Low Ambition is Killing Your Startup

Michael Seibel 0:00 Most people who are watching have the ability to be curious about an area that seems perhaps far-fetched, but if it went the right way, could change the world. And you might be surprised because right now it might just not be sexy. It might not be in the zeitgeist, but that, that might actually be a good thing. Like, that might be your opportunity, whereas building the 17th AI SDR might raise you your $2 million seed round, but, like... [upbeat music] This is Dalton + Michael. Today we're gonna talk about the thing that I believe is the secret killer of startups, and it's not what you expect. It is low ambition. We work with a lot of startups. Let's talk about ambition, and let's talk about what happens when we work with a company that has low ambition.

Dalton Caldwell 0:57 It is extremely counterintuitive because you're like, "Man, I've heard from the world and I've heard from these guys how hard startups are, and like-

Michael Seibel 1:05 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 1:05 ... only a tiny percentage of people succeed." Um-

Michael Seibel 1:09 Therefore

Dalton Caldwell 1:09 ... let me try to, like, increase my odds of success by aiming way lower.

Michael Seibel 1:13 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 1:14 And if I try to just build, like, a small little startup, that's gonna be way easier than trying to build the next Google, which sounds very hard.

Michael Seibel 1:21 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 1:22 Right?

Michael Seibel 1:22 Yes. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:23 That sounds intuitive, right?

Michael Seibel 1:25 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 1:25 But our evidence, um, suggests that is not the case.

Michael Seibel 1:29 Also, it's not creative. This is actually what pains me the most about this thought. It's not unique.

Dalton Caldwell 1:35 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 1:35 We're making a video about it. [laughs] Like-

Dalton Caldwell 1:38 Yeah, you aren't the first person to come up with-

Michael Seibel 1:40 No

Dalton Caldwell 1:40 ... this insight.

Michael Seibel 1:41 If this insight worked, you would see-

Dalton Caldwell 1:43 Yeah

Michael Seibel 1:44 ... so much success. [laughs] The fact that you don't see it, like, this is why I hate first principles thinking sometimes. It's like, the fact that there's no evidence to support this is damning evidence. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:55 I think it would be like, well, Michael, there's lots of small businesses that aren't venture funded that are-

Michael Seibel 2:01 That's great, yes. But there aren't a lot of venture-funded small businesses that make anyone any money.

Dalton Caldwell 2:06 Correct.

Michael Seibel 2:07 And we've had decades to, to experiment. [laughs] That's-

Dalton Caldwell 2:11 Yeah. So I guess the, I guess to steel man the opposing point-

Michael Seibel 2:15 Please

Dalton Caldwell 2:15 ... it's that, okay, well then I guess I should not raise venture capital if I have low ambitions, and I think we would say yeah.

Michael Seibel 2:21 Sure.

Dalton Caldwell 2:21 I think point granted. Like-

Michael Seibel 2:23 There it is. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:24 There it is. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 2:25 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 2:25 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 2:26 Almost nothing in this video we're going to talk about is relevant to a un-venture funded company.

Dalton Caldwell 2:33 Fair.

Michael Seibel 2:34 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:34 But if you are going to raise money-

Michael Seibel 2:36 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 2:36 ... of any sort at any stage-

Michael Seibel 2:38 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 2:38 ... um, being low ambition, uh-

Michael Seibel 2:42 Toxic

Dalton Caldwell 2:43 ... bad.

Michael Seibel 2:44 One, what's so weird about being low ambition is it goes in the category of things that you'll almost never get feedback on. So it's like when you go to a VC pitch, like, uh, th- no one's gonna be like, "You know, this, like, you're just not brave enough." Like-

Dalton Caldwell 2:59 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 2:59 ... it's just like, it's almost weirdly insulting to tell someone. And so, like, you might get weird feedback like, "Well, you're not, you don't have enough users-

Dalton Caldwell 3:07 Yeah

Michael Seibel 3:07 ... or this. Your TAM's too small." And, and the reality is the world doesn't change enough if you win to be interesting.

Dalton Caldwell 3:17 Yeah. Almost like the way I would try to frame this for you all is if you're gonna do something hard, all the odds are stacked against you.

Michael Seibel 3:29 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 3:29 And you, there needs to be a lot of invisible hands that lift you up-

Michael Seibel 3:33 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 3:33 ... and pull you forward-

Michael Seibel 3:34 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 3:34 ... of people that see what you're doing-

Michael Seibel 3:36 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 3:36 ... and try to help you perhaps irrationally.

