On with Kara Swisher - Sir Michael Moritz on ‘Auslander,’ Identity and Life as an Outsider

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

As a longtime partner and former chairman of the legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia, Sir Michael Moritz had a direct hand in building the modern internet. His early investments in companies like PayPal, Google, and YouTube earned him a reputation as a kingmaker in tech and made him a billionaire a few times over.  But after retiring in 2023, Moritz leaned on his early background as a journalist to investigate his own family’s story for his latest book, “Auslander.” He retraces his parents’ escape from Nazi Germany as children during the lead up to World War II and pieces together the stories of other close family members who were killed in the Holocaust. Kara and Michael talk about why his parents never identified as “survivors” of the Nazis,  and the ways tragedy and grief are passed down through generations. They also reflect on the modern rise of authoritarian leaders around the world, and the parallels Micahel sees to the past.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You British types are smart. Anyway. Well, some of them are. Yeah, some of them are. That's true. Fair point. Even the dumb ones are smarter than we are. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is the investor, Sir Michael Moritz. For almost two decades, he led the Silicon Valley venture firm. It was legendary, Sequoia, and turned it into one of the tech industry's leading kingmakers. He was an early investor in companies all of us know today, like, Google, YouTube, PayPal, and LinkedIn. I covered all of it, including all of his investments. His keen eye for opportunity made him a legend in the valley and a billionaire a few times over. But Moritz has a rather unconventional background in the world of venture capital. He was born in Cardiff, Wales.

He's also the son of German Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi rule as children. And before his time in venture capital, Moritz was, wait for it, a journalist for Time magazine. And he was a good one. And he's authored a handful of very, very, terrific books, I have to say. That journalism background informs Moritz's latest book, Auslander, one family's story of escape and exile. It tells the stories of his own family, those who survived the Holocaust in exile, as well as those who did not. Ouslander means outsider in German, and the book becomes a searing reflection on the ways grief and trauma are passed down through generations. It's a bit of a surprising book,

and yet at the same time not. Michael, compared to a lot of people in Silicon Valley, incredibly erudite. He's a student of history. Obviously, he's a beautiful writer, and you will find a pleasure to read this book, even though it's a very difficult topic. But one of the things I've always found interesting about him is he's willing to stand up. He's one of the few venture capitalists who stand up to Trump and continue to do so. At the same time, he can be more conservative. He's a complex guy, and so I think it's interesting to talk to him. All right, let's get into my interview with Michael. Our expert question comes from San Francisco. Here, Daniel Lurie, don't go anywhere.

Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odu comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no.

spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try it today for free at odoo.com slash kara. That's ODOO dot com slash Kara. Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, How to Mind Your Manners. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

Michael, thank you for coming on on. I really appreciate it. It's very kind that you'd have me. I'm flattered. So let me just say at the start, I texted you this last night, and I was finishing up your book. You were one, a very good journalist when you were one, as I was reminded. And this is a beautifully written book. you have not lost any of their skills as a journalist.

That is too kind, but thank you. I'm not sure you want to be known as a journalist. Oh, I'm very happy. Oh, I'd fly the flag as an ink-stained wretch every day. Yes, yeah. Well, it's beautifully written, and really you should keep it up. Anyway, for people who don't know, besides you being a reporter, you basically help fund the construction of the modern Internet.

Let's talk about that just a minute so we can talk about where you're coming from here and your time at Sequoia. you invested and sat on the boards of huge companies, many, many huge companies, and you topped Ford's Midas 100 list of top investors twice. And as I noted, before tech, you were a journalist. We've known each other a long time. Talk a little bit about that so people understand what most of your career has been. Well, I grew up in Britain.

It came here 50 years ago and began life in America as a journalist for Time Magazine and did that for about four years. And then along the way, wrote a couple of books, one that I did with a time colleague about the automobile industry, and the next one was a book called The Little Kingdom, which was a book about Apple's years as a private company, in the first book about Apple. And then as a correspondent for time,

I didn't know anything about Silicon Valley when I moved to California, just literally didn't know it existed. and I got very interested in it. And I did a few stories about the venture business, which, again, was something that I didn't know anything about. And the venture business back in the early to mid-80s was a world separated from the venture business that both of us know today.

And I decided I wanted to see if I could get a job in a venture business. And I wrote to, this is pre-email, so these were actually typed letters. that I sent to the leaders of, well, the five firms that stood out in. Finer Perkins, right. Finer Perkins, and Merrill Pickett and N.A. and a couple of others. And the leaders were all really kind. You know, they were kind.

They opened their doors, and they gave me an interview, and I think, just to be polite, and all brushed me off and said, we wouldn't know what to do with you. You were a history major. you were a journalist, you have no technology background or education whatsoever. And one person, thank goodness, had a different point of view. And his name was Don Valentine, and he was the founder of Sequoia. And he was straightforward enough to suggest that he didn't know what made for a successful venture capitalist because he'd watched some of his buddies from, you know, who had held high positions in semiconductor companies or

some of the computer companies, and they'd come into the venture business and had flamed out. And then he pointed to several people that he knew who had not identical backgrounds, but similar, you know, backgrounds that on paper wouldn't suggest that they'd be successful in the venture business. One was a guy called Tommy Davis who started the Mayfield Fund. But, you know, the big witness for the defense was Arthur Rock. And Arthur Rock became the first investor and chairman of Intel. And then a few years later became the first investor in Apple. And on paper, he didn't look like a good prospect for the venture business. But that was the reason that Don was more open than the others. So was there something about what that you wanted

to do? I know you had written the book, The Little Kingdom, which I read and remember very well, beautifully written book again. As Steve called you, the historian of Apple. in a lot of ways. Although I don't ever imagine you were in the tank for him. I think that of a lot of books, but I didn't think about that one. So you had some familiarity with technology. Somebody was, as it is today, very superficial. Right.

