Building a Multi-Billion Dollar Hard Tech Company | Qasar Younis, CEO of Applied Intuition | Ep. 9

Qasar Younis 0:00 So number one, I lo- I love the car business in, in the, in a way that I've never loved, you know, any other [chuckles] like bus- beyond a business.

Jack Altman 0:06 Why do you love it so much?

Qasar Younis 0:07 I mean, I came to the US in GM money, um, so there's an emotional, you know, component there. Like, my uncle was a General Motors engineer. He bought us the tickets that we came to America on and then supported us.

Jack Altman 0:16 [music] All right. Thanks a bunch for doing this. You're, um, you're one of the CEOs that I look up to the most, but there's no content about you online.

Qasar Younis 0:24 Wow! I'm deeply flattered.

Jack Altman 0:26 When I started this, I was like-

Qasar Younis 0:27 And the same

Jack Altman 0:27 ... I've gotta get you.

Qasar Younis 0:28 [laughing]

Jack Altman 0:28 Oh, yeah, he'll... Every single one, right to him.

Qasar Younis 0:31 [laughing]

Jack Altman 0:31 Um, so I wanna start with when you began working on this company, you were at a place where you had already started a company-

Qasar Younis 0:39 Yeah

Jack Altman 0:39 ... that was, like, probably really hard. You know, you went to Google, and then you were, like, the COO at YC, and you had this comfortable, good job.

Qasar Younis 0:47 Yeah.

Jack Altman 0:47 You already knew that starting a company is pretty brutal, kind of sucks, and you started one anyway, which is very different than, like, a 22-year-old starting a company who's just, like, bright-eyed and doesn't know how hard it is. But you decided to. So can you talk about what was the psychology for you-

Qasar Younis 1:00 Yeah

Jack Altman 1:00 ... when you began working on the company, knowing that you could've, you could've gone and ran a VC firm?

Qasar Younis 1:06 Yeah.

Jack Altman 1:06 You could have gone and been a COO at a public company probably. Like, you had a bunch of options. Why'd you do it?

Qasar Younis 1:10 Yeah, yeah. I, uh, first thing is, I didn't quite know, because the first company I had was three years, but it was like this... I did it full-time for a while, then did it part-time, et cetera, and it was, like, and it failed. It was in Chicago. It kind of failed quietly, and literally didn't know anybody. I mean, my co-founders from that company know us, but, like, we didn't raise a dollar. It was just, you know, you're-

Jack Altman 1:28 Mm.

Qasar Younis 1:28 ... It's like a tree falls in the forest. [chuckles] If a company dies without raising money-

Jack Altman 1:31 Yeah

Qasar Younis 1:32 ... and no one even knew it existed-

Jack Altman 1:33 Yeah

Qasar Younis 1:33 ... was it really a company?

Jack Altman 1:34 Yeah. Okay.

Qasar Younis 1:35 Then the second one was 10 months when it was acquired by Google, and it was a good outcome for us financially. We were, like, three poor, you know, kids, uh, and so, um, it wasn't, we didn't have the grind. 10 months is nothing.

Jack Altman 1:46 It's nothing.

Qasar Younis 1:46 You blink, and your 10 months is done. So, uh, pa- partly, I didn't know, but I knew just from the YC experience that there were a lot of smart founders that went out and did all the right things-

Jack Altman 1:57 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 1:57 ... and still failed. And so, uh, I think for me, on, on YC, e- even with going to YC originally, the way that I got into YC was, as an employee, was my co-founder here, Peter Ludwig, and I, we were thinking of doing a robotaxi company, and, uh, I'd met some of these, uh, Sequoia partners, and they were like: "We don't think it's a good business." And so I was like, "Oh, shit." You know, you take that advice. Look, one of the, my superpowers is I take feedback. [chuckles] Like, that is, like, I listen, and I really re-evaluate my preconceived notion, and all the way to when I started my career in automotive, you know, I was knee-deep in automotive, and I moved over to Silicon Valley software extremely pragmatically. And, uh, you know, we say often all of our values can be reduced to radical pragmatism. The way you're radically pragmatic in any of these, let's say, inflection-point decisions, is having a clear-eyed understanding of what is... what you're good at, what the market is saying to you about the thing you're gonna do, and then, um, where they could be wrong, possibly. So when the Sequoia guy says, specifically one person said, "We'll give you the money to you and Peter to do a robotaxi company, but I don't think it's a good business," to me, it was like, "Okay, I gotta really listen to that feedback." And I went to PG, Paul Graham's house, and said, "Oh, what do you think?" And he said, "Well, you should consider joining YC." And my wife at the time was pregnant with our son, and he's like, "Don't start a family and this startup at the same time," and I also listened to that advice. And then, in terms of the, the, the true inflection point of leaving YC, which is, leaving Google was a tough decision because I was, it was a great job. Uh, it was the first time to be in... Also, people forget what Google... Like, today, people at Google, like, what, 14, 15 years later, is very different than Google at that time. At that time, you know, uh, NVIDIA was near bankruptcy. Apple had come out with this MacBook Air. Wasn't Apple today, and Steve Jobs was still alive.

Jack Altman 3:44 Yeah, Google felt really strong then.

Qasar Younis 3:46 It was the apex predator. Uh, who else was there? Facebook was under 1,000 people. 2010, Facebook was a tiny company, relatively speaking. It was a small company. And so it's like Google was the, the company, um, to work at, and there was really no number two. Everyone was trying to work at Google, and everything... So, but it wasn't that hard to leave because I think I've never emotionally felt that I wanted to be an employee forever.

Jack Altman 4:07 Mm.

Qasar Younis 4:07 Like, that, that, that was a part of it. Also, working with Paul and working with Sam, these are like, you know... I'm not that smart, but I'm smart enough to know that these people are exceptional. And, uh, so, like, getting the exposure to those people, I think, was really important and, like, made, made the transition. Leaving YC, that was actually the more difficult, uh, decision because the reason that you said. Fundamentally, I think it came down to, I, I always felt... One, I already thought of leav- Like, you know, my view was, go in, learn a bench, and try to do the third company. And then, like, I enjoyed the work, and then that was actually what made it more difficult. But really, it was like, am I an investor or am I a founder?

Jack Altman 4:43 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 4:44 And that clear delineation is investors are lone wolf, you know, they're, they're great- Great investors are kind of like thoughtful, academic, uh, independent, contrarian to some, you know, to maybe even to a fault. Those are, like, what really great investors look like. And then, the, the best founders are actually super opinionated.

Jack Altman 5:03 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 5:04 And they're almost, like, difficult.

Jack Altman 5:08 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 5:08 And I think I'm more difficult today to be with [chuckles] than any time in my, in my career.

Jack Altman 5:14 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 5:14 And I, I'm, I'm seeing the manifestation of who I really am.

Jack Altman 5:16 Yeah, it's an unfortunate thing that I think, um, a lot of the great founders happen to be very disagreeable. Um, I happen to be, like, a very agreeable person, which I think, you know, it makes your life easy, but I think to build, you know, really iconic companies, a lot of times you need to be willing to just do a lot of stuff that's uncomfortable and tell people their work's not good enough-

Qasar Younis 5:35 Yeah

Jack Altman 5:35 ... or you don't care if, you know, other people want to do it this way or you're doing it that way, and all that stuff.

Qasar Younis 5:39 And I think, like, you know, the, the, I would say my two f- Yeah, I have many faults, but two kind of glaring faults in my, you know, disposition, my, uh, is one is, I do work a lot, almost to a degree, which is, you know... I, I used to say all the time, "I want to be the person that works more than anybody you've ever met." So I'm, I'm creating that identity.

Jack Altman 5:59 You were always that way?

Qasar Younis 6:00 Yeah.

Jack Altman 6:00 Even before this company?

Qasar Younis 6:01 Yeah. So I was, grew up poor, so just like, uh, it deepened my... Like, you know, I don't say this as, like, some sort of, like, backpatting, but I had to always do shit myself.... paid myself undergrad, and as my parents are just, you know, they didn't have the abilities and the means to provide, so I had to do that. And then same thing with grad school and stuff. So it's always been on my own back and, you know, always in the relatives. It's like the Arnold Schwarzenegger saying where he says, "No one's really doing it themselves-"

Jack Altman 6:24 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 6:24 "... they're doing it with the help of other people." But in the sense of, you know, that, that, that sense. But, but go- but go- going back to that inflection point of, of, of choosing, uh, to, to leave YC, one is so working all the time, that actually made people uncomfort... At Google, it made people uncomfortable. Less so at YC, 'cause you're kind of, you're around a bunch of C- ex-CEOs and founders, and they all work, like, all the time. But at Google, I remember people asking me, like, "Why do you work so much?" And I was like, "Oh, I guess that there's, like, the wrong way of doing that." And the second thing is having really strong opinions, and I just can't let things go.

Jack Altman 6:55 [chuckles]

Qasar Younis 6:55 If I think something is due- being done wrong, I will, you know, take my deep breaths, and I just, I just can't not say, "I think that's the wrong strategy." And I think when you're not the boss, that is very difficult to work with somebody like that.

Jack Altman 7:10 Did you think about it as, like, you were at a point in your career where you were, like, it was your last moment to, like, pick a path, and you were still kind of a stem cell? You could've gone and been an investor, you could've been a founder, but was there, like, a function in your mind of like, "I need to make my choice now, like, for good," basically?

