Welcome everybody. It's Eric newcomer here with
dead cat. We've got Tom and Katie and
we're super excited to have Hunter walk here of Homebrew.
Venture, capitalists whose now, investing out of Their own
money. I guess I'm curious to sort of
get the story and a lively, Twitter presence.
So a good opportunity to sort of get up to speed on.
What's, what's going on in Silicon Valley?
Money World Hunter. How's it going great?
Hey friends. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, one question. Is there a dead cat soundboard?
Like, dude, you sound drunk? Would you like us to have a
sound for you? Katie specifically.
I don't know if you remember. But like, when you used to To
drop big Tech Scoops, when you're at that part of the times
I think I'd reply with like hashtag better bomb Twitter.
I was wondering if we could get like a funk Flex bomb, drop for
you. Here we are as in your can put
that in. After the fact, it's like how
Ronan Farrow posts on his Instagram story is like brace
for impact, right before some other Hollywood, perv gets taken
down. I feel like our Scruples on a
copyright paranoia are low. So good with some audience fair
use is a very gray area, so, right?
You're an expert in. Yeah, we're going to get any,
I'm curious tug YouTube and all that stuff from your old days
to, for sure. For sure.
The closest thing I think we have do a sound board as my
fucking cat walking into the room and Writing to starting to
opine a hedge will happen by the way, my doors, you know.
Now, to be fair, your cat fucking would be an interesting
sound or two. Yeah, no.
She's that's next month. Yeah, that's yeah.
That's a different audio. Everyone always criticizes are
dead cat named, but I didn't think about that as the, you
know, the little deaths that cat and on that note, hello,
everybody? Yes.
All right, so Hunter, yeah, why don't you just explain?
Because I'm going to be honest. Eric doesn't want me to be
honest anymore but things I didn't read Tom.
Why don't you say? He doesn't know what's going on.
No, he isn't gonna think I followed, I followed your
announcement and, you know, Casey Newton's, you know,
dutiful broadcasting of your announcement when you guys kind
of changed the structure on Homebrew, why don't you just
explain to our audience? Aka me what the new the new
strategy is with Homebrew because I don't actually
understand it. Absolutely, yeah and look, it's
a little bit inside baseball, like, basically, we've been
meaning to announce it this year.
We were heading to a conference room.
I knew there'd be a bunch of other VCS and everyone want to
be like, how are things going, what's up with Homebrew?
And as opposed to having the same conversation a hundred
times were like, oh we gotta get this post out, then we realized,
we didn't have any art for it. So 9:45 p.m. in La Sachin, my
partner and I always share a hotel room and we travel.
Its kind of the roommate thing. So we're like searching for
thirty dollar clip art, which you can see in the post itself
at home. Brew bring hundred Arena.
Okay. So look, here's the background
for people who probably, I don't assume most people have heard of
Homebrew to begin with. So I'm a former product manager,
who about 10 years ago with a friend and former colleague
started in early stage Venture fund called, Homebrew named
after the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s or early eighties.
A tip backwards, we could talk about that naming.
If you want later first 10 years, it's kind of very
standard, right? We make eight to ten core
Investments a year seed, stage companies, trying to do one to
two million of their first 0 to 5 and then really sort of, you
know, long-term investors. But for first three to five
years, right? Their seats a series be kind of
leaned in and be helpful. Try to help them build a
foundation to be the best version of, you know, of what
they can become. Because it's our business, we
get to, you know, decide what we want it to be from the
beginning, you know. Look, we didn't want to be
Empire Builders. There was no plans for growth
and no plans for succession right from the beginning.
You said, you didn't want it to be a generational firm, right?
Correct. Great multi.
Yeah, no multi-generational. And look you own your business.
Like you can always revisit that.
But but I always think of us as an Operating model with a
flexible business model. The operating model is the two
of us working together spending most of our time with the
founders. We back.
Not going to conferences, not networking, not chasing the next
hot white see deal. But the answer to the question,
what do we want Homebrew to be for the next 10 years?
We came up with an answer. That was a little bit different
than I think a lot of our peers, a lot of our peers have grown
quite significantly over the time.
What Founders need has changed over the last, you know, eight
nine, ten years. And so we said look, we're gonna
if we don't want to grow, you know, why don't we actually A
sort of stay the same or maybe even quote unquote, shrink
right. Let's focus on what matters and
that's being flexible enough to work with the founders.
We care about in the easiest way possible that meant no longer,
you know, having to have like an ownership Target.
Well, you know, our piece fits so long as you want to sell, its
15% of your company, it meant no longer like trying to figure out
in advance how much are fun. Should be 100 million, 200
million, 30 million, 40 million, like that.
All when you're when you're building a spreadsheet, you
know. A sort of manage manage a fund.
You have to figure that stuff out in advance.
So, we did two things. We said one, let's start out
this fun for by actually just using our own money.
I know this is an extremely personal question, but how what,
how much money is that, or? How, how much money are you
putting behind in? It's more about sort of saying,
look, I've got enough where, like, I can forgo the salary, I
can forego the, you know, the leverage on other people's
dollars and I'm willing to Make the long-term bet that if we're
writing checks together and you know taking a hundred percent of
the risk by keeping 100% of The Upside like that's going to work
out perfectly fine over time. And you know if it doesn't then
you know whoa I got to figure out, you know what, you know how
to resolve that. But I think we're basically that
may be the easiest way to talk about.
It is traditionally, most VCS are asked to do one percent of
their fund. That's like the GP commit.
What we are putting towards this effort, is more than the 1%.
We used to do, you know of our Venture funds, right?
So you know, people can sort of run the math and figure that
out. What is it specifically about
the Venture model that you were disillusioned by like was it
going around to the LPS to the endowments?
No, no I love. In fact they're great.
We've always been really focused on a small number of endowments
and Foundations who we, you know, I'm just, I'm sure we're
going to figure out some way to continue to work with.
Like there's going to be checks that are, you know, too big, you
know, for us to write and companies that we've, you know,
maybe back to We and, you know, SPV he's or that type of stuff.
Also, a lot of them are actually working with us in screened, or
a fund of funds that we created to help back emerging Managers
from underrepresented segments. So we can, we can talk about
that later. So definitely not the LPS.
I think that the stuff that sort of, we were sort of scratching
our head about was two things. One, there's lots of great
reasons to use other people's money to build your business.