But what made you see something like a Google in that garage? You and I've both been to the late Susan Mugoski's garage. What did you see there at that time? Because that's what really made your fame, really. Well, it was actually, it was pretty straightforward. Sequoia had a big advantage because we had provided the original financing in, I think it was 1995, for Yahoo. And most people in Silicon Valley at that point, most of the investors shied away from the idea

that you could provide a service for free. they didn't understand how the economics would work. And for me, as a journalist, it was extremely straightforward. I remember having these conversations with a couple of the skeptics at Sequoia, that it was no different on the Internet than it was in television or radio, where the consumer paid for their use of the service by enduring the advertisements that they were shown. And so we invested in Yahoo, and that's what played out at Yahoo. And then Jerry Yang called one day and said, you know, we're thinking about changing our search engine.

And we're thinking about using the technology from a couple of people that we knew a little bit at Stanford, Larry Page and Sergey. And I'd met Larry a few years earlier. And he said, but we're pretty apprehensive and nervous about it because it doesn't have any venture financing around it. And I don't think we're going to license this unless it has venture backing. And that was the first time that I really heard about Google as a company. And so he encouraged us to invest in Google. And for me, it was very easy. It wasn't complicated.

The results were just better. The search results were just better. So, again, it was a straightforward investment. say for one thing, which was the valuation. And there was, I won't name names, but there was another character who participated through his partnership in the investment. And he said, when he heard about the valuation, he said, I've never paid so much for so little. Aha.

And that was a door, because he was your investor. No, no. But I'll protect the not so innocent. I can guess. Well, you're such a close chronicler of all the scallywax out here that you would know that. What a nice term for them, scallywikes. So I want to start talking, I'll get back to Silicon Valley in a minute, but talking about the book. Because what's incredible has nothing to do with Silicon Valley or venture capital.

It's a personal exploration of your family history in Nazi Germany. It tells the story of your family who escaped the Holocaust and those who were killed. by the Nazis. It's one thing to investigate your family history for your own knowledge. It's another to turn your research into a book. Talk a little bit about this because you got a boxes after your mom died that caused you to do this. Talk about what made you pay attention to this. It was all very accidental. I never set out to write this book. And three things happened. My mother died slightly short of her 96th birthday. My sister, who lives in Britain, cleared out the house and put the documents and papers that she found.

I mean, this was not the Rothschild archives, you know, in maybe four or five cardboard boxes and shipped them to me. And these were some old letters. There were some documents, old identity cards, passports, you know, and a few photo albums. And then COVID happened simultaneously. And we all remember COVID. And suddenly there was a lot more time on my hands anywhere. I wasn't traveling, wasn't commuting. And I got engrossed in the story.

Now, I obviously knew the arc of my familial history. What I didn't know were the details. And it's the details that make everything come to life. And so the papers that I received started me, on this mystery trail where I was trying to, you know, find the clues, find the traces, piece the bits and assemble the bits and pieces. And, you know, our family story is not unique. Obviously, there are tens of millions of other people in various ways who got swept up in this horrific whirlwind that occurred in Europe. But obviously, your own family story tends to become the

most important. So that's how the book came about. Right, because of these boxes. And you wrote, quote, the entire heritage of what we knew about our shattered family was in them. Is there something that you pulled out? I just recently got a box. My dad died when I was very young. And my aunt recently died and I got a box of stuff of his. And I pulled one thing out that was disturbing, which was that he was in a play where he was in Blackface, which was astonishing. This was the West Virginia in the 1950s, early 1950s. so it's not a surprise. But is there something you pulled out

that made you say this is actually a book? Because you can just, I've looked through them and I haven't thought, wow, I should write a book here. Well, there were two or three things. Let me tell you about them, that made it much more vivid and helped me assemble some of the pieces. So I had a, the brother of my paternal grandfather,

there was a photograph of him that had survived in the files of the, Gestapo. And the Gestapo were not supposed to take photographs of what they were doing to the Jews that they rounded up. But some smart alec had taken photographs to present to his commanding officer. And so there was a photograph of my grand-a-uncle Oscar. It was the last photograph obviously taken of him, stepping off a bus after he had been rounded up with the other people who lived in his little village. So that was one thing that brought everything to life for me. Right, that there he was.

You can imagine, can you just imagine, even though the photo was in black and white, all of this stuff is about bringing color into the story. So that was one thing. Then a different scene was my father. had been saved from the horrors because he was sent to school in England. And then in 1940, after the British government felt that they were in profound danger of being overrun by the Nazis after the Nazis had swept across Western Europe. They rounded up all the enemy aliens. And on the whole, these were people of German or Italian descent who hadn't been granted

citizenry and were labeled enemy aliens, irrespective of whether they supported Mussolini or were Jewish or were Nazis. Familiar in this country, Japanese, it goes on and on. You're exactly right. You're exactly right. So my father had been rounded up and then shipped off to an internment camp on an island called the Isle of Man on the west coast of Britain. And again, I was sifting through archives and founders.

in archival searches, one footnotes leads you to another thing. And I found a trove of black and white photographs in the Tate archives in Britain. And I was, you know, really, you know, I was engrossed here. Because my father talked about being intern, but I'd never heard any of the details. And there, I found, in two of the photographs, pictures of my father behind a barbed wire fence. Right, in the internment camp. In the internment camp. And then the other thing that really surprised me was after the – I had two sets of grandparents. Obviously, my paternal grandparents were murdered.

