The Tim Ferriss Show - #101: The Oracle of Silicon Valley, Reid Hoffman (Plus: Michael McCullough)

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Starting point is 00:03:10 where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the habits, routines, influences, et cetera, that you can apply to your life. And those experts, the world-class performers range from hedge fund managers to actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger to people like General Stanley McChrystal to chess prodigies and everyone in between. And in this case, we have a business icon, none other than the Oracle of Silicon Valley. That's Reid Hoffman. He is referred to as the Oracle of Silicon Valley by a lot of tech insiders who look at his company building and investing track record, which includes, for instance, well, of course, PayPal, LinkedIn, but then Facebook, Airbnb, Flickr, and on and on with awe and rightly so. Reid is co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, which has more than 300 million users. Before that, he was executive vice president at PayPal, which was purchased by eBay for $1.5

Starting point is 00:04:05 billion. There, he was nicknamed firefighter-in-chief by the CEO, who is Peter Thiel, who's also been on this podcast. Noted venture capitalist David Z says of Reed, he is arguably the most successful angel investor in the last decade or past decade, and they're both now partners at Greylock Partners. He has a track record to envy. In this podcast, he is joined by a friend. He's joined by Michael McCullough, MD, who is also co-founder of questbridge.org and a successful investor of his own right with training as an ER physician. Michael is a clinical professor at UCSF and previously served as the on-call ER physician for the Dalai Lama.

Starting point is 00:04:46 Michael is also a Rhodes Scholar, Kauffman Fellow, and Ashoka Fellow. He is an avid meditator and is particularly interested in investing in technologies and companies pertaining to the mind. So we bounce around a lot in this conversation. We cover a ton, including how Reed met Mark Zuckerberg for the first time and how he decided to invest in Facebook. Lots behind that. Firefighting and startups and beyond. Using board games to develop strategy. Reed's view of what Uber has done well and what they could improve upon. Some of Reed's suggested philosophers for entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 00:05:15 We talk about going off algorithm per se in the ER to manage life and death decisions. The three types of CEOs and much, much more. It is a very dense, intense, and useful episode. And of course, we discuss QuestBridge as Reid and I are both on the advisory board. QuestBridge, you guys have to check it out, questbridge.org, currently supplies more exceptional low-income talent, meaning kids to top universities than all other nonprofits combined. QuestBridge has created a single standardized college application that's accepted by 36 or so top universities like Stanford, MIT, Amherst, and Yale. This allows them to do some very, very clever and innovative things such as giveaway laptops

Starting point is 00:05:55 and the giveaway forms double as college applications. This offers scholarships to many kids who might otherwise not even think of college. So if you want to break the cycle of poverty, QuestBridge is easily one of the most fascinating, effective, and highly leveraged tools I've ever seen. So check it out, questbridge.org. We will talk more about that. So please check out the show notes. There are a lot of cool show notes for this episode. 4-Hour Workweek, all spelled out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com and click on podcast, all the book recommendations, et cetera. And you can find a lot more there about everything that we talk about. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with the Oracle of Silicon Valley,

Starting point is 00:06:43 Reid Hoffman, and Michael McCullough. Reid and Michael, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thank you for having us, Tim. I'm thrilled. I'm really excited to have you guys on. And I know you've both known each other for some time. And I was thinking about the commonalities that you might have, the common threads. And we'll certainly come back to this. But I had heard Peter Thiel had said of you, Reid, that you were the firefighter-in-chief at PayPal.

Starting point is 00:07:06 And I think that Michael, certainly based on our conversations at least, certainly has exhibited tremendous firefighting qualities. So we'll come back to that. I thought we could begin with just some basic context for folks. And Reid, perhaps we could start with you. When people ask you the question, what do you do? how do you answer that? Well, there's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is I'm an entrepreneur and investor. That's when I want to be very quick and move through the question.

Starting point is 00:07:34 The long answer is I essentially build, design, and improve human ecosystems through software, either as a creator or as an investor and partner. And what that means is everything from things like PayPal to LinkedIn to Airbnb, each of these things are ways that you craft how people find each other, how they interact with each other, how they establish their identity, and how they make progress in their lives. And that's part of what I mean by building and improving human ecosystems. how they interact with each other, how they establish their identity, and how they make progress in their lives. And that's part of what I mean by building and improving human ecosystems. I love it.

Starting point is 00:08:13 Michael, what about yourself? You wear many hats, but how would you answer that question these days? Yeah, I'd say it's probably pretty similar. I create and I help people create things. I'm an entrepreneur and investor as well, but I'm an ER physician by training and I actually began my life in reverse from most people, kind of creating non-profits actually first. So I made eight non-profits before my first company, including like angel investments and things like

Starting point is 00:08:41 HeartFlow and such. And I'm currently a partner at Carapacorn Healthcare. And I'd love to bridge just on the medical side of things. Michael, you had a very difficult beginning, so to speak, and that is going way back to birth. I was hoping you could just give us a brief description of your experience at birth. Sure. It's interesting how sometimes small little slips from an intern or a resident can alter your life. I was eight weeks premature with a twin birth, and they squeezed a little too hard on my head, and it hemorrhaged, and it was missed for nine years.

