebrate failure right and so it's all about mean reversion it's all about managing the middle and so if you're an outlier you feel extremely isolated and you feel stupid when things don't go right as opposed to trying to learn from it rinse and repeat try again right so I'm trying to figure out you know how did they fail and what did they learn in general I think it's a good thing um in general though what I would say more importantly than anything else is are you humble enough to realize that when things worked it was you but it was also a lot of luck and then are you courageous enough to realize that when it failed it may not have been as much you but you've learned enough to now avoid the same mistakes those are the two things that you have to figure out you know you have to be humble enough to realize like timing is everything people are everything right the team the conditions your competitors so many things came into making something work right at that time it's not so replicable same similarly failing if you failed for the right reasons that could be great DNA to go again and try it again now a while back um in a bunch of other interviews you mentioned that in the past you know you wanted to jump into the VC world and you sent out internship letters right yeah and you got it and you got a bunch of no's back but you kept going and you found your way into this world so well no I got no response back the two people that wrote me a no which I remember to this day because I still look up to these two people and they're the most incredible people in the world John door and vinod kosa they're the only two people and look to this day they probably don't remember that they did it this was in 1997.
um maybe they do I don't know I've never asked them um I haven't kept the I can't find the letters now which is real shame I thought I had them until about 2007 2008. um and I don't even know if maybe it was just their EA you know they wrote it and they signed it or I don't even know if it was a stamp it didn't matter to me it was just like I really wanted to see what this world was about because like I was like wow these guys are like creating the future I'm gonna create the future you know no one even gave me the time of day they were there like you know I literally sent it like 50 letters the only two people who were thoughtful enough to take the time to actually send something back saying thank you but we don't hire interns was these two guys right so now going off of that how should entrepreneurs deal with no's when they talk to VCS like does it mean that your idea is terrible or does it mean that you're just not there yet you're not or you're not fit to run a company it's neither of those things listen there is a massive lemming culture and mentality in most Industries and um you know when you're looking on the outside in the tendency is for most people to assign more credit than most Industries deserve so when I'm on the outside looking in to the hedge fund industry what I'm probably thinking is wow they're all Geniuses these guys just know what's going on they're manipulating the world you know Capital flows Finance the stock market right and what you realize on the inside is not really most are bozos and most are following a few guys who really know what they're doing I could be on the outside looking into the world of you know uh molecular biology and genetics and think wow these guys have a you know they have the Keystone to understanding the human body and then you dig a little further in what you realize are not really most people are following the work of a few who are really leading the pack and I would say this industry is not dissimilar to any of those there are a few people that have the courage to have their own perspective and do what they think is right and then there's a lot of people that do what those other people do and Chase so that they're not late and so what you can't get tricked by are like the educational qualifications of people meaningless okay it doesn't matter where you went to school doesn't matter you have a MBA from Harvard or Stanford a lot of idiots I've met that have mbas from Harvard and Stanford and there's a lot of geniuses I've met that have dropped out of school um so you know I would say you should have a a a a healthy skepticism to this industry like every other industry in most Industries there's just a few people that are really good and most Industries are cluttered with a bunch of people who run around following those few people now do you think VC funding is always necessary you know some companies have an explicit goal of hey I'm going to take this idea and once I get funding I'm going to exit so do you think that you know funding is always necessary it's not necessary especially now because you can find very different forms of capital and that's why I think it's it's a very healthy dynamic because now the entrepreneur becomes more empowered to build the type of company they want the type of culture they want you know to stay in so for example you know I know a lot of really really great entrepreneurs who've taken capital from some of the most prestigious Venture Capital firms in the world only to get fired and when you look backwards on that decision they think it's the single worst decision they've ever made and you know sometimes these companies have gone public these people have become rich but it didn't matter to them because it left such a bad taste in their mouth and so you know now you could look at that and say well so what you could have gone you know you wouldn't have been public but you know we don't know that right the counter factual is impossible to know um but what it does tell me is now that you can go to Angel list or if you're building a product you can go on Kickstarter and deficit finance a bunch of stuff it creates all these competitive forces that now rationalizes power back to the individuals who are starting and working at companies and in my opinion that is much better and so um you know I just think it'll just create better behaviors and better outcomes and outcomes may not mean like splashy IPOs how come may just mean like you can hire you know 50 people and you run a company that's profitable and you know you're a great member of your community you have a great lifestyle you spend time with your kids your kids are normal you know all of the executives on your team are great people in their Community their kids are normal that will do more to change the world than like being a douche and having a million billion dollar IPO right you know what I'm saying so Legacy is a very tricky interesting thing and I think again people chase these societally defined Norms of what success is and I think like now that there's all of these different ways the real challenges for all of us to deconstruct that and actually like live our own lives right so to wrap it up what advice do you have to Future entrepreneurs out there um I think it's very hard like to give you like one pithy sound bite um but again I think it's like having the courage to be yourself um healthy skepticism and cynicism um do not develop a sense of like you know idolatry around any individual person don't read the blogs don't read Twitter all of that stuff again is of whole amount of you know self-reinforcing rhetoric and promotional propaganda that is can be informative but needs to be balanced with your own internal sense of what you want to do how you want to do it that's the most important thing a lot of false idols so just be very careful listen to your own gut you're probably the best decision maker that you know and at the same time we as a society kind of need to fix those areas if we're going to thrive very interesting now what is it about investing that attracts you not like what drives you to do what you do I know in previous interviews in the past you refer to analogies between poker and startups yeah and the thrill of both is it the same with investing yeah I mean I would actually say that I don't like investing okay I actually like company building um I really like the phase from an Inception of an idea to that second or third major iteration of a product that's where I feel the most comfortable
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