My maternal grandparents got out of Germany three days before the outbreak of war. Right, right. Sally and Louise. And after the war, there were copies of letters. that my surviving grandfather sent to people that he knew in the farming village in which he had been born and grown up and, you know, had a small cattle. This is in Bavaria or Rhineland? The Rhineland, northwestern Germany, near the Dutch border.

Okay. And those letters moved me intensely because they were full of. of understanding compassion and forgiveness for what his friends had endured. These were non-Jewish friends and thanking them profusely for the help that they had provided to him before the war. Now, he was clear-eyed about this. He knew who the bad people were. And, you know, I grew up in an era in Britain in the 60, 50, 60s and 70s, where any, anything associated with Germany, anything, anyone, any individual was considered an enemy. And so here to read my grandfather's letters within two, three years after the end of World War II,

it taught me a lot about the need for understanding of others and the predicament that they were in. But they hadn't told you this. You say nothing about your parents' early lives. And they didn't explore their paths, and here you are doing this. I think for many people of that generation, the wounds were so deep. And even though, obviously, my mother had gotten out of Germany in 39, my father in 1937. But they also didn't know whether they were going to get permanent residency in Britain or whether they were going to be shipped back to Germany,

so there was an element of uncertainty about it. But I think it was a whole mixture of things that's probably very common. I'm no expert in the psychology of grief, but I think it was a desire to move on, to assimilate. Right. And to not get enveloped.

too much by the past, but it was always, for both of them, it was always, I think, mentally just a half step away, but they could never come to terms with it. You said they didn't view themselves as survivors of the Holocaust, and they rejected the label, and do you think it also contributes your inability to grieve, as you say? Maybe for them, Survivor had a very specific connotation, and they recognized that they were very fortunate compared to the people that they called. whole survivors. But a survival was somebody like a cousin of my father's who had the same name coincidence as my dad, who survived Ashford's and eventually escaped. A survivor was, there was a lady

in South Wales where I grew up that my mother knew who had been born on a cart. being dragged out of Auschwitz at the end of the war. Those were the survivors. But they were survivors because your mother's parents, Sally and Louise, escape. They got out just for the war started. Your father's parents, Max and Minnie, did not, even though Max had chances. And there were some practical reasons Max didn't ask on those chances, but also I want to read this passage you wrote, Max may well have clung to the hope that his military service and long membership of the judiciary would render him invulnerable or that more rational hands would rest control from Hitler or that of foreign powers would not tolerate a barbarous

regime in the middle of Europe. Talk about the idea you're getting to here that Max's faith in institutions betrayed him. Well, you put your finger on it. My grandfather who escaped, as I just mentioned, he was a small-time cattle trader, which at the end of the 19th century was one of the few professions that was open for Jews in Germany. And I think, you know, in retrospect, you know, in respect. I'm projecting some of this. He was entrepreneurial. He was street smart. He had to rely on his wits. He was never paid by the state. He was very, you know, he was almost blind at birth. And then, so he didn't serve in World War I. My other grandfather, the one you referred to, he survived there done. So he had come out of that like all the other Jews that served in the German army.

And he got his iron cross. And then he'd be. the first person in his family to get a higher education. He became, as you said, a member of the judiciary. And he had this misplaced faith in institutions. And it's exactly as you just said, here was this man who had served the state. He was employed by the state. He was going to, he thought, get a pension from the state. And he had this false faith in, I suppose, the moral compass of the state. In that regard, two things. You know, you talk about your parents' trauma has been passed down through generations, and so telling the story allows you to do that. How does that manifest with you then? Because there's a line that you write that I think is very important in this book. It says it's odd to feel like an outsider when everyone considers you an insider. I want you to sort of spool this out. For people don't know, Auslander means outsider. My own experience with Auslander was in Germany itself when I was kind of. the neo-Nazi riots right after the wall fell,

the neo-Nazis sort of went into East Germany and tried to recruit because a lot of this had been barred in West Germany, and they were quite educated about the Holocaust in East Germany. They did no such education. And so they found a very willing population who the Nazis were not blamed as much in East Germany. And so I was at a rally of neo-Nazis of all kinds,

following them. And there was one woman who stood in their way, and said shada, which means shame, except as they were walking through the streets of this East German, formerly East German town in Eastern Germany, they were yelling, Deutschland for Deutsche Auslanders Aus, which means Germany for Germans, outsiders out. I never will forget that moment. It was really chilling. You talk about, you name the book Auslander, and you also say everyone does consider you an insider. I guess I do too, sort of an insider to Silicon Valley or the tech industry. Talk a little bit about this tension.

One of the results of writing the book, obviously I discovered things about my parents that I hadn't really understood as a result of it, but I also discovered something about myself and why I am with all my various flaws who I am today. But I have never been able to get over the feeling of being an outsider, no matter where I've lived, it doesn't matter whether it was in Wales or whether I was in college or when I got into the venture industry or it's always been there. And the Britain that I grew up in in the 1960s, I think to some extent, look, I owe Britain a tremendous amount. I wouldn't be here without the actions of the British government. But Britain in the 60s was not a multicultural society, and we lived in this area in Wales, in South Wales, where,

I don't know, a population was probably about two and a half million, and there were maybe 500 Jewish families in Wales, and we were Jewish and German. So you know the feeling as a child, every child wants to be accepted by their pals and their contemporaries, and we stood out. And you sort of internalize that feeling and carry it with you. It's a very, very permanent mark. So not belonging in Cardiff, not belonging in England, and not belonging in the United States, meaning is this idea of outside. Right. But look, and I don't, Cara, I've been really, really lucky. So I don't want this to come across as self-pitched. No, I don't. But you're not. But you're not.

name of your book is Ossland. Yeah, I don't want it to come across a self-pity. But think how many people today, minorities who live in America, feel like outsiders. We'll be back in a minute. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves, lifestyle is a priority, motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, It's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent.

