How To Navigate Your Career | Elad Gil | Ep. 6

Elad Gil 0:00 I actually don't believe in lifelong learning. I believe in lifelong doing, right? Everybody talks about lifelong learning, and I'm gonna go learn this thing before I go do it. Of course, just go fucking do it.

Jack Altman 0:07 Yeah.

Elad Gil 0:07 That's how you learn things the best, [chuckles] I think.

Jack Altman 0:08 Yeah.

Elad Gil 0:08 But again, that's, that's how I view the world. And it's back to your point on assuming there aren't obstacles in the way or there aren't that many limits, part of that is just that assumption that I can just go do stuff. [upbeat music]

Jack Altman 0:17 All right. Well, I'm very excited to do this with you, Elad. Thanks for making the time. And before we get started, I'm gonna try a joke because I just shared it with you, and you looked at me deadpan-

Elad Gil 0:27 [chuckles]

Jack Altman 0:27 ... but I thought it was funny, which is that we're at Sarah Guo's office, and I said, "This episode was brought to you by Sarah Guoga."

Elad Gil 0:32 Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

Jack Altman 0:32 I thought it was funnier than you thought it was, so-

Elad Gil 0:34 Thank you, Sarah

Jack Altman 0:35 ... Hopefully, the viewers will laugh a little bit.

Elad Gil 0:36 We love your water.

Jack Altman 0:37 Today, we're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff. The main thing is kind of around the idea of careers and how you think people can navigate their own. Obviously, to some extent, you're gonna be the case study, uh, as we talk about some of this stuff, but that's kinda where I wanna

Jack Altman 0:50 go. And where I wanna start is kind of around the mindset that at least I perceive in you, which is that you seem to navigate the world in somewhat of like an anything is possible, there aren't boundaries type of way, where any person can be, you know, met, where any company can be built, where any deal can get done. I don't know if we've ever, like, talked about this explicitly, but I've just observed over the years that that seems to be kind of how you operate, and I'm curious if that mindset was always there. Did you cultivate it over time? Because it seems very valuable.

Elad Gil 1:20 I think it's, uh... It all started when I saw the movie Limitless. [chuckles] And as-

Jack Altman 1:24 All right. [chuckles]

Elad Gil 1:24 [chuckles] Sorry. It's off to a bad start.

Jack Altman 1:27 No, it's good.

Elad Gil 1:27 Um, yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. I feel like, uh, I don't know if it was instilled by one of my parents or something, um, but in general, I had a family that, you know, uh, on both sides are multiple generations of immigrants, et cetera, and you got to just show up in a country and figure things out. And so a lot of that perspective, I think, kind of transferred over in terms of you should just go and try things, and what's the worst case that could happen, or what's the worst thing that could happen? And I think a lot of barriers that people kind of set up for themselves mentally or that they perceive to be existing societally actually don't really exist. And so there's a very strong attitude in my family of life is kind of what you make of it, but also, you can just pick up the phone and try calling someone, and what's the, what's the worst thing that could happen? They just don't answer the phone.

Jack Altman 2:05 Yeah.

Elad Gil 2:05 And so it's, it's a little bit of that mindset, I think.

Jack Altman 2:07 What are the other, like, ingredients to the mindset? So like, that-- the one that you just mentioned is clearly one, where you're, like, not afraid of rejection and where like, you know, you're like, "It's okay if somebody says no, or I don't get that thing."

Elad Gil 2:17 Mm-hmm.

Jack Altman 2:18 What are, like, other ingredients, do you think, to the mindset?

Elad Gil 2:21 Yeah, I think it's a little bit of, um, almost shamelessness around certain things. Like, you just don't sweat it. It's, it's, it's the old thing where you, um, learn a foreign language more easily if you're willing to sound like an idiot in the foreign language, or it's the willingness to ask a really dumb question that turns out to be a good question. Um, there's a couple people I've met over time who I think are really exceptional, where they start asking these really basic questions, and your first reaction is like, "Ugh, like, why are they asking this dumb thing?" And then they keep drilling, and they suddenly get to the essence of the thing in a way that you didn't expect. And that's almost that shamelessness of being willing to ask something that, that most people would worry about, and do I look dumb, and am I really asking the right thing, and how will I be perceived? And so I think part of it is, um, concern about perception. I think part of it is just the willingness to take on a little bit of risk. And I think part of it, honestly, is just facing the reality of the situation. You know, truly, what is the worst thing that could happen in certain situations? It's like nothing. [chuckles] You know? Like, nothing will happen.

Jack Altman 3:12 Have you thought about, like, that risk question, about, you know, is there actually risk when you take risk, or is the risk what it looks like, maybe is a better way to say it? 'Cause like, you know, if you think about it as like a repeated game, it's actually not that risky. But I'm curious, like, what do you think is the blocker some people have when they're, like, afraid of taking risks professionally?

Elad Gil 3:29 It depends on how you define risk. Risk could be starting a company, it could be changing roles, it could be asking for a promotion, it could be all sorts of things. Um, you know, and I do think there's different, uh, ways that people approach this, and some of those things break down on people's backgrounds. Um, you know, sometimes it's more oriented around gender. I remember talking to somebody who's running a big podcast, and she said that she would constantly get pinged by male guests suggesting themselves, and then she'd reach out to women to be on it, and they'd say, "Well, I'm not sure that I have anything interesting to say."

Jack Altman 3:58 Mm.

Elad Gil 3:58 And so I think there's also different angles on just how people perceive themselves, how people think about the world, and I think they, they break down a- along all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of lines. And obviously, there's different types of people and different orientations that do everything, right? It's, it's, it's not meant to be an over-interpretation, but I do think there are characteristics that just drive behavior as

Elad Gil 4:16 well.

Jack Altman 4:16 As you've sort of navigated through your career, you know, you've obviously, you built companies, you became an angel investor, you've become, like, a extremely successful independent investor institutionally. Have you built towards certain outcomes? Have you been like: I want to become X, and so to get there, I'm gonna do A, B, and C? Or in a given year, do you just, you know, it's January 1st, and you're like, "Okay, this year, this is what seems smartest, so I'm just gonna do that and see where it goes?"

Elad Gil 4:42 Yeah. You know, it's interesting. John Lennon has this quote that "Life is what happens while you're making other plans," and I think some of the best careers that I've seen have been unplanned. You know, in evolution, there's this idea of punctuated equilibrium. You have a bunch of stuff happen, and then it kind of solidifies for a while and gets boring, and then a bunch of stuff happens. And so, um, at least in, uh, certain evolutionary terms, it seems like there's explosion of diversity, and then it consolidates. And I feel like that sometimes happens in careers, and that's definitely happened in my career path, where there'll be moments in time where I'm planning ahead. I'm running a company.

Jack Altman 5:07 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 5:08 The company needs to have a financial plan, and a hiring plan, and a product plan, and everything else. You need roadmaps. And then other times, it's super reactive. You know, I started investing effectively by accident when friends of mine started asking me to invest in their companies because I was helping them. And years ago, 14 years ago, whenever I made my first investment, I never would've thought, oh, now I'd be running, like, a multi-stage investment practice in addition to all the other stuff I do. Um, and so it happened a little bit more by happenstance. Now, arguably, I should have thought ahead on that, and I should have planned it and started it earlier and all sorts of things. So I think maybe the, the ad hoc or semi-ad hoc apr- approach I took sometimes doesn't work, but I think the flip side of it is the, the thing it does do is optimize for market need.

Jack Altman 5:44 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 5:44 Right? If you're sort of reactive to the market in the moment, then that's when you can actually do really interesting things relative to it. And there's founder market need in terms of startups and what they need help with, or it could be, you know, certain startups that you're gonna build or whatever it may

Elad Gil 5:55 be.

Jack Altman 5:55 It also seems like it leaves a lot of, like, optionality available to you.

Elad Gil 5:58 Mm.

Jack Altman 5:58 Like, you know, what's... More than most people who have gotten to where you are, I could imagine next year, you doing multiple things in a way that I think is hard-... to see other people or groups that are more solidified?

Elad Gil 6:12 Yeah.