Starting point is 00:09:20 So I couldn't speak much until I was about in high school. I couldn't speak as fluently as I am now until I was in my 30s. And even like right now, I have a speech impediment device, kind of like they have in the Kings, a speech movie, or I speak in accents if I need to speak more fluently. So for me, I learned how to watch people a lot when I was younger, because it was harder for me to interact with them verbally. Got it. And as the lines for both of you started converging, but before you met, Reed, you went to, as I understand it, a somewhat unconventional high school in Vermont. I think it was the Putney School where you farmed maple syrup and drove oxen. What did you take from that experience that stuck with you, if anything?

Starting point is 00:10:09 Well, it was actually, at the time, you know, it's funny. It's kind of as you're older, each decade you look back on your life and you actually, in fact, have a different view of your early decades. So if you'd asked me 10, 20 years ago, I'd say, well, it's completely off track. I've become a technologist and an entrepreneur and none of that stuff was actually directly relevant. And now when I kind of look back at it, I say, well, actually, in fact, it was very grounding. I had experiences there, everything from blacksmithing to actually a bunch of artistic things. I had, you know, kind of some intensity around cross-country skiing and sports. And all of that actually, I think, helped me understand the breadth of

Starting point is 00:10:52 human condition. You know, typically Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors and technologists tend to be very narrow focus. And I actually think it's helped me keep a broader focus as I think about kind of what it is to be human and how do we increase our humanity. And I might be skipping ahead a little bit, but do you have then a sympathetic ear for, say, non-technical founders who come in without technical chops? Or how do you look at that? Well, so it depends on the project. Some projects are depth of technology. Usually when I talk to a non-technical founder who wants to create something,

Starting point is 00:11:46 the very first, second, and third piece of advice I give them is to find a technical co-founder because it's not so easy to just say, oh, well, look, I'm going to hire some engineers in some remote location to build the app that I think of because actually, in fact, you have to be much more detailed, much more specific about how it's evolving. And so if you're building technology and you don't at least have a good technical co-founder, you have a problem. Now, that being said, there's a number of businesses that the technology is only one piece. It's an important piece, but it's only one piece, like Airbnb, for example. You know, Nate's very technical, but Brian and Joe are design folks. They're product folks. They're art folks. They both, you know, kind of coming out of RISD.

Starting point is 00:12:32 And so, and actually that helps fundamentally with the Airbnb product. And so it isn't that you, it isn't that everybody in a founding team has to be technical, but if you're doing a technology thing, at least one of you does. No, that makes perfect sense. And where did philosophy enter the picture for you? Because I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley think of you in part as a philosopher, at least a thinker along those lines. How did you become interested in philosophy and why? Well, it's funny, actually. I'd say one of the small critiques of Silicon Valley is, and this may actually speak more to you than the people of Silicon Valley. Very few people in Silicon Valley interface with me as a philosopher. It takes another thinker like you to actually along with Michael. And my undergraduate degree was called symbolic systems, which is in short speak, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. And I've always actually been very interested in kind of what makes us uniquely human. And,

Starting point is 00:13:35 and, and that's continued throughout my entire arc of my career and childhood. And so then it was like the scientific study of thought and language. But then what I realized when I was at Stanford is that actually, in fact, even though we were trying to be scientific about what it is to be intelligent, about what things I could get out of philosophy in order to pursue a more scientific view of intelligence. And so because the modern analytic view on philosophy is it's pre-science. It's like how you think about things with precision. And then science births out of philosophy. And so I went to Oxford in order to study philosophy. Are you currently drawn to any particular schools of philosophy or philosophers in the context of, say, recommending someone who has never been exposed to philosophy or feels that they haven't. What starting points might you suggest? Well, one of the things that I – the papers that I read at – because it's – when you do a course, you read a subject.

Starting point is 00:15:12 One of them was Wittgenstein. I actually frequently refer people to when they're thinking about kind of how do we think of ourselves as sharing a world, as talking to each other about it, as understanding it. Matter of fact, recently when I was explaining a theory on Bitcoin to some fellow technologists, I said, look, it's like a Wittgensteinian language game. The notion of how you play. And they're like, okay, how do I understand that? I'm like, okay, well, here's some good books on Wittgenstein, and here's a couple of points, right? But it is, that would be the one that I would probably start with, just because I think he is one of the, you know, one of the fundamental philosophers who is still being understood because the kind of one of the bedrocks of modern analytic philosophy is to think of if you're trying to talk to someone else about some problem and you're trying to make progress, how do you make language as positive an instrument as possible and what are the ways that language can work and what are the ways that language can work, and what are the ways that language doesn't work. And so, for example, on that thread, when I wrote my thesis in Oxford, it was on thought experiments, because most philosophers actually, in fact, analyze and argue through thought experiments, and there's actually more

Starting point is 00:16:20 limitations to the methodology than at least many believe. No, it's – I find language just an endlessly fascinating topic because you'll find – I mean Silicon Valley and elsewhere, people will debate, say, the existence of God without ever defining what God is for each of the parties involved. Right. I would love for you to elaborate, if you could, about going off algorithm in the ER and what that means, because I've had some fascinating conversations with literature, but within a bell curve, there might be ways to save people or even improve people's lives that aren't in kind of the standard operating procedure. So like I had a patient one time who came in with head to toe burns, and you can look at him and you would know once you intubate him and have him in the ICU, he wouldn't possibly actually wake up again, but he was lucid enough. And I thought, you know, I'd want to call a few people before I had to go to sleep. So I gave him my cell phone to use, much to the chagrin of the people in the room. Better make a few calls. But even there, like I had to stop him from making additional calls,