If you're going to be multi-generational, I think you
need to do that. You can't be tied to any one GPS
Capital so like. You're investing in things where
you really need to be a, the leader of that round and they
need a lot of money. Like let's say, if you were
starting a climate fund right now, I think you'd really want
outside LPS because the the capital requirements of those
companies might be significant, you know, if you can't afford
look there's lots of people. Like we started a little bit
later in our career if you're earlier and you need a fee
structure, right? Like in order to pay the bills,
in order to be able to bring on, you know, younger employees.
Like that's a great reason to have outside money.
If you're risk averse, which I'd say most VCS are and you don't
want to necessarily put your own Capital At Risk in a meaningful
way like, you know, outside, right?
So none of that applies to us and so in that case it's like
it's just not a tool we need the second is and we can talk more
about this. I think there's a, you know,
what do you want to call it a prisoner's dilemma right now
where everybody every manager, every VC is being rewarded for
increasing the velocity of their Capital deployment.
Every firm is Raising faster, bigger management fees.
I know you're at You're leaving management fees.
That's really helped. Ease are concerned about this,
but at the same time, the last few years a venture has been
Fantastic. Four, Tops of top, endowments
and Foundations, not just paper, markups, real returns.
And so their models say, reinvest this, into those VCS
and in fact, when they're VC's, come back faster, and with
bigger and Sequoias, like, hey, you gotta, you know, you gotta
come in, you gotta come in in this big way or like, you know,
by take it or leave it and they're like, okay, we're going
to take it. You've been great for us, right?
Like the amount of money that just keeps flowing into.
The Venture ecosystem is larger and larger.
I think it actually is leading to venture capital, I guess.
Sort of like funding their own continued commoditization of
capital. Like what does it mean?
When just everybody is like 300 400 500 million dollars, you
know or billion dollar a um it just becomes this like race to
deploy it, you know? And I think for us it was like
that is not interesting. Like that is a that is a
impediment to us being able to Make measured choices to work
with who we want and to be aligned with those Founders,
right? Like look big fun when you say
like, you know was an interesting to you, do you mean
that? It also is not to the benefit of
the founders as well. Like is there a real net
negative for the industry? Look I think there's lots of
playbooks, right? I believe that if you have a
very large fund, hundreds, millions billions of dollars.
That's going to implicit lie and explicitly Define what a success
looks like, right? Like, it's just math.
It's just the physics of Adventure.
If you have a billion dollar fund, you know, a 400
million-dollar exit, you know, sucks if you have 50 million
dollars into that company, I believe that if you were going
to be a focused early stage investor, you should try to have
the smallest fund possible to run your strategy because I
think it's not about, you know, betting on Lower outcomes.
It's not about playing defense first offense, it's about having
the patience to give that company.
The time to figure out what Of company.
It's going to be and then using Capital to help back it not the
race to. Well can you get to the next
round and 12 to 18 months, you know?
Or you know it looks like you're not an outlier type of stuff.
Look we have you know multiple multi billion dollar companies,
you know in our fund one, right? Some of those realized some of
those Still on paper you guys are backer and chime Rach.
I'm plaid Cruz Gusto, you know, honor a few more, every one of
those companies had a different First one to three years.
Some were straight and up to the right and exited for more than a
billion within that time Crews, some of them were up and down,
you know, chime may be the most valuable of those.
They almost didn't get, you know, two of their funding
rounds done. Like it took longer for that
model to prove itself and work. Neo Banks and fintech wasn't hot
yet, right? So I just don't think you can
forecast the eventual success of a company by the slope of the
curve early on, you have to be prepared to work with.
Them to figure out who they are then use Capital to accelerate
it and I think if you the larger your fund, I think the less
patient you are, the more eager you are for write-ups.
The more, you're going to be selective, you know, maybe
adversely selective of companies that are telling you they're
only up into the right. And I just think Founders need
more choices. They need more choices of
different types of capital and so, you know, we want to be one
of those choices. I think that what you just
described sounds great. The reality.
I have a question about though because Once you have a company
and you start raising money, Founders are going to start
raising from people in addition to your firm also, when they
start raising money, say in a series B and they get on that,
you know, and they're put on that conveyor belt of.
Okay, now you're expected to raise money in a certain time.
You're supposed to expect you to have a certain kind of exit and
a certain kind of growth like your approach.
Seems to me like it would get snowed under by the reality of
the rest of the See market. So how do you still provide that
kind of like patience and time for Founders if they're just
going to raise their Series, be from Sequoia, I'm sorry.
Beyond this. Like mad conveyor belt.
Absolutely. Well you picked a very
interesting moment because I usually tell Founders that up
until the series be they actually have some optionality
like depending on who they take money from like they have the
ability to sort of say, look, we can take one step backwards to
take to step forward. Hey, this is good, but not
great, let's try something different.
I actually sort of, you know, generally say series B is where
you've given. Yup, most of that optionality
and you start to move towards something that says we now have
to both figure out how to keep growing, what we're doing and
what's going to be the next growth driver?
Write that and hopefully in a quote-unquote, perfect world,
the series B is coming at a point at, which the company is
ready for that sort of capital and ready for that sort of
challenge in the fast-paced world of company announced its
series a and that starts to Leading inbound on the series B.
And the terms are great. And you take Capital early that
actually in Risk people sometimes like oh I just raise
fifty million dollars ID risk my company I'm like no way.
You just re risked it like you just set the bar you have to get
to even higher and the second thing I'll say is like look we
like I said under the old model where we'd beat around.
I don't want to talk about fun strategy the whole time but like
I want to make sure like I do understand it.
Do you think you'll make more money with this one strategy?
Like it's more an absolute dollars.
Yeah. Then what then like going and
raising a 500 million dollar fund.
Absolutely not right. So I mean maybe You'll have a
better eye are potentially. And who cares?
What's so for, who cares about Ira?
It's unclear. If I want, if I want to maximize
dollars, I might have stayed at Google like, who cares about?
Like look, there's two ways to look at this.
I think stuff like there is the I am above a floor in my, like
personal Comfort, which makes you know, which makes things
that I can add to it, you know, great.
I can, I can donate more money or like, maybe I can buy a
vacation house, like, that's wonderful.
But those aren't things. I'm going to optimize for You
know, I've been so, you know, lucky fortunate privilege,
whatever that like I'm looking at it as I think if we're good
at it, we can do just fine. And if I'm not good at it, I'm
not. I do I'm not creating myself a
lifestyle that requires, you know, a seven-figure salary
every year or so and so forth. I think, I think wealth, you can
look at his, like a floor or ceiling look so long as I'm
above floor. I'm fine.