Qasar Younis 7:27 I think that, you know, your, basically your mid-thirties are a very important point in your career because you're old enough to basically get whatever job... or you have enough experience to know, like, what you're good at and what the market wants. But you're also not at the point you're, you got 20 years out of y- where you can really... That's a year... You know, the way that I think about life, and I've, I've talked about this in- uh, inside of Applied, is you kinda get, like, these, these, uh, Post-it notes. Each Post-it notes is five years. So how many of those do you get?

Jack Altman 7:55 Yep.

Qasar Younis 7:55 Six?

Jack Altman 7:56 Yeah, maybe eight, maybe if you're lucky.

Qasar Younis 7:58 You gotta write what you're gonna do on those. So, you know, Google was one of them, Y Combinator was one of them, um, Harvard Business School, and automotive engineer.

Jack Altman 8:06 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 8:07 I'm wr- [chuckles] like, I'm writing four Post-its out.

Jack Altman 8:09 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 8:09 Right? I'm already four Post-its out.

Jack Altman 8:10 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 8:10 And that's before- that's after you're an adult, right?

Jack Altman 8:12 Yeah, and ideally, if you do, you know, work that really matters, one of those Post-its is gonna be a 15-year Post-it.

Qasar Younis 8:18 Yeah.

Jack Altman 8:18 And so then you really don't get that many.

Qasar Younis 8:20 You really don't get that many.

Jack Altman 8:21 It's funny, I'm 35, and I just did this, you know, start- you know, starting, you know, being an investor after having been a founder.

Qasar Younis 8:26 Yeah.

Jack Altman 8:26 And I had a lot of these similar background thoughts-

Qasar Younis 8:28 Yeah

Jack Altman 8:28 ... 'cause I do think that there's this mid-career moment where you know enough, and you, you're in a situation where you can kinda set yourself up in different ways, but you still have a, a lot in front of you, and yeah.

Qasar Younis 8:38 Yeah, and so at that time, when I had decided to... Between deciding to leave YC and actually leaving YC was, like, a four, five-month period, where I told Paul and Jessica, "Hey, I'm going," which is, that's August of '16. My last day was December 31st, '16. I had that time, and their view was like, "Hey, maybe you don't want to start a company. Maybe you don't want to leave..." You know, the, the way that YC works is the next batch starts in January. So it's like, "Oh, this, this, this is already rolling, so think about it." In that time, the real d- first was, like, funds actually reaching out and saying, "Hey, do you want to work at a fund?"

Jack Altman 9:08 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 9:09 Then I think it, just because I'm a rational person, was like, "Okay, let me talk. Is there something there?" And ultimately, like, it was never gonna be, you know, Andreessen Horowitz Younis. It's not gonna be Kleiner Perkins Younis or whatever, you know, Coastal Younis or whatever the, the firm is. And, and also, I had a good gig at YC, so it's like, why would I step into a parallel kind of thing? So that didn't quite make sense. Then it was like, oh, start a fund or start a company.

Jack Altman 9:31 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 9:31 And I really explored those things. The thing that ultimately tipped me, Peter, my co-founder-

Jack Altman 9:36 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 9:36 ... having an idea that actually I really- and then it wasn't a 50... It wasn't like a definitely this is the right thing. Now-

Jack Altman 9:43 Yeah, but at the time, it was like a seven-

Qasar Younis 9:45 At the time, it was-

Jack Altman 9:45 ... 70/30 call or something?

Qasar Younis 9:46 51/49.

Jack Altman 9:47 That close.

Qasar Younis 9:48 Yeah, super, super close.

Jack Altman 9:49 Uh-huh.

Qasar Younis 9:50 Super, super close.

Jack Altman 9:50 Of start this company and start a fund?

Qasar Younis 9:52 Start a fund.

Jack Altman 9:52 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 9:52 Yeah, super, super close. And I think like, like, like I said, in hindsight, the narrative is going to be very easy. Like, I was an automotive engineer, and I would do software and, you know, AI for vehicle intelligence, like, machines, cars, trucks, tanks. It seems so obvious-

Jack Altman 10:06 Yeah

Qasar Younis 10:06 ... but at the time, it was not like that.

Jack Altman 10:07 It's funny 'cause you probably could've started a fund. You would've made some killer investments, and then you'd tell a story that-

Qasar Younis 10:11 Yeah

Jack Altman 10:11 ... in that parallel universe about how it was always obvious-

Qasar Younis 10:13 Yeah

Jack Altman 10:13 ... and it's always what you should have done.

Qasar Younis 10:15 Exactly. Exactly.

Jack Altman 10:15 How much-

Qasar Younis 10:16 So your brain just rationalizes the reality. But I can tell you, the, the empirical thing that I knew, the thing that I do know is fundamental, is I enjoy this more-

Jack Altman 10:24 Yeah

Qasar Younis 10:24 ... than anything I've done.

Jack Altman 10:25 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 10:26 And I, you know, so like, next year will be extremely difficult to watch I say this.

Jack Altman 10:30 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 10:30 Like, this job has been easier than working at YC, working at Google, working at Bosch.

Jack Altman 10:35 Even at the beginning?

Qasar Younis 10:36 Yeah.

Jack Altman 10:37 Wow!

Qasar Younis 10:38 Because for me, the thing that bothers me the most... And you have to kind of really know yourself, and this I know about myself, is the people I'm with, that's the dominant thing.

Jack Altman 10:45 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 10:46 If I have tension with the people I'm with, and I have, like, a, you know, we're not in, you know, in sync and, and, and har- harmonious, I have, uh, you know... That just grinds my gears.

Jack Altman 10:56 You also have much more control over everything as a CEO than as a VC. That's one of the biggest things I've noticed-

Qasar Younis 11:02 One hundred percent

Jack Altman 11:02 ... flipping, is I used to have control over everything, and now I don't.

Qasar Younis 11:05 Yeah.

Jack Altman 11:06 And which is okay, but that's, like, a huge difference. And so if you're, you know, constitutions like that-

Qasar Younis 11:09 But the control comes with a cost.

Jack Altman 11:10 Of course.

Qasar Younis 11:11 Nothing is free.

Jack Altman 11:12 Of course.

Qasar Younis 11:12 So now you got the responsibility that comes with it, which is, did you hire the right people? Are you picking the right-

Jack Altman 11:16 Yeah

Qasar Younis 11:16 ... you know, the, you're making decisions every day, which are always in the gray zone. And one of the key hallmarks of Apply that we just... We talked about it just today earlier in the staff meeting, is like decisiveness, decisiveness, decisiveness. You've got to make decisions as a leader without all the information. And then, by the way, they've got to be right.

Jack Altman 11:34 Yep.

Qasar Younis 11:34 [chuckles]

Jack Altman 11:35 A lot of times when someone, like, I feel like when people start their, you know-

Qasar Younis 11:38 And that's a hard piece of advice, though.

Jack Altman 11:39 It's very hard.

Qasar Younis 11:40 Yeah.

Jack Altman 11:40 Yeah. When, when people start their companies in their early twenties, let's say, versus their mid-thirties, oftentimes, I think the story is, you know, in their early twenties, there was a lot of iteration, there was a lot of wandering in the woods, and on the fourth thing, boom, they realized-

Qasar Younis 11:55 Yeah

Jack Altman 11:55 ... that Airbnb was a thing and-

Qasar Younis 11:57 Yeah

Jack Altman 11:57 ... you know, the cereal and whatever.

Qasar Younis 11:59 Yeah.

Jack Altman 11:59 And then a lot of times when people are later in their careers, it's like they saw the whole movie, and I think you did see the whole movie.

Qasar Younis 12:04 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jack Altman 12:05 How important-

Qasar Younis 12:06 YC was huge in that.

Jack Altman 12:07 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 12:07 You just see the, you see it play again and again and again.

Jack Altman 12:10 And you knew a, you, you knew how a company was built, but you also knew what-... this market and this product-

Qasar Younis 12:15 Yeah

Jack Altman 12:15 -would be because of how you grew up. And so I'm guessing part of what got you fifty-one forty-nine in the direction of starting Applied was that you felt pretty confident that there was a real business to build here.

Qasar Younis 12:24 Yeah, and Peter, my co-founder. I mean, we have a tremendous relationship, and I think, you know, our parents live a quarter mile from each other in Michigan-

Jack Altman 12:30 Yeah

Qasar Younis 12:30 -which is kind of-

Jack Altman 12:31 So the foundation was just crazy strong on both of those fronts.

Qasar Younis 12:33 Yeah, yeah, and we have shared values. I think, I think like you-- and as you get older, you start to realize, like, these are my people, these are not my people.

Jack Altman 12:38 [chuckles]

Qasar Younis 12:38 Like, you, that, that, that start, starts happening as well. And, like, my people, broadly speaking, are, you know, Michigan people, they're Sunnyvale people. It's less the, you know, I would say the... Like, I could never do a consumer company. It's just not-- we're kinda like Detroit guys, and we kinda, you know, we grew up in factories, and literally worked for many, many years in factories. Go to the General Motors Institute. It's just a very different... And it's not obvious when you talk to me.

Jack Altman 13:02 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 13:02 I'm just a Silicon Valley guy. I worked at YC, I worked at Google. Like, that's not, you would say, "What are you talking about?"

Jack Altman 13:06 But that's not where you came from.