Jack Altman 6:13 Do, do you, do you actively cultivate optionality in certain ways? Like-

Elad Gil 6:17 I do.

Jack Altman 6:17 -do you wanna be in a place where you're like, "If I wanna spend my time incubating or doing growth investments?"

Elad Gil 6:22 Yeah.

Jack Altman 6:22 Like, you know, 'cause-

Elad Gil 6:23 I've definitely tried to set up things in a, in a flexible way upfront, and so that was very thoughtful. Or that, you know, that took a lot of, uh, uh, pre-planning in terms of, um, how do I set things up that I have a lot of flexibility in terms of what I actually focus on, how I spend time day to day? And part of that is because what I found is that, um, if I allow that sort of organic path to happen, I end up with better outcomes. Um, and I also enjoy them more, right? I wanna work on things that I find interesting. I really love technology. I love the impact of technology. I'm very techno-optimistic, and so I wanna work on things that I think will be important to the world, and then I wanna work on things that I just find really viscerally interesting, and sometimes those are the same thing, and sometimes they turn out to be different things. You know, one thing I've been thinking about recently is, um, how do you gain longevity in Silicon Valley? Because if you look at it, most people spin out every five to seven years. There'll be cohorts of people come in, and they'll go off, and suddenly a subset of them just move away. Or somebody who's really relevant for a couple of years, suddenly becomes irrelevant. And so I started wondering, like, what are, what are approaches to having relevance over time in a very dynamic, fast-changing environment like tech? And I feel like there's two or three paths. I mean, one path is obviously you start a platform, and you stick with it, right? You're running a major company, you're s- you've started a major investment firm, whatever it is, right? And then you tend to have a longer arc because of that platform. And so th- that- that's sort of one form of it. There's also people who, every couple of years, start or do something really interesting or new.

Jack Altman 7:39 Yeah.

Elad Gil 7:40 You know, you could argue to some extent, that's, that's Elon Musk, who has both of them, right? He has the platforms as well as the new stuff ongoing.

Jack Altman 7:45 Yep.

Elad Gil 7:46 Um, it could be Peter Thiel-

Jack Altman 7:47 He just adds, he doesn't move away from it, I guess.

Elad Gil 7:49 Yeah, he keeps adding. Um, Patrick from Stripe started Arc, which is a biotech institute-

Jack Altman 7:52 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 7:52 ... which is super interesting. You know, so you start to see these people who, over a decade or two, start accumulating a portfolio of super interesting th- things they've done, often in different fields. And so that's one way people have relevancy.

Jack Altman 8:02 Yep.

Elad Gil 8:02 Um, another one is by staying at the cutting edge of technology or the cutting edge of startups or the cutting edge of what... And so there, there's a few different ways that people do it.

Jack Altman 8:08 It also seems like when you do new- when you either replace or add something new, it lets you go back to a beginner's mindset more often, and it, like, lets you sort of just, like, scratch more itches. And I do think it gets hard to become great at things when you lose engagement on them, and so staying engaged seems like a big part of longevity.

Elad Gil 8:26 I think that's a big thing, but I think also, um...

Elad Gil 8:29 I think, I think the set of character- characteristics that I've noticed in people who tend to have these long arcs, and I don't know if it's correct, right? This is all kind of early hypothetical stuff that I've been thinking about, but I haven't really vetted.

Jack Altman 8:38 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 8:39 And, I, you know, it's, it's very early on, but, um, one is, most of the people seem to be reasonably polymathic.

Jack Altman 8:44 Hmm. Yep.

Elad Gil 8:45 They, they actually tend to go deep on multiple things quite early on in their life, so it isn't something they pick up later, where every end years, they decide to go deep. It's like they're always going deep on things. And they happen to have one core thread through the rest of their career, but then they, they continue to have these interests, and those interests sometimes blossom into standalone things, right, for them. The second is they tend to be driven more by impact or interestingness than by status or money.

Jack Altman 9:06 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 9:07 Because I feel like people who are driven by money eventually get really unhappy. They hit a certain level of wealth, and they're like: "Now what do I do?" You know, um, and obviously, some of them keep going, but it, uh, it... You, you see it often in the sort of how that translates into satisfaction- [chuckles] -of that person.

Jack Altman 9:20 Totally. Yes.

Elad Gil 9:20 So it's like, what is the driver? Sort of the second characteristic. Um, third characteristic is many, but not all, had success at a young age, right? I think Mark and recently, one of these people, he's done amazing things over a very long arc. He was on the cover of Time magazine when he was what? Like 21-

Jack Altman 9:34 Yeah

Elad Gil 9:34 ... 22, 23, right, with Netscape. So amazing set of things that he's done over time, as an example. You know, they have this, this characteristic of staying interested and being relevant and part of the future. And, um, you know, these are the people that I think compound over 20, 30 years, and they just keep doing interesting things over and over again.

Jack Altman 9:52 There's a bunch I wanna go into

Jack Altman 9:54 from that, but can we talk maybe first about how people should choose... Let's say, you know, you're early in your career or even, even not extremely early in your career, and you're thinking about where to go. You know, you just talked about, like, money and status are, like, not the prize to fight for.

Elad Gil 10:09 Yeah.

Jack Altman 10:09 And what we'd probably both say is, those will come as byproducts of doing other things, but, like, that's not the way to get there, actually. How do you think somebody should be optimizing when they're thinking about: "I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing. I either just graduated, or I wanna make a change or whatever." Like, what, what goes into the calculus?

Elad Gil 10:24 No, that's fair. Um, well, I think there's almost, like, four or five different types of careers you could pursue. Um, but before we get into that, I actually think Naval has a really good framework on this, where, um, you know, in the '90s, John Doerr is, you know, is sort of a legendary investor. He invested in Amazon and Google and all these great companies, Netscape, um, I think. And he used to have this, um, mercenary versus missionary framework. He'd ask you: "Are you a mercenary or missionary?" And, of course, you had to say, "I'm a missionary," right? How could you possibly say you're a mercenary? And Naval has this better framework, I feel, which is like he says: "Look, early in your career, you have to be at least partially mercenary."

Jack Altman 10:57 Hmm.

Elad Gil 10:57 Right? And a lot of people, early on in their career, they're like: "If I only make it to X, you know, if I made a couple hundred K, I'd be so happy in life," or, "If I made whatever." You need that, a little bit of that mercenary hunger, otherwise you're just not gonna be driven in certain ways. You won't be scrappy enough or whatever. And you might be with, with interestingness or other things driving you, but you need some, some characteristic of a need to win in an aggressive way. Oh, actually, that's one of the other characteristics that people compound over time. They're, they're aggressive or competitive in, in some form or another.

Jack Altman 11:21 Are you saying that, just to click on it-

Elad Gil 11:23 Yes

Jack Altman 11:24 ... when you're young, it's more important to have the mercenary thing than later on?

Elad Gil 11:27 I think what I'm saying is, most of the young people who are successful are at least partially mercenary early, however you want to interpret mercenary as a word. Once you're successful, if you're not missionary, you're a zero-sum person. Nobody wants to work with you. You're terrible. And so you make a transition in your life. And then Naval adds a third component, which is, later in life, you become an artist, right? You do it for the love of the craft. And those are the people, I think, who sustain, right? Who can go through the transitions of, "I'm a little bit more mercenary. I just wanna make it somehow."... I'm missionary now, I wanna do things for important reasons. And obviously, these things blend, right? Nobody's 100% in any direction. And then later in life, you're like, "I'm doing it for the art, I'm doing it for the craft," right? And I think that's a great framework, right?

Jack Altman 12:06 It is an interesting framework. I've never thought- You know, it's funny because if you hadn't just explained that, and you asked me to intuitively react, I would've said you should be missionary at first. You know, it's like-

Elad Gil 12:15 Yeah

Jack Altman 12:15 ... the thing that sort of like learn then earn kind of thing you hear.

Elad Gil 12:17 Yeah.

Jack Altman 12:17 But actually, I think when you think about all these really impressive people in their 20s, they were, they were working like crazy.

Elad Gil 12:24 Yeah.

Jack Altman 12:24 And a lot of that was driven by like, you know-

Elad Gil 12:26 You just wanna make it.