And I'm going to optimize for other things or like, there's
always a next number to get. I also wrote a blog post saying
we don't talk enough about money, real enough, and Silicon
Valley, right? It's a bunch of hand waving
esac. You're basically saying you've
made enough money. That you that you are wealthy
enough that you don't need to optimize for wealth anymore.
I can defer salary, I can defer a salary assume that I'm going
to continue to be a relatively good investor and keep that
upside in lieu of a salary but it's like makes true that if I
make zero money that if I make zero dollars from now on it
would be bad, right? Like yeah if but but but if it's
lumpy and variable, that's okay. Yeah.
And maybe you're seeing Bet that they're very rich in Silicon
Valley. It's a weird thing.
Like right look, I'm Silicon Valley.
Middle class, right. Like which I winking lie.
Joke is, you know, only like a multi multi-millionaire.
You're not a cent a millionaire, but like shit.
I mean, look, I was at, I was a Google from 2003 to 2012.
If like, if I wasn't a millionaire from that, like I
did something really wrong, but you're sweet.
I mean, you had a 90 million dollar Fund in 2018, right?
And now, you're saying like you're committing to more that
you're To have more than your 1% stake before.
So like you're going to be investing, like a million
dollars are dating, get them order of magnitude.
Here, it's we'd have wheat. So the way that I sort of
describe it because we literally don't have a number is Sasha.
And I each like mentally committed, you know, sort of
like a number for the first one or two years and then as we,
which is mostly going to be deployed.
So like I think 80% of our checks are going to be like
hundred K to 500k checks and then I think 20% will be later
or larger. And so if we do like, let's say
we do Ten twelve of those a year.
Like I don't know where it averages out, but you can sort
of like, figure out a low number, right?
A high number, right? Like, that's that's what I
think, you know, that's what I think we've committed.
And then, as we see how that's doing as we hopefully continue
to realize, like we have only seen, you know, we're in the
carry-on fund one, and will continue to hopefully, you know,
be able to return dollars to our investors and ourselves as that
portfolio continue to mature. It's still too early to know how
funds, two and three are going to be.
I mean we're confident in it. But right, you know our goal is
to Cycle recycled dollars, we see from the previous Homebrew
funds into this new model, right?
So like I'm we are dipping into our savings to get it started
and then as money comes back, there may be richer in the
future given our current portfolio and I am right, I am
right. So, like I am going to be poorer
in the near term then richer again.
That's the goal. Well, that's just investing.
Do you think? I mean look, you're obviously
doing this as you're describing it because you feel it is, you
know, fulfilling to your soul as to how you want to.
A raft with these companies, I'd like to stay in the, if there's
a 2 by 2, that's like low happiness, happiness, low
success, High success. I much rather be I much rather
focus on the being in the happiness with higher low
success. Then the success with the higher
low happiness and I believe that we can stay in the upper right
quadrant of high happiness, High success.
In this model, I think if we grew to 500 million, we'd still
have a chance to stay in the success, but I believe we'd be
deprecating the happiness, right?
So but I guess I don't like managing people.
I don't like you know having to do a bunch of internal politics.
I don't like having to, you know, hobnob with other
investors and if we had like 300 500 of those like anybody who's
grown their fund over the last few years from, you know the 50
million hundred million to the 300 million, 40 million, 500
million, lots of wonderful, wonderful people, their lives
changed, so dramatically and will be changing.
So dramatically especially if the markets get choppy.
Like I have no interest in spending my time and energy like
justifying my A half a billion dollar fund, I just want to work
with Founders, do you think the valley would operate more
successfully or you know with a higher happiness quotient if
more funds operated in the same way that you do because like
this rush to increase fun sizes, it seems like it's fulfilling
you know a need which is that there is money to deploy from
the LPS. It tends to pervert the
incentives. A lot of times of helping to
successfully grow these companies.
You know, you can build a reasonably sized company.
Maybe that's profitable that doesn't need to Raised so many
rounds of funding. But once you know, the
incentives get put in there because of the types of
investors. Everything sort of changes, I
guess? What I'm asking is you think
more fun Should operate like you guys are it's hard question.
Because look what I want to be clear is we're not changing the
bar for an investment like I'm still expecting Venture scale
outcomes as part of our you know quote unquote you know Homebrew
Evergreen portfolio. It just it just so means that
like, if something doesn't, you know, get there, it still might
be meaningful to us. Because it's our own money and
we're keeping 100% of the Returns on Silver.
There's also a lot of amazing work being done in, you know,
being done in climate being done in bioscience, you know, nuclear
fusion that like my model is not helpful for, right?
Like you need people For Better or For Worse, you know, throwing
hundreds of millions of dollars against those things and that's
wonderful. People think that, you know,
venture capital is just like fungible fuel, it's not it's
Rocket Fuel, like it's not car fuel, it's not motorcycle fuel,
you know, it's not RV fuel, all Which are like perfectly fine
Vehicles if you wanna if Ike you're piloting that vehicle,
like don't put rocket fuel in your vehicle, like it will
destroy your vehicle, but like if it is a rocket, you know.
It is a great Capital choice but yeah, your repeal that rocket
fuel right? Yeah, yeah, okay.
So, do you think that the types of Founders have changed about a
decade ago, basically up until like probably the pandemic.
What we thought of as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur Was pretty
much a stereotype even if it wasn't a white guy was somebody
who loves to work all the time. And I hate this phrase but who
loves to Rise & Grind and just wants to go, go, go, go.
Go, but what you're saying is that there's sort of an
acceptance of a wider array of funding choices.
You can have different kinds of companies with different kind of
growth speeds. Are we seeing entrepreneurs
change? Are we seeing the number of
entrepreneurs went away? Now, that sort of like we've
seen this first class. This like, you know, the sort of
mid teens companies either succeed or not.
We're seeing them all get sold off, you know.
Yeah, we're kind of seeing the one that didn't succeed, really
not succeed. So like are we seeing a
different kind of founder? I think I'm an optimist in this
scenario because I think you know, early stage Venture is
probably still underfunded on a global basis, right?
Like it's overfunded periodically in a particular,
ZIP code or area code, you know, or like you know, particular
idea but I think as software driven businesses No Marc
Andreessen, says software eats the world.
I sort of flattened that little bit to software enables the
world that feels nicer but the that's why.
And that's why I'm not a billionaire, the nicer side of
Martin exercise. Yeah.