Qasar Younis 13:07 Yeah, but that's not where I came from, right. I mean, the, and, and so where I'm from, Silicon Valley, as being an immigrant, that's very Silicon- being an engineer, that's very Silicon Valley.

Jack Altman 13:12 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 13:13 But the other things are not, which is, like, being very Midwest. In that way, like the Marc Andreessens and I, you know, we get along a lot. He's similarly from the Midwest, Peter's similarly from the Midwest, and there, you can sense some of those traits, and so you can sense some of these, these values. But just in terms of, again, back to that inflection point, for me, where, where, where, where, where, you know, the Peter thing kind of, uh, uh, goes over, the all the personal things going over, it's not obvious, but once you're in it, then it was like, "Oh, this is my thing." Like, I can just make all these decisions. And you're saying, you know, in the early, or the early phases are more difficult than the later phases. I think it's been similar. It's just different sets of problems. One thing is true is now, again, hindsight, I think my skill set is just way better being a founder. Yeah, product design, engineering, those are your bread and butter of, of being a product company. Um, running an organization, you know, I d- I had that experience, so yeah, now it seems like it was, like, the right idea, but-

Jack Altman 14:08 How much has the movie played out similarly, uh, compared to, you know, what you thought it would be on day one?

Qasar Younis 14:14 Um, I think shockingly to, like, to the- what our plan is. I mean, we, we... So unlike other folks, maybe twenty-year-old founders, we, like, enumerated. Like, there's this great Napoleon line, which is like, um, he, he talks about how people think he's a great field marshal, that he's-- when he's in war, in his memoirs, he writes that he was in battle, that he would make these decisions. He goes, "No, no, I just studied the battlefield way better than anybody else, and I just thought through the permutations of if/then this will happen," and we did a lot of that. So we're like, we're gonna start this thing, and if this works out, the other competitors are gonna react this way, or the in-house teams are gonna do this, and then we're gonna do that. Like, and then the crazy thing is like w-

Jack Altman 14:54 You're like, you just thought harder than other people almost?

Qasar Younis 14:56 Yeah. One, one of my first engineering managers had this, uh, uh, thing. We were working at a Flint V6, V6 engine plant in Flint, Michigan, um, and he had this, uh, uh, sign above his, uh, desk, which said, "No problem can withstand the constant onslaught of thought." And like twenty-five years later, you know, I think about that, like, every second day.

Jack Altman 15:15 Mm.

Qasar Younis 15:15 And so there is like... And I don't know if that's right or wrong.

Jack Altman 15:17 Well, it's funny because, you know, the, uh, you know, e- every plan is good until, you know, it meets reality-

Qasar Younis 15:23 Yeah

Jack Altman 15:23 ... or whatever.

Qasar Younis 15:23 Yeah.

Jack Altman 15:23 It's actually, like, a very different lens on that-

Qasar Younis 15:25 Yeah

Jack Altman 15:25 ... which is one is like, you know, think about it, but not until you get out into the real world will you know. And this is actually saying: No, think about it hard, and if you think hard enough, then you'll know.

Qasar Younis 15:34 Yeah, and if you have enough experience, this is where experience matters. Why not being twenty and being in the thirty year old is, is better because you can just look at other companies. Like, why, what... Like, again, it's going back to that whole thing of like, um, being very clairvoyant about what you're good at, what you're not good at, and how the market is gonna naturally react to some product like this in the market.

Jack Altman 15:51 Do you have as much of a vision on the next ten years right now as you did on the first ten years when you started, or do you have less clarity today than you did then for some reason?

Qasar Younis 16:00 I would say more now, mainly because when we were starting, there was a lack of confidence that it would actually do that. The business would open- and just for everybody to, to get on the same page of what our business is, um, we have three, you know, rough areas. We, we have engineering tools, we have operating system, and we have autonomy. So we do the thing, and that is just like there is a company, Microsoft had the same thing. From nineteen seventy-five to nineteen eighty-two, they were a tooling company, then they got into operating systems, and they got into applications like Office and stuff like that. Today's Microsoft is very different, so we're really talking about Microsoft from seventy-five to, let's say, ninety-five, or something like that, or, or two thousand. But th- then they're all in PCs, we're all in cars and trucks and tanks and jets, but it's the same concept. You have software that you... You know, tools and software and applications that sit on top of these, you know, pieces of hardware, um, that somebody else is manufacturing, somebody else is making. And so, you know, that you can already see that's being informed. Like, that's not-- we're not coming up with this. As a student of history, you know, that absolutely plays into our strategy.

Jack Altman 17:04 Where are we right now in just, like, the landscape with auto in general and automotive, like-

Qasar Younis 17:09 Yeah, I mean, I don't know when this, uh, will come out, but it's tariff season right now. And, uh, you know, the car business-- So number one, I lo- I love the car business in, in the, in a way that I've never loved, you know, any other [chuckles] like, bus- beyond a business.

Jack Altman 17:22 Why do you love it so much?

Qasar Younis 17:24 I grew... I mean, I came to the US in GM money, um, so there's an emotional, you know, component there. Like, my uncle was a General Motors engineer. He bought us the tickets that we came to America on and then supported us, and then I went to the General Motors Institute, and it paid for my college, and I worked at General Motors, and I worked at Bosch, both in, in, in, uh, the US and in Japan, and then I spent some time in Germany as a student, and so I just know the industry. I know-

Jack Altman 17:45 Do you love, like, the cars or the people-

Qasar Younis 17:47 Yeah!

Jack Altman 17:47 -or the engineering-

Qasar Younis 17:48 Love the cars

Jack Altman 17:48 ... or is it the whole thing?

Qasar Younis 17:49 The whole thing.

Jack Altman 17:49 The cars.

Qasar Younis 17:49 I like the cars and the engineering that goes into the cars. So, you know, like, there are not a thousand YouTube channels on, you know, databases. There are a thousand YouTube channels on cars, and every sub-brand of car has their car cl- There are Subaru car clubs, and there's, you know, Civic, like, everything that you can think of. There's J- you know, Jeeps, people who go out and out, you know, uh, off-roading. So it's just a h- it's a giant community.

Jack Altman 18:09 Are you more likely to go deep on, like, a really cool engine or, like, a supercar?

Qasar Younis 18:14 ... both, I mean, great engines are in super cars. [laughs]

Jack Altman 18:17 Yeah. Okay.

Qasar Younis 18:18 So I mean, I, I absolutely like-

Jack Altman 18:19 But you like the whole thing?

Qasar Younis 18:20 Yeah, I like the whole thing.

Jack Altman 18:21 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 18:21 I mean, I can tell you the history of the Ford Mustang or the Porsche 911. I can tell you the difference between a GT2-3 RS versus a GT2 RS, and you know-

Jack Altman 18:30 You know all the players in the ecosystem.

Qasar Younis 18:31 Yeah, I just love it.

Jack Altman 18:32 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 18:32 I mean, th- that's why you go to GMI as a 16-year-old. You're like, "I love cars, and where am I gonna go to work on cars? I go to the General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan."

Jack Altman 18:40 What was that like? What was the GMI like?

Qasar Younis 18:42 So different-

Jack Altman 18:43 I know nothing about it

Qasar Younis 18:43 ... than any-

Jack Altman 18:44 Yeah

Qasar Younis 18:44 ... school-

Jack Altman 18:44 I have, like, no, I mean, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri-

Qasar Younis 18:46 Oh, yeah, yeah

Jack Altman 18:47 ... but I have no frame of reference on this.

Qasar Younis 18:48 Yeah.

Jack Altman 18:48 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 18:48 So, so, um, it is a fascinating school. It was started 100 years, in 1919, when General Motors didn't have enough engineers, and they basically started a school in order to get more engineers. Uh, you can imagine if the Bay Area doesn't have enough AI engineers, l- for example, a company that's super flush with cash would start an AI academy, as an example, and then that just existed. The difference about GMI and other schools is you work half the time, you go to school half the time. Resonates with a poor kid like me because I can immediately start working. So you, and unlike other co-ops, like at Waterloo and some other places, you have one company that's with you for those five years, and then they pay you, like, uh, you know, at an increasing rate, and by the time you're in your fifth year, you're a senior, you're making almost an engineer's salary, and you're almost doing an engineer's work.

Jack Altman 19:30 Mm.

Qasar Younis 19:31 And since it ex- exists for 100 years, i- it's a very, uh, you know, well-oiled machine. Like, you don't go in and they're like: "What's an intern?" They're like, when you leave on a Friday, there's a chance there's a GMI kid on Monday from the opposite section coming in, picking up your work, so there's continuity. So it's, it's a very industry... They call it the West Point of automotive. It is the v- it is really an industry school.

Jack Altman 19:53 Does this exist in other industries in the same way? I haven't heard.

Qasar Younis 19:55 West Point exists.

Jack Altman 19:56 I know West Point.

Qasar Younis 19:57 And I, I, like, you know, part of me wanted to go to West Point.

Jack Altman 19:59 Mm.

Qasar Younis 19:59 I just love that regimented, you know, structure-

Jack Altman 20:02 Yeah

Qasar Younis 20:02 ... as well. It just spoke to me. Um, but yeah, so when you go into that world, you can imagine the guys who are at GMI, and it's almost all men.

Jack Altman 20:11 Mm.

Qasar Younis 20:11 It was, there, there wasn't a, a desire to make it a [chuckles] -

Jack Altman 20:14 Yeah

Qasar Younis 20:14 ... like a gender-balanced school.