Jack Altman 12:27 Yeah, there's some ego, which is not a bad thing. There's some, like, drive to, like, prove yourself. There's some of these other things, and maybe it's not just money, but it is... There's something personal about it.

Elad Gil 12:35 Yeah, and I actually don't believe in lifelong learning, I believe in lifelong doing, right? Everybody talks about lifelong learning, and I'm gonna go learn this thing before I go do it. Of course, just go fucking do it.

Jack Altman 12:42 Yeah.

Elad Gil 12:42 That's how you learn things the best. [chuckles]

Jack Altman 12:44 Yeah.

Elad Gil 12:44 But again, that's, that's how I view the world. And it's back to your point on assuming there aren't obstacles in the way or there aren't that many limits, part of that is just that assumption that I can just go do stuff, right? I don't have to learn it first. I'll learn it on the way, or I'll learn it-- I'll pick it up if I can. And there's some things, obviously, that are really hard to pick up, right? Like, I couldn't go and do advanced mathematics right now, right? But there's other things where I think I can just go pick them up. Um, and then I think separate from that, you asked, "Well, how do you think about your career?" And I think there's, there's like four or five different types of careers, right? There's a founder career, am I gonna start a company or not? There's joining a company, either with the goal of starting something later, being an executive, being IC. There's the IC path, there's executive path, there's investor path-

Jack Altman 13:19 Yeah

Elad Gil 13:19 ... there's a service provider path, right? There's all these different things you could do in tech, for example.

Jack Altman 13:23 Within the investor path, would you delineate somewhat between, like, working at, like, a big platform versus, like, something more like what you're doing or angels or things like that? Or do you think it all ends up looking kind of like the same button?

Elad Gil 13:34 It depends on... I- if the goal is to be an investor, then I think those things mesh, or they, they merge more, which I think is different from, "Hey, I'll do it for a little bit to learn about XYZ."

Jack Altman 13:41 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 13:42 Um, I think for most people, the path is you join something, right? Um, if everybody was a founder, we'd have no productivity in society.

Jack Altman 13:48 That's true.

Elad Gil 13:48 And [chuckles] so you need, you need more joiners than, um, initiators. And, um, for the people who join something or who join a startup young, I think there's, um, four or five characteristics you should care about. One is, where is it? And I think you should go to a cluster, right? And so for AI, the cluster is the Bay Area. I think 80 or 90% of all AI market cap is in the Bay Area, uh, which is a very huge skew. Fintech is largely New York. Um, obviously, if you're going into, um, acting or directing, you'd go to Hollywood, right? It's, it's kind of funny, tech is the only industry where people say, "Oh, you could do it from anywhere, and therefore, you don't have to go to Silicon Valley." But if somebody came to you and said, "I really wanna be an actor, I'm gonna move to Austin,"

Jack Altman 14:25 Yeah

Elad Gil 14:26 ... you'd be like, "What are you talking about?"

Jack Altman 14:27 Yeah, I think the same.

Elad Gil 14:28 And so, um-

Jack Altman 14:29 I'm gonna be a politician in Omaha.

Elad Gil 14:30 Yeah, exactly.

Jack Altman 14:31 What do you think?

Elad Gil 14:31 Yeah, exactly. It's great.

Jack Altman 14:32 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 14:32 It's a great idea-

Jack Altman 14:33 Thank you

Elad Gil 14:33 ... if you wanna, if you wanna do local politics.

Jack Altman 14:34 Yeah.

Elad Gil 14:34 Um, and so it's the same thing, right? So whatever you wanna do, go to the cluster. That's where you're gonna have density of other young, hungry people who wanna do the same thing in the same industry. That's where you make your initial connections, you build your cohort, um, you get exposed to the best in the world at the thing, you learn the craft, et cetera. Um, you do the craft. Um, so one is, where are you? Two is, what market are you in? And going into a bad market can be devastating for your career unless you leave it quickly.

Jack Altman 14:59 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 14:59 An example of that is I moved out to Silicon Valley as the dot-com wave was collapsing, and I joined a telecom equipment company, and that used to be a very hot sector. And, um, I, I eventually left the company. I got laid off in the third round of layoffs as it was sort of collapsing. Everybody who stayed in telecom equipment had a terrible career that I knew from that era. Everybody who went into other industries did well. And so really, that choice of market was a huge pivot point. And so the, the second question after geographic location is, what market are you in? It's almost like market location. Third is, which company do you join in the market? Is it a marquee company or not? Is it a brand? What sort of network is there, et cetera. And if I was optimizing for company choice, I would look for something that's growing rapidly based on some clear metric. The metric could be revenue, it could be users. It needs to be something solid with high retention, whatever it is, because growth allows you to have a great career. If a company goes from 50 to 500 people, that's way better than joining a company that goes from 50 to 60. 'Cause when it goes from 50 to 500, uh, as employee 50, you know everybody, you're trusted by everybody. As the company grows, you get more and more opportunities, and-

Jack Altman 16:01 Just to stick there-

Elad Gil 16:02 Yeah

Jack Altman 16:02 ... 'cause I think that's, like, one of the-

Elad Gil 16:03 Yeah

Jack Altman 16:03 ... most important things. Like, I feel like that's the kind of thing that most people intuitively know or have heard, but then they get tricked out of it somehow anyway.

Elad Gil 16:10 Yeah.

Jack Altman 16:11 Like, how do people get tricked on that, and, like, how do you avoid it? It seems like if you just had to pick one thing, it would just be pick that.

Elad Gil 16:17 Yeah, pick the thing that's growing in a good market.

Jack Altman 16:18 But people don't pick that all the time. So like, why-

Elad Gil 16:20 Yeah. Why do you think that is?

Jack Altman 16:21 Well, I think sometimes they are getting attracted to a title or a scope or something like that that seems more appealing. Like, I think people have a hard time going from, "I used to be a director, and now you're making me a manager, when this other place is gonna make me a VP." I think that's hard. I think, like, comp is hard for people.

Elad Gil 16:36 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jack Altman 16:37 Um, sometimes for good reason. I think sometimes people are just like: I really like my manager that I'd have at this company, even though it's not growing fast.

Elad Gil 16:44 Yeah.

Jack Altman 16:44 And I think maybe what's being missed there is you're like... You know, at the company where you didn't like your manager as much, you- probably your manager is gonna change four times anyway, and you might like one of those people.

Elad Gil 16:52 Yeah, I think that's all true. I think, um, you know, after the choice of a high-growth company, I'd make sure that it's in a very strong network.

Jack Altman 16:59 Mm.

Elad Gil 16:59 Because Silicon Valley, or honestly, every industry, moves in cliques, and people work together over and over again if they like each other. And if you're at a successful network, it branches out, and then you have all these opportunities. It's kind of like the PayPal mafia. Early Google ended up being the COOs at all these different companies, as well as founders of companies like Instagram and Pinterest and other companies.

Jack Altman 17:15 How do you pick that? Like, how do you find where there's gonna be a good network?

Elad Gil 17:18 You can just look at the characteristics of the people and kind of... Y- I think you get a vibe.

Jack Altman 17:23 Yeah.

Elad Gil 17:23 I think, um, people often ask me, "What's the biggest determinant of company culture?" And I say, "Winning."

Jack Altman 17:27 Hmm.

Elad Gil 17:28 You know, [chuckles] and I feel like some places have a... It's like you're- you can kind of tell the, the high-performance teams. How quick are they following up on things? Like, how aggressive are they? How well do they ship? Like, there's those external cues, and then there's the internal cues of just like: um, what is the degree of stuff these people have done at, you know, in their prior careers or at young ages or however you wanna-

Jack Altman 17:49 I think this is so important 'cause you can't-... you can't, like, remake these networks later.

Elad Gil 17:54 Mm-hmm.

Jack Altman 17:54 The net- like, the people that you grow up with are the genuine relationship that exists later on-

Elad Gil 17:59 Mm-hmm

Jack Altman 17:59 ... and I feel like there's no replacement for that.

Elad Gil 18:01 Yeah, but I think there's, like, 10, 15 years to do that. You know what I mean?

Jack Altman 18:03 Yeah.