So that leads me to believe that like, wow, maybe what we're
seeing actually is the byproduct of like, you know, industrial
capitalism, becomes technology capitalism, and businesses
everywhere are being built with software and, and, you know, so
and so forth. So I actually think there's tons
of opportunity and that is not just because there's tons of
capital available, like it's because there's tons of people
who want to be entrepreneurs. And and as you know, as there
are even in some cases out of desperation as there are fewer
stable long-term job options, you know, maybe that
incrementally continues to push people towards like, well,
stability is actually building my own thing or, you know, or
now, I can solve, I can use software to solve, you know, a
problem for a business that predates, the PC, you know,
agriculture, you know, construction all these
industries that are really embracing software out of both,
you know, opportunity necessity. I do believe that creates more
and Foreign entrepreneurs. And I think some of the axioms
that are now true, that maybe would have been disputed 10
years ago or just like, you know, sort of cliche, 10 years
ago now, true, or like good businesses.
Can be built anywhere, right? Like, I think that was already
happening in the last few years. Sort of proved that geography
itself, you know, may not be sort of a limiting factor people
used to say things like you know, and entrepreneurs can look
like anybody right? And then you know, flash a
portfolio page and they didn't look like anybody.
You took a particular one type of then put them into a Gann
with a bunch of like, you know, a i generated images that were
all kind of like, oblong versions of the same person and
like, oh look, but I do think that's changing, maybe not fast
enough but like, I mean, I know in our portfolio.
You know, we've always been sort of like, I think 50% or more of
our companies have as at least one female founder, you know,
that type of stuff and so it's happening.
But do you still, you chase archetypes.
I mean, oh, great question. Like these Charles Hudson.
You know, had this tweet, like VC is a weird business if you
look at it as a 2d business check.
Sighs stage, it looks broadly competitive.
If you add a third dimension, preferred founder Ike archetype.
It becomes hyper competitive among small groups of peers and
not competitive at all outside of that group.
And you also wrote sort of about mission-driven Founders and how
that wasn't always a great archetype.
So, I guess how do you think about sort of still chasing or
maybe you don't, but chasing founder archetypes, in a world
where you're trying to have more diverse just just just to
correct. I said, Ed, I love
mission-driven. Founders.
Here are some of the places that they get themselves into trouble
As Leaders, okay? And, and the ways that that they
can avoid or address those because I love mr.
Dhanraj, I also wrote something. That basically talks about
consent is my is my job as an investor, a rocket fuel.
Investor is my job to find and win consensus steals, or is it
to find and bet on non-consensus ones?
And it's funny you ask that question to different people and
some will be like more people than I expected say.
It's a good strategy. It's like what's the hot start
up right corner, keep raising. And what do I mean by consensus?
Consensus is, you know, pattern matching archetypes working in
an area that people understand with some social proof, you
know, on the cap table a little bit of momentum.
Those have traded off the charts, right?
So like that's where prices have gone up.
So dramatically, non-consensus startups, people who don't
pattern match. Some of the archetypes are
talking about working in industries that aren't yet
trendy Adventure or are out of favor in Venture.
Those actually are where the quote unquote.
Deals are still meant, you know, Stu still exists.
If you want to be a smaller fund.
Like, otherwise, if you're if you're underwriting to 2 x, 3 x
returns, you know, and you're just trying to win the consensus
deals and they the the outcomes are bigger than ever then.
Fine go and continue to pattern match.
I guess. I would say that any archetype
that is both well understood and correct is eventually going to
see the prophet? Multiple back to the investor
compressed because that's where the competition occurs.
So, yes, it's sort of reasonable fund strategy to say.
I have an eye of archetypes that are correct, but not yet, widely
understood that I'm going to invest in because that is the
true definition, maybe of contrary it, right?
Like contrarian is not, you know, investing in people who
dropped out of college, right, you know, like maybe it was
when, you know, Peter and others did whatever but like that's not
contrarian. Now like contrarian is not going
into YC like that, you know, that that that's Harvard.
Now, right, like to have it. So do you have an archetype
these sort of this become more consensus?
Since you started or I have personality traits that I care
about? I have, I have found her traits
that I care about maybe more than the average Venture
investor because a, they're matched to the type of people, I
enjoy getting up and, and working on behalf of putting
sweat and and reputation behind and agenda dollars and two.
I think they were sort of the trade-offs that come with those
are things that I think we can help solve.
You know, help them versus, you know, risks that, I'm not that
I'm not good at the risking, right?
And so, what I've always said is like I'm happy to have teams
that don't have a technical founder, but have, you know,
technology awareness. They're going to bring the
technology in house but it's not like the two Founders are
technologists. Now we have plenty that are
right. So it's not a it's not a
bifurcation is just hey I'll look at those.
How about I respond to? I respond to every cold email,
right? Like I don't care about warm
introductions and networks as an archetype.
I think a lot of the best folks, you know, are outside of
networks. Now, that doesn't mean that they
like, you don't have to prove that they can do something
interesting. I, those cold emails are best
when they include, like a link to a demo of something.
They built or product that a customer is ready using rather
than just like, you know, hey fun me and I'll build this,
right? I am perfectly happy to back
people who don't have a traditional educational pedigree
in a so they like one of one of the examples in our first fund
that like will stick with The longest and maybe in some ways,
I'm proudest of was in the construction space, a company
called building connected to Founders again, not part of the
network, not Stanford, not Facebook, cold email, we LED
their seed round. I sat on their board, they
raised up to a b round, they had a growth term sheet on the table
and also a 300 million dollar acquisition from Autodesk for a
bunch of reasons. You know, we were perfectly
happy to support them going on. I think there are scenarios
where it could have been a multibillion-dollar business,
but I think they correctly for themselves decided did that
selling to Autodesk was the right thing because they haven't
because I didn't over capitalize the company and because they
were good investors around the table that was meaningful for
every investor it returned half our fund because you know, got
it got in early concentrate, early stage, it changed the
founders lies multi-generationally.
You know, one of them started a fan of started a foundation.
A scholarship at his high school to send people to college came
from an area where, you know, college wasn't the default.
The Next Step type of stuff he benefited from something like
that prior early. Chloe is all made out, you know,
well because the company had over diluted one of the founders
did a year at Autodesk, handcuffs are off, you know,
went and now a CEO of another thing.
The other one is still there. Leading a thousand people,
right? I am so and, you know, look, I
have a lot of problems with the way, our governments working
different types of things in equality, but like that, for me,
was a heck. Yeah.
Capitalism moment, right? Because where else, can a guy
who worked in construction for a few years and his technical
buddy? You know, decide that they're
going to step away from jobs? Not because they have trust
funds and not but because they like have an urgent problem,
they want to solve. Solve for an industry that, you
know, has been ignored by people, you know, coming out of,
you know, maybe some more traditional colleges
universities or even worse, targeted, just because it's big
and quote-unquote broken. And the sales people can go
interface with the construction folks.