Michael Seibel 3:39 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 3:39 And there are way more invisible hands pulling you up if you're doing something really ambitious and exciting-

Michael Seibel 3:46 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 3:47 ... than if it's just like ho-hum, who cares?

Michael Seibel 3:49 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 3:50 The faceless army is not going to help, help you.

Michael Seibel 3:53 Well, and it's weird because it's almost like the world wants big, new things.

Dalton Caldwell 3:59 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 3:59 The world wants it. Like, it's like entropy is really working in your favor weirdly. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 4:05 If you have a big dream, most people will respect you for having a dream.

Michael Seibel 4:12 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 4:12 And if there's small ways they can help you on your personal journey-

Michael Seibel 4:15 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 4:16 ... they will do so.

Michael Seibel 4:17 Especially if that dream clearly makes the world a better place.

Dalton Caldwell 4:19 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 4:20 This must be some weird aspect of just being human-

Dalton Caldwell 4:24 Yeah

Michael Seibel 4:24 ... where, like, you just kind of want the world to be a better place.

Dalton Caldwell 4:27 Yeah, think about it.

Michael Seibel 4:28 You wanna help people doing that.

Dalton Caldwell 4:28 If you were to meet someone and they were like, "Michael, my goal is to eradicate cancer. M- I want there to never be cancer again. No one should ever get cancer," A, okay, great. Like, again, I would, I would be, like, really excited to-

Michael Seibel 4:41 Exactly

Dalton Caldwell 4:41 ... hear that.

Michael Seibel 4:42 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 4:42 I would have questions. "Oh, well, how are you gonna do it?" You know.

Michael Seibel 4:44 Sure.

Dalton Caldwell 4:45 Um, but man, what a cool mission.

Michael Seibel 4:47 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 4:47 But if I met someone, they're like, "Michael, my goal is to improve click-through rate of ads by .05% that are rendered on mobile through the use of novel AI," again, might be a, might be a business, but much harder for that to stick in my mind of, of, um, a mission or a vision that I'm super excited about.

Michael Seibel 5:10 Well, and let's be clear. Yes, and there are many software examples for that too, right? In my mind, so let's not just use health- healthcare I think is easy, right?

Dalton Caldwell 5:20 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 5:20 Like cancer, but, like, hardware/software example, self-driving cars. Software example, like bot. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 5:28 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 5:29 Like AI products that are giving people-

Dalton Caldwell 5:30 And, and-

Michael Seibel 5:31 ... superpowers

Dalton Caldwell 5:31 ... Gmail. So when Gmail came out-

Michael Seibel 5:33 Gmail's a great one

Dalton Caldwell 5:33 ... I believe Yahoo Mail gave you something like 10 megabytes of storage.

Michael Seibel 5:37 I think you had to pay. I think default free was, like, three or something.

Dalton Caldwell 5:40 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 5:41 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 5:41 And then Gmail was 1,000.

Michael Seibel 5:43 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 5:43 And that was on purpose. It was, it was 100x better than the alternative.

Michael Seibel 5:47 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 5:47 And so for a lot of products, we would always recommend, uh, to YC companies trying to be 100x better-

Michael Seibel 5:53 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 5:53 ... is, like, the bar you should be going for. If not, why bother?

Michael Seibel 5:57 Why?

Dalton Caldwell 5:57 Why bother making something that's 2% better than the alternatives?

Michael Seibel 6:00 It's really hard to convince founders that this secret hand is working in their favor. And like, it's something that we've seen in hindsight, right? Like the number of secret hams that were helping OpenAI

Dalton Caldwell 6:11 Right?

Michael Seibel 6:12 Many [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 6:13 Many

Michael Seibel 6:15 And I think this is something that I personally learned from Sam, which is that basically it's like you can tell people these stories about how you're gonna do this thing that's gonna make a lot of money without having this little impact, and like they might actually believe you. They just don't care. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 6:33 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 6:33 And like what's weird is that like to win, you need a lot of people to care. You need customers to care, you need investors to care, you need employees to care, you need co-founders to not leave. Like you need care.

Dalton Caldwell 6:45 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 6:46 The more ambitious you are, the more you want to make, uh, your customer life a better place, the world a better place, the more people have reason to care. And that caring is a variable you get to control when you pick your idea.

