EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 12,223 words- 0:00 – 0:50
Intro
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
That's how you learn things the best, [chuckles] I think.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
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]
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
[chuckles]
- JAJack Altman
... 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."
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, I think it's fantastic.
- JAJack Altman
I thought it was funnier than you thought it was, so-
- EGElad Gil
Thank you, Sarah
- JAJack Altman
... Hopefully, the viewers will laugh a little bit.
- EGElad Gil
We love your water.
- JAJack Altman
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
- 0:50 – 4:16
Shamelessness mindset
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
I think it's, uh... It all started when I saw the movie Limitless. [chuckles] And as-
- JAJack Altman
All right. [chuckles]
- EGElad Gil
[chuckles] Sorry. It's off to a bad start.
- JAJack Altman
No, it's good.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
And so it's, it's a little bit of that mindset, I think.
- JAJack Altman
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."
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- JAJack Altman
What are, like, other ingredients, do you think, to the mindset?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
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?
- EGElad Gil
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."
- JAJack Altman
Mm.
- EGElad Gil
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
- 4:16 – 5:55
Optimizing for market need
- EGElad Gil
well.
- JAJack Altman
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?"
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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
- 5:55 – 8:29
Cultivating optionality
- EGElad Gil
be.
- JAJack Altman
It also seems like it leaves a lot of, like, optionality available to you.
- EGElad Gil
Mm.
- JAJack Altman
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?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Do, do you, do you actively cultivate optionality in certain ways? Like-
- EGElad Gil
I do.
- JAJack Altman
-do you wanna be in a place where you're like, "If I wanna spend my time incubating or doing growth investments?"
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Like, you know, 'cause-
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yep.
- EGElad Gil
Um, it could be Peter Thiel-
- JAJack Altman
He just adds, he doesn't move away from it, I guess.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, he keeps adding. Um, Patrick from Stripe started Arc, which is a biotech institute-
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm
- EGElad Gil
... 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.
- JAJack Altman
Yep.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
I think that's a big thing, but I think also, um...
- 8:29 – 9:54
Characteristics of people with long career arcs
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
And, I, you know, it's, it's very early on, but, um, one is, most of the people seem to be reasonably polymathic.
- JAJack Altman
Hmm. Yep.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Totally. Yes.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... 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.
- JAJack Altman
There's a bunch I wanna go into
- 9:54 – 22:20
What to optimize for early in a career
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
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?
- EGElad Gil
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."
- JAJack Altman
Hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Are you saying that, just to click on it-
- EGElad Gil
Yes
- JAJack Altman
... when you're young, it's more important to have the mercenary thing than later on?
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
Yeah
- JAJack Altman
... the thing that sort of like learn then earn kind of thing you hear.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
But actually, I think when you think about all these really impressive people in their 20s, they were, they were working like crazy.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
And a lot of that was driven by like, you know-
- EGElad Gil
You just wanna make it.
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
That's how you learn things the best. [chuckles]
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... there's a service provider path, right? There's all these different things you could do in tech, for example.
- JAJack Altman
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?
- EGElad Gil
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."
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- 22:20 – 25:20
Different phases of your life
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm
- EGElad Gil
... 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-
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm
- EGElad Gil
... 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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah, we're kind of missing that right now-
- EGElad Gil
Um
- JAJack Altman
-it feels like.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, we haven't built anything big in, like, a hundred years, right?
- JAJack Altman
It's all very utilitarian now or something.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm
- EGElad Gil
... 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-
- JAJack Altman
Mm
- EGElad Gil
... 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.
- JAJack Altman
It's cool that you're doing it now-
- EGElad Gil
Yeah
- JAJack Altman
... while you can also still kind of, like, inspire yourself with it, rather than, like, waiting thirty years or something and doing it.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, I think also from a longevity perspective, that may be a really interesting artifact to leave behind.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
I think a hundred years from now, that may be, besides my family, the thing that
- 25:20 – 26:33
Aspiring to do things that are useful
- EGElad Gil
could sustain.
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
Yeah
- JAJack Altman
... rank all the time?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Like Elon-
- EGElad Gil
Yeah
- JAJack Altman
... tends to be self-sacrificing quite a bit.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yep.
- EGElad Gil
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
- 26:33 – 31:16
Pivot points in careers
- EGElad Gil
sorts of folks, you know?