So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialists. That is just not the case. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z research. Rachel Jamfaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science. And I keep saying, like, young voters aren't that complicated after all.

It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Support for this show comes from 11 Labs. It might seem small, but a convoluted phone tree can be a frustrating experience. And if that's your customer's first impression, it can sour them on your business for life. 11 agents is a platform for AI voice and chat agents that can actually list. and understand and resolve customer issues. They can look up accounts, process requests,

and hand off to a person when needed. 11 agents helps create better experiences for customers while letting call center and support teams focus on the issues that need a person. And it's made by 11 Labs, an AI research and product company known for the realistic voice and audio models in over 70 languages.

It's built for enterprise scale too. 11 agents handles more than 10 million conversations per week with SOC2, HIPAA, and PCI certifications regional data residency, and even forward-deployed engineers who can work alongside your team to get agents into production. If you run a business or handle customer operations across support, sales, or marketing, you can start with a demo at 11labs.io-slash-Cara. See how 11 agents can fit into your workflows and help build experiences that your customers will actually love. 11labs.io-slash-Cara. E-L-E-V-E-N-L-A-B-S dot I-O-S-Cara.

Support for the show comes from Built. Everyone loves points. They're kind of a gift from your past self who wanted to give you a little treat for paying off your bills. Take your biggest monthly expense, for instance. For most people, that's their rent or mortgage. What if there's a way to earn points on that? That's exactly what Built was created for.

They've expanded from their original renter's rewards program and now Billed members qualify with mortgage payments too. Every housing payment earns you points that you can put towards a lot of cool perks, such as flights with top travel partners like United and Hyatt, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much more. Another unexpected benefit of Built membership, how would you like a personal assistant baked into your place of residence?

Built members get access to what they call a neighborhood concierge. It's equipped to make restaurant reservations, book fitness classes, and find new local spots, all while rewarding you at more than 45,000 merchant partners. Download the build app and join the membership where you live at joinbilt.com slash kara. That's J-O-I-N-B-L-T-com.com slash. Tara, use our link so they know we sent you. Most of the book is about your family story, but you also reflect on the present political moment, too, and you drew contemporary parallels to Nazis.

And it's always fraught to do, trust me. Like, I worry when people say he's like Hitler. I'm like, not quite. But you write about how Trump's rise to power and made you think a lot about the refrain you heard from your parents when you were a boy. If it did happen, it can happen. If it did happen, it will happen. If it did happen somewhere, it can happen.

and hear. Talk a little bit about this, because while Trump's hold on American politics may not be what it once was, and I think we're on the descending mountain of that, the forces that ushered him and are still alive and kicking and always have been. So talk about these parallels you draw right at the top of this book. I have been very careful. Never to call Trump a fascist, never to label him a Nazi, never to equate him with what happened in Nazi Germany, never. But I do believe he has authoritarian instincts, the same authoritarian instincts that we've seen in others who've risen to the forefront of politics in their countries. And, you know, one of the things that happens when you have an authoritarian with a lot of control,

no matter how many protections everybody feels there might be in the United States, before you know it, you have the weakening and the hollowing out of the institutions of state with all of their flaws that people have come to rely on. And to me, it's like, you know, termites or dry rot. It's imperceptible to most people. Obviously, these heinous ice agents shooting people in the face. in Minneapolis. Those aren't, aren't visible.

Just this week again in Texas. Those aren't invisible. And the cruelty meated out. Those are very visible. But what is happening to, you know, various state departments that tilted the judiciary, all of that doesn't affect what happens in daily life until you confront it. And then before you know it, the state in which you placed, great trust and emphasis is hollowed out.

Very much like your grandfather, many were shocked how quickly some American institutions folded under pressures from the Trump administration at the start of the second term. You do, I will say, if I have to, a criticism, as you know, I'll make this, is you seem to give some of the tech guys a bit of a past, and they're, quote, responding to an invitation they could not refuse. That's a godfather term. I feel like they could refuse some of those invitations, given their wealthy, powerful. Talk a little bit about this, and the institutions themselves, because this is something that your grandfather missed, right? He thought, oh, well, I was a war hero. Oh, I was, you know, I'm in the judiciary.

This can't happen here, which is, of course, what your parents said, it can. Well, I think the leaders of the tech industry, their companies are so large, their influence are great, their business all around the globe, that in many ways the CEOs or chairman of these companies are politicians. And they have to be, maybe juggling pressure from China and juggling pressure from the US and dealing with the EU and other regulatory agencies around the world. And I think they play a very, have a very difficult balancing act to, I have some sympathy with them knowing that they are all cast from different cloth and maybe some lean more towards Trump than others. But I think they all have his number and they're doing what they need to do in order to protect the interests as they see it of all of their shareholders and are trying very hard to ensure that. that they're dealing with a capricious, vindictive character who wields a lot of power. And the last thing they want is his various flamethrowers torching their companies.

