Ep 047 - Bryan "BK" Kim, Partner at a16z

Speaker A: In today's AI powered day and age, the underlying technology is no longer something that differentiates you. Momentum is. In this conversation, Brian Kim, a partner at A16Z, breaks down what that really means and why it's key to his investments in ElevenLabs, Partyful, Bereal, and the controversial Cluli. We're digging into the questions that we always ask but are hard to find the answers to. How do we build momentum? How do we separate momentum from hype? And why don't we have a super app yet? Plus, Brian gets real about his career highlights and lowlights and advice he'd share for his younger self. I'm Tychee Chung, your host. This is Brian Kim on Newt Adventure. Let's go.

Speaker B: This is my very first in person podcast.

Speaker C: Brian. Oh my God, I'm, I'm honored. This is great. First in person is great, right?

Speaker B: I agree. It's fun. Speaking of podcasts, you've been on a few amazing ones recently. We're talking GDPN sorcery. Um, you're on the A16Z podcast, and so you've been interviewed by some of the best in the game. What's something that you wish those hosts had asked you, but they actually didn't like? What is it that you've wanted to talk about that maybe you haven't had the chance to on a show?

Speaker C: You know, it's, it's always a, uh, lot about how we look at venture, what we sort of think about and, you know, the theories and our thesis, of course we, we have that. And I've been sort of going on and on about this momentum as a moat thing, but I think, you know, it's always interesting to talk about origin story. My boss, Ben Horowitz has this good saying where, you know, when we meet entrepreneurs for the first time, when he meets entrepreneurs for the first time, one of the questions that he asks is like, where are you from? And I think that's interesting, right? Like, where are you from? Can be like, translated into so many things depending on who's listening to it. So I thought that was an interesting origin question. I try to ask that to my founders too, more and more so to understand motivation, understand why they do what they do, who they are, which, uh, also gives me a better chance to connect with them at a human level.

Speaker B: So, Brian, where are you from?

Speaker C: Damn, what a great question. I'm from everywhere is sort of the question. I was born in San Diego, but grew up in Korea. And so I have this weird otherness growing up of like, oh, are you from Korea or you from us and the answer is like, not really. Neither. I'm m. Just like weird. The way I talk about it. My OS isn't calibrated to like an American os, nor a Korean os, nor is it a Korean American os. It's this weird combination. I think you pick and choose like what you like almost and you construct it over time. But you know, I think when, when I really think about where you're from, you know, the critical time period where I grew up, I grew up in Korea and in a local school system. I didn't go to fancy international schools. It was just straight up, you know, getting beaten up by my teachers. Um, that's normal. It's normal. It's normal in Asia. It's normal. It's normal. I tell myself it's normal. I think what it gives gave me is a lot of resilience and adaptability. And so when I think about who are you? I'm like, well I'm someone who can adapt to almost any condition. Uh, I'm someone who's resilient. So the question where I'm like oh, like what's your fun fact about you? I'm like, well, you can drop me in the middle of desert and probably find a way, probably make friends with the local people. Just like, just figure it out. The whole thing is like, don't die, just keep going.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned that. I actually went on a six month long trip last year, Asia. I was in Japan, Vietnam. And my dream is to create a global venture capital firm. Makes money from Asian LPs and invest in American startups. And that's a little bit of uh, a work trip out there.

Speaker C: Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker B: And I'd come to realize that the, the things that Asian venture capitalists prioritize is a little different.

Speaker C: They're, they're very different.

Speaker B: And so do you think that you could do Korean venture capitals?

Speaker C: You know it's funny, there are some really big winners.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like Huang, um, like at some point took like became like $100 billion company I think. And there are a lot of really strong company like even you know, the likes of Naver, which is basically Korean's answer to Google. Kaka Talk. Yeah, 90. I think the, I think the stats is like 99% of Koreans use Kaka talk. It's some like insane penetration.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: And, and on that basis they like built everything else. So like the thing there is like, look, um, it's the often touted fact is like a 12 largest 11th largest economy in the world. And like that's, that's big. And uh, you have very, very digital connected people. So there are venture scale outcomes there. So I've been, you know, interested. I, I meet people, I've, I've um, networked there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I met, met a few folks and, and you know, it's funny, the valuation actually is at. On par really us, the multiples are. Yeah. It's honestly the thing, uh, for the companies that we back, every company, uh, that we invest in, we sort of have to assume is this a fun returner. And given our fun size, the fund returner, almost by the. Almost by definitely almost by definition needs to be global in nature.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So that's something that we always think about in founders too. Like what are your ambition level?

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. And so your specialty is in the consumer space. And what I was so fascinated about in Asia, especially in China, are these super apps.