Elad Gil 18:03 Like, I think it's, um... I, I totally agree with that. I think you have a few shots, but you don't have infinite shots. You have a couple of those, and once you fall into one of those good networks, those people tend to go to all the best companies next, and so you get pulled into all the best stuff, or you angel invest in them, or whatever it may be. And so, um, the network, I think as, um, if I had to choose a high-growth company, I'd go to one with a great network, and then after that, there's comp and role, and all the stuff you mentioned that people get distracted by, and I don't think that matters. Um, I think that stuff tends to self-fulfill by joining something that works really well. And so often people get misled by, "Oh, you're getting 10 times more equity," but it's in something crappy, so who cares? Like, that thing won't work at all, and so it's worthless on a relative basis. So I think people misunderstand compensation as well, particularly in startups, or you get way more cash, but who cares? The thing's gonna not work, and then you've, you've killed that amazing network you would've had as the alternative, right?

Jack Altman 18:52 Yeah.

Elad Gil 18:52 The opportunity cost... It's almost like opportunity cost on market and network-

Jack Altman 18:55 It's like you-

Elad Gil 18:55 -is what you should be focused on.

Jack Altman 18:57 Right. It's like you accepted $20,000 to have a much worse lifelong network or something.

Elad Gil 19:01 Correct. Yeah, exactly. It's a really poor trade.

Jack Altman 19:03 Connecting this back to you a little bit and your own network, which, you know, we've joked about this, but I perceive your network as, like, incredibly strong, and I think it's very authentic, and you have these relationships with people who are unbelievably impressive, and, um, you've gotten to that in ways that look to me like natural and authentic. I wanna ask you a little bit about how you've gotten to that. Like, was it a function of just doing interesting stuff over and over? Was it about, you know, you meeting people, and then you meet their friends, and they're impressive? Like, how is it... If you had to sort of inspect it, which I know you don't love to do, but if you had to inspect your own network progression, like, how has that happened?

Elad Gil 19:44 Yeah, I mean, I think we have very different perceptions of [chuckles] how we were talking about this earlier.

Jack Altman 19:47 Yeah.

Elad Gil 19:47 Like, I think, um... I know a lot of people that I feel have a much broader, deeper set of relationships or whatever. Um, I have a couple. Um, you know, fundamentally, I've noticed that, um, gru- uh, certain groups of people almost seem to self-assemble in, in different industries over time, and it's often odd how early some of these folks meet each other. There, there's one really well-known founder, who I think is, like, one of the most successful people of his generation, and he was telling me a couple weeks ago that, um, all the people that ended up being the most successful people he knew in Silicon Valley, he all met in his first six months out here before anybody knew who he was. He was just some random guy who showed up. Uh, he'd just graduated college and suddenly had this huge network of, of other young, really great people who eventually did huge things. And so I think it's almost like like recognizes like or people self-aggregate. I'm not putting myself in this bucket. I'm just saying I've observed that you almost see the self-assembly of people over time, and a reasonably small number of people end up all knowing each other, and then a reasonably small number of people end up driving a lot of the big changes.

Jack Altman 20:48 Yes.

Elad Gil 20:48 And I think that's true in every field. I think, like, if you look in biology, you know, maybe there's a dozen biologists in each field that really matter, with the exception of some really big fields like cancer, where then you do it by subspecialty or whatever it may be. But, like, you look at certain aspects of, um, I don't know, what, stem cell biology, it's gonna be, like, 20 people-

Jack Altman 21:06 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 21:06 ... that everybody knows that matters.

Jack Altman 21:08 It's really interesting to me when, you know, I hear from you that, you know, you're like: "Oh, I, you know, I haven't done so much," or, "I don't have that network."

Elad Gil 21:16 Sure.

Jack Altman 21:16 And, um, I think to most people, including me, it's like, where you are is very aspirational, and I'm wondering, is part of the story of you that you've always... You know, you're thinking about there is always a bigger fish, and how do I keep going, and that's part of what drives it all?

Elad Gil 21:29 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Jack Altman 21:30 Like, is that a thing about you?

Elad Gil 21:31 Yeah. I think I have a high bar for myself, and I feel like, uh, I am, uh, continuously missing the bar. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Like, I'm proud of some of the things I've done, and, you know, I'm happy that I started Color, 'cause that helped save a bunch of lives, and, you know, there's, there's a bunch of things that I'm very happy I did over time. Um, but I do think that there's so much more to be done, right? And so it's a little bit of a, um, how do you maximize the impact you're having in your minimal time on the planet? You know, how do you judge yourself relative to what you think may be possible?

Jack Altman 22:02 What are some of the flavors of things that you haven't accomplished yet that you would like really hope you accomplish?

Elad Gil 22:07 Yeah, I mean, there's two or three things. Uh, to put that aside for one second, one of the things that I found really interesting is a friend of mine, um, is on one or two prominent boards, and he feels like the existence of Elon Musk has been hugely empowering

Elad Gil 22:20 for him, 'cause he can go to these really important CEOs and say, "Look at what Elon Musk is doing," and they suddenly get re-motivated. You know, [chuckles] they've been running a company for 10, 15 years. And so there are some people who've had, I think, really outsize impact, who may be one in a 100 or multi-hundred-year sort of talents, and obviously, that's really rare because it's definitionally [chuckles] once in a-

Jack Altman 22:36 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 22:37 ... in a very rare period. But, um, you know, there's a lot of things, um, left to do, and I think there's almost, like, three or four levels that people often talk about, right? If, if... I, I used to, um, spend a lot of time in India doing yoga and stuff like that, uh, which sounds very cheesy when I say it out loud, but I really [chuckles] enjoyed it when I did it. And, um, some of the discourse or discussion was, you know, throughout your life, you're moving through different rings of importance, influence, focus, whatever. So early in your life, it's about yourself and your studies and, you know, your early career, and then a little bit later in your life, it's about your family, 'cause you have kids, and you focus on that, and then it becomes about your society. And then very late in life, you go off to a cave and meditate, and you become a sadhu, and you, like, shut off the world, right? Throughout your life, you mix these different poor things, right? Between, um, you know, yourself, your work, your family, your society, and your, you know, religion or whatever-

Jack Altman 23:28 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 23:28 ... other thing you have, so maybe that's five things. What I've been thinking about a little bit more lately is... And I, I honestly have always thought about, like, what's the society-level impact I'm having? So I started off as a biologist, 'cause I thought I could maybe help with some certain diseases or help find cures or solve things for people. And then that transition to technology, how can you use technology as a lever to sort of impact the world in a positive way? Lately, I've been thinking about other things in terms of either applications of technology or, you know, one project that I've been working on a little bit, um, with some folks on my team. Um, we're, we're gonna change the name. We've been calling it Monumental, and it's basically, if you look at every society, at its apex, um, people have built large-scale public artworks or, um, architectural works to basically inspire the next generation.

Jack Altman 24:06 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 24:07 Right? And so the Eiffel Tower was built in the 18-... hundreds is an ode different steelmaking for a world fair, right? They're literally trying to show off how good they were at making steel.

Jack Altman 24:15 Yeah, we're kind of missing that right now-

Elad Gil 24:16 Um

Jack Altman 24:16 -it feels like.

Elad Gil 24:17 Yeah, we haven't built anything big in, like, a hundred years, right?

Jack Altman 24:19 It's all very utilitarian now or something.

Elad Gil 24:21 It's very sort of-- I think in general, postmodernism has been a very bad trend in every level, um, academically, societally, architecturally [chuckles] et cetera. And so we don't really do large-scale works of public beauty, and so that's one project that we're working on, which is we're, we're looking at a few different test sites. We have a, a bronze foundry in France that's actually doing our first work. Uh, it's a small-- it's only, like, two feet round-

Jack Altman 24:40 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 24:40 ... but we're just seeing sort of the quality that they produce. We're working with some marble works places. We're looking at carbon fiber, and then we're looking at test sites, and we're working with some, um, both architects as well as developers, and saying, "Are there places where we can put large-scale statues?" And it could be something like the fifteen or twenty-foot statue, like the Atlas in front of-

Jack Altman 24:56 Mm

Elad Gil 24:56 ... Rockefeller Center, or it could be a multi hundred-foot work, like, you know, the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or something like that. And so the, the aspiration is to do one or more of those giant public artworks somewhere.

