Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO @Snowflake: Deepseek is Not a Threat to OpenAI & OpenAI Beats Anthropic|E1258

I think it is terrifying to be a startup building on top of OpenAI. The line between an infrastructure provider and an application provider today is super blurry. There's basically no guarantee that OpenAI or Anthropic or Microsoft or Google are not going to go creative. You're not going to switch from ChatGPT to DeepSeek. It's a product, it's not a model. There's a big difference, Harry. There's a reason why Anthropic hasn't done as well, because it operates sort of at the model level. It's all of the additional things that go into ChatGPT that I think has staying power.

Ready to go? Sridhar, I'm so excited to have you on the show, man. It has been so long since we saw each other last as well, so thank you for doing this with me.

(laughs) Thank you, Harry. Amazing to be here, um, and, uh, 20VC is absolutely one of the iconic names, uh, in investing. Excited for this.

Dude, you're very, very kind. Listen, I spoke to Margot before the show, and she said, like, "You'd be really missing a trick with Sridhar if you went straight to AI and straight to actually, like, CEO-ship." And so she was like, "You gotta just get a little bit more personal." And so I was like, "Okay, Margot, tell me more." And she said, "Start with, as your younger self in college or in your first job, did you ever imagine yourself becoming a CEO, and why?"

(laughs) No, I did not. Certainly not when I was getting a bachelor's, certainly not when I was getting a PhD. In fact, I think when I was getting a PhD, becoming a professor, um, sounded more like the ideal. But at some point, I, you know, was not that excited about doing research, um, and, uh, that's when I switched over to software engineering. Uh, and even in software engineering, it's very much of aspire big, uh, but take little steps. Um, and yo- when you're at the right place at the right time, great things, uh, happen.

I totally agree with you in terms of being right place, right time, uh, says the man with a fondness on a podcast. Um, my, my question to you is, when you look at, bluntly, graduates coming out today and entering the workforce... I know you also have two boys-

That's right.

... who Margot told me about. What would you advise 20, 21-year-olds coming into today's workforce-

(laughs)

... who are bluntly scared in some ways, looking at AI, going, "Where is there gonna be long-term jobs? Where is there not?" What would you advise a 20, 21-year-old entering the workforce?

My kids and I used to talk a lot, they're 25 and 23, um, about what they should work on. Roughly, my advice to them was, "Find something that you're passionate about that society values." Um, I was like, "Yeah, don't pick these noble professions that we all pretend we value, but in fact we don't." I was like, "Being a teacher is really hard." Like, God bless them, but you know, um... And so hopefully by the time you have graduated, you have skills and passion in something that society values. Obviously everything is undergoing a lot of change. The best advice I have for navigating the, um, environment, um, is be open, be nimble about where change is coming, embrace change. Don't be one of those people that's like, "Yeah, the internet is never gonna be a thing." It is. AI is. And so embracing the change, seeing what is, uh, seeing what is possible, and you know, putting in the time, putting in the dedication, uh, to both excel at the job but be thinking about where things can go. Um, I think that core formula, um, of drive and malleability is the advice that I give to a 21-year-old. Honestly, it's the thing that I look for when I am trying to hire, uh, you know, take your pick, a senior exec into Snowflake.