Speaker C: These super apps, yeah.

Speaker B: And so do you have any thoughts on, I guess Cacao is kind of a super app.

Speaker C: Cacao is definitely a super app, right? Yeah, it's definitely a super app.

Speaker B: And so why don't we have that in America?

Speaker C: This is interesting. We. So I've been at a 16t for four or five years. This is like a topic that just pops up again and again and again. I'm like, super app. I'm like, we're going to be a super app. Like, I think what's interesting is like if you look at the super apps that's been built, most of the time they're predicated on messaging. And I think that's sort of one theory that we went back to, which is like messaging is such. It's too high of a frequency of a use case. Right. It's utilitarian. And you know, think about your main messaging app. I don't know which one it is. Mine's today Imessage. I don't know. I opened that, what, probably 100 times a day.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, that gives you an insane stickiness, insane, uh, frequency to build other things on top of it. It gives you almost a permission to build other things on top of it. So if you're building a product that, you know, I'm going to go in once a week, how are you going to build all these other things? You know, So I think that's important. So if we believe that, then the question becomes, all right, well can't we have that? And the truth is we could. Except if you think about again, kakao talk 99% penetration rate. What's uh, WeChat in China? Probably similar. Like 95, 99. It's some insane level of penetration. And I was at Snap before and Snapchat before, and we studied the penetration of all these messaging apps. When it tips over to 99, I think that's when you get super app potential. Well, not even potential, but like, look, like I own you.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you can start to build products

Speaker C: like I, I own the customers. Uh, one of my partners, um, Alec Drumpel, has a really funny saying where, you know, the best business to have hostages. They don't have customers, they have hostages. But if you think of a messaging app, it's almost that, like, even if you don't want to use something like, by the way, I don't want to use. I don't. I really just clunky. I don't want to use it.

Speaker B: You have to.

Speaker C: I have to like all my other like network back in Korea, they use it. So like, I get pulled back in every time and you can't say I don't want to use it. Like, it's not up to you. You're in hostage.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's the same thing with the imessage.

Speaker C: Absolutely. What are you going to do? But I think that's like, partially why it's hard, uh, in this ecosystem, us particularly to build a super app. Because even if you look at iMessage, that's not 99%. It's nowhere close. Why? Because Android. Yeah, Android is huge. They don't use imessage. They get these very, very sad, you know, other colored bubbles. Uh, which is, which is interesting. Anyways, that's a theory as to why it's been harder to think about super app.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And the answer we got instead of a one monolithic super app is what I think, um, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook or Meta have popularized, which is like constellations. Like, ah. Like it's not going to be one we one app to rule it all, but it's going to be constellation of apps that rule it all.

Speaker B: That's actually a perfect segue into talking about the different consumer products that might win in the next five, 10 years. Awesome.

Speaker C: We're in the age of AI. So this is a fun.

Speaker B: I loved ever since you. I heard it for the first time, which is at this Versi event that you guys had hosted. It said momentum is the moat. I think that is so clever. And so I was listening to your podcast with Molly and you were talking about how momentum is product velocity plus distribution. Yeah. Absolutely. And then uh, Molly had moved on to talk about something else, but that's something that I actually want to double down on.

Speaker C: Oh, fantastic.

Speaker B: And so what does that really mean?