Jack Altman 25:05 It's cool that you're doing it now-

Elad Gil 25:06 Yeah

Jack Altman 25:06 ... while you can also still kind of, like, inspire yourself with it, rather than, like, waiting thirty years or something and doing it.

Elad Gil 25:11 Yeah, I think also from a longevity perspective, that may be a really interesting artifact to leave behind.

Jack Altman 25:16 Yeah.

Elad Gil 25:16 I think a hundred years from now, that may be, besides my family, the thing that

Elad Gil 25:20 could sustain.

Jack Altman 25:20 Do you think that having this sort of mindset that makes it so that you're always aspiring to more... And one of the, one of the cool things about business, but one of the also things that I think makes some people feel like they can get on a treadmill, is no matter what you accomplish, unless you're Elon Musk, there's somebody who's accomplished ten times more, and then you accomplish ten times more, and there's still somebody who's accomplished ten times more, and everything like that. Do you think that that is a fundamentally healthy thing, or do you think that is something that is, like, a fundamentally, like, anxiety, sort of dissatisfaction-inducing thing? And if the answer is, like, in the middle or blended somehow, like, how have you managed your own psyche as you've kind of, like, continued aspiring to, like, a new-

Elad Gil 25:58 Yeah

Jack Altman 25:58 ... rank all the time?

Elad Gil 25:59 Um, I don't know that I've aspired a new rank. I think what I've aspired to is to do things that are useful. It almost feels like there's a set of people who truly self-sacrifice and have pretty rough lives otherwise, but they're doing large-scale works for humanity's sake.

Jack Altman 26:13 Like Elon-

Elad Gil 26:13 Yeah

Jack Altman 26:13 ... tends to be self-sacrificing quite a bit.

Elad Gil 26:15 Yeah. So I think, um, if you read a lot of biographies of people who have done very large things, many of them have had these unhappy lives.

Jack Altman 26:23 Yep.

Elad Gil 26:24 And I think part of that is that self-sacrifice. So to your point on, is it good or bad? It may be terrible for the individual in some cases, but may be fantastic for society, and maybe society doesn't move forward that much without these

Elad Gil 26:33 sorts of folks, you know?

Jack Altman 26:34 One of the things that we've talked about before is, like, that there are, like, pivot points in careers, and you go through these moments where you, like, make a new change and-

Elad Gil 26:42 Mm

Jack Altman 26:42 ... decide to do a new thing.

Elad Gil 26:43 Yeah.

Jack Altman 26:43 Like, I, you know, did one year of investment banking before.

Elad Gil 26:46 Sorry to hear that.

Jack Altman 26:47 It was terrible. I mean, it was bad on a lot of levels.

Elad Gil 26:50 [chuckles] Yeah.

Jack Altman 26:50 But I did a year of investment banking, then I worked in tech, joined a company, started a company, became an investor, angel invested throughout. But, like, you know, I could probably point to, like, three or four pivot points that have happened, like, um... And those seem important, um, like, those seem like more important than other-

Elad Gil 27:07 Sure

Jack Altman 27:07 ... moments in time. How do you, when you're talking to either people, you know, earlier in their careers or when you think about it for yourself, like, how do you navigate those? Like, is it spend longer thinking about those than you would normally do it? Would you, say, go talk to a zillion people? Is it-

Elad Gil 27:20 Uh

Jack Altman 27:20 ... just follow your gut? Is it-- Are there some frameworks?

Elad Gil 27:23 Yeah, I mean, I think there's almost two tests of pivot points. There's the things in your life that matter, and then there's the things in your career that matter, and those overlap but are different or, you know, are distinct. You know, career-wise, I think we talked about it in terms of are you in the right location? Are you in the right company, the right network? I think those are the things that actually do matter from a career perspective, and then every once in a while, you're making the right trade-off. And I think many great careers have two or three of those choices done right.

Jack Altman 27:46 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 27:46 Sometimes when I meet people, I used to do this, I don't really think of it this way anymore, but I used to almost view people... I'd meet someone and be like, "What's a Monte Carlo simulation of them?" Right? Monte Carlo simulations, you rerun things with a little bit of randomness, like, a million times, and then you end up with some average outcome. And so if you were to rerun somebody's life a million times, on average, how do they do?

Jack Altman 28:02 It's a good question.

Elad Gil 28:03 And, you know, there's gonna be probabilistically scenarios where you're a total wipe and scenarios where you do incredibly well despite yourself, and I know people like that. Probably on average, you end up doing extremely well, depending on who you are. And so those are the types of people that I think, on average, have amazing careers, right?

Jack Altman 28:18 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 28:18 They're the people who just have some mix of characteristics, and then those pivot points are decisions. They should make better decisions than average, but every once in a while, they'll get something wrong. And so sometimes you see these careers where somebody just kind of had to hit it every time, and the question is, are they exceptional? And in some cases, they are, or do they also get lucky once or twice?

Jack Altman 28:33 Yep.

Elad Gil 28:33 Right, which is often the case as well. But there's other kind of big life drivers I feel that, that are decisions that you made, and those include things like what school did you go to early on? Like, I didn't realize an Ivy League school matter, and I didn't apply to any of them, right? And-

Jack Altman 28:44 Are you in the camp of thinking still that that matters much?

Elad Gil 28:47 Yeah, hundred percent it matters.

Jack Altman 28:48 Because of this network thing and this talent?

Elad Gil 28:49 Yeah, the network and the brand-

Jack Altman 28:51 Uh-huh

Elad Gil 28:51 ... yeah, opens doors, it opens opportunities, it creates a lifelong network. Like, um, the schools have unfortunately, purposefully degraded that, right? They removed merit, they did all sorts of things that made their student bodies worse. You know, they selected for activism over goodness, all sorts of stuff, and I think we're kind of seeing a slow motion pay the price of that right now. But I do think, on average, it's still better to go to a branded, well-known school than not.

Jack Altman 29:13 If you had to guess, are we on a trend where in twenty years, going to Stanford still matters, or do you think that we're heading down to sort of the Peter Thiel forecasted thing of college as a-

Elad Gil 29:24 Yeah

Jack Altman 29:24 ... as a silly exercise?

Elad Gil 29:26 I think it depends on two things. I think, one, it depends on what the schools do to, um, reinforce quality in terms of the types of people who go there. And I think they still have very high-quality people, but they've mixed in a lot of low-quality people, um, under all sorts of assumptions about what makes sense. And then secondly, I think it comes down to the degree to which there are advanced forms of technology that could disrupt how society works, right? And those are the two things that could matter.

Jack Altman 29:47 You were speaking about, like, um-

Elad Gil 29:48 But my prediction, though, would be on average, it's still gonna be important.

Jack Altman 29:51 When we were talking just a second ago about sort of, you know, there, there are some people who navigate these pivot points in their career, and they kind of seem to get lucky a couple times, and it just-

Elad Gil 30:01 Sure

Jack Altman 30:01 ... starts going up, and that's great. There's also some examples of people who are really smart, really hardworking, and it just seems to, like, not go their way. Have you ever thought about that or, like, diagnosed what might be happening there?

Elad Gil 30:13 I find it really difficult to diagnose because I know a few very talented people who just tried a few things after another, and it just never worked.... and you don't know, is that just luck? Is it a characteristic of finding product market fit? Is it something else? You know, so, um-

Jack Altman 30:29 Right, like somebody gets a bad role in the Monte Carlo simulation.

Elad Gil 30:32 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so is it just a bad role, or is there something inherent to that person where maybe they filter information slightly differently, and they make more bad decisions? Like, there's a few people that I've worked with where it's been very hard for me to understand their thinking or their framework for the world. There's one or two people who repeatedly just make bad decisions. Another version of that would be an amazing technical person who has no commercial sensibility and can't pick it up.

Jack Altman 30:55 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 30:55 Right? And we've all worked with people like that, where for some reason they just can never think from a business perspective or from the human psychology perspective, right? Is it brain wiring? Is it something else? Like, what's the-- why are they unable to learn these things? And it probably goes the other way, right? There's probably people who could never pick up a technical subject matter. And so it could just be an inherent characteristic, it, it could be something else,

Elad Gil 31:16 I'm not sure.