We don't want to like we're not going to get our hands dirty.
Like this is a guy who's like hands, you know, grew up hands
dirty and was able to build something that the industry
wanted that you know was not a hundred billion dollar, actually
a billion dollar acquisition by somebody that was later written
down to zero because it was a The pan.
Like, you know, it's been doing great for Autodesk and were able
to take economics away from it. That like, you know, now like
fundamentally, they would not have been able to do in anything
other than like, entrepreneurs. I'm and by the way, because we
take a concentrated, early-stage reproach.
Like I said, I can actually have it be a home run for us, you
know, not just a single double like, uh, okay.
We got one X our money back, you know, I guess we'll make it
somewhere else, right? Like, I love those, I would
never give up the opportunity ability.
To like support and back, those Founders, you know, you know,
just to sort of, you know, Chase the chase.
What everybody else is doing speechless.
I love it because that's like the such a much.
Oh, I'm sorry for the industry. Oh yeah, let's talk about this,
you know. So I have like I have companies
in the portfolio that thankfully now like are starting to get
coverage, but like any time people want to be like, oh, hey,
Meet. Let me, let me write a takedown
of this, like, halfway interesting company orders.
I get the most feedback on. We're not necessarily negative
stories, you know, I wrote a story about a school, like a
coding Academy, that just very unusually accepted students who
didn't have a lot of money who didn't have any background in
Tech and the story itself. Go, I had tons of incoming.
First of all, people who wanted to fix.
Also, there are also people who were not business, you know, New
York Times, Like business section readers, who are happy P
to hear that. Something was happening in
Silicon Valley, that wasn't atrocious, and then third of
all. I wrote that story years ago and
I just got a note from somebody saying, oh, I remember this
person, you wrote about he was living in his car while he was
going to the school. He went to Hobart and I don't, I
mean, he was homeless, when he went yeah Burton and he was the
leader of the story, he has an extraordinary job.
Now, he works, you know, for so great.
I can't say which three-letter agency, but he's doing very
well. Right?
Look, I love it. That's like I do think we love
those stories. I don't want it.
People think we are look how I'm not a hey Tech doesn't tell
enough Goods you know protect price doesn't do enough.
Good stories you only one but I'm also a whole truth to power
hold true that repair. Right?
Like, you know, I think the biggest challenge our industry
faces, is it sees? Its it continues to see itself
as an underdog when it's actually the railroad Barons,
right? Like kind of goes back to that
idea that like nobody in Silicon Valley wants to admit just how
rich they are. It's like they kind of want to
admit it by being like hey I sit Courtside or I do this or I have
this crazy house but they don't want to like be 0.
Open about the fact that they have basically fuck you money
and they can live almost completely outside of well, even
outside of the democratic support, that it was, or that,
it was somehow, our, it was its Noble, like, it's Noble money.
That's how that money is more noble than, right then other
because well, but if it went to like, you know, a teacher's
right? Well, it's the same way.
I think I'll write founder is getting nostalgic about the
early days or times where they were just hanging out in a small
office, just trying to make it work because you know, obviously
their precarious relatively But you are able to focus more on
the mission, what you think permission is rather than, you
know, trying to please your investors.
And I feel like, you know, the same thing kind of comes up and
criticizing their critical Tech stories.
It just like, weren't we having so much fun when it was all
about, you know, highlighting funding announcements.
Yeah, I'd say the two things I had the two things I do.
Wish when it comes to reporting, is I do wish that and I think
the, I think the longer somebody's in it either, they
understand this or they actually move further away from It, I
wish folks could actually embed within.
I wish folks had done a start-up or could embed in with a
start-up because often what sort of like perceived as a specific
choice. You know, is sort of more like
at at worst an unintended consequence.
I would love by the way. So work out of any New York City
startups office for a month. I work out of my home, so I'm
happy, right? Have you have you asked, have
you put that out there? All right.
Well, I'm throwing this out on the podcast.
Yeah, we were on a start-up with the information, but but I would
Right. And look at it but the people I
would like to do that. Kind of story.
I mean I would love to I would also argue that the three of us
did work out of a startup. I mean we actually do you think
we're going to do two things? This, when this podcast drops we
are going to find Erica started. Yes.
Second. Ya what I'll say about?
Kate about the information is I think Jessica one of Jessica's
early columns was like what? I Now understand, you know,
working at a startup that I didn't understand when I was
covering that right? Look just Something like like
sometimes like, oh I used to take every product, you know,
get a cancelled as like, oh, this is so, you know, this is
smoke. I gotta find the fire.
Something must be really wrong and like, I've had to now, I've
had to cancel products sometimes just because, like, you got to
focus or this or that, it's right.
Not, you know, it's not scanned, you know, like a few things.
And, but obviously also, you know, doesn't mean that like
every sort of perfect and should be treated with kid gloves and
like, you know, that type of stuff, you know, I look back at
work, I don't know if you want to get to the YouTube stuff, but
like, I look back at YouTube and like there were things that I
did not recognize, you know, they were, they were second
order effects that some of the choices we made that were not
obvious to me at the time. I don't know if any sort of
quote unquote process changes would have made them more
apparent to me. I do firmly believe, and we
tried as best. We could to have a product team
that looked more like our user base, then Google demographics,
let's say. But I also believe that like,
actually, the way to sort of, you know, anticipate unintended
consequences would say. Say is in team composition to
demographics that like the more diverse more diversity
Geographic, you know, class-based ethnicity, whatever.
The right the right facing is that you have on your product
team and the more that those people are out to speak and
bring their experience to that. I think the more likely you are
to sort of debate anticipate and properly like you know, judge
how your product is going to be used, right?
Like the everything is gamergate, you know, now, right?
Like it, If you didn't, if you don't know what that is, or you
didn't experience it or so and so forth.
Like you're building a social product.
You should probably understand right as your, as your worldview
evolved or I, you know, I know you some but not I think of you,
you know, from your Twitter presence and like you're like
sort of good liberal in Tech world, right?
Or did you see yourself that way or like?
I feel like there's sort of a lot of night might not my exact
tagline. No, you wouldn't.
Would you yesterday, I sort of like to be.
See. I thought Funniest TV series.
What that's all about that. That was the threat.
I was the Lobos. Yeah.
And you just a great your often, like I feel like, you know,
there's this a lot of these Tech platforms had sort of a very
like sort of, you know, Free Speech was the by word.