Speaker C: I have a lot of theories. Um, and you know, that's uh, my attempt at theorizing what companies are doing really well in this era. Right. And that's, I want to sort of specify that it's meant to be a little controversial. Right. Like people like oh no it's not. You got to build all these other things. And like what about the traditional definition of mode and da da da da. I agree, Yeah, I agree. I'm just talking about this point in time in AI development and there are a couple elements. One, I think AI is bigger than Internet. So in that world we must assume that we're very, very early because let's assume that is bigger than Internet for a hot second. How many people in the world who has smartphone use Internet? 100%. 7 billion devices plus, plus and minus. They use Internet, that's 7 billion. What is OpenAI's? Um, you know, MAU w it's, I think weekly active is like sub billion, like 800 million or something. Um, um, okay, okay, that, that's interesting. And that that sort of remains still the primary consumer interface and consumer use case of AI.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: Which remains some maybe order of magnitude or some like little less, little more than that. Less uh, less than Internet. So we're really, really, really early.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: We're still really, really early. So in that eariness of the primordial soup of everything popping up and everything is magic, then how do you actually think about, you know, moat in this world and the whole thing around, like network effects, system of record, like all these things, like it's harder when it hasn't really fully been adopted. So all the things that we learned in terms of like business model and like moats and things like that, I believe we learned it during the Internet era. I believe we learned it through the mobile era and the cloud era and the SaaS era. We learned it, we learned it well. We saw what businesses work. I'm like this is great. We now understand what makes businesses work. Mhm. Well, we need to sort of dial the clock back to the very early stage of everything blowing up. I'm like, how do you find what works then? Because when you think about like the earlier times, like when Google first popped up and Facebook first popped up, you can theorize all these things. I'm like network effect, whatever. But like if you could dial the clock back it was just, oh my God, that thing's on fire. We have never seen growth like this. Oh my God, they're shipping products so fast. What is happening? So I want to go back to that era and that's why I say momentum is a moat. And I also want to make sure that it's differentiated by the thing whereby, oh like you just need to be famous and like have marketing. I'm like, that's not it. As part of it. That's really, really hard to get. That's part of it. But the other part of it is you got a ship.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And the whole thing is, look, you know this too. The underlying infrastructure layer, the model layer changes every month, every week. Like they're like, it all happens altogether at some points where I'm like, it's quieter. And then like video models, there are four different updates a week and I'm like, what is happening? So on average, my guess is that every week. So then the question, uh, for apps companies, you know, that are building on top of infrastructure, you can't build slower than them at all. It's like uh, you know, the underlying sort of uh. I don't know why I always think of these icebergs moving around and then like it's moving around in like a weekly basis and you know, whoever's slow, slower than week, like product per week they try to jump to the next iceberg or whatever ice plate and it already moved. M. You're going to fall in nig. Ah me. You know.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So the way I think about it is like you got to move faster than those plates moving around.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So that's why I think look like we're so early. AI is bigger than Internet. Underlying model layer moves too fast. And therefore I believe momentum is a.

Speaker B: You mentioned the two key things is for the company to feel like it's on fire. Not in a good way. Yeah, like the world is putting it on fire.

Speaker C: Because they like not the meme. Not the fog. Meme was fire. Yeah. This is fine meme. Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's that combined with shipping velocity.

Speaker C: Yep, absolutely.

Speaker B: And so when you're talking to a founder looking at a company,

Speaker A: how do

Speaker B: you define a high quality fire? That's something that I've not understood. So you mentioned. It's, it's beyond uh, the likes and the comments and the following. What defines a flame that can last?

Speaker C: It's, it's, it's funny. You, you gotta meet the founders. Like that's important. Like we're doing this in person. In person's. Great. I always find great joy in making sure you meet the founders in person. I have many examples where when I led 11 labs, I flew to meet Matty in person to get things scribbled on, on a piece of paper. And from there you get the type of person he is. Roy, the same thing. I, I emailed him and Roy Lia Cluley he's like nah bro, I don't want to meet you. And you know, I followed up and said I'm around your office, can I come by? And that's sort of how it started. Same thing with Function Else and Slingshot. We like lock them in literally in our partner's house and then we're like, we gotta get to a deal now. You know, like it's all in person. So it's. You get a little bit of sense of how the founder operates, what's important for them. You ask questions like where are you from? And things like that. So that, that's important to understand a motivation level. But the two other things that sort of show modiness, if you'll momentum is one. Do they know how to get distribution in consumer? AI side we have these funny things saying that you can't theorize, you can only observe.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So you can have all these like amazing theories of like, oh, this is what's going to happen in consumer. Like the truth is that you can't guess. It's so random. What you need to be doing is obsessively observing. And so when you say like how do you see it? Well, the world sees it, the customer sees it first to say oh like it doesn't have to be a very large number of people. I just say it needs to be some like statsig.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: Group of people. Statistically significant group of people. And that's like maybe a thousand people, doesn't matter. And then you start seeing how to use it and how that sort of get how the adoption works and how the engagement works. I'm like well something very, very special is happening here. That's one way to see it. The second way to really think about it is uh, we, we try to do this which is interesting. We try to go into the products and look at the history of like, you know, app store updates or websites, whatever. And like try to see how often they push out products.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And sometimes it's on Twitter like oh, like we're announcing X whatever. And then like a week later we're also doing this. A week later we made patches on this and like, and you can see the record of speed. And that's something that I personally take seriously. I won't say all of us take. All of us are obsessed with that. It's like sort of what I do where I try to understand, well, how fast are you shipping? So those are some of the ways that I try to tease out. Like, is this thing. Is this company and product, does it have the momentum? And if it does look like, is it always guaranteed that it'll continue? No, but I rather believe in that continuing than like not having momentum and be like, well, you know, one day it'll happen. I'm like, well, that, that sounds like a riskier thing to me.

Speaker B: And so when consumer founders come to you and they're like, I want to build momentum, we. They have a great product, maybe they have fantastic retention, which is a more classic metric that.