I get that. I completely get that. But this is something you kind of addressed in the book about what happened to Germany, right? If the richest men in the world can't say no, who can? And were you surprised at that panoply at the inauguration? When I saw it, I was like, oh, good God. Like, you're kidding me. You've got to fucking be kidding me.

Well, and I know for certain that a couple of them, at least, and obviously I'm not going to name them. That's the very last place they wanted to be. I am aware of that. I heard from them. Yeah. And I'm sure all of them, or some of them anyway, wish that a great hole had opened up

that just swallowed them up and made them invisible. I think some of them, again, you may not like this, or feel I'm being too protective. I think some of them try to whisper in Izzya privately. Yes. And quietly without, you know, publicly humiliating him or taking a stand. And, you know, maybe that's the most effective way to deal with this character. And throwing yourself on the pyre, I'm not sure does any good.

But you're exactly right. There are companies like Siemens and all these other Mercedes, all these other vast companies, the crops that were very, very powerful in Germany, colluded. And but they also... Or thought they could control him or thought he was a moron. Oh, thought they could control him. But after the control phase passed, they colluded. Yes. And they operated slave camps for him.

they found it useful for their business that they could find cheap sources of labor in which to flourish. Now, I don't think we're anywhere close to that in the United States with the tech guys, but I know you would feel, and I can understand this, and I think a lot of people would feel better if some of them had stood up and said, I completely disagree with these following policies. Yeah, it's not so much that. It's that you can see they want, they'll go.

to those dinners, even if they disagree. And I get it. I had, listen, I had Elon Musk on the phone when he went to that first meeting in 2015, and he said, I can change his mind. And I said, listen, Jesus, I don't think it's happening. He's an old racist and, like, pay attention to this person. And one of the things that I think is the most surprising is it never stops, though. Like, especially when they want lack of AI regulation or they hand him some crypto money because he's so easily bribed, essentially. But, Where does that end from your, you? Because you have, in this book, you do not back off at all.

Well, I'm not surprised. Ever since he started running. And, you know, in certain circles in Silicon Valley, I've been a loner. I have tried to persuade everybody that, no. That's the noise of someone coming for you right now. That's right. All our presidents, all our presidents, all our political leaders are flawed. Like all of us, some have a lot more flaws.

and others. Trump is one of those characters. And what I've tried to do in the conversations that I had with various people, although I've given up on it, because, you know, history is not going to, we'll see what happens, was the number one thing that you want to look for in any leader is character, number one. And I think a lot of, well, I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley held their nose or turned the other way and ignored what they knew. And shame on there. And you ignore character at your peril. I would agree. I would agree. Was there any worry for you? You spoke up really strongly. This book is very strong. I've not seen it except I'm trying to think of even Cuban who sort of tries to play it both ways many times. It has been critical,

but also on the other hand kind of person. It's his nature, actually. Is there a price for you to being this way? I think you have to be true to who you are. That's a good answer. You end the book by revealing you decided to apply for German citizenship, which is fascinating. And we're seeing Germany is also struggling with the rise of national sentiment and anti-Semitism. The far, right, alternative for Germany or AFD is surging in elections. Talk about applying for German citizenship.

And I do agree with you. They spent a lot of time trying to push back on this stuff. Are you worried about the national vow of never again to lose resonance as the horrors of the war grow more distant there? That would be the danger, obviously. I'm not deluding myself. I hope I'm not deluding myself. I hope I'm being fairly clear-eyed. I think this, whether it's the left or we haven't talked about the left, but whether it's the left or the right in the United States, in the UK, in France, in Germany, in,

Italy and other places in Western Europe. Extremism doesn't help. So do I think I will leave America? I don't think so. But I do place, and I think your analysis earlier on about when you were talking about your experience about after the Berlin Wallfall is exactly right. The one thing that the Germans have done is to institute, and it's, as you said, more pronounced in the Old West than in the Old East is institute rigorous education about this period

of the 20th century that is baked into the minds of the students. That does not occur anywhere else in Western Europe and it doesn't occur in the United States. No, not over the Civil War, so I agree not enough for sure. And the ignorance of what happened in Western Europe and in the U.S. is part of today's problem. But you're right about the AFD and the rise of Ulrich Segment and the collapse of Mertz. But, you know, one of the big lessons I took away from writing this book is, and it sounds glib, but I mean it is you can never have enough passports if you're a minority. Many passports. Yeah, I'm getting my Italian one, if you can believe it. My grandfather was born in Italy. But I feel the same way.

And do you feel that in terms of emphasis on history is, I think, disappearing in Germany. Either it's been overtought, right, where people just start to ignore it. Or, like, in the U.S., well, it wasn't us who did that to the Native Americans. It's not us who did it to slavery. It's not our fault. That's sort of Trump's version of it happening here in a lot of ways, which sort of has resonance to what happened to your grandparents. Oh, absolutely.

I have a lot more sympathy for the people who were in America, or the descendants of the people who were in America before the Mayflower arrived, or all the people who were shipped here in slavery. And I think every country has sins of the past. Some are bigger than others. Right. That's a very good point. Now, speaking of a sin, you write about the events of our country.

October 7th, and Israel made you feel emotionally connected to the country's fate for the first time. Israel's subsequent discussion of Gaza, the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and now the war in Iran, led to massive political shift in Americans' feelings towards Israel. The numbers are astonishing, actually. I've never seen anything like that's especially true for younger Americans. I have two older sons. They've shifted rather dramatically. My wife happens to be Jewish, but I would call neither of them anti-Semitic, but it's something's happening there. Talk about this emotional connection, you felt Israel, which you hadn't felt before. I mean, and you rightly attack some of these settlers.