It like, read it back in the day.
There was such like that long period where there was like, no,
you know, we don't want to moderate, we want to have an
open platform. I mean, YouTube is still like
pretty loose. But then, you know, I feel like,
yeah, it's been sort of the the mainstream Democrats who have
been much more pronounced but I don't, I don't know how to pull
it. I mean, obviously, I tend to
vote Democrat but like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to
counter. I don't know how to categorize
myself in sort of the same way that you did.
But here's what I'll say about you too, and, and those sort of
close supporter of AOC weren't you.
I remember seeing you sweet positively.
Yeah, I helped. Yeah, I saw China and our spouse
right? Somehow crazy.
That do the first. We'll look, I think Even outside
of whether you agree with all her policies that like she is an
archetype for a type of leader that we need to see unlike you
know, both sides of the aisle and also I grew up in Queens.
718 born 516 raised. So I was at YouTube from 2007 to
end of 2012. These people said, when you
leave Google, I'm like, well, my heart kind of left in middle of
2011, my daughter and a 2012, but but it was great.
I was, so I was the first product lead post-acquisition
working, you know, for Chad and Stuff like that.
I think there were a few things. I believed about YouTube, then
that were atypical. And some of them have become
more normalized. Some of them are still debatable
and I think the things I believed and, and tried to build
it to the product tried to build into the team were, that we are
not quote unquote and agnostic platform, right?
That like the oh, well, we're not immediately.
I wouldn't call some Media company either.
But like if you have terms and conditions and Community
standards, That are anything beyond just what is minimally
legally required? You are already making editorial
decisions, you're making decisions about what sort of
content you want on the platform.
So on so forth to say that like you're neutral is is not true.
And I think that's fine. I also tried to build out with a
great policy team build out policies that were
principle-based and then we could evolve the definitions
because it's very hard to do the reverse.
It's very hard to have enough like case law to where you can
perfectly right. You know what?
There's always gonna be gray area and I think the clearest
thing is like, here is the type of service we are trying to
build. You know, if you do things that
like defaults are these boundaries, like there might be
consequences, here are some examples of that, but people are
going to come up with new examples, right?
And you can't wait a year to then update it, like, you have
to try to address it in the moment.
So I think it's okay to actually like create some expectations of
how people of what's okay. And then, you know, reviewing of
all those over time and sometimes it's okay to be wrong,
like we were wrong, about some stuff like What?
I'll tell you one second and the third that I've always believed
in because I was at Second Life and AdSense before is, I've
always believed and this Chad believe this too.
I mean thankfully because I couldn't have got it done on my
own was that you know, likes and retweets are not payment and
that creators, you know, deserve payment for their creativity and
audience. And that if you are not doing
that, as a platform at the best case scenario, you're leaving a
strategic hole. Open for somebody else to do it.
Worst case scenario. You are exploiting people and I
never Ever wanted to exploit. I never wanted to work for a
company that exploited people. So Katie just real quick.
We always had the question of like, policy made in the Bay
Area. You know, sometimes in the East
Bay, depending upon where we were sitting like is East Bay
policies, you know, like good for the world, right?
And so, for example, there were certainly geographies especially
ones that we didn't operate in, but we're available in that
sometimes asked you to do things to content.
Mostly take down that we did not abide by because we We weren't
commercial operating their, their country, we didn't believe
in those principles, you know, it was more towards the Free
Speech, but when we were operating in a country, we
really did have to understand. Like, okay, we've got people on
the ground, their employees on the ground.
Like, if we're going to be operate, commercially in this
country, what is right, what is wrong?
I'm gonna, I'm probably gonna get a load of this wrong.
Apologies to any Thai people but like it's, it's, it's it's out
of humility. If I remember correctly, like
there was, you know, this thing in Thailand, where the
government asked us to take down some videos that were I'm like
photoshop's of you know like bare feet on the heads of very
influential or maybe even religious you know our political
tie figures to us. That looks like you know, know
where I could take this down. Like that's like free speech and
it's silly but then you'd sort of start to see those videos
getting flagged and they weren't getting flag from like
government IPS like they're getting Flack from actual users
and you'd look for the reasons that are like.
This is actually like this actually is offensive like you
know to us and I don't want to Go vagina was like, well, now we
understand that people but like there was enough Grassroots and
so we didn't take it down but we did put up an interest.
Yeah. We've created a new type of
interstitial that was basically like this complies with our
terms of service but users in your country find it
objectionable for the following like you know category since and
people could click through and so like we want.
But trust me like the first thing you know that we thought
was like skepticism and dismissiveness, right?
And we learned like no like if you're going to have a global
footprint Global responsibilities, you have to
sometimes realize that Your first assumptions or what you're
comfortable with or what you're uncomfortable with does not
match you know, your community where they are.
And so make those tough decisions, right?
Thigh like the 60 philosophically.
I'm so curious about this because I think the biggest tech
companies have decided that in general.
What they'll do is they'll comply with the laws and in some
ways, the Norms of the companies in which they operate.
But at what point does a big tech company have to decide.
Okay. Okay, we cannot really comply
with either of those things, it doesn't work for us.
And does that mean that the idea of a global tech company,
especially consumer-facing is something?
We'll see chipped away out over the next few years.
My answer is like, I don't know, I think that there is a
perfectly viable path that basically says, we are going to
operate on each country's laws and there is a set of red lines.
There's a minimum Set of like yeah of things that need to be
in place for us to operate in that country.
So like some some set of choices if there's a bunch of different
toggles like some combination of those toggles based on Country
law mean, that we are going to forego operating in that
country. And that will be more granular
and broader than just the China issue, right?
Like, historically this has been, like the China issue.
Is it worth trying to operate there because, you know, you can
change from within and it's a big, you know, big Market
opportunity, or is it a quagmire?
Are you have to compromise too many of your stated values
around user privacy or, you know, freedom of expression, you
know, and information to, you know, to spin up your service.
So I do think we're going to, hopefully see you.
No more companies being deliberate about what those
choices are and maybe denying their services to countries that
seem to be not good actors. Right.
But I don't know. Like this is, this is, this was
a tough one. But anyone who builds Global
Services like has to has to think through this obviously,
right? It was like, Wow but it's, you
know. But again, like I don't feel bad
for companies doing with this. Like this is, you have trillion
dollar market caps, like, you have, you know, Executives who,
you know, this is what you signed up for, right?
Like, but that's I mean, that's the thing.