Speaker C: Yeah, I. Look, I. There's no, no one, no, no other people that like more obsessed with retention than me. And this is like a kind of a one on 80 for me. Yeah, I, I was the one who was most obsessed with retention. I put out all the metrics. I'm like, this is what you need. And yeah, now I'm like, actually, uh, momentum.

Speaker B: So, and so when a founder asks you like, how do we manufacture momentum? What are some first steps? Is it that high quality promo video that we've been seeing.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Series, uh, and cluly. Or is it a tagline cheat on everything? Is it. What are some first steps to actually building momentum? If you don't have the pre. The story like Roy has about getting kicked out of Columbia.

Speaker C: The word that you use, manufacturing momentum. Um, I have a problem with because I don't think as manufactured. You're not like, you're not saying, like, I'm gonna make momentum, I'm gonna do X, Y, Z. And like, you know, it's not manufactured. A lot of times it's a result. Momentum is more of a result that we observe than like, you know, you try to manufacture and sometimes you can. Um, but I think it manifests itself in certain ways where one, the product needs to be good. Product needs to be very good. Note that I didn't say product needs to be perfect. Note that I didn't say product needs to be amazing. Even product need to be very good and very innovative, thoughtful, different. So I'll give you two examples for that. Clearly a, uh, translucent overlay on a website that's. That's not that hard to do. Snapchat disappearing photos. You think that's hard to do? That's not the point. Be real. It stitches two, back and forth, front. That's been done before too, by the way. Front, back picture. I think that's not hard. It's different and it's unique in that point in time. But that must be there. When lovable came up prompt to app, was that the only place you can do it? No, you can do it in, you know, Bolt New could have done a replit. Yeah, it's not the only place. Product needs to be. Great, good, great. What? But it doesn't need to be. Oh, holy shit. I've never encountered something like this. Like, that's not the prerequisite. Actually. The second thing that I think it happens is very oftentimes you can't tell what users will like. We can theorize. We can absolutely theorize. We theorize all day long, but at the end of the day, you have to have the humility in this world and B2C side of things where I just don't know how people use it. And so you have to launch first and you have to get into people's hand. Once you get into people's hand, you move very quickly to continue add different elements. So I think that's like what I think of momentum. And the third is, look, the funny thing is if a tree fell in the middle of the, you know, forest and you didn't hear it, that it actually fall. That that matters.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Speaker C: Have a great product. Nobody knows. Okay. That doesn't exist, you know.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So then, um, the best founders that I know marry this sort of, let's launch, let's get in. They have great product. They got into people's hand hands and say, like, okay, now, now what? I got to make sure people know about this. So let's actually track back one of the examples of Cluli m. They launched Interrecoder. Very, very viral. Best use case. Well, you know, she don't. Like, okay, like, okay, that was ahead of his time because I think Meta just came up with an announcement that they allow all these things. The future that he was talking about was a few weeks early. Okay. Yeah, it wasn't even like crazy in the future. It was like a few weeks early. Yeah. And. And people just got all up in arms with like, pitchforks. But, you know, that's. Yeah, that's what, that's what, you know, even seeing the future few weeks in advance, that's what it does to people. So anyways, that, uh, that's. That was an existing product that did well that the founder saw oh, people like this thing. I wonder what else I can do with that. And then built cluly on top of sort of with the, uh, interview coder and like, oh, okay, this is, this is working. This is great. All right, let's add distribution to it. Like, how do I do it? You know what? I'm gonna spend a lot of money doing this, like, crazy high def, uh, video, which, again, if you think about it, he's probably shown the way to a lot of founders. See, these are all really unique.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, I'll take another example, uh, at ElevenLabs, like going back two and a half, three years ago when that launched, it was very unique. Um, it was a way to, like, you know, copy your voice. I can actually get your voice and copy it. And there were competitors. And so when we were talking to 11 labs, we were like, oh, like, this is interesting. But the instant voice clone, uh, product that they had, what we realized that it was 10x cheaper and about not even 10x 100x faster. To develop it, the other companies you need to send in your voice sample, wait three, four days, you get it back, you pay $100 or $200, and then you got it. It's a magical product. Like, you have your voice clone. That's incredible. But 11 was doing it like 10x cheaper price, and they did it in like, few minutes. That is a way superior product. And when we met the founder, it was very clear that Peter and Matty were very determined folks that were building for the future of audio AI and they were shipping very, very quickly. Yeah. And you could see that in revenue, you can see that in product and all that came together. And frankly, they're based in uk, so, you know, instead of thinking, oh, like, we must find a Silicon Valley like nature, like, no, like the thing's working, the people have spoken to some extent. And it is our job to work with the best founders in the world. And it is my job to show up wherever they are. Could be Hawaii, which has happened. It could be, uh, it could be uk, which has happened. It could be France, which has happened. It doesn't matter where. You know, momentum as a mode actually translate into our job too, in my mind. M. Like, I try to be first.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: First to speed, first to conviction, first to meeting them, first to xyz. Am I always that? No, but I try. And so I think that cycle matters.