Starting point is 00:18:11 but he got to call a few people. He had begun to swell his airway shut, so I had to make sure I could intubate on kind of the first try or I probably would have lost my job. And by intubate, you mean get a tube down his trachea before it was completely closed? Yeah, because if you inhale hot air, then the soft tissue in your mouth will swell up and you won't be able to breathe. Now, in his case, it didn't change outcome that much because he was either going to die in the ER or in the ICU. So I thought enabling him to make kind of a human connection ahead of the ICU would be helpful.

Starting point is 00:18:53 And now in your experience then, when you look at, let's just define maybe the use of the word algorithm. So is it fair to say that in this context, one could think of an algorithm as a mandatory checklist, which also excludes certain options? Yeah, I think that's true. And I think Atul Gawande's work and others shows a checklist is profoundly helpful. The Checklist Manifesto.

Starting point is 00:19:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a really good book. And even things like you know washing your hands between patients or things as simple as that will save a lot of lives however sometimes you do know everything on the checklist and sometimes there are things you can do that that aren't on the checklist that actually ought to be done so um example was also that um i had a patient who, in our ER, they have a policy of making sure they call the donor network after the patient's actually passed away to see if they can, with the permission of the family and the intentions of the patient,

Starting point is 00:20:00 help with a skin transplantutation like a cornea, but they became confused to think, well, that means then you shouldn't call earlier to talk about the heart or the liver and things like that. So in that particular case, an algorithm or a policy actually made people not appreciate the more important organs to kind of think about too. So have I answered your – No, no, you have. And I just – we've had dinner before and I'd love for you to describe if you could.

Starting point is 00:20:40 And it was fascinating for me to hear your description of this, but what is it like to, and I know we're bouncing around a bit, but to stare into someone's eyes or to look into their eyes as they pass from alive to not alive? Maybe, what does that mean? I've had the honor of having that happen a few times, and it's interesting because it often depends on the emotional state of of the patient right so if the patient's afraid you're trying to give comfort to them as they're dying and and other times patients die and they're giving you a sense of peace and kind of universality that that would be hard to pay for kind of a depth of understanding that they are dying and this is kind of the

Starting point is 00:21:26 moment of their death. And so it's an honor to be there either way, to either witness it happening from a person who's content with it or to comfort and hold the hand of someone who's not. And in that type of context or just in general, what to your mind separates a good ER physician from a great ER physician? What do the great people have, do or not do, that the good lack? Yeah, I think a good ER physician is thorough. They make sure they don't needlessly miss anything or not like, you know, wash their hands between the patients. I think if you layer on to that, that you actually care about the patient, you know, you like to like laugh with the alcoholic or to make or to help the woman the first trimester of her pregnancy feel comfort that she is likely not to lose her child. But

Starting point is 00:22:27 even if she does, it wouldn't interfere with her being able to get pregnant in the future again. And so you can either pay attention to, say, the odds that she'd lose this particular pregnancy or to make sure to reassure her what she's actually worried about is, you know, will I ever have an infant? Will I ever have a family? And I think, like, a lot of people don't know that a third of all pregnancies are actually lost, and that's normal for humans. Every animal has, like, a normal rate of, like, losing one, and that's a known pregnancy, so it's likely more like half.

Starting point is 00:23:04 And yet, since we no longer live in a tribes with other people we hide the fact of losing an infant in the first a trimester so if you don't take the extra time to comfort people sometimes they think they're abnormal when are they actually are not right no that No, that makes perfect sense. I don't think that applies to therapy of all different types. I mean, outside of the context of an emergency room, the firefighting that I mentioned earlier, Reed, my understanding was that you wore many, many different hats and had the role of interacting with a lot of external entities

Starting point is 00:23:47 when at PayPal, whether that was regulatory or the credit card processors. Maybe that's not the right description of them. But what makes a good entrepreneurial firefighter in a context like that? Or what did your co-workers feel made you good at that job? Well, the most two relevant factors were Peter Thiel, who was the CEO, feeling that I was good and solving the problems. Everything else was secondary to those two considerations. I mean, on the firefighting side, I mean, PayPal had perhaps the most kind of parallel thing to, you know, to date myself a little bit like Star Wars, you know, flying into the trench and trying to actually hit the target and a lot of different ways you could fail. And so in the PayPal case, for me, a lot of that was building an understanding of what each particular problem, particular threat was, what the key moving variable was, and then being able to solve that and then propagate that out to all of the places. So, you know, for example, one of the kind of challenges that Peter handed to me was

Starting point is 00:25:16 we had thought that PayPal might be a bank. And so we had started the process of applying for a banking license. Then what we discovered and decided upon inference was that actually, in fact, banking regulation is so fierce in terms of not innovating, not building new things. It would be very difficult to build a new company on that basis. So I essentially had to move to go persuade the regulators that it was okay that even though we had applied for a banking license, right, that it was okay that we were not going to be a bank. And that it wasn't a tell that was just inconvenient for us or anything else. And to give to full color to this, the basic statement about whether or not a company is a bank starts with the claim, you accept deposits, which obviously if anyone has exposure to PayPal, they say, well, you could frame what PayPal does as accepting deposits. Right. You know, why is it you're not a bank? And so that would be the kind of challenge uh that was handed to me and then what you had to do is you had to figure out for this uh problem which could kill the company what were the key moving variables learn them talk to really smart people