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
Mm
- JAJack Altman
... decide to do a new thing.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Like, I, you know, did one year of investment banking before.
- EGElad Gil
Sorry to hear that.
- JAJack Altman
It was terrible. I mean, it was bad on a lot of levels.
- EGElad Gil
[chuckles] Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
Sure
- JAJack Altman
... 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-
- EGElad Gil
Uh
- JAJack Altman
... just follow your gut? Is it-- Are there some frameworks?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
It's a good question.
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
Yep.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Are you in the camp of thinking still that that matters much?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, hundred percent it matters.
- JAJack Altman
Because of this network thing and this talent?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, the network and the brand-
- JAJack Altman
Uh-huh
- EGElad Gil
... 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.
- JAJack Altman
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-
- 31:16 – 33:28
Becoming great investors
- EGElad Gil
I'm not sure.
- JAJack Altman
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?
- EGElad Gil
I don't know. [chuckles] It's-
- JAJack Altman
It seems hard to tell. I can't tell either.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Say it's early stage.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah, so how-
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm.
- EGElad Gil
Mine are much more product market.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
'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.
- EGElad Gil
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
- 33:28 – 36:57
Getting more leverage on time
- EGElad Gil
things that you do.
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
So what's your time like?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
Wow!
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm
- EGElad Gil
... 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-
- JAJack Altman
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... you know, questions.
- JAJack Altman
Totally.
- EGElad Gil
Um, so I'm interested-
- JAJack Altman
And building your own projects will lead to anything, you know?
- EGElad Gil
It could, or it leads to nothing, but it's just interest-
- JAJack Altman
Totally
- EGElad Gil
... 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.
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
Done a few, yeah.
- EGElad Gil
-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.
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
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
- 36:57 – 40:58
Investing outside of AI
- EGElad Gil
or something.
- JAJack Altman
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?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Maybe what do you find just interesting to you?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm.
- EGElad Gil
Right? And so basically, anybody could reproduce with anybody. They've done this in mice. They're now translating it into people. There's-
- JAJack Altman
And that looks like it's possible?
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Wow!
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
Um, that's huge to unlock societally-
- JAJack Altman
Huge.
- EGElad Gil
Right?
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
Why are there so few companies working on that? That'd be one example. Another example is, um-
- JAJack Altman
And also male-male, female-female.
- EGElad Gil
Could do everything, right?
- JAJack Altman
Wow!
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, it's amazing.
- JAJack Altman
That'd be, that'd be a really big deal.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, it's a huge deal. That's why I'm like-
- JAJack Altman
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... why, you know-
- JAJack Altman
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... why aren't there more people doing this? Um-
- JAJack Altman
Yeah. Almost like, why are more people not talking about that? That's crazy.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Like big Bryant Johnson energy going on.
- 40:58 – 47:01
Getting the theme right means more
- EGElad Gil
AI."
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
I mean, I've gotten some of those things very right and some of those things very wrong.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
You basically just believed crypto, then things were good.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, I mean, you just-
- JAJack Altman
You got the theme right, you're right.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
Mm-hmm.
- EGElad Gil
'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."
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
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-
- JAJack Altman
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.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
It's early for a longer time than you would think.
- EGElad Gil
It's always that way.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
Social networking was that way.
- JAJack Altman
Basically, all of Silicon Valley can think something, and we're all still early together.
- EGElad Gil
And I'll still be right. Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
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-
- EGElad Gil
About Josh?
- JAJack Altman
About Josh. [chuckles] Just like all the-
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Yeah.
- 47:01 – 47:40
Elad’s new book
- EGElad Gil
do that. Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Okay, last question, 'cause then I think we gotta give the room up.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
Um, you got a new book coming?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
What's up?
- EGElad Gil
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?
- JAJack Altman
Mm.
- EGElad Gil
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.
- JAJack Altman
That's good. How do you find the time to do that?
- EGElad Gil
It's been tough.
- JAJack Altman
You just don't sleep.
- EGElad Gil
I try not to.
- JAJack Altman
Try not to sleep.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- JAJack Altman
That's great. All right, well, Elad, this was very fun. Thanks for coming by.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah, thanks for doing it.
- JAJack Altman
Yep. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 47:40
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