Jack Altman 20:16 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 20:16 It's, like, literally, like, 90% are men.

Jack Altman 20:18 Men, yeah.

Qasar Younis 20:19 And, um, and it's in Flint, Michigan, and you have to do this corporate co-op, so it already filtered-

Jack Altman 20:24 Yeah

Qasar Younis 20:24 ... like, a very particular type of person. And, uh, so-

Jack Altman 20:28 You start at 16?

Qasar Younis 20:29 Uh, you start at 18.

Jack Altman 20:30 18, okay.

Qasar Younis 20:30 You start at 18, but I started working at General Motors at 18-

Jack Altman 20:33 Yeah

Qasar Younis 20:33 ... which is kind of a crazy thing-

Jack Altman 20:34 Yeah

Qasar Younis 20:34 ... you know?

Jack Altman 20:35 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 20:35 But you become an adult real fast.

Jack Altman 20:36 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 20:37 And the biggest thing that you learn is, oh, what happens in the office is super different than what you're learning. I would, I'd learn, like, you know, fluid dynamics. You, you learned, uh, thermo. You're like, "Well, I never use ther- thermo at work."

Jack Altman 20:47 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 20:47 "At work, it's like people are trying to get promoted in a project and this like, you know, Pontiac that's gonna get launched, this Corvette program," and you're like: "Oh, this is, like, super different." And that was also very, like, telling and informative to me. But the, the, the macro point is, you know, when Peter and I started this company, we thought we... like, other people must know the car business. It's such a giant business-

Jack Altman 21:08 Mm

Qasar Younis 21:08 ... and live in Silicon Valley.

Jack Altman 21:09 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 21:09 Tesla's right there.

Jack Altman 21:10 And they just don't.

Qasar Younis 21:10 And, like, eight years into the business, like, very few people actually understand the car business. And then as we got into defense, and then we got into construction and mining and trucking, you just realize that these ecosystems are actually quite far from each other. Defense has become a bit closer to Silicon Valley because of a couple of, you know, strong companies like Anduril and Palantir and stuff. But generally speaking, they're still kind of different ecosystems, and I think one of the secrets that we had in getting that flywheel going is we understand the market so well. I mean, the joke we used to make is, like, we forgot more about the car business than most if a founder was to g-

Jack Altman 21:42 Yeah

Qasar Younis 21:42 ... to enter it. I mean, it's like for, uh, Peter's childhood, his, his father was a chief engineer on radar for, uh-

Jack Altman 21:48 Yeah

Qasar Younis 21:48 ... one of the big suppliers and worked at General Motors.

Jack Altman 21:49 There's just no way to catch up to that kind of-

Qasar Younis 21:51 You can't.

Jack Altman 21:51 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 21:51 He's like, every, like, every dinner he had growing up, he, e- every, every male [chuckles] adult male in Peter's family worked in the car business-

Jack Altman 21:58 Wow

Qasar Younis 21:58 ... as an engineer. So when you go to barbecues, you ha- e- every dinner, you talk about this supplier, Takata's going under, what's happening, TW, TRW is getting bought by the ZF, and what does ZF do? ZF does, you know... Like, you just, all this stuff. It's kind of like if you grew up in Cupertino-

Jack Altman 22:11 Yeah

Qasar Younis 22:12 ... uh, but, you know, Silicon Valley's in the center of the universe. Fast-forward to, like, 2075, Silicon Valley is just another thing. When you grow up in it, everybody works in the business.

Jack Altman 22:20 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 22:20 And it's not a cool business, it's just everybody works in it.

Jack Altman 22:23 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 22:23 And then, by the way, in the car business, it's 'cause it's also consumer.

Jack Altman 22:26 Totally.

Qasar Younis 22:26 So, you know, you sit in cars, people rent... You know, I worked on a '69 Mustang on over a summer-

Jack Altman 22:31 Yeah

Qasar Younis 22:31 ... you rebuild the engine. So when you do that kind of stuff, it's like, it's like true passion.

Jack Altman 22:36 Oh, yeah.

Qasar Younis 22:36 Like, I remember I'd meet people who'd come from, like, Kansas, and they were like... I was like: "Oh, you know, why'd you move to Warren?" And they're like, "Oh, to work at GM." And you're like: "What? You moved across country? [chuckles] I'm just here because I would," you know.

Jack Altman 22:45 There's like-

Qasar Younis 22:46 Yeah, just here

Jack Altman 22:46 ... this is my dream. Yeah.

Qasar Younis 22:46 And then that's when you, you b- meet people in the Bay Area who are, like, moved across the world to work in the Bay Area. But there are some people who are just born here-

Jack Altman 22:52 Yeah

Qasar Younis 22:52 ... and to them, that's a little more strange.

Jack Altman 22:54 Totally.

Qasar Younis 22:54 Yeah.

Jack Altman 22:54 So, um, like, where are we in... Like, with cars today, obviously, like, there's a ton of intelligence that's being added. Obviously, in San Francisco, you can feel it. You can also just see it. You know, if you buy a new car-

Qasar Younis 23:05 Yeah

Jack Altman 23:05 ... you can feel that they are updating quickly. What's, like, the la- the landscape in the latest right now?

Qasar Younis 23:09 I think generally cars are still pretty dumb. Um, I mean, if you look at a parking lot, there's just not a lot of intelligence. Most cars are still a mechanical, electrical system. They'll have some connection to your phone. They're, they're, they're mostly dumb. And our, our vision of the future is every moving machine will be intelligent. That is the, the world that we see. And-

Jack Altman 23:28 Self-driving is, like, just one small part of that whole thing.

Qasar Younis 23:30 One part of the intelligence.

Jack Altman 23:31 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 23:31 The, the, the, it's, it's a part of that intelligence, but it's not the whole thing.

Jack Altman 23:34 Yeah. What are the other big parts of the... I don't know if you think of it as like, you know, different pillars of it, but like-

Qasar Younis 23:40 Yeah

Jack Altman 23:40 ... obviously, mobility is a big part of it.

Qasar Younis 23:42 The in-cabin experience.

Jack Altman 23:43 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 23:43 The, so if you're in a tank-... if you're in a fighter jet, there's already a lot of work in order to make the war fighter more efficient in their executing tasks, but that integration can be way tighter.

Jack Altman 23:54 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 23:54 And I think defense in the future- right now, defense is still typically one person with one machine or a small group of people with one machine, and I think in the future it's the opposite, where it's one person with lots of machines.

Jack Altman 24:06 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 24:06 And that's like you see the early versions of that through swarms of drones, but I think that is gonna be prevalent in, in kind of the future. And so the machines are the ones that can be at risk, rather than the human operator.

Jack Altman 24:16 Is that like you're prompting a swarm that can now do swarm-level things? Is that kinda what you mean?

Qasar Younis 24:21 Yeah, absolutely.

Jack Altman 24:21 Got it.

Qasar Younis 24:22 And, and but the human is still relevant and making ultimately a lot of those decisions, especially when you're talking about taking lives.

Jack Altman 24:28 Would that happen on a construction site, that, like, one person is coordinating between, you know-

Qasar Younis 24:32 I think so

Jack Altman 24:32 ... a digger and an excavator and a-

Qasar Younis 24:33 I think it'll happen.

Jack Altman 24:34 Like a dump truck

Qasar Younis 24:34 It's still far from that.

Jack Altman 24:35 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 24:35 It's still far from that. So, so you'd asked, so what are the sub-components? So one component is, you know, the thing that you just- autonomy. The other component is interaction with the machine. The other component is literally just the guts of how to run software on these things. It's... That seems so trivial to us-

Jack Altman 24:49 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 24:49 ... but these machines are typically built by lots of sub, sub-companies that will assemble all these parts together into a truck. And they're- so the, the- typically, the OEM, the original equipment manufacturer, the Scanias of, you know, biggest, uh, uh, or Traton Group, biggest, uh, commercial trucking company in Europe, um, they're assembling parts, but some of those parts are getting from other folks. As we go into the future, those- you're gonna be defragging of those parts because it's partly an electrical powertrain and partly just because you're bringing all this compute that exists throughout the whole vehicle into a centralized compute. Once you have a beefy central compute, you can do a lot more things with it. You can interact with it. It can run, you know, uh, models on it, and suddenly it's more intelligent. Uh, and so then you can do more intelligent fleet management. You can do, you know, all of the things that you would kind of normally expect. J- just think about it, just the, this dumb car or this dumb tank becoming more like your phone.

Jack Altman 25:45 I remember when I was, you know, in the surprisingly early days of Lattice, but definitely as things, you know, progressed, our customers weren't just like, "We just want some software. We have the whole plan." They were like, "We also want help making the plan for how we're gonna do performance management or whatever." And as I'm listening to you talk, I'm imagining that when you're talking to one of your customers, they're not just like, "We know the spec. You give me the parts. I'm good to go"-

Qasar Younis 26:09 Yeah

Jack Altman 26:09 ... but are rather like, "Can you help me get into the future?"

Qasar Younis 26:11 Yeah.

Jack Altman 26:11 And so I'm wondering out loud about, like, what is your relationship like with these customers you work with? Because I'm guessing that-

Qasar Younis 26:19 Extremely deep

Jack Altman 26:20 ... you're thinking all day about what they could be doing that they might not have even-

Qasar Younis 26:23 Yeah

Jack Altman 26:23 ... thought about yet.