Starting point is 00:26:37 and then solve that problem so that it was then fundamentally part of the cornerstone of what you were doing. And it ranged from relationship with eBay to Visa and MasterCard to international. I mean, just a very long list of things. And in each one, the looking at the problem had to be reframed. It was almost like building a kind of a view of the world. And then what are the key moving parts in order to get right in order to make PayPal succeed? And when you were defining the moving variables, is that a list of the unknowns where you need to go seek out information? Or is it – how would you go about putting together that list? Well, it kind of starts with what is the end result that you want to have happen? So, for example, in the regulatory one, the key thing is that regulators will never tell you that it's not their job to regulate you because there's no interest in them for that. What they will simply do is say, oh, actually, in fact, there's nothing for me here to actively regulate. They won't tell you.

Starting point is 00:27:51 You're outside of my scope. They'll go, okay, fine. You now seem like you're an okay. Like I don't need to actually regulate you because you're not in my positive purview. And so you say, okay, how do you get that state of affairs and how do you propagate that? And then you start working back from that to say, okay, well, how would they make their judgments? What are their key considerations? How can I learn about that? Who would I need to know? Because those were some of the unknowns come in. What are the kinds of things that would get them to say, okay, I think you're being reasonable and within my purview of

Starting point is 00:28:29 how I am out to help govern society, help protect consumers, help protect other entities, you're good by me. And then you work back from that is essentially the way that you do it. And how did you learn how to do that? Were you part of a debate team? Did you study negotiation? Did you work at a state fair for the summers? How did you develop the ability to not only deconstruct a problem like that but then to interface with all these various stakeholders at the table? I think the most fundamental was, I don't know if your audience knows what this is. You probably do. As a child, I played a lot of Avalon Hill board games.

Starting point is 00:29:19 Yeah. And each board game is actually a complex set of rules and circumstances. And essentially, as you're analyzing each one of them, you kind of look back from, okay, these goals mean that these are the kind of moving parts, and how do you do it? So it was actually, in fact, my childhood gaming for being able to build a model of what a game was that was essentially the fundamental thing that informs my strategic sense. Because this all comes out of strategy. And if you were giving advice to, say, someone leaving Stanford undergrad and they had no gaming background,

Starting point is 00:30:00 what would you recommend they do to try to develop a strategic ability or thinking? Well, um, you know, there's a lot of different paths to it. Most people think they're better at strategy than they are. Um, and so you really have to actually really hold up a very clear, you have to have a very deep self-awareness of, am I in fact really good at it? Because like having an idea or saying, like for example, you say, well, I just do this. Well, one move, a real strategy is actually built up off a, you know, what are your competitors doing? What is their mindset? What are their assets? How are they going to move? How are you going to move? What are your edges? What's the way that you can make

Starting point is 00:30:46 that work? How is it when they're playing against you, you can still play to win? So games are a very good way to do that and getting a lot of different exposure, not to computer games, because computer AI strategies are usually not that interesting, but against other people is very useful. I think it's also useful to read some, which I did as a child, military strategy, Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, other sorts of folks, more modern folks, and to think about kind of like what are the set of principles that when you're thinking about how to win a game that's in contention, in conflict.

Starting point is 00:31:26 And then a lot of people also, of course, have some sports knowledge on this too, although one of the things that's frequently a little limiting on sports is that the sports game that a person tends to do, they tend to be like, I play soccer or I play football or I play basketball. And then they have a very deep sense of what the strategy is there, but they haven't played enough different kinds of games, enough different circumstances. You know, it's like understanding like, well, what happens if I change these four rules in basketball, right?

Starting point is 00:31:57 Right. How would you play the strategy now? Totally. That's the kind of thing because actually, in fact, most of the circumstances you find yourself in, actually, in fact, you have to figure out what is the current game look like and how do you play that? And that's, of course, also, by the way, the reason why frequently, you know, companies rise and fall is because they learn to play one game. They got good at it and then the marketplace changes and now it's a kind of game, and you have to adjust to playing that new game. And that's actually, in fact of the disruptive theme that one encounters so much in Silicon Valley. I wasn't planning on asking this, but I'd be so curious to hear, given your experience with

Starting point is 00:32:51 regulatory risk and so on, what do you feel, if you have an opinion, Uber has done well and what could they have executed more effectively or strategically? So what they've done well is essentially quickly deploying their product so that it's clear that there's a bunch of people who are benefiting from it, both consumers and drivers, in various circumstances, so that there is an ecosystem of people by which you go, look, see, we can actually add a lot of positive to the system. I think that's been kind of one of the things that they've done most positively within it. On the negative side, the company tends to be very combative. And when you actually think about the mental space in which regulators tend to operate, they tend to have gone into that