Jack Altman 31:16 For people trying to specifically become great investors, 'cause we've talked a bit about companies here. For people trying to become great investors, what do you think are, like, the different potential configurations of how somebody gets great over time? Say somebody who has, like, maybe been an investor for a few years or hasn't even done it yet, but, like, what are the ways that somebody becomes great?

Elad Gil 31:36 I don't know. [chuckles] It's-

Jack Altman 31:38 It seems hard to tell. I can't tell either.

Elad Gil 31:39 I, I-- well, the problem is, I don't think there's a single right way to be a great investor. And so... And also, it depends on what stage you're investing at.

Jack Altman 31:47 Say it's early stage.

Elad Gil 31:48 I mean, early stage, you just need one thing to truly work, and you're considered a great investor, even if you do a hundred things that are bad.

Jack Altman 31:53 Yeah, so how-

Elad Gil 31:53 And so the question is, like, what is consistently good, right? Or how do you have a high hit rate? It's a little bit different. And I feel like there's all sorts of styles. Like, I think Naval is a great investor, Naval Ravikant, and his heuristic is often, um, is it an interesting technical problem? Is it somebody I'd wanna work with? Like, he has a set of criteria that are really good, but very different from mine.

Jack Altman 32:12 Mm.

Elad Gil 32:12 Mine are much more product market.

Jack Altman 32:14 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 32:14 Like, I think there's a product market fit here or potential for it, and he's done great, right? And so, um, I don't think there's a correct style. I think each person has to kind of adopt the style that works for them. I think, um, there's a really good, um, set of discussions with Jensen Huang from Nvidia, where he points out that his org structure is radically different from most CEOs, and he's like: "You should really build the org structure around the CEO, and you shouldn't be able to just plop in a new CEO in the same org," right? It should actually be tailored to that person and function around that person and their style and all the rest. And I think that's true of investors too, right? Like, uh, different investors have very different styles that they bring to bear, and I don't think there's a right one. I think it's just differential trade-offs relative to what that person's good at, what, what they're interested in, what, you know, how they work with people and founders.

Jack Altman 33:00 'Cause that seems like one of the, like, easiest places that people go wrong, is investors, I think, can often look at other people who are succeeding and try to do their play, and it's like, if you're not Jensen Huang, don't try to do what he's doing, kind of thing.

Elad Gil 33:11 Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it, it's very hard to replicate these things too, because, again, it, it may just not be a good fit. It's almost like there's different types of athletes, right? And you're like, well, the powerlifter may be really different from the sprinter, but they're both great athletes. That may be true for investing. Maybe somebody's a powerlifter, maybe somebody's a sprinter, and you just need different training and different styles and different

Elad Gil 33:28 things that you do.

Jack Altman 33:28 I have a couple questions about, um, how you personally have worked as an investor. How do you spend your time? Because you are involved in a surprisingly large number of companies that a lot of people have heard of. I assume those founders are calling you. When I was running Lattice, I called you sometimes, so there's a lot of people who call you. What does your time look like? Like, and now you've also got-

Elad Gil 33:46 Mm-hmm.

Jack Altman 33:46 You know, you got a lot of stuff going on, so, like, how do you seem to be there for everybody? Because I think somehow there's a combo where it's notable how founders say you pick up the phone, but you're involved in a lot of big projects.

Elad Gil 33:59 Yeah.

Jack Altman 33:59 So what's your time like?

Elad Gil 34:02 It's very busy. [chuckles] Um, I think, uh, you know, one thing I've been trying to sort on my side is how to get more leverage on time, and so, you know, I'm definitely gonna be, um, you know, adding in my team and, you know, adding people, uh, over the coming year. So my goal for this year is to be, be able to offload thirty to fifty percent of stuff that I'm doing that I don't think is relevant to the things I really enjoy doing.

Jack Altman 34:21 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 34:22 One of the things I really enjoy doing is working directly with founders and, like, you know, um, helping them with w- whatever sort of things they need help with. Um, and it could be trivial things, it could be important things, whatever. Uh, but also, I used to, I used to, and I'm going back to spending more and more time, um, more directly hands-on with technology or more hands-on with projects or other things, and part of that also has just been finding people on my team who can do things like that. So, for example, um, Shreyan, on my team, is working on this project called the Alexandria, where we're taking eventually a thousand of the great works of humanity that are off copyright in terms of philosophy and, um, history and other, other, um, texts, and then using AI to translate them into, um, languages that represent eighty-five to ninety percent of all the spoken languages in the world in terms of, of, I should say, population coverage. Building audiobooks for all of them so that you can stream it off of every device. Um, so the idea is basically, can you create a modern Library of Alexandria, where humanity's knowledge base is sort of unlocked?

Jack Altman 35:16 Wow!

Elad Gil 35:16 You know, and so there's stuff like that that I like doing, and I, I think there's a societal version of it, and it's just fun to play around with the technology and actually ask which APIs are actually good for certain things, or how do you think about QA across a very large text, right? Or how do you capture, capture nuances of work? So, for example, you're dealing with the Bhagavad Gita or the, the Bible or something else, and, um, you know, there's all these translations, right? There's the King James Version of the Bible-

Jack Altman 35:40 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 35:40 ... because it's the specific translation, and the nuances of words are set a certain way. And so how do you think about word nuance against dozens of languages relative to such an important set of texts, you know? So I think there's things like that that are just interesting-

Jack Altman 35:52 Yeah

Elad Gil 35:52 ... you know, questions.

Jack Altman 35:53 Totally.

Elad Gil 35:54 Um, so I'm interested-

Jack Altman 35:54 And building your own projects will lead to anything, you know?

Elad Gil 35:57 It could, or it leads to nothing, but it's just interest-

Jack Altman 35:59 Totally

Elad Gil 35:59 ... You know, it's back to, like, what are you driven by? I'm, I'm driven by, like, uh, technology, its impact, interestingness, like, things that, you know, can move the needle for the world, but also I just- I like the technical details of things.

Jack Altman 36:08 I also feel like because you've done a few things that, uh, prevented you from getting caught up in tons of minutiae, like, you mostly don't join boards, as far as I know. You don't have to navigate firm politics, obviously. So you've got a lot of things that I think are huge draws on other people's time that I suppose you've avoided.

Elad Gil 36:27 Yeah, I've tried to purposefully avoid them. I used to be on boards, and I found them, um-... reasonably painful. I mean, I'm still, uh, more recently, I've kind of, uh-

Jack Altman 36:35 Done a few, yeah.

Elad Gil 36:36 -uh, add- added to a couple boards, but they're largely silent seats, so it's a little bit of a, you know, I officially have a board seat, but I don't show up to the board meetings.

Jack Altman 36:43 Yeah. And you're not, you know, you're not in the middle of internal firm meetings and stuff like that? There's so many other things people get caught into.

Elad Gil 36:49 Yeah, yeah. And I, I, again, there's, there's a lot of that's, that's accumulated more recently, and so that's why I wanna hire people to offload it. And so I think I probably have to hire, you know, half a dozen people

Elad Gil 36:57 or something.

Jack Altman 36:57 What outside- obviously, you're interested in AI and have done a lot there. What, what outside of AI are you most interested in right now?

Elad Gil 37:04 There's interesting in terms of things that I think are useful and interesting in terms of things I'd invest in, and those aren't necessarily the same thing.

Jack Altman 37:09 Maybe what do you find just interesting to you?

Elad Gil 37:11 Yeah. Um, you know, one, one area of sort of application of technology that I think is very under-focused on... I think there's two or three. I think- so I was about to write a, a blog post on this or a post on this, where, um, there's, like, four or five areas of biology that I think can be applied, that nobody's doing anything. I'll give you, like, four or five examples, or very few people are doing something. There may be the one-off company or whatever. Um, one is, um, and there's a company called Ovum doing this. Uh, there's research out of Japan where you can take any cell type, you can differentiate it down a set of lineages, and then eventually you can make sperm or egg.

Jack Altman 37:40 Mm.