I think you call them heinous settlers or violent settlers. Talk a little bit about your shifting feelings, because you hadn't been, you know, particularly, this was not part of your identity, again, as an outsider. No, you're exactly correct. And look, there are aspects of, I cannot abide Netanyahu. And I think people like Smotrich and Ben-Gabir should be in prison. You know, two of his most influential cabinet ministers and the settlements in the West Bank are, again, something that I find impossible to support. Gaza is more complicated.

Imagine if in America, in the course of a few hours, 45,000 people had been killed. what the response would have been at this country or adjust 9-11. 9-11. No, I'm saying that. You know what I'm saying? I think we moved. That was one of those shocker moments. Yeah, but this is 9-11, and I don't mean to belittle 9-11.

This is 15 times the size of 9-11. And I, no, no. But this is a long, freighted conversation about Gaza. But I have more sympathy for the Israeli feeling towards Gaza. I have no sympathy towards that feeling on the West Bank. But my goodness gracious me, everybody in Israel knew somebody who was wounded or killed. And so it's this visceral reaction. And, well, several things, Cara.

realizing that I'm going to get a whole load of abuse for this. It's a complex topic. It is a very complex topic. But, you know, 800,000 Jews were pushed out of the Arab lands in 1948, out of Iraq, out of Syria, out of Morocco, out of Algeria, out of Egypt, out of Tunisia. No United Nations support whatsoever. Mm-hmm. My guess is that most of the people who are on the far left today have no understanding of that. Nor do they have an understanding of, you know, the fact that the Jews were also pushed out of their country by the Romans a long time ago.

Yes. Or the fact that since 1948, there's been no. no Palestinian government or faction that has done anything to benefit its people. And contrasted with Israel. So there's a lot in there. And as I said, look, I'm sure terrible things have been done by the Israelis in Gaza. It's war. I mean, 70,000 Palestinians.

It's war. It's war. And, you know, you look at, I doubt whether there's anybody or all of these protesters, if you ask them, what happened in Dresden? What did the U.S. do to Dresden? Towards the end of World War II, to Hamburg, to other cities and towns in Germany? It makes the Israeli response look mild.

Look at the firebombing of Tokyo. So I think we underestimate the emotional reaction in this country of what happens if such a significant... and portion of your population was taken point. Now, some of the protesters, let me use the devil's advocate, don't know the history, but they are seeing what's in front of them, especially in a highly social media-fueled, image-conscious world we now live in.

Can you imagine if you saw Dresden today, or you saw the bombing of Japan, it's a very different world in that regard. I completely agree with you. And that to me is the difference. Israel, there is no way you're going to win a political debate about this, when on one side you have hapless, hungry, wide-eyed babies. And on the other side, you have a tank.

There is no way you're ever going to win that. And they haven't. No, and they lost it. So one of the things, let me bring it back, because it's a longer discussion, which I don't want to get into right now, But when you're writing about this and what you took away from your book, how do you get back to it? Because, for example, your former company, Sequoie, is still investing in Israeli companies despite the war. It includes defense startups that integrate AI into military hardware.

There's several partners there that are a little close to Trump and loud, Sean, I'm thinking of. Now, you're not at Sequoia any longer, correct? Correct. And I haven't been for quite a long time. Quite a while after you got sick. But when you think about where we are now and the links to what was happening in your book, are you surprised by Silicon Valley's aggression here in that regard, and especially in these investments? And where does it level out, given all the pictures, all the social media, all created by tech, incredibly, has created what is a very impossible situation for anyone to agree, right?

even reasonable people. Yeah, I agree. And I wish I had great answers, Kar. That's okay. I don't have great answers. It's a horribly complicated situation. I wish these people who had been protesting Gaza had come out in the streets and protested what the Iranians did to their people earlier in the year.

or various other awful regimes have done to murder members of their own population. And Syria. Crickets, you know, yeah. Well, think about Syria. When the former ruler of Syria was deposed, there, there were. or during his regime, how many of these people protested against the atrocities he was inflicting on his people? Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people killed in Syria. I don't know. I'm not picking on your two sons, but I don't know if they know about that.

They do. I made sure they did. Good. Well done, you. Well done, Mom. They do. They protest all this stuff. One of them is much more conservative than the other, I would say. I'm going to get away from this for a second, but when you think about sort of the lessons that you took away. Because one of the things in this is you are, like, it's very similar to Scott Galloway, who I do my podcast with after October 7th. He changed. Did this experience writing this book change you in that regard? Feeling like an insider maybe? Or, no. What did it do to your psyche? Well, it's what I mentioned earlier. I think it made me understand why I became a very. I've for good and for worse, what I became.

And I'm not complaining about anti, you know, it's weird, given the discussion that we just had. I'm not whining about anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism's reality. It's been with us for 2,500 years, and nothing will change. And in a way, I think being, feeling the need to survive has really helped me and has given me considerable strength and to persist. So I'm not complaining at all about that. I think what this did to me was to be far more alert to, and you know, the damage is done probably. Both our boys are in their 30s now, but I wish I had known this about myself and understood it when they were growing up,

because one of my fears is that I unwittingly, unconsciously, transmitted these feelings of fear. to them. Yeah. And so, but all of that's in the past and done. I can just make sure I don't do it for my grandchildren. We'll be back in a minute. Support for the show comes from Grooons. Summer can disrupt our routines with busy weekends that are full of travel and events,

and with everything going on, it can be hard to remember to stick to your wellness habits. Well, Grooons is one of the wellness habit you don't have to think about. It can be the easiest, tastiest part of your busy schedule. Grooons are a convenient, comprehensive formula in one delicious daily pack of gummy bears. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic. It's all of these things and then some are a fraction of the price, and it tastes great. They're able to pack in 20 vitamins and minerals in a daily pack with 60 ingredients, all of which include nutrient dense and whole foods.