I mean, the negotiation at some point isn't really so much
between the user. You know, the companies and the
government sits between the companies and their investors
because the expectation is that you do operate in all these
countries because you need to continue grow, you know, can you
grow your user base and extracting?
What, you know, this is actually that users I would, I To take a
set of notes on things, I needed to accomplish during this
podcast, and I forgot to do that.
But now you just prompted me because we're audio not video.
Usually, during video podcast, I change my hat and Hoodie a few
times to different to promote different portfolio companies.
Okay, you know, you're supporting so I figure I'm gonna
have to do that audio audio wise.
So I happen to be a personal investor in a company called
long-term Stock Exchange that are gree started, which is about
giving companies a chance to list in a place where you And
bias towards maybe even create voting struggle, sort of put
proposals together that we reward investors who are going
to be long-term holders and allow you to think long term,
right? Still, very nascent.
There's some companies that have pledged, you know, to be on
their a sauna. So and so forth but like I am
actually hopeful that there is going to be investor structures
that better match against like you know and not just be corpse
that better match against you know sort of the types of
trade-offs. You're talking about Tom I'll
tell you one thing. So I always this is I always say
the sort of jokingly but I also kind of not joking.
So like my solution to this issue of like what Facebook yo
what truth is being discussed on Facebook and like you know, it's
safe in Menlo Park but not great in Sri Lanka.
We're were the sort of you know quote unquote, Facebook me, Adam
are right, wasn't it? Yeah.
So here's my joke, not joke, kind of thing.
Like take the Facebook's executive team or even better
like board of directors, it is going to change, you know,
annually. But like Shirley Jackson The
Lottery like once a year. One of you is going to have to
make your major life choices based upon what the average
Facebook user believes, right? So if the average Facebook user
believes that vaccinations, you know, are fake, because that's
what's been spread, like, you can't get vaccinated or let you
know, basically how do we like, you know, it's obvious joke but
like it's the sort of the question about when, when
leadership of these companies essentially are in an Elysium
that is so distanced from the The downstream impacts and
downstream consequences that their products are are
influencing these. It's almost as if they had to
live under it. They would want a nudge.
These people to have used that they found palatable or not
palatable that lower like the more amenable to their
lifestyle. I mean, you see that three
people to dislike downplay the ideas and not allow them to be
the most prominent ideas, but it's an interesting Twist on.
You're trying to make something that normally is position is
elitist that the I would try to direct how people think and
you're sort of saying well if the elites want to live under a
the world they're creating they should have to have to suffer it
or is that just what you think? That's sort of like the Khan
Academy. Somebody's a writer to me.
It's like the idea that Ben Shapiro and like Dom, Boingo, or
whatever, I don't even know, but like these people are like it.
Is that In the world to me, if you would
agree with this would be is evidence enough that something
is broken with the platform. Why would you want to create a
product where the thing you're building audience for is like
Ben Shapiro? I don't know.
I feel like that's sort of a. Problem.
Like, just the same way, I wouldn't want to run Fox News.
Have Tucker Carlson me by my banner show.
I wouldn't want to own a tech company and have like these
really dumb. Conte, conservative, content,
creators, be sort of the top output at that, I'm putting out,
or do you have what he would unique Jew hate.
You hate 43% of America. Is that what you're saying
there? He does.
Yeah, I grew up in another area so it is right.
Yeah yeah. I mean they're yeah enjoy Rush
Soros dollars Rush Limbaugh is like was terrible.
And you know people are very responsive, you know, they
listen to what what you put out and that's why it matters, what
Elites like pump out to the world.
And I think I just I think the distance between you know the
experience of the quote-unquote average person and the 1% is
like you know the quote the greatest threat to stability,
right. And the fact that I can look, I
don't know the guy but I believe that, you know, there are people
like Peter teal who like, you know, sort of are calculating
enough that like look the chaos ladder is going to benefit me
and if things go to shitty I have Of money to insulate
myself, the chaos, that, you know, Bannon created, right,
like and maybe that's maybe that's really, you know, maybe
he's playing 7D chest for a better brighter, glorious shared
future. But like, that's what I worry
about. Like I worry about when some of
our, some of our billionaires, you know, can sort of insulate
themselves from the challenges of the world, and I have nothing
against billionaires in general. So, I liked, I liked when our
Industries billionaires were just awkward and not assholes,
and they were just kind of like, Nerdy trying to figure out what
to do with their money, going to basketball games and getting
awkwardly video. Dancing around, it's fine.
Yeah, I know. I look, how do I think it's a,
it's a fascinating point in in Agra and I see, you know, I
during that during the back and forth.
I mentioned this. But like, you know, covering
Uber there was always, I don't know if Travis did this Eric
Kidd, you can tell me, but, you know, dhara makes deliveries
from time to time, you know, because he wants to see what the
average user you know. Deliver person.
It's like and you know, maybe at the That kind of changes some of
the benefits that they give them or subsidies or things like
that. But you know, it's do you think
there would be a substantive difference?
If, you know, Susan with Jackie was in a country that has been
overrun by misinformation YouTube's.
And the, I mean, maybe she has been, I don't know.
I used to spend time in the review, the flag video review,
Q, fairly like, I don't remember if I did it.
Monthly or quarterly, I don't like overstate it, but I would
do that because I felt like it. It was unfair to ask, you know,
I don't care if they're in contractors employees.
Would it was unfair to ask you human beings to, you know, look
at flag videos which we know could have some very bad things
in it. If the product managers and if
the leadership only saw it as statistics on a piece of paper
or like, you know, when people are when you get the stuff
that's like, oh well, you know, Facebook says, 99.8% of, you
know of post, didn't contain beheadings, you know, you're
like wait, hold on. Like point two percent like
that, still hundreds of thousands of be Hetty.
Oh, watch that live streams of and not to pick on them because
you know, this was this was a YouTube thing and I saw, you
know, I saw just about everything but child porn and
that's because child porn is actually pretty easy to filter
out algorithmically because it's one of the areas where like
content fingerprinting is shared amongst companies and so on.
So worth it does mean it's probably just means it just
means like it actually didn't get to the, to the but I saw be.
I saw, I saw, you know, I has beheadings.
I saw all different types of graphic poor.
I you know, and like having to watch you having to see the
things you cannot unsee. I do think creates a different
visceral impact upon the leadership of these companies,
than just seeing it in text as a summary report and trying to,
you know, sort of debate. Well, you know, should we put
resources on making that number go up or down, you know, or
should we put more money on Advertising?
You know, right away, that matters.
I'm a social media Elite worried about, you know, having to live
under the ideology that I'm programming into the masses.