Qasar Younis 26:24 Yeah.

Jack Altman 26:24 And then you're, like, partnering with them-

Qasar Younis 26:25 Yeah

Jack Altman 26:25 ... in a different way.

Qasar Younis 26:26 I mean, like in the- a lot of the word partner gets thrown around, like, basically in every company-

Jack Altman 26:30 But I can see it for this company in particular.

Qasar Younis 26:31 Yeah, yeah. It's like we- 'cause we do the software side, they do the hardware side, and so they're bringing a set of expertise that we don't have. It's not in our, in, uh, in our company, and so it is very much like, "Let's do product planning." Sometimes people ask us, like late-stage investors ask us, uh, you know, "Well, how... You know, is it easy to replace you guys, or what is the..." It's like, no, we are as deep in these companies as you possibly can.

Jack Altman 26:53 You're like... I'm- I would guess some people on your team and some people on your customer's team feel like actual teammates.

Qasar Younis 26:59 Yeah, I mean, it's extremely intimate. You're working on just giant projects.

Jack Altman 27:03 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 27:04 You know, when you're making a new truck, that is thousands of engineers that work together. Those are-- Like, if you ever think how complex it is, just open the hood of your car.

Jack Altman 27:14 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 27:14 Every little screw has a team behind it-

Jack Altman 27:16 Crazy

Qasar Younis 27:16 ... that has to make sure that that whole thing and that screw with that weight is- can handle-

Jack Altman 27:20 It's crazy that we can make a car, honestly.

Qasar Younis 27:22 It's unbelievable.

Jack Altman 27:23 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 27:24 It's unbeli- it's the most complex thing that humans make at scale.

Jack Altman 27:27 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 27:28 We make rockets. We make-

Jack Altman 27:29 More than an iPhone, I guess.

Qasar Younis 27:30 Yeah.

Jack Altman 27:30 Which is, like, the other big, like, you know, thing that you always look at-

Qasar Younis 27:32 Yeah

Jack Altman 27:32 ... and I'm like, "Wow, I can't believe we have an iPhone"-

Qasar Younis 27:34 But the iPhone-

Jack Altman 27:34 ... which also I also can't believe.

Qasar Younis 27:35 Yeah, yeah, but an iPhone is, like-

Jack Altman 27:37 A co-

Qasar Younis 27:37 ... I would say, you know, one-tenth the complexity, maybe one-fiftieth.

Jack Altman 27:41 Totally.

Qasar Younis 27:41 Like, it's just so- like, and you fly down the highway at seventy-five miles an hour, and you don't think twice, like this thing is- [chuckles]

Jack Altman 27:47 Yeah

Qasar Younis 27:47 ... gonna, like-

Jack Altman 27:47 Yeah

Qasar Younis 27:47 ... the wheels are not gonna fall off.

Jack Altman 27:48 What about employees? Like, is that another big thing that you have to educate people on? 'Cause, like, you know-

Qasar Younis 27:52 A lot less.

Jack Altman 27:53 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 27:53 The employees, because they're, uh, they're- our employee base comes from really two big pools. It's the traditional Silicon Valley gents we, you know, engineer or, uh, AI software, uh, uh, uh, you know, background, Stanford, EECS, Berkeley. That's what they're... That's that, that group that we all know.

Jack Altman 28:09 Mm, mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 28:09 Then there's a whole other group which are, like, the automotive, defense, uh, construction, mining, trucking folks, and they don't really know Silicon Valley. So you have to educate them, this group, on how to work like Silicon Valley-

Jack Altman 28:20 Yep

Qasar Younis 28:20 ... directness, speed, efficiency, et cetera.

Jack Altman 28:23 Mm.

Qasar Younis 28:23 And this group on, you know, safety criticality, on how these markets move, how these markets buy, uh, like, what does a vehicle life cycle look like? And it's not as hard as you would think because you're just in it all day.

Jack Altman 28:35 Yep.

Qasar Younis 28:36 Whereas an investor or a partner, you know, for them, software is gonna be new. For an investor, this is, like, a new area altogether.

Jack Altman 28:42 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 28:42 'Cause you have to, like, learn two categories, and they have to learn software and AI, and they have to learn, like, vehicle manufacturers.

Jack Altman 28:47 Yep.

Qasar Younis 28:48 And, and, and there's a lot

Qasar Younis 28:49 of errors that can-

Jack Altman 28:49 Aside from cars, you also mentioned tanks, you mentioned the military. Um, and so obviously, like, there's, like, a big dual use thing going on here, where-

Qasar Younis 28:59 Mm

Jack Altman 28:59 ... you're both in-

Qasar Younis 29:00 We're a true dual use company. Yeah

Jack Altman 29:02 ... the government and, you know, commercial.

Qasar Younis 29:03 Yeah.

Jack Altman 29:03 And so, like, what- is that, like... How different is that? What does, what does, what does it require from you to build a dual use company that's working with both arms?

Qasar Younis 29:11 Yeah.

Jack Altman 29:11 Like, the way you do business must be completely different, so...

Qasar Younis 29:14 So just for everybody who is not in the business, just a lit- little bit of education, you have companies like, um, an Anduril, who is really working primarily in defense, and they might work in multiple countries and things like this, in multiple, let's say, um, domains, uh, but they are working primarily for a very specific vertical, which is the, the, the defense market. Um, company like us, we are working across a bunch of verticals, and the defense vertical is- will use the same products, roughly, that we have for the other verticals. But it's not only made for the defense vertical. The pros of that is, you're essentially subsidizing these very expensive, uh, tech- technologies through non-defense uses, and then you augment them for the def- you know, there's, there are specific things that the defense ecosystem has. Um-... I think the future is more dual use companies, to be very honest. I think, uh, Palantir is a great example, started as more of a defense-oriented company, does m- a lot more commercial work now. Um, so I think that's just g- I think you're gonna see more and more of that. You see a big boom in defense tech investing. I think the thing that a lot of people will recognize once you get into the defense ecosystem is there's limitations there, too. It's not like this endless market with no competitors. I mean, there have- there's really mature competitors there, there's emergent competitors there, and then it's, the pot of money isn't as big as people think. They hear these big numbers, like a trillion dollars, but that money is used for labor, literally soldiers, that's used, and, and supply chains and logistics, and then some is used for technology.

Jack Altman 30:42 Right. But there's, like, a lot more cars than tanks. You know, and there's some, like-

Qasar Younis 30:45 Yeah

Jack Altman 30:45 ... high-level numbers you could just look at and say, like, "Okay, like, it's not..."

Qasar Younis 30:48 Yeah.

Jack Altman 30:48 The spending is humongous, obviously-

Qasar Younis 30:50 Yeah

Jack Altman 30:50 ... but you're probably tapping into the specific budgets.

Qasar Younis 30:52 I mean, the, the, the automotive industry, global automotive industry is 3% of the world's GDPs.

Jack Altman 30:57 Wow!

Qasar Younis 30:58 It is the biggest of the industrials, and the industrials is one of the biggest markets, period. And so when you add defense and construction, mining, all these other things, that's like five-ish some percent of the GDP. So for our- I think the magic trick that we're playing as a dual use company is, how do you build things that can work across these different verticals, you know, without a lot of augmentation? And then that makes everything cheaper.

Jack Altman 31:19 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 31:19 And that's a, you know... And that's kind of- and but the, the companies have done this before, but our automotive suppliers before, our defense suppliers before, they'll overlap each. They'll make something for, you know, one type of vehicle, and then they'll actually resell it for another type of vehicle.

Jack Altman 31:32 Does your own work change as you now, you know, as you work with the military or whatever? D- 'cause, you know, obviously, I know you gotta know more about the government, you gotta know more people at the government.

Qasar Younis 31:40 Yeah.

Jack Altman 31:40 Like, what does that change for you? I'm also now curious after that to ask about, like, what have you learned? What do you think about, you know, the tariff situation?

Qasar Younis 31:48 Yeah.

Jack Altman 31:48 What do you think about just, like, the overall, like, climate at the moment?

Qasar Younis 31:51 Yeah, so I mean, I've said this, uh, many times, but I'll repeat it, which is, you know, I think American tech companies, small and large, are for... Maybe obligated is too strong of a word, but, um, I, uh, nothing comes out of an obligated- like, you're almost obligated to help the US government. If you're a citizen of this country, you get the benefits of being a citizen of this country, and you- it is such a privilege to say, "Well, I don't wanna work with defense or the government." It's like, well, you are getting a lot of the upsides [chuckles] of being an American, right? So at some moral or ethical or mission foundation, we believe it's important for the company. And, and this is... You know, we started our defense work a year after we started the company, so it's not a recent proclamation. Um, and it was less in vogue then. I think now it's no longer controversial-

Jack Altman 32:36 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 32:36 ... frankly speaking. So I think that, that, that is, uh... But the defense ecosystem is very different. How you, m- you know, allocate dollars, how you talk to the DOD, so we do all of that stuff, uh, including all the way to, you know, having facility clearance, having cleared engineers and cleared senior executives who can work on top secret things. You don't really have that in trucking.