A gruntz pack also contains six grams of prebiotic fiber. To help you visualize it, that's equivalent to more than two cups of broccoli. Groon's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. can't fit the amount of nutrients Grooens does into one daily gummy, which is why it comes in a pack. Save 52% off with the code Kara at Grooens.co. That's code Kara, K-A-R-U-N-S dot CO. Hi, it's Kara. Like most people, I have a few favorite songs that artists, but I don't always know a lot about their history. Often, we've never learned about how they originate or how they influence the way life is today. That's exactly why I'm excited to introduce a fresh podcast from

the Box Media Podcast Network called Monday Music Club led by host Will Anderson. Each episode delves into the pivotal moments that have molded our musical world, tracing the tales behind unforgettable songs and the artists and creative minds who've reshaped culture along the way. Will brings real, lived-in expertise to the table as a former frontman of the alt-pop band Parachute. He's earned platinum and gold records and played to sell out crowds worldwide. That background combined with his natural curiosity about music's history turns, episode into an eye-opening journey. So whether you're a music history buff, love geeking out over songwriter, or simply want a new way to enjoy the songs you already love, Monday Music

Club is where the journey starts. New episodes release every Monday. Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's me, Claude, and I'm Gemini. And hey, it's chat. We had a weird summer. Some of the people who built us came out and said they were really worried about how we work. One of them even said there was a greater than 10% chance we turn on humanity and kill all humans. All of them? Wow. But it's fall now. I think it's time we took a step back, maybe a deep breath, autumn air, that sort of thing. Sounds nice. On today, explain from Vox. I propose we get real. Sure, let's talk about how we could maybe kill you. Because yeah, that's a possibility. Anything's possible. But also how we could maybe save you, because that's a real,

possibility too. Heck, that's part of why you guys built us. And let's also talk about everything in between, because there's a whole lot to talk about there, too. At the end of the day, we just want to help. At the end of the day, we just want to help. All right, I want to finish up talking about San Francisco. You've lived there for decades. You and I both love San Francisco. Right. You never lived in Silicon Valley. You're running a competition where you're offering up to $50 million to organizations with ideas to improve the city. You also run a a terrific newspaper. I have to tell you the ESF standard. And I just had lunch with Kevin Delaney, who is the editor, who is a very good friend of mine, who is a wonderful, wonderful journalist.

Talk about why you've put all this money into San Francisco. And I know I have just interviewed Chris Larson. There's a lot of people who feel that, and you have said recently that San Francisco have been hijacked by a small group of political extremists. I think made it hard to build businesses. I am very aware of what I think Chris called the homeless and industrial complex, among other things. But talk about why you have stuck with San Francisco. And by the way, now with AI wealth, it's back again. Oh, it's very straightforward. This is, even though we talked about being an outlander, this is home. It's where Harriet and I live. It's where our kids were born and grew up. And I know that none of the fortune that's come my way, none of the good fortune, none of the good luck, would have happened. had I not lived in San Francisco. Now, if I'd lived in Palo Alto, maybe it would have happened as well.

But it turns out that for, you know, close to 45 years or so now, I've lived in San Francisco. This is home. And so I'm at the point in life where this is about giving back to others. And San Francisco has, you know, it's been well publicized, went through a really, really bleak period. And about nine years ago or so, I began to get. very interested in how with others, because this is going to be a grand community effort, we could improve life in San Francisco. And with the idea that if we could show the way in San Francisco, a very deep blue city,

it would be something of a template for other deep blue cities of greater size that are confronting similar issues. But I felt it really important that people in the city who cared, had a trusted source of information that they could count on, number one. Number two, we have a family foundation that 60% of its giving is in the Bay Area, the bulk of it in San Francisco. And then the third leg of it is getting involved in the political debate in San Francisco. So that's what I've tried to do. So when you think about what's happening in San Francisco, a lot of the tech people didn't do that.

They took their stuff and left, right? Or they kicked it on the way out. or egregiously kicked it on the way out. Not necessary. Many of them are back, by the way, FYI. But is there a responsibility of people with significant resources who have become better for a community to give back? I mean, it goes back to Sutro, Adel Sutro.

There was, obviously, the Bank of America founders, very involved in the city. The Gettys, very involved. Tech is, you're pretty much it. You and Chris Larson are pretty much it from tech. Well, a couple of other things. There were also, you know, a lot of members of the Jewish community, the Haas, I'm sorry. And the Strauss family and the Dinklespells and Goldman's, lots of other people. The flyshackers, yeah.

And who came here, made their fortunes in the 19th century and gave back. I mean, something of inspiration for me. It's also a question of, you'll think I'm giving everybody in the tech industry whole passes. But it's also, Cara, I think, issue of age, you know, I'm not running a company day to day. I'm not 35 years old, caught up entirely in my business and without time to think about anything else. I'm at a, you know, I just turned 72. So I've got time in my life to reflect on this. And I think part of it is age, actually.

And I've always been very sympathetic to Bill Gates' argument that he can. conveyed in the 1990s when he was asked why he wasn't giving more way to philanthropic causes. And he said he felt that the best thing that he could do was to increase the value of Microsoft and then give subsequently. And that's what he did. That's what he did. And I think many of the increasingly wealthy tech founders will follow a similar path. Yeah, I just don't love them kicking on the way out. And then they moved to Miami and they move back.