Dalton Caldwell 7:00 Yeah. I, I don't know if this will resonate for you, but I almost think of a startup or any organization as like a battery or a flywheel or an engine.

Michael Seibel 7:09 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:09 And you want it to be so strong-

Michael Seibel 7:13 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 7:13 ... and have so much velocity and torque that it can pull forward all of these different people, all these different customers, all these stakeholders because of just like the strength of this thing.

Michael Seibel 7:26 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:26 And if the, the core engine is weak and doesn't have much torque, nothing is gonna happen.

Michael Seibel 7:32 Yes. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 7:33 Because you're having to pull, you're having to pull the world a different direction.

Michael Seibel 7:37 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:37 And so a very ambitious idea, a very ambitious approach-

Michael Seibel 7:41 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 7:41 ... into what you're doing has the shot, it has the horsepower and torque to, to pull something forward.

Michael Seibel 7:47 I want to add to that. You don't know how many times other people pitch your company, right? So when you have that hero or that, uh, champion side of a company that you're selling to, they have to go pitch their boss and their coworkers when you're not in the room. When you're raising money, that partner you're talking to, they have to pitch their partners and their LPs, right? The employee, they often have to pitch their parents-

Dalton Caldwell 8:12 Yep

Michael Seibel 8:13 ... their spouse, their friends. When you're not in the room, how good of a pitch you giving them?

Dalton Caldwell 8:20 Right.

Michael Seibel 8:20 Are we changing the world or are we optimizing click-throughs by 1%? [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 8:25 Yeah, I, um, I met Elon in like 2008.

Michael Seibel 8:28 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 8:28 And that's like the only time I ever talked to him.

Michael Seibel 8:30 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 8:30 And in the first 30 minutes of talking to him, he told me the following line. "My goal is to die on Mars, hopefully not on impact." [laughs]

Michael Seibel 8:43 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 8:44 Clearly he uses that line a lot.

Michael Seibel 8:46 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 8:46 But it stuck in my mind when I met him as what an-

Michael Seibel 8:50 Almost 20 years

Dalton Caldwell 8:51 ... what an interesting, ambitious person, and he made a big impact. You know, again, like I, I certainly remember the time I met Elon Musk, and that was way before he was-

Michael Seibel 9:01 Yeah, famous

Dalton Caldwell 9:01 ... you know, famous as he is now.

Michael Seibel 9:02 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:03 And that simple story that is that ambitious, and clearly he just told everyone that. Like it wasn't that I was special.

Michael Seibel 9:10 No. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 9:10 He just walked around life-

Michael Seibel 9:11 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 9:12 ... and would tell that to every person he would talk to. And I'm arguing that's how you manifest-

Michael Seibel 9:18 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 9:18 ... the kind of stuff that he manifested-

Michael Seibel 9:20 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 9:20 ... is he would say crazy, provocative things. He would back them up.

Michael Seibel 9:25 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:25 And there were all these invisible hands of he, you know, he would just keep putting that story out there-

Michael Seibel 9:30 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 9:30 ... and got people to work for him. He got people to give him money.

Michael Seibel 9:33 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:33 He got, people wanted him to win.

Michael Seibel 9:36 And like I think that like what sucks is that sometimes the press and like history can turn all of these stories into like the big man. Like, "Oh," and then he hand-built the robot, he hand-built the rocket, and he welded it. And it's like all of these are team games.

Dalton Caldwell 9:52 He told people a story that they could believe and sink their teeth into and, and devote their lives to that vision.

Michael Seibel 9:59 Yes. They joined his team. And even the people who didn't work there were still part of the team.

Dalton Caldwell 10:05 Who's buying the stock?

Michael Seibel 10:06 Exactly.

Dalton Caldwell 10:06 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 10:06 They're still part of the team. And so it's so weird to think that like-

Dalton Caldwell 10:11 I'm telling this story. I'm part of the team

Michael Seibel 10:12 ... part of the team. Exactly. Exactly. So it's weird to think of these people that are held up as these individual greatness people who really their skill was building the largest teams.

Dalton Caldwell 10:24 Yep.

Michael Seibel 10:24 Their skill was understanding having high ambition allowed them to build the most exciting, largest team, and that team would power them to fulfilling the ambition. You know, I, I come from a politics world way back in the way. Like you know what that sounds like to me? Obama, right? And it's like we're gonna get a Black guy with the last name Hussein to become [laughs] president.