Elad Gil 37:40 Right? And so basically, anybody could reproduce with anybody. They've done this in mice. They're now translating it into people. There's-

Jack Altman 37:45 And that looks like it's possible?

Elad Gil 37:47 Yeah, yeah. Again, it's done in the lab for mice, so it should be done in... You should be able to do it in people.

Jack Altman 37:51 Wow!

Elad Gil 37:51 And it has all sorts of weird implications. Like, you meet LeBron James at a party, and you take a skin scrape, and suddenly you claim a, there's a paternity suit or something. You know, because you'd be able to differentiate the cells down the line of sperm, and then so, you know. And so there's crazy things you can start imagining, but it also means that anybody over a certain age or a certain capability, whatever it is, you can have kids, right?

Jack Altman 38:09 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 38:10 Um, that's huge to unlock societally-

Jack Altman 38:12 Huge.

Elad Gil 38:12 Right?

Jack Altman 38:13 Yeah.

Elad Gil 38:13 Why are there so few companies working on that? That'd be one example. Another example is, um-

Jack Altman 38:18 And also male-male, female-female.

Elad Gil 38:20 Could do everything, right?

Jack Altman 38:20 Wow!

Elad Gil 38:21 Yeah, it's amazing.

Jack Altman 38:22 That'd be, that'd be a really big deal.

Elad Gil 38:23 Yeah, it's a huge deal. That's why I'm like-

Jack Altman 38:25 Yeah

Elad Gil 38:25 ... why, you know-

Jack Altman 38:26 Yeah

Elad Gil 38:26 ... why aren't there more people doing this? Um-

Jack Altman 38:27 Yeah. Almost like, why are more people not talking about that? That's crazy.

Elad Gil 38:29 Yeah, yeah. And there, there's, there's a whole swath of reproductive biology that nobody's doing much in. That's one area. Another area... Again, these things may sound stupid, but I think they're huge quality of life. There's a whole set of genetic pathways that lead to tooth regrowth. So if you have a cavity, you should just be able to regrow the tooth. Lots of [chuckles] animals actually have, uh, replacement of teeth, you know, certain types of cats, sharks, like anybody who has... Th- and again, pathways have been mapped out. You should do some translation. I'm not meaning to trivialize it. It'll take time and work. Um, third is sort of cosmetic applications against longevity, so graying hair, balding, wrinkles, all- you know, again, there's a lot that's been uncovered there from a basic biology perspective. It just hasn't been applied.

Jack Altman 39:06 Like big Bryant Johnson energy going on.

Elad Gil 39:08 Oh, yeah. [chuckles]

Jack Altman 39:08 That'd be good.

Elad Gil 39:10 Well, I mean, if you think about it, Botox is a forty billion dollar market cap company, or the company that makes Botox.

Jack Altman 39:14 Yeah.

Elad Gil 39:14 And in that case, you're literally injecting a bacterial toxin into your face to paralyze nerves.

Jack Altman 39:19 Is that bad?

Elad Gil 39:20 It sounds good to me.

Jack Altman 39:21 It sounds okay.

Elad Gil 39:21 It sounds fantastic.

Jack Altman 39:22 When you say it that way.

Elad Gil 39:23 Yeah, when you say it that way, I want more.

Jack Altman 39:24 Yeah.

Elad Gil 39:25 Why aren't there more toxins I'm injecting?

Jack Altman 39:26 Yeah.

Elad Gil 39:26 [chuckles] Um, and so, uh, why don't I use more paralytics?

Jack Altman 39:29 I don't know.

Elad Gil 39:30 And so, um-

Jack Altman 39:30 Doesn't it also make your armpits not sweat or something?

Elad Gil 39:32 Yeah, that's why I use it.

Jack Altman 39:33 Yeah.

Elad Gil 39:33 That's mainly what I use it for.

Jack Altman 39:34 Yeah, that's...

Elad Gil 39:34 Yeah. Otherwise, I'd be sweating like crazy right now.

Jack Altman 39:35 For sure. Yeah.

Elad Gil 39:36 So, um, there's just all these really interesting areas of biotech where nobody's doing anything. And if you look at biotech, it has all sorts of structural issues in terms of why it's set up certain ways, and, you know, uh, there aren't really f- uh, that many founders. It's often these things that are incubated by companies, and they're all spun out, spun out to be bought by pharma. You know, it's a very-

Jack Altman 39:53 Yeah, it's been hard for-

Elad Gil 39:54 ... specific industry structure

Jack Altman 39:54 ... it's been hard for, like, Silicon Valley venture to fund biotech. Obviously, it's very-

Elad Gil 39:59 Sure

Jack Altman 39:59 ... profitable and goes well a lot of times. It's just been a hard thing for-

Elad Gil 40:02 It's a very different structure, and the outcomes are... Like, everything is different about it. But the key thing is, like, there's, like, half a dozen things I can think of that are societally really impactful or useful that aren't going into curing cancer, which is really important, right? I used to work on cancer as a biologist-

Jack Altman 40:13 Mm-hmm

Elad Gil 40:14 ... uh, for years, right?

Jack Altman 40:15 Will AI matter to some extent in-

Elad Gil 40:17 I don't know

Jack Altman 40:17 ... accelerating this, or is it-

Elad Gil 40:18 Yeah, I'm not sure

Jack Altman 40:18 ... not clear that it will apply?

Elad Gil 40:20 It's unclear to me, yeah.

Jack Altman 40:21 Anything outside of biology that, like, speaks to you right now or, like, gets you similarly excited?

Elad Gil 40:25 I mean, there's a ton in AI, obviously. Um, I've long been involved with, um, you know, and all from a defense perspective, and there's interesting things happening in defense. Um, I mean, there's a lot of areas that I think are interesting. I guess there's sort of this two-by-two matrix of interesting versus focused on.

Jack Altman 40:40 Mm-hmm. And you can't focus on everything.

Elad Gil 40:42 Well, I mean, it's not just you can't focus on everything. It's kind of like, what are the things that nobody's thinking about that they should be thinking about?

Jack Altman 40:48 Mm.

Elad Gil 40:48 Certain aspects of energy are like that. Um, certain aspects of biotech are definitely like that. Like, so it's, it's more like where are the gaps in the world versus, "Hey, everybody's funding

Elad Gil 40:58 AI."

Jack Altman 40:58 Do you think about that question at all from, like, a market perspective? Meaning, like, when you think about what stages of the startup ecosystem are over and underappreciated, it's not just about what companies, but also just, like, what stages and where's the capital going.

Elad Gil 41:12 I mean, I've gotten some of those things very right and some of those things very wrong.

Jack Altman 41:15 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 41:15 Um, so, like, I did a bunch of stuff in crypto in 2017, 2016, 'cause it was so clear that it was important. Um, I was really-

Jack Altman 41:23 You basically just believed crypto, then things were good.

Elad Gil 41:26 Yeah, I mean, you just-

Jack Altman 41:26 You got the theme right, you're right.

Elad Gil 41:28 Yeah, yeah. And there's some areas like that where that isn't true. A friend of mine actually is a very prominent crypto angel, and he invested in, I don't, I don't remember how many, 200 crypto companies.

Jack Altman 41:35 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 41:36 And he said his biggest takeaway when you look back at his portfolio of crypto investments, he did amazing on them, right? Um, I don't know what he made, 20X or whatever his money. He said if he'd actually indexed further, he would have done better.

Jack Altman 41:46 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 41:46 'Cause he missed Solana, and he missed one or two things that... He said, "As long as I took the meeting, if I'd funded it, I would have, like, done a 40X instead of a 20X or whatever."

Jack Altman 41:53 I feel like getting the theme right is actually probably worth more than people even talk about. Like, you were investing in AI slightly ahead of everybody else, I feel like. And just if you were just doing a ton of AI investments in, like, let's say, 2022 and 2023, probably got something, feels like.

Elad Gil 42:08 Yeah, no, it ended up quite good. I mean, I led the first round for Perplexity. I was in the first round of Harvey. I was, um, you know, early to a, to a, to a bunch of character. I was amongst the first money in, um-

Jack Altman 42:20 Which is not to say it couldn't still be good now, obviously. It's just that now that everybody thinks it's good, it just changes the calculus a little bit.