Jack Altman 32:56 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 32:56 Like, it, it is... Now, don't get me wrong, the trucking industry, as example, is very nationalistic, is very global, is very competitive, but it doesn't have the same connotations. Now, for other countries, actually, trucking and construction, mining, and cars are like their defense industries. To Italy, Ferrari is a big deal, you know? To Hyundai, Hyundai to Korea is a big deal. Toyota to Japan is a big deal. Uh, Renault to France, right? Scania to Sweden. These are... I mean, not only there's, like, some emo- emotional thing about Renault in France, there's a jobs program involved. W- when the Valley, we forget this very thing that exists in defense and, and construction mining. In the Valley, we just have the top part of the pyramid, which is kind of highly paid engineers and the support staff that, that are around there. In these other industries, you have a giant tr- uh, you know, uh, workforce.

Jack Altman 33:44 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 33:44 So you got the executives, and then the engineers, and then you have a huge labor pool who builds this stuff, maintains this stuff, takes this stuff to the field. And so the, the, you know, when a factory opens up, that's three to five thousand families who now have a way of living. So that we understand the defense con- context. You know, this senator wants this new plant in their, uh, you know, state or in their district.

Jack Altman 34:10 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 34:10 Um, but actually, it exists in all the commercial industries as well. Where a new factory goes is actually a big deal-

Jack Altman 34:17 Yeah

Qasar Younis 34:17 ... and that's why you have these tax incentives. So for us, we've just had to become way more sophisticated about working with the government. It is its own complete... It's its own universe.

Jack Altman 34:27 Yep.

Qasar Younis 34:27 It's very different.

Jack Altman 34:28 I wanna talk, uh-

Qasar Younis 34:29 I... For any founder listening, I wouldn't walk into the defense vertical, like, with some casualness. It is, it's, it's its own universe.

Jack Altman 34:38 It's not like building a B2B SaaS app.

Qasar Younis 34:40 No. [chuckles]

Jack Altman 34:40 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 34:41 It's just, it's just a very, uh, the, the way that it- things are bought is very,

Qasar Younis 34:44 very different.

Jack Altman 34:45 Yeah. Actually, I wanna talk now about, like, the company and culture and management as a company that is simultaneously deeply Silicon Valley and also deeply, you know, other parts of America. [sniffs] Um, I remember during COVID that you stayed, I think, pretty much in person-

Qasar Younis 35:03 [laughing]

Jack Altman 35:03 ... five days a week. Yeah.

Qasar Younis 35:05 We've been in person, in person, as long as the government has allowed us, we have been-

Jack Altman 35:08 Yeah, but-

Qasar Younis 35:08 ... in person five days a week.

Jack Altman 35:09 I feel like the-- I think I remember you telling me once that, like, the day you were allowed to get people-

Qasar Younis 35:13 Yeah, we're back

Jack Altman 35:14 ... back in with masks, you're back.

Qasar Younis 35:15 We're back.

Jack Altman 35:15 And, like, everybody else was, like-

Qasar Younis 35:17 Yeah

Jack Altman 35:17 ... freaking out, uh-

Qasar Younis 35:18 Yeah

Jack Altman 35:18 ... you know, and, you know, going remote.

Qasar Younis 35:20 Because COVID is a conspir-- No, kidding. [laughing]

Jack Altman 35:22 Should we go to the-

Qasar Younis 35:23 No. [laughing]

Jack Altman 35:23 Let's do conspiracy theories next.

Qasar Younis 35:24 [laughing]

Jack Altman 35:25 Um, I would like to do that.

Qasar Younis 35:26 Yeah, I mean, I think w-

Jack Altman 35:27 But there was that. You know-

Qasar Younis 35:28 Yeah

Jack Altman 35:28 ... you're down in Sunnyvale. It took me, like, five hours to get down here.

Qasar Younis 35:30 Oh, you're saying this, this look like a Sunnyvale?

Jack Altman 35:31 I mean, look where we are.

Qasar Younis 35:32 Look how much square footage you have. [chuckles]

Jack Altman 35:34 I don't know where... Yeah. [chuckles]

Qasar Younis 35:34 This is Sunnyvale, by the way.

Jack Altman 35:35 Yeah, I mean, you... And you probably-- I mean, now it's called Due Defense, but I bet you knowing, you know, just the climate we've lived through, I bet you-

Qasar Younis 35:42 Yeah

Jack Altman 35:42 ... it didn't feel, you know, so great to be supporting defense-

Qasar Younis 35:45 Yeah

Jack Altman 35:45 ... at some point in Silicon Valley-

Qasar Younis 35:47 Yeah

Jack Altman 35:47 ... in history. So you've done a lot of these things, and so I guess I'm curious what the-... common threads on the culture have been to be a Silicon Valley company that's also-

Qasar Younis 35:56 Like a little anti-Silicon Valley?

Jack Altman 35:57 A little anti-Silicon Valley.

Qasar Younis 35:58 Yeah, yeah. I think it's the Sam Walton in his great book, Made in America, and he says one of the things, he says, "Always swim against the stream." Like, just as, as an instinct, swim against the stream. And so I think that's really the-- Which is, like, if everybody does the thing, it's, it's probably, like, priced out-

Jack Altman 36:14 Yeah

Qasar Younis 36:14 ... somehow. So if you're trying to build a company in San Francisco, you're priced out in the sense of there's other companies like you. There's not a lot of companies like in San Francis- in Sunnyvale, but there's a lot of good engineers everywhere from San- South San Jose all the way up to, like, let's say, Burlingame, Redwood. And we have, you know, a big double-digit percent of our workforce comes from San Francisco down the Caltrain. Um, and so I think that's a part of it. It's like, some of it's just skepticism-

Jack Altman 36:37 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 36:37 ... of the mainstream, but really it's like, how do you carve your own path? And then we're very first principles thinking, so we just debate it out. Take, take the COVID example. I'll give you that. You know, it sounds like we had this clear voi- v- view. The way we made that decision is we had, I think it was four or five different meetings. The early applied people, the parents, the new grads, um, SF people. It was like this, like-

Jack Altman 37:00 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 37:00 ... we had to, and they're all, like, the discussions of, let's say, five to fifteen people, and the discussion was: Should we go fully remote, or should we go back in office, or should we do hybrid? And I, I, you know, I did the, uh, GitLab investment at YC.

Jack Altman 37:13 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 37:13 So I'm not against remote-

Jack Altman 37:15 Yeah

Qasar Younis 37:15 ... like, at some fundamental, dogmatic level, radical pragmatism, that's the, that's the name of the game.

Jack Altman 37:20 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 37:21 And so the, that whole discussion can boil down to we originally were, like, hybrid. Nobody wanted to be fully remote. That was across all the groups, the new grads, the parents, nobody wanted to be fully remote. So we were like, okay, hybrid or full-time in the office. Within the hybrid group, you know, we have customers coming on- onsite all the time. We do interviews every day. So then we were like, logistically, how do we do interviews only Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Well, a good CTO comes from, you know, from Toyota, they're not gonna tell you. They're just gonna come to whatever one-hour slot that they have available when they're in Silicon Valley. And so then we're like, "Well..." And then we have offices everywhere else. We have on both sides of the time spectrum, um, from Munich... You know, when we do all-hands, we have to do them at two PM because in Tokyo and Korea-

Jack Altman 37:59 Mm

Qasar Younis 37:59 ... it's six AM, and in Munich it's ten, eleven PM-

Jack Altman 38:01 Yeah

Qasar Younis 38:01 ... depending on the time zone. And it's like, so you're really covering the full spectrum. It's like the three corners of the world, right, in terms of time zones.

Jack Altman 38:08 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 38:08 And, uh, and so all of that led to, "Okay, we're probably in office." And then it was like, "Well, we should probably be in office then as a consistent thing." If all these principles are true here, they're probably true in Germany, they're true in o- other places. So we, we made the decision. What we didn't do is, what did-- what is everyone else thinking? What's everyone else going to do? If there is a version of that, I mean, I say this, like, kind of tongue in cheek, we're like, "Whatever the big companies do, we should do the opposite of."

Jack Altman 38:33 [chuckles]

Qasar Younis 38:33 So, like, whatever Google does, we should, like, just do the opposite of that. And i- ironically, before Google was never remote, and then they were all remote.

Jack Altman 38:39 Yep.

Qasar Younis 38:40 And so we just, we're always flipped to the [chuckles] to that, you know. I think we could've been, like, when we started the company, we very seriously considered being a remote company.

Jack Altman 38:45 Yeah. How do you feel when you see things as a sort of like a, you know, intrinsic contrarian? How do you feel when you see the world come around to you? Does it make you uneasy, or are you like, "I told you so?"

Qasar Younis 38:56 Uh, you know, if there's a person that I'd love to emulate, if I could, it's Andy Grove.

Jack Altman 39:00 Mm.

Qasar Younis 39:01 You know, and I mean, we as a company, and part of onboarding for managers, we read High Output Management. I mean, that's-

Jack Altman 39:07 It's, like, my favorite management book by far.

Qasar Younis 39:08 Yeah, and so you... You know, and then, like, we, you know, a joke I make to, again, like, these are kind of weird things. The joke I make is, like, to engineers, is, like, wear a collared, wear a collared shirt, because the norm is to not wear a collared shirt.