Dalton Caldwell 10:46 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 10:47 Or middle name, sorry. Like we're, we're gonna, we're gonna need a team here. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 10:51 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 10:51 We're gonna need a powerful team. And I think that, you know, a lot of people talk about great companies or movements, like so hard to build a movement off of improving click-through rates by 1% by using AI.

Dalton Caldwell 11:03 Yep.

Michael Seibel 11:04 And what's sad and unfortunate is that you will, if you have a good, you know, if you've decent co-founders, you go through YC, blah, blah, blah, you'll be able to raise a seed round, right? Like if you do yada yada-

Dalton Caldwell 11:15 Yeah

Michael Seibel 11:15 ... amount of revenue, you're probably gonna raise a Series A. But no one's gonna tell you in the back of your mind like, yeah, after that, no one's gonna care. And you need people to care.

Dalton Caldwell 11:27 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 11:28 So let's put this in the context of AI because like hilariously I think I would have assumed with AI ambition would have gone way up, but this whole talk of like single person company, like I don't, s- just there's some stuff in the ether which in my mind is like making, sometimes I feel like ambition's going down. And I, what do you see there?

Dalton Caldwell 11:53 I, I think it's because we're in a market cycle, if the way you're keeping score is what's raising money-

Michael Seibel 12:02 Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's a real-

Dalton Caldwell 12:03 ... um, you're gonna get weird ideas. 'Cause remember in, in 2021 all sorts of stuff was raising money.

Michael Seibel 12:09 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 12:09 Think about all the unicorns. Every, every 24 hours there'd be a new unicorn minted.

Michael Seibel 12:12 Yes. Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 12:12 And you'd be like, "Wow, I can't believe," remember Cameo was a unicorn? Like, "Oh, I can get, you know, C-list celebrities to say stuff." That's the future. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 12:22 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 12:22 Again, actually, I like Cameo, but-

Michael Seibel 12:23 Sure

Dalton Caldwell 12:23 ... that's, it w- it was probably not the most ambitious idea in the world.

Michael Seibel 12:26 No.

Dalton Caldwell 12:27 Um, and so if you're keeping score on what's raising money, you can get really warped ideas-

Michael Seibel 12:32 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 12:32 ... about what good is.

Michael Seibel 12:33 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 12:34 Um, and I-

Michael Seibel 12:35 That's a really good point

Dalton Caldwell 12:35 ... I'm just trying to argue this is going on in AI land, it's like, kinda like everything's getting funded.

Michael Seibel 12:39 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 12:40 And so you're like, "Oh, yeah, I guess, I guess my like 15th version of the same thing that other people have done is a good idea." Tricky.

Michael Seibel 12:49 Tricky.

Dalton Caldwell 12:49 Tricky.

Michael Seibel 12:50 No, it's, it's definitely interesting as well because ambition, high ambition doesn't mean the road's gonna be easy. It doesn't mean that you're gonna be popular, especially early.

Dalton Caldwell 13:02 That's a great segue. Let me give some specifics because I think you could be watching this video thus far and be like, "Man, I should just pitch some like really crazy sci-fi ambitious stuff," and like-

Michael Seibel 13:14 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 13:14 ... "these guys will think that's really smart."

Michael Seibel 13:16 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 13:16 Um, not necessarily.

Michael Seibel 13:18 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 13:18 So let me, let me give the nuance here.

Michael Seibel 13:19 I'm gonna kill NVIDIA. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 13:20 Yeah. The ambition has to be combined with a simple pitch-

Michael Seibel 13:29 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 13:30 ... and a pitch where the logical leaps you are making are intuitive and that you are credible at making those logical leaps.

Michael Seibel 13:40 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 13:40 Okay? And so when Elon was talking to me about dying on Mars, [laughs] I, at that time he was running Tesla.

Michael Seibel 13:50 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 13:50 He knew a lot about hardware.

Michael Seibel 13:52 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 13:52 And in my conversation with him, he talked about all the ways that like NASA was underperforming.

Michael Seibel 13:57 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 13:57 So actually there was quite a bit of substance in my conversation-

Michael Seibel 13:59 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 14:00 ... with him about how he was going to actually do it.

Michael Seibel 14:02 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:02 And his argument that the thing that was holding back space colonization exploration was institutionalized slowness because it was run by the federal government.

Michael Seibel 14:10 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:11 So he had a whole... There was a lot there, guys.

Michael Seibel 14:13 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:13 Um, and that is how you make a credible pitch.