Starting point is 00:33:47 job because they view themselves as protectors of important groups in society, whether they're consumers or workers or other folks. And so they don't tend to respond very well. It's not a competitive game with them. It's not you bulldoze through them or over them. They're actually, in fact, what they want is they want to know that their concerns are being answered. And it's frustrating, of course, for the company because, you know, the regulators are being triggered by, you know, competitive interests like, you know, taxicab companies and other kinds of things which want the world to stay only exactly as it is, which is not actually good for anyone to just say, you know, the way that we're going to run is the way that we were running in the 1950s and that's the way we're going to be running in

Starting point is 00:34:30 3000. You know, that's obviously not a very good idea. So actually, in fact, innovation and change and the pushback is frustrating. But nevertheless, when you're interfacing with the regulators, you have to interface with them with the understanding that they may be conservative, they may be slow to change, they may be risk averse, but their goal is a mission of protecting society. And so you should interface with them on that channel more than on the, just get out of my way, I'm innovating. And I treat you like I treat a competitor.

Starting point is 00:35:02 And that creates a lot of unnecessary friction. Right. No, that makes sense. You are, of course, considered a company builder. You've had an integral part in building some massive successes, but you're also very well regarded as an investor. And I would love if you could tell the story of getting introduced to Mark Zuckerberg and how you decided to be one of the first investors in Facebook. Well, actually, I could have told you I was interested in investing in Facebook even before Mark Zuckerberg. I tracked the product.

Starting point is 00:35:39 I thought it was extremely well done. When I tracked it, he and his co-founders, Dustin, Chris, and others, were in Boston going to Harvard. And so I went, ah, it's too much of a hassle. I was an angel investing. It's too much of a hassle. If I was a venture capitalist, I probably would have flown out there. But I was an angel, too much of a hassle. And so I kind of went, oh, that's cool, and then went back to it. And then I got this call from Sean Parker, who I'd known from his work at Plaxo and, you know, is a good product inventor and a good systems thinker on these things.

Starting point is 00:36:13 And Sean said, I've just met these really good guys, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and others who are doing this thing on Facebook that I'm joining that's really awesome. And I'm like, oh, that's really cool. Are you moving to Boston? He's like, no, no, they're here. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. He Are you moving to Boston? He's like, no, no, they're here. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. He's like, yeah, and we're looking for an estimate. I'm like, I would definitely like to meet with them. You know, I'm super interested in this. I tend to think, and one of the things I said, which is, I think, totally, you know, even though it's probably the most expensive economic decision I've made in my life, but it all in a good outcome. I said, look, you know,

Starting point is 00:36:45 when I did, when I led the series A in Friendster, I got a lot of pushback on, am I having my keek and eating it too? Because even though I don't see any conflict between Friendster and LinkedIn, you know, it just generated all this stuff. And part of having integrity and having, you know, a high sense of ethics is not just having it, but also making some work to appear to have it. So actually, I think we should do is we should have Peter, uh, lead the Peter Teal lead the round, uh, and I'll follow because then Peter can be the board member. And even though I'm super interested in this, I think that's probably the best thing to happen. And so, um, my actually very first meeting with Zuckerberg was at Peter Teal's office,

Starting point is 00:37:23 uh, uh, with Sean there who I'd known, and with Zuck. And then Matt Kohler was there as well, and who was working for me at the time. And that was our very first meeting. But basically, the meeting was very confirmatory, because I'd already seen the product, already known the product was really amazing, already seen it having traction. And really really what I learned from the meeting, which is hardly a surprise, especially now in retrospect, was that Zuckerberg, extremely smart, very much of a learning machine, very good at the evolution of technologies. But I'd already more or less was positive. If he'd said, I don't want to meet with you,

Starting point is 00:38:04 but you want to put in money, I probably would have put in money anyway. Right. And what was Mark Pincus' role at that point or his involvement with Facebook? Well, actually, so the way – Pincus had also known Sean Parker back from Napster days. Pincus had done an early startup called Freeloader. But part of actually how Mark got involved in the Facebook investment was separately Mark and I had bought a patent called the Six Degrees Patent. It has some number which describes the viral expansion of a system. And, you know, again, kind of on the ethics basis, I went, look, Mark and I are partners on this. We're actually trying to protect all

Starting point is 00:38:54 these new Web 2.0 viral companies. That's our principal goal in this patent, in going and buying this patent. But, you know, given that Facebook's also in this, I should actually, in fact, split the investment with Mark because, you know, basically it's part of being a good partner with him. And so that's part of how Mark – now, he also had known Sean Parker and Sean had talked to him about it as well. So there's a bunch of different things. But that's fundamentally how Pincus also became a Series A investor in Facebook. impression of some people that you have actively decided in the past not to take the CEO role

Starting point is 00:39:48 yourself. And have you sort of proactively made decisions in your life to avoid taking the CEO role or having it for a long period of time? And if so, why is that the case? Or is that a misperception? Well, there's kind of three different CEO jobs at levels of scale in the organization. There's CEO jobs of, call it, 10, 20, 50-person organizations. There's CEO jobs of hundreds to 150 to 500 people organizations. And then there's CEO jobs of over 500 people, like 1,000 or thousands. I've always known that I'm fundamentally not really interested in the CEO job, the large scale CEO job. When you're doing the large scale CEO job, your primary responsibility, you have to embody the strategy, you have to think about the things the right way. But your primary thing is the organization, having the right culture, having the right structure of the organization, the right people in it, the right way of hiring new people, the right way of empowering them, even though