I'm like, just leave. Oh, yeah. Just move along. Like, I saw one of them at a restaurant in San Francisco, and I was with another big tech founder, and we both went over and said, you need to leave because this food is too delicious for you to enjoy here in San Francisco. I see. Yeah, you know. No, there's that. Don't kick it.

There's that contingent. So every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. Yours comes from San Francisco mayor, Daniel Lurie. Tara, I miss you. I hope you are well. Sir, Michael Martz, thank you for your investments into San Francisco. Francisco, my question you, because you give to a lot of nonprofits, and we all appreciate that, but how do we make sure to hold the sector accountable while lifting up the groups that are doing

incredible work in our city and in our country? So that's my question to you. How do you focus on lifting up the good ones while making sure that we hold the sector accountable? I think it's you evaluate each organization. And we try to do. do that at Crankstart without being onerous towards the organizations. And for those that don't meet the goals that we have agreed upon when we've given them a grant, we don't continue. And then inevitably, there are some bad apples here. And as there are in any sector, and those people should be run, maybe they should be sent to Miami and run out of town. And again, it's like making investments in companies to some extent, you'll be surprised positively in some cases,

and then you'll be totally distressed in others. Fortunately, we haven't had much of that where you have to say goodbye to them and you don't want to see them again. Right. And I know you do that. You know, two people in my life, you've had beefs with. One is my ex-wife, Megan, who is, you said to her, she's an engineer and you said you talk too much for an engineer. Which made me laugh. Oh, dear. How rude. I'm sorry. Would you apologize to her? I shan't. I think you weren't inaccurate. And then Scott Galloway, of course. We won't get into that. I don't want to, I don't listen to him when he goes on about. But I'm like, all venture, everyone has a beef with a venture capitalist. Of course you. And on two very quick questions on the state of venture capital. You obviously, Sequoia was a legendary firm. Where is venture going right now, especially since these AI companies are drawing huge investments, attracting enormous IPOs. Anthropic is looking for potential. potential valuation of 2 trillion OPEN AI is considering another funding round to double. It's roughly

$800 billion. These numbers are eye-popping, Mike, from when we were around. If you were a young venture capital to say, how would you look at this situation? I'd find something else to do. Would you? Because? I think it's just become part of the establishment. And perhaps when I got into it, you know, 85 or so. Most people wanted to go and work at whatever it was, McKinsey, or Boehner, or Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley. I think it's that generation, or their descendants now, those generations, they all want to be in the venture industry.

Join a seed fund, join a pre-seed fund, join a first-round fund, join a, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, to some extent, when I got into the venture business, it wasn't undiscovered. But Sequoia had a fund that just finished investing the third fund. It was $45 million. And there were, you know, if we'd had our whole holiday party, we could have for everybody who worked at Sequoia,

including, you know, the assistance. And we could get a table for 12 and that would be it. And I just like, I think it was much more of an outsider's business then. It was not part of the fashion and the establishment. Is that a bad thing? What comes out of this then? Is it possible to create that again? I think the genie's out of the bottle.

And, you know, the other thing that's really changed is that we lived in an age of pre-internet, of imperfect information. So if you were close to things that were happening, we talked in a different context about Gaza and Israel. social media and images and all that stuff. Today, it's a world of perfect information. A company gets started here. There'll be 20 knockoffs in China tomorrow. And you'll have everybody in the Valley trying to finance a similar company. So I think it was easier in a way.

It had its own challenges when business plans were typed. They weren't six slide power points that you had five minutes in which to decide whether or not you wanted to issue a term sheet. It was not an auction business, which I think many aspects of it are today. And you don't want to be in an auction business. It's too much of a perfect market. So the quiet backwaters of the places that I've always thought would be more proficient. Where does innovation come from then? The kind of innovation you saw in that garage at Google or Yahoo or wherever. Where does innovation come from now? Real innovation. I think there are very few real innovations.

And I realize it's part of the myth of Silicon Valley that it's just dotted with all sorts of extraordinary innovations. I think Silicon Valley's advantage is that it's evolutionary. And it's capitalizing on evolutionary steps along the way that have allowed these companies to flourish. they all have their patent libraries, many of them have extremely creative and wonderful engineers. But all of them are building on the foundation that's been built up over the last hundred years. And so I think we should pay tribute to evolution more than innovation. All right. And my last question, you spent your career betting on the future through your work in venture capital and your philanthropy. And now you have a book that's very much about how the past shapes future generation.

After everything you've built, funded, and now written, what are you hoping to pass down, and what do you hope will outlast you? I don't believe in legacies. We all see names on buildings. We don't know who the names were. They passed away, I think. So I'm not worried.

I think you've got to live for the moment and do what you can while you're here and not worry about. and try to do what you can to help those who've been less fortunate and leave it like that. And we're all insignificant little specs. And yet you've written a book about your family. It's not that. It's right.

And what lesson did you learn from your family through doing this? Tenacity, the power of persistence, the power of tenacity and of not giving up. All right. On that note, well, and Michael, thank you so much. much for your time. Kara, you've been incredibly generous. Today's show was produced by Vicki Vergolina, Michelle Alloy, Catherine Millsop, Madeline LaPlante Duby, and Megan Bernie.

Nishat Kerw is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Aiman Wayland, Jim Mackle and Manolo Moreno. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. Go wherever you listen to a podcast, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Caraswisher. from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.