Michael Seibel 14:17 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:17 When we heard Sam pitch OpenAI, he actually knew the researchers that were doing the work and were recruiting them to work on it.

Michael Seibel 14:24 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:24 And it was all based on papers that were coming out that were being written.

Michael Seibel 14:27 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:28 It wasn't Sam just being like, "Oh, I'm gonna make magic AI. Give me money."

Michael Seibel 14:31 No, no.

Dalton Caldwell 14:31 There was a whole lot of substance there.

Michael Seibel 14:34 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:34 And so if you're watching this and you're trying to triangulate what, you know, Dalton and Michael are saying about ambition, you have to root it in things that you know about-

Michael Seibel 14:43 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 14:44 ... and make very simple low leap of faith arguments on how you'll be able to do it. That is so important for ambition.

Michael Seibel 14:51 I love that. But I want people to understand that that might not be as hard as you think.

Dalton Caldwell 14:58 Oh.

Michael Seibel 14:58 Right? Like AI wasn't the buzzword it was t- it is today 10 years ago.

Dalton Caldwell 15:04 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 15:04 Figuring out who the leading AI researchers was, was a, was a question of curiosity.

Dalton Caldwell 15:10 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 15:10 It wasn't a state secret. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 15:13 Nope.

Michael Seibel 15:13 Figuring out what the leading papers were was a question of curiosity. Like, I'm not saying that Sam isn't incredibly talented. I'm saying that like understanding how broken NASA was, was a question of curiosity.

Dalton Caldwell 15:24 Yes.

Michael Seibel 15:25 Like there are-

Dalton Caldwell 15:26 Well, hilariously, SpaceX, the, the NASA people were always like, "This will never work."

Michael Seibel 15:29 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 15:30 Like they, like he had naysayers out of the gate-

Michael Seibel 15:31 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 15:31 ... which was the actual experts being like-

Michael Seibel 15:33 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 15:33 ... "This is the stupidest thing ever"-

Michael Seibel 15:34 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 15:34 ... the whole time.

Michael Seibel 15:35 So I think that like, you know, most people who are watching have the ability to be curious about an area, um, that seems perhaps far-fetched, but if it went the right way, could change the world. And you might be surprised because right now it might just not be sexy. It might not be in the zeitgeist, but that, that might actually be a good thing.

Dalton Caldwell 15:59 Yep.

Michael Seibel 16:00 Like that might be your opportunity, whereas building the 17th AI SDR-

Dalton Caldwell 16:06 Yeah

Michael Seibel 16:07 ... might raise you your $2 million seed round, but like...

Dalton Caldwell 16:11 Well, and in both of these cases, maybe you can think of others, it involved disagreeing with authority figures and conventional wisdom.

Michael Seibel 16:20 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 16:20 Like it basically required looking dumb.

Michael Seibel 16:24 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 16:25 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 16:25 Yeah. To experts.

Dalton Caldwell 16:27 To experts.

Michael Seibel 16:28 To experts.

Dalton Caldwell 16:29 So you would need the combination of a credible argument that you could explain and sit down for half an hour and like walk through all the pieces-

Michael Seibel 16:37 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:37 ... and have it be an idea that has been discarded by experts that it will never work.

Michael Seibel 16:41 In fact, you know, we're talking about the difference between being ambitious and being a scenester.

Dalton Caldwell 16:47 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 16:47 I think these are some of the tests, right? I think, you know, we kinda think about a scenester as someone who wants to play the game of startup, but not actually do anything, you know?

Dalton Caldwell 16:55 Correct.

Michael Seibel 16:56 Their, their ideal is to be on a panel with Elon Musk, not to-

Dalton Caldwell 16:59 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 16:59 ... change the world. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 17:00 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 17:01 And I think a scenester would be one very afraid of being looked down upon by experts. They wanna be embraced by experts by day one, and I think a scenester is afraid of ideas that aren't sexy.

Dalton Caldwell 17:14 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 17:14 They wanna be part of the zeitgeist immediately. And so I think when thinking about trying to work in a company with high ambition, you have to be careful, right? Like, you wanna make sure you're not working with someone who's pretending to be high ambition. Maybe the last piece of advice on this front, imagine that we're talking to a founder and he's like after, uh, they're like after hearing this, "But I don't know if I have this level of ambition." What, what would we tell them to do?