Starting point is 00:40:54 you're making kind of strategic decisions. And there are people like Jeff Wiener who are completely awesome at that. And I rather help them rather than doing that personally. Then you get to the other two CEO jobs. So you get to the mid-stage CEO job. I'm okay doing that. It's not the thing I'm most passionate about. I actually prefer to work on product strategies, firefighting things, business strategies, problem solutions, thinking about how to reconceptualize the strategy of the entire business and either myself or working with people on that

Starting point is 00:41:30 but I'll do that in order to make it work and then in the early stages I'm actually perfectly comfortable doing it it's not necessarily a job that I say I want, I must do it but being the CEO of a 10, 20, 50 even up to 100 personperson organization, I can do that

Starting point is 00:41:47 just fine because then you're still all kind of working on the same problem. It's less about how you build the org. Obviously, you have to build a very strong team, but it's less about like, okay, how do we take the org from 100 people to 1,000 people? It's actually much more like, okay, how do we just solve these key problems? And that's stuff I like to do. So it isn't really a specific don't want the CEO job, except in a very large scale. What it is is I am only interested in the CEO job as it's instrumental to something serious that I want to accomplish. And then as that organization grows, wants not to be the CEO. And you've had some experience searching for CEOs.

Starting point is 00:42:34 What should founders remember when looking for someone to replace themselves or things they should keep in mind? Well, so the first thing is, generally speaking, founders should try to go – like, I'm still very active at LinkedIn – should try to go the entire course with the company to the degree to which they're passionate and can be useful. Companies are always stronger with founders, more and them more connected and committed to it. But that being said, sometimes you go, look, my great skill set is product or my great skill set is evangelism or my great skill set is something other than building the scale organization. In which case, the fundamental way you look at it is – so the former way that Silicon Valley used to look at it, which is I wrote an essay about this. It's published in my LinkedIn influencer post and on my site, reidhoffman.org. But the way that Silicon Valley used to look at this is like you bring in gray hair, an executive, a person with management scale. And by the way, you want those skills. But actually, in fact, I think who you're bringing in as a founder is you're bringing in a late later stage co-founder and you're bringing in a later stage co-founder ideally who has

Starting point is 00:43:47 scale skills, who knows how to build scale organizations is passionate about this one, you know, has their identity as closely tied or, or, or nearly as closely tied to the organization as you do. It's, it's this specific mission is something that they really care about.

Starting point is 00:44:02 They're not just like, Oh, I'm a hired gun, but actually in fact, I'm a missionary on this as well. And then someone who would partner with you very well. And that's actually what you're looking for. And so that's part of the reason why Jeff Wiener has been so successful at LinkedIn is because he cares about not just scale organizations, but how do you transform people's careers? How do you demonstrate you can be doing compassionate business and that compassionate management

Starting point is 00:44:29 is a high performing culture of a company? How do you have people who have a culture of we make ourselves significantly better every year? How do you bring all that? That's part of what he actually really cares about, links which you know uh which uh is deeply tied to the linkedin mission uh and so he cares about the organization he cares about the way he manages and he cares about the product and all as a uh essentially a later stage co-founder and that's the kind of thing that you uh you should be thinking about when you're a founder and you're thinking, okay, it's time for me to bring in another person as a CEO. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:45:11 Michael, you mentioned accents a little earlier and that you use accents in the ER often. And I know you've mentioned to me before that Southern is best. And I was hoping you could elaborate on that. I'm getting into much trouble. But when I had my head injury as a kid and brain surgery in the fourth, fifth grade, you're always looking for ways to be more fluent. So in speeches, I talk like I'm a European. It's a good accent for speaking. But if I'm in the ER, I'll talk like I'm from Alabama or Georgia because it's a good accent for sick people. You can almost like yell at them. They don't think you're mad.

Starting point is 00:45:54 So you can kind of raise the volume of someone who's hearing impaired pretty loud. They don't think you're mad at them. And it keeps the nurses also kind of humorously entertained as well. And how has the ER experience or the skills developed or exhibited there translated to the other things that you've done in the nonprofits or in the for-profit investment world? The ER in particular has helped a lot with my investing because most of the specialties interface with the ER and enabled me to reach into ophthalmology or cardiology. And investment in things like heart flow, I can just pick up the phone and speak to an interventionalist or heart surgeons and things like that. So I think from a decision-making capacity, it teaches you the importance of actually making a decision because you don't always have all the information you need, but the

Starting point is 00:46:53 stakes are high. So I think there's a lot of entrepreneurial kind of a crossover there that can also be helpful. Making important decisions with incomplete information. Well, and also just the importance of having actually made a decision as well, right? Because if you're always kind of like waffling, nothing actually happens. And you and I have talked a lot about meditation, but more broadly speaking, the people listening are very interested in morning habits and morning routines. So I'd

Starting point is 00:47:25 love to ask you guys the same question. Let's start with you, Michael. What is the first 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like? And what time does it start? If we could get into specifics, that would be great. Sure. More recently, I used to fight this kind of hour and a half awake in the middle of the night thing between two sleep cycles not kind of actually just kind of get up and do like probably you know half an hour to an hour of like meditation between like three and four in the morning or four and five and that then hands me half an hour of real clarity after that to kind of think about kind of my day and how i'd like to end up using it and what type of meditation do you practice? There are concentration and mindfulness techniques