Elad Gil 42:25 A little bit. I mean, even then, um, you know, my big lesson from technology trends, especially these things that'll last for ten, twenty years, is-... people always say these things are over or overhyped, or, and it's still early.

Jack Altman 42:35 It's early for a longer time than you would think.

Elad Gil 42:37 It's always that way.

Jack Altman 42:37 Yeah.

Elad Gil 42:38 Social networking was that way.

Jack Altman 42:39 Basically, all of Silicon Valley can think something, and we're all still early together.

Elad Gil 42:43 And I'll still be right. Yeah.

Jack Altman 42:44 Yeah.

Elad Gil 42:44 And then the question is, are you choosing the right things? Because in any technology wave, 95% of things go under or they're crappy, and most of the market cap is usually, like, two or three things or five things or whatever, and that's gonna be true here. And so you could also be right and early, and then just, uh, even if you're indexing, just index the wrong things. A friend of mine did that in social gaming. He had a fund in 2008 or '09 or '10, and he invested in 30 social gaming companies, and he missed Zynga, and he missed Playdom, and his fund basically went to zero. But he invested in two other companies outside of gaming that actually really worked, and so he did really well. But he indexed the right theme and just missed the right companies, and so that can happen, too.

Jack Altman 43:20 Because you have so much range in terms of, like, what stage you'll do... I mean, like, the other person who comes to mind is Josh Kushner, who will, you know, both incubate things and also do a pre-IPO round, which you also are, you know, capable of doing both. And does that make it so that you are thinking often also about, you know-

Elad Gil 43:37 About Josh?

Jack Altman 43:37 About Josh. [chuckles] Just like all the-

Elad Gil 43:39 Yeah.

Jack Altman 43:39 Yeah.

Elad Gil 43:39 Josh is great.

Jack Altman 43:39 Josh is great.

Elad Gil 43:40 He's fantastic.

Jack Altman 43:40 Doing it earl- going early versus going late, and what types-

Elad Gil 43:43 Yeah.

Jack Altman 43:43 -of moment we're in. Like, you know, there was a moment where-

Elad Gil 43:46 Yeah

Jack Altman 43:46 ... a couple, maybe it was 18 months ago or something, there was a moment when, like, the growth stage was kind of clogged up, and just, like, nobody wanted to move on series B or C, and, like, there was probably some interesting stuff that was okay.

Elad Gil 43:56 Yeah.

Jack Altman 43:57 And-

Elad Gil 43:57 I, I kind of view it as just like: What's good? So, uh, three years ago, the good stuff was super early-stage gen AI.

Jack Altman 44:03 Mm-hmm.

Elad Gil 44:03 And that's, that's where almost all my time went, and it wasn't that some calculated thing. It's just I kept seeing great things. And then, um, you know, a year, year and change ago, it was all these amazing compounding companies that suddenly went out to fundraise again. It was Rippling and Figma and Anduril and a few other things all went out-

Jack Altman 44:22 And just things that looked like they could go forever.

Elad Gil 44:24 They could go forever. And then six months ago, it felt to me like it was a lot of those kind of mid-stage AI companies. So that's when I, uh, me and my team did the bridge round and Decagon and, you know, Harvey again, and a few other companies where it's just kind of like, "Okay, these are the things that are really working."

Jack Altman 44:38 So is the way that you make these sort of, like, thematic observations, just a function of good stuff that comes by, or are you, are you actively thinking about it, or are you just observing what's around you, and that's how it goes?

Elad Gil 44:49 It, it's both. I think sometimes it's, "Hey, gen AI is gonna be really important. GPT-3 came out. It's dramatically better than two." You extrapolate the curve. Of course, you do it. Or crypto, "Hey, it's this real sea change," and, um, how you think about two or three really big use cases. Uh, and then there's other times where you think there's a theme, and there isn't. You know, that happened to a lot of people with edtech or digital health, which I did, right? Um, and then sometimes it's just organic, like a bunch of stuff shows up, and I think most of the time it's organic, right? Because to some extent, if you're only thematic, there's enormous hubris in terms of assuming that you know better than all the founders out there, right? There's thousands and thousands of founders excavating away, right? Looking for [chuckles] that-

Jack Altman 45:27 There's, like, a genius hive mind happening.

Elad Gil 45:29 Yeah, a genius hive mind, and they're covering a huge surface area. Are you gonna be better than thousands of people in terms of deciding what's good?

Jack Altman 45:36 Right.

Elad Gil 45:36 Most of the time, probably not, right? Every once in a while, you might get lucky. Um-

Jack Altman 45:39 I mean, I guess the steelman of the counter is you gotta just get good at something, and so it's easier to get good at something narrow than to do everything.

Elad Gil 45:46 Yeah, it depends on how you define something.

Jack Altman 45:47 Yeah, exactly.

Elad Gil 45:48 Yeah.

Jack Altman 45:48 Yeah, and I guess the counter back would be like, do you wanna be pretty good and on the right theme, or do you wanna be incredibly good at the thing that's, you know, not as good-

Elad Gil 45:55 It doesn't matter.

Jack Altman 45:56 Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Elad Gil 45:57 So yeah, I don't- I think, um, you cannot be flexible in terms of how you think about the world as an investor, right? As a founder, you definitionally have to choose one thing to go deep on, and so that's harder in all sorts of ways. And I think maybe what happened is, ten years ago, the best advice that you could have gotten was: Keep going no matter what. You know, there's a small number of themes and, um, just dig away, and it's hard to raise money, and et cetera, et cetera. It wasn't that hard to raise money, but still in a relative basis. Probably the best thing to say these days is, you know, "Maybe you should give up. This thing isn't working." There's so much low-hanging fruit in AI, for example, and I think early in a market, you wanna focus on the low-hanging fruit. And if you have these really complex, hard things you're doing, you're doing the wrong thing. Those should come way later in the life of a market. Right now, all the easy shit's available. Just go do an easy thing.

Jack Altman 46:40 Totally. Well, and some of the easy things are important and clear, like, you know, like customer support, like Decagon.

Elad Gil 46:45 Yeah.

Jack Altman 46:45 You know, it's like a lot of these things are just... they're, they're good, and they just haven't been done yet because there hasn't been time.

Elad Gil 46:50 Yeah, and people really overthink that. They're like: Oh, it's easy and straightforward, and so therefore, I don't wanna do it, 'cause every... And then nobody does it.

Jack Altman 46:56 Right. And it's actually just, like, a huge blessing to be able to platform shift-

Elad Gil 46:58 Yeah

Jack Altman 46:58 ... where the easy-low hanging fruit hasn't been taken.

Elad Gil 46:59 Yeah, it's amazing.

Jack Altman 47:00 Yeah.

Elad Gil 47:00 Go

Elad Gil 47:01 do that. Yeah.

Jack Altman 47:01 Okay, last question, 'cause then I think we gotta give the room up.

Elad Gil 47:04 Yeah.

Jack Altman 47:04 Um, you got a new book coming?

Elad Gil 47:06 Yeah.

Jack Altman 47:06 What's up?

Elad Gil 47:07 Uh, [chuckles] yeah. So I'm working on another book for Stripe, uh, Stripe Press, and it's basically more of the zero to one part of the startup journey. And so it's, it's just like my High Growth Handbook book. It's very technical advice, except instead of being technical advice to really scale up a company, it's technical advice around how do you hire your first employee?

Jack Altman 47:22 Mm.

Elad Gil 47:22 Um, how do you raise money for the first time? How do you build your first product? How do you choose a market? You know, all the very early-stage stuff, so I'm very excited about it.

Jack Altman 47:29 That's good. How do you find the time to do that?

Elad Gil 47:31 It's been tough.

Jack Altman 47:31 You just don't sleep.

Elad Gil 47:33 I try not to.

Jack Altman 47:33 Try not to sleep.

Elad Gil 47:34 Yeah.

Jack Altman 47:34 That's great. All right, well, Elad, this was very fun. Thanks for coming by.

Elad Gil 47:36 Yeah, thanks for doing it.

Jack Altman 47:37 Yep. [upbeat music]