Speaker B: I love that. I'm having such a great time. Okay, so what I think you touched upon, which is super important and very topical in the vc World is the difference between momentum and hype. Right? The difference between momentum and noise.

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B: And so that got me thinking you like to invest at this stage called you call attraction Seed. Arguably Series A. Yep. Um, but let's say you know like along the stack of pre seed, seed traction seed, Series A and growth. Like does momentum look very different at all of these stages?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think the definition looks different. Right. You always have to look at you know, some of the comps in the space or what have you and like what, like what stands out. Right. Um, but I also think it's important to know I guess your zone of competence.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Like I, I've sort of figured out, figured that out.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: The hard way. Where like what is m. What is my zone of confidence? You know I mean that in like operating world too like because um, I used to be a snap. I joined fairly early as one of the first like hundred ish employees and then helped grew that company of 4000 people. 2 billion from zero revenue. Like that's that. That was a space that I was in and but a hundred people, that's not small. Right. Um, and then I went to an earlier stage startup to be a C suite like CFO of, of a 20 person company and eventually grew that to 150 whatever. But I realized that that is not my zone of comp. It's. It's just when we're trying to figure out PMF like banging the head against the wall whiz of founders that's like so much respect. Very, very inspired by that. But I'm not that good at that. Like I just know now the same lesson carried over to invest look like do I want to find the best founders at the infancy stage. Like I have an idea. I'm like you, you're special.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I'm gonna give you some amazing like small like $@m some small you know, post money and gonna ride the rave. I m wish I can do that but that's just not my zone of competence. Like my zone of competence. Well like I still like numbers. I unfortunately have a decade of banking experience. I used to be a cfo. Like I can't change the past. Right. Like I like numbers.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: I don't need a lot of numbers. I just need a static number that's not that high. It really isn't that high. So that's where I have decided that my zone of competence is when the statsic number starts to show up. I'm like ah, like what's that? And most People who like, number, they need to have a lot of numbers. I'm like, well, like, show me the piano. Show me, like, quarterly, monthly, whatever. Like, I don't need that. Because when I ran gross at Snap, I had to, like, deconstruct large numbers all the way back to small numbers to see, like, oh, like, what is the syncling thing? And that's what I understood to like, oh, like, I just need to think to understand if it has a potential to be something great. And so that's my zone of confidence, which is why I focus on what I call traction seeds or, or. Or, uh, A's. And like, these days, it's so that difference is so small where, again, speed matters. Speed. Speed and conviction matter. And like, uh, ah. And then you just got to sort of decide, like, is this, Is this what you like.

Speaker B: We started this conversation talking about origin stories.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And we kind of went back to it with that last prompt, which was talking about your time at Bungalow, some time in banking.

Speaker C: Yeah. A lot of PTSD there. When you're like, oh, like, what are you made of? I'm like, oh, worked at a bank for 10 years straight up from.

Speaker B: But you were also one of the early employees of Snap, and now you're investing in the best people in the world.

Speaker C: I. I am very lucky to work with a founder that I work with.

Speaker B: I want to stay along this line of origin stories.

Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker B: And talk about highlights and lowlights in your storied career thus far. You've done such amazing things in the startup world and beyond. When I say the word highlights, what's the first thing that pops into your mind?