Starting point is 00:48:11 that you can use that are pretty common. I think rather than talk about the type that I do, I think a lot of the debate between types of meditation is kind of like the debate of kinds of like weightlifting people do. And I think the important thing is that you actually just like, you know, lift the weights, right? So I'm not convinced any one type of mindfulness training is superior to another,

Starting point is 00:48:36 but clearly almost any would be superior to actually not actually doing it. Do you have any opinion of neurofeedback? I think generally, even as an investor, I think there's beginning to be a commercial breakdown between that are taking the interface with the mind out of the realm of religion and into the realm of science and such. And I think they're even like a prep high school who are doing a controlled experiment on mindfulness to see how it affects homework and performance and things like that. Yeah, no, definitely.

Starting point is 00:49:28 And Adam Guzzali, who is also on this podcast at UCSF is doing some really interesting work with a iPad based or tablet based games for quantifying progress and meditation and mindfulness. Read. What about yourself? What are your morning rituals look like in an ideal day, assuming you have control of your morning, the first 60 to 90 minutes of your day?

Starting point is 00:49:53 What does that look like if you had your sort of optimal recipe? Well, I don't know if it's optimal or not, and I also don't know how interesting it is, but most of my days are pretty packed because of responsibilities to Greylock, responsibilities to LinkedIn, okay, I want to work on this. I want to think about this the day before, the night before. This is a key thing that I want to think about. A product design, a strategy, a solution to a problem that one of my portfolio companies was looking at, that sort of thing. Or I need to solve this thing creatively for a meeting I'm having later today. Like we're making a decision at Greylock to invest in something. or I need to solve this thing creatively for a meeting I'm having later today.

Starting point is 00:50:48 Like we're making a decision at Greylock to invest in something. You know, a team is going to be pitching me or there's going to be some kind of business development relationship between LinkedIn or another of my portfolio companies. And so the very first thing I do when I get up, almost always, is to actually sit down and work on that problem because that's when I'm freshest. I'm not distracted by phone calls and responses to things and so forth. So I'll actually – it's the most tabula rasa, kind of blank slate moment that I have. And so I use that to maximize my creativity on a particular project.

Starting point is 00:51:26 I'll usually do it before I shower because frequently, like if I go in the shower, then I'll continue to think about it as I'm doing it, but I'll get it all fired up. Ideally, I would have 60 minutes for that. Some mornings I do. Frequently, it's like around 30 just because of the press of the day. And then the next things that kind of round out if it's only 30 are a combination of a quick triage through email to see if there's anything that's an emergency or kind of something that's temporarily or otherwise important that I need to get on right away. And then frequently, most of my during the

Starting point is 00:52:08 work week, I almost always have a business breakfast on some project could be anything from a nonprofit, you know, like Mozilla, to, you know, portfolio company, or just a general meeting with someone who's been recommended to me. And then on the drive to that breakfast, frequently I'll do a call. That's kind of one, because it's one of those, usually the days are so packed with meetings that some of the, it's typically the only real phone time I have. And so if there's someone I need to talk to that is not co-located, that's usually when I call them. Got it. And when you're working on that first creative problem, is that something that you've put in a notebook the night before?

Starting point is 00:52:52 Is it on a laptop? How are you storing these problems and then working on them? So it will either be most commonly because I kind of grew up where i was thinking by using a pen and paper most commonly i will have sketched a few things thought about a few things uh it'll be a you know and usually it's in the notion of how do you solve this problem like a little bit back to the thing we were talking about is like setting up that framework like a strategy you know within a strategy of a game what are the kind of key things that, you know, might be constraints on a solution or might be the attributes of a solution

Starting point is 00:53:32 and what are tools or assets I might have? Because part of what I'm trying to do is I actually think, you know, most of our thinking, of course, is subconscious, is part of what I'm trying to do is allow the fact that we have this kind of uh relaxation rejuvenation period in sleeping uh to essentially possibly bubble up the the thoughts and solutions to it and so when i've woken up not only am i kind of tabula rasa, but I'm also possibly primed for that. And so anyway, that's the way I do it. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. You've said before, Reid, that your network is your mentor and that you learn from everyone in your network. I'd love to just tick off a couple of names of people I believe you know and hear the first thing that comes to mind in terms of what

Starting point is 00:54:22 you learn or have learned from them. You mentioned earlier the CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky. What's the first thing that comes to mind there? So Brian, one of the things that I thought was an excellent focus from him is that he calls this seven-star design, which is most review systems go to five stars. And so seven stars was thinking about the design at a much broader scope. But the precise way of thinking about it is what he came to realize is that Airbnb is not just an online product. It's not just a marketplace, a website. but it's actually the entire experience that you have of going to the room or apartment, of checking in, of staying there, and of leaving. And how do you actually, in fact, best design within your abilities of doing a peer-to-peer marketplace that entire experience?