Like what, what is the lever that I pull to make sure that I
can still take the vaccine? Or, I don't know.
Do you, what do you think? I mean, there are certain moves
that would seem to bias things just politically versus see more
neutral, or, I don't know. Do you have like a prescription?
The first is diverse teams anticipate, you know, sort of
the outlier use cases, so have diverse teams.
The second is the senior Executives at social media
companies should be exposed to and occasionally do the job of
the lowest level folks who are often the content reviewers.
If you are just seeing, you know, sort of reports and
statistics and not actually understanding what people are
dealing with. You know, I think you lose
empathy for it. The third is that we have to
maybe come to grips that. In some of these companies that
they're not software. Margin companies, write
software, margin means, high margin He used to make a CD-ROM
of a, you know, of a Excel, you know, whatever.
Distributed in shrink wrap boxes and there are no marginal costs
of, you know, each new each new box outside of the cardboard and
that's what our that's what investors and Wall Street, you
know, sort of demand. And so as a result in these
sorts of services trust and safety is staffed.
As a cost center, it's a drain on margin and so you want to
minimize trust and safety minimize can customer support to
not put your software margins at.
Risk. And so I think it is a vector
for, you know, when we talk about regulatory, you know, I
think there's actually some interesting questions about, are
you Staffing, trust and safety and responsiveness to different
types of flagged content and so on and so forth, you know,
proportionate to your Content Volume.
So that the worst types of things that are occurring, you
know, on the system aren't live for hours days weeks, while they
crawl through multiple tiers of support and so on so forth.
And so like no, I don't want real time.
Evaluation of every YouTube video, right?
It doesn't scale and perpetuity but I think that there's this
question about our we Staffing to the level of public good or
we Staffing to the level of, you know, a margin structure that
we've convinced ourselves, these companies should have even if it
creates more negative externalities you know for the
world. You know what's interesting
about that specifically though is that listening in on Facebook
earnings call Ducks was you know he was signaling for a long time
that they were going to be making Being a multi-billion
dollar investments in their trust and safety teams and it
would have a material impact on profits.
And from my understanding of it, that didn't affect the company's
valuation too much. I mean, the thing that really
tanked, Facebook was when it was a pure business problem, right?
Yeah. When they look and this is, I
think over the last year to this is change a little bit as
because I think I think it's become, you know, I've been.
Yeah. Right.
So like Susan, you know, the Nook, I'm sure there's been more
growth in, you know, over the last few years on these teams
than there were in the first year.
To 15 to 20 and that's a good thing and I think that's frankly
been that that that wasn't internally motivated, right?
I think that came in response to press scrutiny, regulatory
scrutiny, you know, contractor complaints, that type of stuff
and it's great. So maybe like, you know, maybe
we're halfway there already but you know, if you were going to
look and say what's, you know, for the next generation of these
sorts of things for the, for the metaverse, you know, whatever.
Like you know, what are some standards to evaluate whether
they're likely to go you know stay on the rails or go off the
rails. It's you know, Are you
developing trust and safety in a way that scales to an
experienced goal or, you know, or to a to a margin goal.
We have to let you go. But like, I mean one thing the
media companies do is assess, you know, like sources is this
person, generally honest, or if I run an op-ed page, you know,
are they making strong arguments?
You know, there's like this human assessment of the quality
of the product that you're putting out, right?
And so if your ex Expanding and certainly for like the top sort
of traffic generators on a platform, it's not a big enough
set. It's a small enough set that,
you know, it's knowable to those social media platforms.
I mean, do you think they should apply media level standards,
like actual quality filters? I never liked using the word
quality for me, especially say it at YouTube, quality refers to
bitrate not, not contest that cause shows your orientation,
that it Still funny mommy on user-generated.
Yes. An engineering problem rather
than it's like we are a media business and have the main thing
we should care about is second line that sense.
YouTube know. I think that I think that I
think that the classic gatekeeper definitions of media
are a subset of the type of content that deserves to exist
in be seen in the world. And so that trying to, you know,
suggest that those are the, you know, aspirational markers.
In terms of, you know, even subject is is fundamentally
wrong and Miss judges, you know, the question about What people
are interested in the community standards?
The business model, the incentive system does that also
mean that then we should run to sort of like lowest common
denominator in terms of people's, you know, people's
interests. No, I think that we have a
responsibility to think about that.
I'm glad to see for example, that the companies have said you
have sort of re-engineered, hopefully their algorithms to
say like, well, oh stuff that's Rising quickly.
And popularity, you know, end has a bunch of controversy
around it, maybe we should slow that down, you know, until we
have a chance to look at it rather than then accelerate it
to the point where we get a clear enough signal on whether
it's really bad or not, right? Like I think those are the smart
engineering choices, right? I also think by the way quickly
to Eric's point that I also think, you know when we apply
media levers level standards, here we tend to bias towards the
narrative that media finds acceptable and not acceptable.
And for example, when it comes to anti-vaxxer content obviously
and rightfully, we are incensed by the reality that there's so
much anti-vaxxer stuff that gets disseminated through Facebook
and YouTube. Twitter, but like, you know, the
current war in Ukraine right now.
I would bet if we look at this period, maybe five ten years
from now, we were Awash in misinformation, we are Awash in
propaganda, Ukrainian propaganda, telling stories of
heroism and and people surviving and, and, you know, people on an
island. That's hold the Russians to fuck
you. And then, and then apparently
got killed that got wide distribution that had, you know,
was as false as anything to do with anti-vaxxer content, but
because it is, you know, in In the service of a narrative that
we largely agree with which is that the ukrainians are victims
of the Russian, you know, Russian aggression here.
We're okay with. And it's funny to me that we're
not seeing that much anger right now, at Twitter, I mean, I find
Twitter almost unreadable these days when it comes to stuff
about Ukraine because I'm just like, I don't believe this shit.
There's no way I, you know, and I don't think anyone's vetting
it because people don't care because it sounds good to them.
There's a note in your positive crane.
Truther Birds aren't real. I see ya.
Look, I changed the way I use Twitter.
Lately because I don't really have a point here, other than
just like like saying media and standards as some sort of high
level of of truth that we should all adhere to.
We should just acknowledge the fact that like sometimes media
standards or what people want to hear, you're ready for my outro,
you ready for my outro line. Yes, Tech doesn't like to admit
making mistakes and the Press overcorrects on the last one
they made totally amazing. I agree with that.
Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Silicon Valley, goodbye, goodbye.
Goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye.
Goodbye. Silicon Valley, goodbye,
goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye.
Goodbye.