Speaker C: Oh, my God. You know, Figma went public last, like, last week. I. I tweeted this. And it's not a hyper, hyperbole. Like, I just talking about it now, like, I'm tearing up that video clip of, uh, New York, New York Stock Exchange, and everyone chanting, like, figma. Yeah, I. I know what that feels like. Like, I'm genuinely tearing up. Like, it's so special. It's so all the people who are there, who worked so hard through failed acquisition, through assault of AI, through long product development cycles early on, that's not easy. Um, the FIGMA folks there must be incredibly tight. Yeah, they must be incredibly tight. I. I have zero doubt. You're zero that they're incredibly tight. And the highlight to me was similarly at Snap, when, look, Snap was not a normal journey. Right. Like, Facebook tried to copy it, like, so many times, eventually succeeding. And, uh, you Know, we went public and you know, that was a, that was a hard time. You know, that was a really fun time, but like a lot of pressure. Course.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I remember, I remember very specifically there was a time where Gross wasn't doing all that great. And I ran Gross and I joked that like, I didn't ring grown Gross. I ran defense. Uh, I, I, I ran the dark magic of defense. And uh, and, but that makes you understand Gross at a more fundamental level because, like, you need to understand why, like how to keep it alive.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So anyways, like, it was not the most fun times. We were having like weekly all hands. We're like, we're gonna get back. It's gonna be good. All the engineers are asking like, what the hell is happening?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: None of us left. None of the, none of the great employees, none of the, none of the friends that I had the joy, uh, of working with. We all were angry and you know, say what you will. Like, everyone's like, oh, like a stupid product. This is texting up, disappearing messages. Like, I'm sorry. I love the product. I think it means something very special. I think it means something very unique to emulate real life conversation and digital mobile element. That meant something to me. So the fact that all of us banded together in the time, like in difficulties and said, nah, nah, we're pissed, we're pissed. We deserve to exist, we deserve to do well. We deserve to continue to serve the, you know, people that we serve.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And we just. I don't think I ever worked harder in my life and that, that is, I don't think you can that. I think that's what made me tear up, um, looking at like figma thing because, like, it's just all blood, blood, sweat and tears. Like, I know that there's no, there's no bigger joy than that. So that, that's, that's uh, what I would say operating highlight. Look, the, the investing highlights is actually more mundane. It is a weekly or monthly calls with some of my founders. Like, I genuinely, it's funny there, there are times I'm like, oh, like, life's hard. It's so busy. There's so many things, so many meetings, da, da, da. And then monthly catch up with some of my companies, pop up in my, uh, in the inbox. I'm like, all right, cool. Like, you know, and by the time I'm done, I'm just like, this is it. This is why we do it. That's special, I think. And like, you know, it's funny in A way that it's not about the end result. It's the journey that you get to take with these amazing founders. And uh, I think that's the highlights which, you know, it's good because it comes in higher frequency. It comes in higher frequencies. Yeah. This is good also.

Speaker B: The more you invest, the more founders you have.

Speaker C: This is true. This is true.

Speaker B: This is true. You know, what you said really resonated with me too. My very first job, I was working at a late stage biotech company. An office of the CEO sort of position. And um, while I was there, they went public. And I remember, big day. It was the. The person that I sat next to, the one that I asked questions to all day, was in New York City ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. And the whole company was in the cafeteria.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And celebrating and eating pizza.

Speaker C: Oh, I. Right. Yeah.

Speaker B: And it was that moment where I had realized I wanted to do Venture.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: Because I want to do that for other companies and I wanted to be part of that process. We did talk about highlights on the opposite of that is low lights though. And so when I say the word low lights, is there a moment that comes to mind?

Speaker C: Oh, um, yeah. I mean there is a very distinct low light. Um, bungalow was a, um, Is a co. Um living product. You. The mission is very. Is amazing is to, you know, obviously home prices continues to go up as we all know, much, uh, more relative to like average income, gross and everything. Especially when you think about these, um, coastal cities that everyone wants to go for career opportunities. It's impos. Like New York. Find a.

Speaker B: Find a.

Speaker C: Find a studio. Yeah, exactly. San Francisco. The all these places. So the solution was, okay, we're not building as f. Like quickly enough to accommodate all the newcomers and into. Into this thing. So we must get the existing inventory and you know, co. Live with other people. It's great. Works out the rent on average is much lower and everything's good. Now layer that on with uh, plague. A couple things happen. One, um, you don't want to live with other people. That is not. That is not a thing. So the entire premise goes out the window. Two expensive coastal cities. Remember what happened in New York? Like, I still remember very, very, uh, well that I think it was a bumble ad where it was. It was on a. It was in a building during like Covid and said like we know you're a real New Yorker if you're seeing this or some such thing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Because like they're there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Ye. I'm like, yeah, that, that's what happened. So these two things made it really difficult. And I remember having to let go 50 people and whatnot.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh.

Speaker C: And I don't, don't think I slept. I think I, I was not well. I'm not going to put, uh, out all the biological things happened to me. But like, it was, it was not good. That was, that was an incredibly, incredibly difficult day. And I, I don't, yeah, I don't ever want to get there again.

Speaker B: Yeah. They say the hardest part of being an executive is firing people.

Speaker C: And imagine during COVID oh, um, my 50 people back to back to back to back to back.

Speaker B: And it's, wow.

Speaker C: A lot of the people that I hired and it was hard. Yeah, it's really, really hard.