Jack Altman 39:17 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 39:17 So you almost-- So I think you contrarian almost just to push the principles that you hold so dearly, that everyone should be casual or everyone should be formal. Like, whatever it is, you just, you're pushing it. And then in that, you know, in that, in that conflict is when you actually discover what the truth is. Without that conflict, you live in these assumptions, and then you don't know what the truth is, because you might think something slightly different than me. So a core part of our culture is, like, just debate, debate, debate. Say what's on your mind, let's have that conversation. That doesn't mean it has to be disrespectful. It doesn't mean that it's a culture of constant yelling and... You know, you don't have to do that stuff. But I think there are, like, get-along cultures-

Jack Altman 39:56 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 39:56 ... and there are cultures that are, like-

Jack Altman 39:57 For sure

Qasar Younis 39:57 ... actively pushing each other.

Jack Altman 39:59 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 39:59 And, uh, we're definitely in that

Qasar Younis 40:01 category.

Jack Altman 40:01 Do you have any, um, like, contrarian beats you're on right now? Like...

Qasar Younis 40:05 I mean, what's the mo- most contra-- I mean, yeah, I do. I mean, uh, this is the macro stuff. I mean, because you, macro being this month-

Jack Altman 40:11 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 40:11 ... this year, this time, you have the big, you know, uh, uh, um, amount of investments going into broadly gen AI, specifically in humanoid robotics-

Jack Altman 40:19 Yep

Qasar Younis 40:19 ... like, right now in this, in this universe. You know, I mean-

Jack Altman 40:23 Like a-

Qasar Younis 40:23 I, I mean, I just think, where's the business models? 'Cause when you take Applied Intuition as an example, in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, lots of companies getting funded in autonomy. Billion-dollar raises were the, were the, were the craze. Autonomy was the hot, hot thing.

Jack Altman 40:35 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 40:36 All the tech currents lists, everything, it was all autonomy, autonomy, autonomy. And now it's like, you know, self-driving is some how, like, almost out of vogue. It's coming back because the Waymos are starting to flood San Francisco. But I think, like, the point about saying humanoid robots or gen AI companies, I think maybe the real... I don't know if this is true.

Jack Altman 40:50 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 40:51 I truly say I don't know if this is true. I could be completely wrong. Probably the really good ones are gonna emerge in four or five years from now.

Jack Altman 40:57 Mm.

Qasar Younis 40:58 'Cause you're just gonna, uh, the ecosystem's gonna learn a lot about the space, and then the most important thing they're gonna learn is what the business model is.

Jack Altman 41:04 Right. I would think based on how you spend your time, you would think that we will end up with very smart humanoid robots, though.

Qasar Younis 41:10 Yeah, absolutely.

Jack Altman 41:11 So you believe in the product happening-

Qasar Younis 41:12 Absolutely

Jack Altman 41:12 ... you just don't believe there's a good business there yet.

Qasar Younis 41:14 Yeah, it just has to be found.

Jack Altman 41:16 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 41:16 What, it, there, it might even exist. It might even exist in a company that's well-funded right now. It just has to be discovered.

Jack Altman 41:22 And is the reason you think that is 'cause you're like: Why should I build a humanoid when I could have a Caterpillar, or I could have, like, a machine in a factory doing a purpose-built thing?

Qasar Younis 41:30 Yeah, exactly. The, the, the, like, it's just first principles.

Jack Altman 41:33 Uh-huh.

Qasar Younis 41:33 Even though, like, it's... We had a, one of those Chinese Unitree, uh-

Jack Altman 41:36 Like, why do I need a human-shaped robot?

Qasar Younis 41:37 Yeah, yeah.

Jack Altman 41:38 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 41:38 It, though, it's so emotion-- We had one of them in the office with the, with the, with a Chinese team here, and they're showing their, you know... That's, like, really emo-- the wh- the whole company, like, gathers around it.

Jack Altman 41:47 Mm.

Qasar Younis 41:47 I mean, hundreds of people, it's like a celebrity. We've, we've had Mark and Risa-

Jack Altman 41:50 Yeah, that's awesome

Qasar Younis 41:51 ... walk down the hall. We've had Sam come, and you didn't have as many people than this, this, this, you know, uh, humanoid robot.... you can't discount that to fool you-

Jack Altman 42:01 Mm-hmm

Qasar Younis 42:01 -as an engineer or as a founder into thinking something is actually a good thing than it not. So just, like, step back and ha- and have that debate of like, "What really is the thing here?"

Jack Altman 42:12 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 42:12 And I think for Applied, we did that. We believed in autonomy. We built a horizontal business where you can give the tools to all these people to, uh, build, and so then you're kind of abstracted away. So I think there's some version of that, and companies, by the way, are trying to do the Applied play in humanoids as well right now, so the ecosystem gets more, more, more sharp.

Jack Altman 42:28 I feel like when I talk to people on, like, Wall Street, whether it's, like, at a hedge fund or-

Qasar Younis 42:33 Yeah

Jack Altman 42:33 ... like, a Goldman or something, I feel sometimes surprised that actually public investors are- you'd think that they are short-term minded, and they're not, is my experience. And I think actually in some ways I, I think there might be, like, a U-shape, where it's like early-stage investors think very long term, real, like, public investors think very long term, and maybe it's, like, the growth investors that are, like-

Qasar Younis 42:56 Yeah

Jack Altman 42:56 ... the most short-term minded because they're just getting taught to think about, like, how long to liquidity and what's my mark gonna be there.

Qasar Younis 43:03 I think it's all over. I, I don't- I, I think the brain wants to find that pattern. I don't think there, there- think there's a lot more noise than signal in there. I think I've, you know, I've certainly met seed f- you know, folks who are, like, trying to flip their money by Series C and are just looking at the markup 'cause they wanna get the next fund raised. So they're, you know, optimizing to invest in what is gonna get marked up, which, by the way, is not a bad strategy. 'Cause I know a specific investor whose that's their strategy and done exceedingly well.

Jack Altman 43:30 Mm.

Qasar Younis 43:30 Their view is just, like, ride the hype.

Jack Altman 43:32 Interesting.

Qasar Younis 43:33 'Cause the hype is gonna get funded again.

Jack Altman 43:35 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 43:35 And then if you ha- it's a- the old classic question: What- does a company make money, or does money make a company?

Jack Altman 43:41 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 43:41 The reality is, if we're two-

Jack Altman 43:43 Starting a-

Qasar Younis 43:43 ... two humanoid robotics companies, and I raise three million, and you raise two hundred and fifty million-

Jack Altman 43:47 Yeah, that's a better odd of mine [chuckles]

Qasar Younis 43:48 [chuckles] You're better off, you're gonna win.

Jack Altman 43:50 For sure.

Qasar Younis 43:50 And everyone thinks you're gonna win.

Jack Altman 43:51 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 43:51 Employees think you're gonna win-

Jack Altman 43:52 Yes

Qasar Younis 43:52 ... your customers think you're gonna win-

Jack Altman 43:53 Yes

Qasar Younis 43:53 ... the target, who you-

Jack Altman 43:54 And then it's self-fulfilling. That's right.

Qasar Younis 43:55 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Jack Altman 43:56 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 43:56 And then so, like, uh, and then it's self-fulfilling. Yeah, absolutely. So I don't think there... I think I've met late-stage investors that are like, you know, I can see that they're gonna dump on when the public- the company goes public 'cause they're just looking for that-

Jack Altman 44:07 Mm

Qasar Younis 44:08 ... twenty percent bump, well, you know, return. And then you met, like, you know, early-stage investors that wanna dump early, so y- I don't think there's truth

Qasar Younis 44:14 in it, um.

Jack Altman 44:14 Do you feel like as the job's changing, it's making you change, too? Like, do you think that, um, doing this job changes who you are? And the reason I'm asking is because I felt like in a lot of ways, I mean, I think whatever work we do changes us in some ways, but I felt like there were so many things about, you know, Labs was not as big as Applied, but, you know, there's hundreds of people, and, you know-

Qasar Younis 44:35 Yeah

Jack Altman 44:35 ... you experience a lot of those things, and, um, it, I felt like it was very hard to not be... A- I think in mu- m- in many more good ways than bad ways, it changes your psychology, your behavior.

Qasar Younis 44:46 Yeah.

Jack Altman 44:46 Like, it does update your software a little bit.

Qasar Younis 44:49 Yeah, yeah. I, I, I'm not removed enough from myself to have that objective third-party view. I'm sure I've changed, w- without a doubt, and it's imp- impossible, um, not to, based on the, on the surroundings. But I can say, again, maybe it's like rationalization, you never know. I feel more myself today than I've ever felt.

Jack Altman 45:07 That's great.

Qasar Younis 45:08 Yeah, I mean, it's like I feel that's a huge privilege.

Jack Altman 45:11 That's amazing.

Qasar Younis 45:12 Yeah, and what-

Jack Altman 45:12 You can just, like, settle into yourself and-

Qasar Younis 45:14 Yeah, but that could be just getting old [laughs]

Jack Altman 45:15 ... still have a long way to go with the company. Yeah, maybe that's a good thing, though.

Qasar Younis 45:17 Maybe you're getting old.

Jack Altman 45:18 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 45:18 It's like you just come to peace with like, "These are things I'm good at. These are things I'm not good at."

Jack Altman 45:22 For me, I'm like, even just, like, having kids takes a little bit-

Qasar Younis 45:25 Yeah, absolutely

Jack Altman 45:25 ... of the edge off of just-

Qasar Younis 45:26 Yeah

Jack Altman 45:26 ... like, I don't really care about a list of th... There's a list of things that I used to care about that I don't care about anymore.