Dalton Caldwell 17:43 Yeah. So this again might be surprising, uh, advice from us, but to the extent that you have no idea how to make your startup ambitious, it might actually be more fun and fulfilling to go work somewhere where that is not the problem of the organization.

Michael Seibel 17:59 Yes. Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 17:59 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 18:00 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 18:01 And then maybe it'll come to you later, right?

Michael Seibel 18:02 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 18:02 There's a lot of people that worked at very ambitious places-

Michael Seibel 18:04 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 18:04 ... that end up having a whole string of ambitious ideas later.

Michael Seibel 18:08 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 18:09 But it's not obvious spending your time working on a low ambition startup idea for years is like actually-

Michael Seibel 18:15 No

Dalton Caldwell 18:15 ... a good idea.

Michael Seibel 18:16 You know, I'll try to coin a new phrase, like ambition pilled, right? Like-

Dalton Caldwell 18:21 We've certainly worked with founders who have been inside of companies and seen what a company can do, and be like, "Well, if this company can do this, like, I could make a company." And it's crazy sometimes when you me- you know, talking to a founder who was involved in figuring out, like, how to make, um, Starlink work. And you're like, can you imagine just working at a company that's like, [laughs] "Well, we're just gonna put all the satellites up and have global internet," and then they did it.

Michael Seibel 18:47 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 18:47 And then you're like, "Oh." [laughs]

Michael Seibel 18:51 [laughs] Wow.

Dalton Caldwell 18:52 I, I think the way I would riff on this is basically we've seen so much wacky stuff work-

Michael Seibel 18:56 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 18:57 ... because of our jobs.

Michael Seibel 18:58 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 18:58 We're extremely convincible.

Michael Seibel 19:00 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 19:01 And part of our, um, value add as investors was to be like, "Hey, we've seen a lot of people make stuff like this work. You should definitely do it."

Michael Seibel 19:08 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 19:09 And that is helpful-

Michael Seibel 19:09 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 19:10 ... to hear from someone that is an authority figure to be like, "Hey, this, this sounds as crazy as other stuff I've heard working. You should try it."

Michael Seibel 19:16 Yes, yes. And I think people find that surprising. I think they would expect us to be like, "Well, but if it's a B2B SaaS thing for this and da da da da, it's more likely to get funded." And it's like, that's not really our KPI.

Dalton Caldwell 19:28 No.

Michael Seibel 19:29 Like, whether it can raise a seed round is not the KPI. Um, like, whether it can actually make a big difference in the world, that's really... Those are the companies you care to be helpful to. And when you have limited time, all you're doing is searching for those companies. So if you're watching this, one, you have our permission, as the authority figures, obviously, to have as much ambition as possible and to make the world a better place. This road's gonna be hard regardless, so you might as well make the world a better place. If you're concerned by your level of ambition, go work someplace with high ambition. And, like, you're, you, you can be ambition pilled, and, like, we've seen it all the time, and we certainly see so many founders who come through after working a place like that, and they're like, "Now I'm confident I can make a big difference too." And then last but not least, do not be fooled by the scenesters, by the fake people out there. If they have the tagline that you mentioned with Elon, and then have no backup in the-

Dalton Caldwell 20:25 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 20:25 Right? It's like if the first minute of the conversation's good, and the next th-

Dalton Caldwell 20:28 Yeah

Michael Seibel 20:29 ... 29 minutes you're like, "Oh, this person seems..." Maybe move on.

Dalton Caldwell 20:34 Yeah. May- maybe my final parting thought is if we call back to the tar pit concept, which you and I have talked about before-

Michael Seibel 20:40 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 20:40 ... the ultimate meta tar pit-

Michael Seibel 20:42 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 20:43 ... is getting caught in a low-ambition idea that you know in your heart can never be big.

Michael Seibel 20:47 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 20:47 You know in your heart-

Michael Seibel 20:48 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 20:48 ... you're not even excited.

Michael Seibel 20:49 Your warm-up idea.

Dalton Caldwell 20:50 You don't even... You're like, "Uh."

Michael Seibel 20:51 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 20:51 You're going through the motions explaining it to people. If you burn years of your life on something that you think is a waste of time in your heart of hearts, that is a true tar pit. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 21:00 That is a true tar pit.

Dalton Caldwell 21:00 You gotta get out of there.

Michael Seibel 21:02 I love that. That, that is the meta tar pit. [laughs] Oh, man. All right, great chat.

Dalton Caldwell 21:05 All right. Thanks, Michael. [laid-back music]