Speaker B: Brian. I'm having such a great time.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: But I'm so sad that we're nearing our end here. Um, I ask every guest three questions to end the show. Oh. Um, and so these are a little bit tougher. So I'll give you some time to think. But Brian, are you ready?

Speaker C: Ready.

Speaker B: Okay. So this show is called New to Venture. And so in the spirit of being new to Venture, if you were to write a letter to your past self right as you were starting in this hectic, chaotic world that is startups and venture, what would you write about? Not to the general public, but to yourself. What would you Write to yourself?

Speaker C: 1 Is that very early on in venture, it was hard. I was used to managing many, many people, building teams, operating, et cetera. And all of a sudden I found myself collecting data to put it in a metric dashboard so I can one day make a, uh, smart investment. That I was spreading, uh, Excel sheets, doing models, looking at P and L. And it actually really took me back to like first few years of banking. And in my head I was like, oh, shit. I just regressed two decades in my career. And that was, that was hard. That was hard. And I think what got me through it was, and I wish I would write this so then I don't like, suffer the first few months, uh, with that, but look like you're new to this job that you, I, I am so privileged and happy to have now. You don't know shit. You don't, you don't like, um, that you're an operator, you've been an operator and like you know how to high growth companies work, but you don't know shit. And some of your colleagues, even if they're 10 years younger, 20 years younger than you, like they have done it Longer than you. So. So shut up. And that. That would be what I tell my mind to, like, shut up. Just quiet down. Shut up. Do the work.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And. And learn. You're. You're a beginner. You don't know. You don't know anything.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So be humble. Just do everything. Soak it up and know that you don't know anything.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I. I think, uh, I would try to write that such that I don't stress myself too much of, like, oh, my God. Like, I don't know any. Like, I should be doing more xyz. I'm like, no, bro. Like, just.

Speaker B: Yeah. Just learn. Yeah.

Speaker C: And I'm still very much learning. I'm, like, five years into it, and my colleagues are some of the best investors in the world. And whenever I hear it, I'm like, this is. This is gold. Yeah, that's really good. The second. Um, which actually kind of goes against what I just said. My colleagues are some of the smartest people in the world.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: The thing that I would also write to me is, like, if you think you know something, have conviction, and don't. Asian. Let's go back to being Asian. Uh, I. You know, we grow up to be more deferential to authorities, and that's a product of being beaten by your teachers. Um, but you grow to be more deferential. And, uh, I've sort of learned that, look, if you think you know something and if you think you've done the work, and if you think you met the founder, you. You think you know in your heart of heart that they're special. Even if all your amazing, you know, partners are like, this is. This is not it. Saying it. Have conviction. That is why you are at the table. Remember the White Lotus, the last season? I'm just happy to be at the table. I don't know if you watched my last, but, like, that's. That's the thing. Like, uh, the.

Speaker B: The. It's.

Speaker C: It's funny. I actually took a lot from that, where you go, like, I'm happy you have this. I'm happy you have this. I'm just happy to be at the table. I'm just happy to be at the table with my partners. It's great. I'm just happy to be at the table with my. With my founders. But as you continue to do the work, if you showed up, if you did the work, and if you have conviction, also kind of trust your gut. Like, just make the move.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And just do the thing. So those are the two things I would Tell myself I freaking love it.

Speaker B: This is motivational. That's my biggest struggle as an early, uh, investor is that there's so many people that I look up to in the industry and I take what they say is gospel because there's.

Speaker C: They say, never meet your heroes.

Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe can't be doing this podcast.

Speaker A: Come on.

Speaker B: It's not, not a good use of my time. But um, that's a lovely answer. And there's so many key takeaways from that. The next two questions.

Speaker C: These are few. Oh, that was part one of the question. Okay, got three questions.

Speaker B: Shout out another VC in the ecosystem that you think has been absolutely killing the game. Maybe wrote a great article or someone that just been along with you for the journey.

Speaker C: That's such a great question. That is a hard question because you gotta like shout out your competitor to some extent, uh, Mark or Ben, you know, because it's, it's, it's similar to like how you collect your os. How I collected my os. It's not just like one thing. I'm like, oh my God. That's the, that's the thing. When, when I made. And this is not the first controversial investment I make when I make controversial investments. Uh, some of my partners, internally, Chris Dixon in particular, uh, has said this where run into the fire, not away. And that, that like signals everything that we do here at a 16Z and I, I take that to heart. It's, it's so, um, inspiring and, and it feels good to be at a firm that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: That reinforces that. So like dad. And he's obviously one of the semesters in the world.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So he. Easy answer there. Uh, especially internally. Um, the other person that I really admire, uh, is actually a competitor, uh, at Excel, um, Sonali, the Reicher. She's in London office. We've been on boards together. And um, she somehow marries a very thoughtful and direct approach with founders that are hard to say with the warmth and sort of care.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And I just watch her operate on like this like one day, One day I'll be like that. And you know, she also embodies a thing where like she just shows up everywhere. I'm like, oh, like she's there. Like it's great.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, the last part I would say is like, I think this pertains to the world of AI that we live in. Some of the legends that I look up to, I m. Won't name names, but like some of the legends.