Qasar Younis 45:30 Yeah, absolutely.

Jack Altman 45:30 And I guess there's just a lot of things about getting older that update that.

Qasar Younis 45:33 Yeah, there's a, a one thing that reminded me, that is I, uh, l- uh, that, that I wanna repeat, which is my last co-founder had this line where he said, Michael Ma, and he said, um, um, "No matter how successful you become as a founder or, you know, venture investor, whatever, if your kids don't like you, you're a failure."

Jack Altman 45:50 Yep.

Qasar Younis 45:51 And that just, like, for me, I think ten years ago, that would've kind of made sense. It, to me, it's like-

Jack Altman 45:57 Now, you're like, "That is so true."

Qasar Younis 45:58 That's... There's nothing more true than that.

Jack Altman 46:00 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 46:00 So true that it doesn't even belong in this conversation, and I wanna interject in because I believe it's so absolutely true. Then that Gandhi line, "What's truth? Truth is what stands the test of time."

Jack Altman 46:08 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 46:09 So when we are, we will all die. When we're... Hopefully, we make it to 80, 90, we're laying in that bed, you're not gonna think about this fucking podcast.

Jack Altman 46:17 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 46:17 You're not gonna think about the fundraising-

Jack Altman 46:18 Oh, it was a good podcast, though.

Qasar Younis 46:20 Yeah. [chuckles] I mean, you just-

Jack Altman 46:21 Probably watch it one more time later.

Qasar Younis 46:21 So what are you gonna think about? You're gonna think about your kids.

Jack Altman 46:23 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 46:23 You're gonna think about, "Oh, this guy had a good working career. Uh, you know, I, I had a good relationship with my parents." Well, that's the thing you're gonna think about. And then everything else just kind of gr- grays out, and so I think becoming more okay with the professional stuff and being like: Hey, I'm gonna always give direct feedback.

Jack Altman 46:40 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 46:41 Like, that's just gonna be who I... I just cannot lower my bar. I ask on a weekly basis of my team, "Am I just being too, you know, pedantic?" And, uh, one of the team members, uh, on our team is one of our engineering leads, he, uh, sent this in a WhatsApp. I was like: I don't know if I'm just being the, an asshole here, and I bet you just... And he goes, "No, no. You are- your only role in this company is to maintain that bar. And we maintain that bar, everything else, all the products will get taken care of, all the... But you, you, as soon as you lower the bar, everyone becomes more mediocre." And so I think you as a founder, as not only, you know, you as starting your own firm, but as any- anybody out there who's starting a thing, you have to kind of figure out, like, as the company changes, are you becoming more of yourself, or are you becoming less of yourself? Then you kind of ideally wanna orient that to more of yourself, and then you become more comfortable, and yeah. But it's not easy because I think your brain just rationalizes it. One thing that's absolutely true is what's a parallel universe where Applied Intuition fails?

Jack Altman 47:32 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 47:33 We raised ten, twenty million dollars. We never found a product-market fit. We might be partnering together in a venture fund. Who knows? [laughs]

Jack Altman 47:39 That would've been great.

Qasar Younis 47:40 [laughs]

Jack Altman 47:41 Still, I would rather it work out than not.

Qasar Younis 47:42 [chuckles]

Jack Altman 47:42 On

Jack Altman 47:43 the la- uh, la- last note on that topic, for founders, because obviously, you know, you saw a bunch at YC.

Qasar Younis 47:48 Yeah.

Jack Altman 47:48 You've been doing your own very successful one now. You angel invest. What are the things that, you know, when you find yourself talking to a founder, what do you focus on most with helping people or advising right now?

Qasar Younis 48:02 ... there's this book, uh, called Into Thin Air-

Jack Altman 48:04 Mm-hmm.

Qasar Younis 48:05 -uh, which is about this, a fated Everest climb. And it was a journalist who wanted to just talk about Everest tourism, and he ends up being in this trip where 16 climbers ultimately die in a blizzard. It was the worst, uh, single camp incident. And in this blizzard, when he gets hit, he's coming down the mountain, and, um, there is a Japanese climber, and she's going up the mountain, and he sees base camp. He's like, "I'm 100 yards. I just gotta make it to the tents, and I'll, I'll live." And there's people who've fallen off, and because all this is because everyone's lacking oxygen. So everyone's kind of in this delirious state. So he's going down the mountain towards the camp, and this, this woman starts pulling on him and says, "No, no, the camp is that way." And he's like: No, the camp is right there. And he goes, "I looked in her eyes, and you could see that she was gone."

Jack Altman 48:50 Mm.

Qasar Younis 48:50 "And I had to make a decision. Am I gonna die, too, or am I gonna leave her?"

Jack Altman 48:56 Wow.

Qasar Younis 48:56 Obviously, left her. She dies. I meet founders all the time who are going up the wrong side of the mountain.

Jack Altman 49:03 Oh, wow.

Qasar Younis 49:04 And you're just like, "This company's not gonna work."

Jack Altman 49:06 So what do you do?

Qasar Younis 49:07 You tell them, but they can't because we're- we all have to believe-

Jack Altman 49:11 [exhales]

Qasar Younis 49:11 -that you're doing the right thing. [chuckles]

Jack Altman 49:13 You know what's so hard about that is, as a founder, so many people are telling you you're going up the wrong mountain.

Qasar Younis 49:17 Yes!

Jack Altman 49:17 And even when you're going up the right mountain, there's gonna be people telling you that you're wrong, that it's wrong.

Qasar Younis 49:21 There's people telling you you're going the wrong mountain. [laughing]

Jack Altman 49:23 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 49:24 [laughing] Yes.

Jack Altman 49:24 Still, I think you might be still. It doesn't seem like-

Qasar Younis 49:26 Yeah, exactly.

Jack Altman 49:27 I can't tell if this is working or not.

Qasar Younis 49:28 Who, who knows? Like, that's the thing. That, that's the thing is, like, it's working it- "it's working" is a state in time.

Jack Altman 49:33 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 49:34 It's not a permanent state.

Jack Altman 49:35 Yeah, and there's a lot of head fakes right now a- available with, like, a new paradigm and everything like that.

Qasar Younis 49:40 Yeah, and I think, I think, um... So I find myself often talking to founders and having that conversation. I think it's not easy to start a company: It's really, really hard to stop a company.

Jack Altman 49:48 Yeah. Does it d- what- do you then end up in a contentious conversation, or is it usually just like, "I disagree," and moves on?

Qasar Younis 49:56 I think you can only tell a founder... I mean, I'm almost always an investor in the company.

Jack Altman 49:59 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 50:00 And I'm saying, "Hey, like, I'm not telling you because it's in my financial interest for you to stop this."

Jack Altman 50:04 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 50:04 "I know you have six million in the bank. This isn't, this isn't what it looks like."

Jack Altman 50:08 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 50:09 And I think that the, the crazy thing, you know, and, and there is a lesson to be taken away where Applied-

Jack Altman 50:12 Mm.

Qasar Younis 50:13 You know, again, [exhales] there's a parallel universe that doesn't work, but it hasn't been hard.

Jack Altman 50:17 Yeah. Yeah. It's like the, it's been pulled out of you the whole time.

Qasar Younis 50:21 Yeah.

Jack Altman 50:22 Yeah.

Qasar Younis 50:22 Yeah.

Jack Altman 50:22 I actually, this is something to YC's credit that I really... I mean, there's many things to YC's credit, but this point I give to them strongly, which is they will tell founders pretty directly if this isn't working, and I think a lot of investors aren't willing to have those kinds of conversations with founders because we've gotten to a place where everybody knows that, you know, screw, you know, screw the haters.

Qasar Younis 50:41 That Qasar Younis is maintaining a list of the people who passed on the [chuckles] company-

Jack Altman 50:44 Yeah, exactly

Qasar Younis 50:44 ... and when it crosses 100 billion [chuckles]

Jack Altman 50:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Qasar Younis 50:46 Yeah.

Jack Altman 50:46 Well, at our next podcast, that's what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through-

Qasar Younis 50:49 Yeah, [chuckles] gonna go through the list

Jack Altman 50:50 ... in a few years, we'll do this.

Qasar Younis 50:50 But the, the, I can tell you, just again, to, on the VC side-

Jack Altman 50:53 Yeah

Qasar Younis 50:53 ... it's very hard if you're looking at a Series A company, and you're passing, you don't know if it's-

Jack Altman 50:58 No, of course

Qasar Younis 50:58 ... you're making the right decision.

Jack Altman 50:59 Yeah, you probably not.

Qasar Younis 51:00 So why, why, how are you like-

Jack Altman 51:01 Yeah

Qasar Younis 51:01 ... you're like, "Hey, I, I'm not gonna invest, but-

Jack Altman 51:03 Yeah

Qasar Younis 51:03 ... you might actually be on the right thing."

Jack Altman 51:05 For sure.

Qasar Younis 51:05 Yeah.

Jack Altman 51:05 100%. It is very hard. All right, well, um, I got a lot of your time here. This was awesome. I really appreciated it. Thanks for, thanks for dropping by-

Qasar Younis 51:11 It went by in a flash.

Jack Altman 51:12 It was fast.

Qasar Younis 51:13 Yeah.

Jack Altman 51:13 But I could have... Yeah.

Qasar Younis 51:13 Thanks for coming out.

Jack Altman 51:14 Thanks a bunch. [upbeat music]