Speaker B: Legends.

Speaker C: Adventure.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I know for a fact that they're throwing the Same diamond as I am. They're pounding the same pavement that I am. They're meeting the same people as I am. And that's inspirational.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: They don't need to work for the

Speaker B: love of the game.

Speaker C: Perfectly set. Love of the game. And to, uh, be at the table. Be at the table, run the table. But they love, um. Of the game, and I have so much respect for that. The fact that they are playing the way that we all play, counting the payment, showing up, hustling, genuinely hustling. That gives me a lot of joy to be, uh, part of this industry where the love of the game trumps everything. And it's such a privilege to be operating and, like, sort of working in the industry at this time with a set of contemporaries that I look up to and I get to compete with and I get to work with.

Speaker B: Yeah, I like how the first one was Chris, who encourages you, pushes you forward. The other one is someone who can navigate really tough conversations.

Speaker C: Incredible.

Speaker B: The last ones are just people that.

Speaker C: These are legends, dude. Like, they're. They're just, like, in a random, like, conference room, like, on a panel with me. I'm like, why are you here? I don't know why I'm here, but why are you here? That's great.

Speaker B: Last question. Yes, last one, I promise. Um, it's the shout out. A thesis that you're excited about or maybe a founding team that you've enjoyed working with.

Speaker C: Look, I. I derive so much joy working with all my founders. Particularly though what I have enjoyed is how Mattie at ElevenLabs have developed. And, uh, it's just funny. It's. It's patronizing to say grown, because I am nowhere at his level even. But he sort of started. He and Peter, childhood friends, such amazing aura together. It's so funny. Um, they built this thing, 11 labs, and it was early on, and people still ask, what's the moat? I'm like, they move faster. It's like the leader. I. I don't know. It's momentum, actually. But the reason why I think I have so much joy in that is twofold. One is rate of growth, where he grew from this. Like, initially, when we backed 11 Lab, it was more of a consumer product. It was a hobbyist product. And it became this, like, he learned how to sell into enterprise. He wanted to, and he, like, actually kind of pioneered that motion in my mind. And watching him do that, just in awe. And I'll give you one fun example is my favorite example. So after the deal, I flew to London to Have dinner with him. So we're having dinner. It's two and a half hours. It's great. D d it's great to work with you. Of all the stories, dinner ended and we're like, oh, Matty, it was so great to hang, like, see you next time. He goes like, pause, pause, pause. I, I, I need to check something. I'm m like, okay. He pulls out a, uh, piece of paper from his pocket and he goes like, okay. Talked about this, this, this.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: I have six more questions. I have six more topics. Can we go through enlightening round?

Speaker B: That's

Speaker C: m, that example is just, it's so telling. Like what kind of person, what kind of leader. He's now on the board of Klarna. Like I've like seeing him grow. I'm like, oh my God, that, what a special experience. The second thing is the team is stacked with amazing people.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: I think one of the first company that I actually know like 30, 40 people personally.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Hired some of them like it and I know them like they're in my dms. Like, I talk to them a lot and I know the caliber, quality and the type of people they are is just so high.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And again, like future will say what the company is, et cetera, and they will continue to develop it. But it's just been so incredible to work with an entire team. And uh, I, I think that's rare. I think that's really rare.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: To like know 30, 40 people in one of our companies and like actually talk to them and work with them all the time.

Speaker B: Yeah. A bunch of killers.

Speaker C: Oh yeah. Kind killers.

Speaker B: Those are the scariest ones.

Speaker C: Yeah, they'll, they, they'll, yeah, they'll look at you while they do it. It's uh, they're, they're kind killers.

Speaker B: You heard it here first. If they ever have a job opening, you better apply.

Speaker C: Oh yeah. One, one thousand.

Speaker B: Bunch of great people.

Speaker C: Great people.

Speaker B: This has been so much, this was

Speaker C: so much m fun.

Speaker B: I got to have you on for a part. There's so many things that we, we

Speaker C: didn't even cover half of it.

Speaker B: Um, just because, uh, I was having so much fun, I kind off.

Speaker C: This was good.

Speaker B: Uh, this is awesome.

Speaker C: Fantastic. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Of course.

Speaker B: Anytime.