Starting point is 00:55:19 And so the way the placeholder he uses for that is this thinking of seven-star design, which is thinking through each step of the experience. And so I thought it was highly instructive and something I now use myself, use when I talk to other people, because our product isn't just the website, isn't just the mobile application. It's the way that people are embedded in the environment when they're using it. And you should think through that as much you can, even though you may have some very limited ability to control other aspects of it or shape. And what about one of your partners at Greylock, John Lilly? So John is about as deep and interesting as a technologist you get for an investor. He puts together kind of both the aspects of being very deeply technical about

Starting point is 00:56:15 platforms. I mean, he was the CEO of Mozilla, growing it to being 20% of web browsers, with also kind of design experience. like he's a consulting professor at the stanford school of design and so for me you know part of the thing that uh i get from john i've learned from john is to think about the intersection of kind of user design with deep technology and how for example design patterns then shape deep technology patterns and kind of a set of different questions that you'd ask about, look, what's the structure of the design space? And does that inform the structure of your technology space? And so we talk about a whole wide variety of technologies, but those are the kinds of mental and strategy and thinking patterns that I've

Starting point is 00:57:03 gotten honed to a fine edge from John. Also a hilarious guy. Very sharp sense of humor. Yes. What about your former co-worker, now SpaceX Tesla founder, Elon Musk? So Elon, obviously super smart, obviously relentless, obviously thinking you know like for example the the the old phrase the sky is the limit that's too short for elon right you know mars and beyond um uh the thing that i most learned from elon is actually in fact um that so previous to Elon's amazing successes with Tesla and SpaceX and SolarCity, I had come to learn that that part of the business strategy is to solve the simplest and easiest, most valuable problem. And actually, in fact, part of doing strategy is to solve the easiest problem.

Starting point is 00:58:02 So part of the reason why you work in software and bits is that atoms are actually very difficult. You have sometimes real material product development risk, inventory risk, material science, all these things that makes atom products harder. And so if you can work in the bits products, it's a lot more valuable. It scales more quickly and so forth. And all of that's true in terms of the fact that it wasn't that that lesson I'd learned was false. But what Elon taught me was actually, in fact, if you have a very deep vision for something, you're relentless. And you choose something that really matters that the competitors are, in fact, really weak,

Starting point is 00:58:41 right? Like they're not actually, in fact, like for example, you know, all of the rocket contractors were mostly focused on how do they milk government contracts, not on how do they build new propulsion systems, not on how do they take advantage of the last couple of decades of actual progress. And so that actually gave him a, it, as, uh, it's a very hard challenge. What he's done is extremely compelling and, and, you know, very few people could pull it off, but that gives you a sufficient window, even when you're taking on a hard problem. And that's actually one of the things I learned from Elon. And, uh, Julie Hanna, uh, Kiva.org chairwoman.

Starting point is 00:59:23 Yep. What would you, what would you say to that? So Julie, now I knew this already, but Julie is a very good model for this, which is that you can have someone who is a world-class entrepreneur, serially experienced with it, is a general learner, has done enterprise companies, has transitioned to thinking about open source, and was one of the early kind of people of how do you apply open source to things, can also go and thoroughly apply all of those things into not just the for-profit world, not just her own companies, not just her

Starting point is 01:00:06 angel investments, not just her work with various kind of incubators and others, but also into the nonprofit world. And where it's one of the things when you say, you know, we have a tendency in Silicon Valley to say, you know, entrepreneurs are heroes. But, you know but one of the things I think is truly heroic and awesome about what Julie has done is say, look, I can take all these skills, I can take my entire life only just building economics and enterprise businesses and other kinds of businesses. But actually, in fact, when I begin to think about how do I scale and how do I change the nature of humanity and human ecosystems, I'm going to take my technology skills and apply them to philanthropic projects with the same kind of scale, with the same kind of impulse. And I'll put real time into it. I'm not just going to talk about it.

Starting point is 01:00:59 And I'm going to do it with the full set of skills that a world-class entrepreneur does. And so I've seen – I've taken heart and inspiration from Julie about the value of diving in and getting your hands dirty on projects that are outside of the commercial side for – that are really ones that you can actually, in fact, get to massive scale. And last for this list, U.S. Senator Cory Booker, who I actually met for the first time at an event that you co-hosted. So thank you for that. But what have you learned or admired as it relates to Corey? Well, so Corey is, I think, a great civic leader. He, you know, is entrepreneurial and bold himself. When he was the mayor of Newark, he lived in the housing projects in order to know what the experience was, in order to be able to be to understand, you know, kind of how does he maximize the happiness and the economic potential and they and solve the problems of the people that he is there to help

Starting point is 01:02:12 you know help as a mayor and then as a senator uh part of what i have found him to be practically unique in, like, or the leading edge. There are a few others who I think also do this, but he's the leading edge of, I get that Silicon Valley is creating all this kind of interesting technology,

Starting point is 01:02:38 and I get that there's these really powerful commercial models and I want to learn from them, but when Corey comes out to Silicon Valley, of course he has the interest that every politician does, which is, you know, raising money and there's these really powerful commercial models and I want to learn from them. But when Corey comes out to Silicon Valley, of course, he has the interest that every politician does, which is, you know, raising money and there's a bunch of money in order to inform political campaigns. But his first, second and third questions aren't about how do I get you to give

Starting point is 01:02:55 me a check? It's how do I learn from you in order to solve a problem that's critical for the American people and in particular, critical for the people who may be being left out, but all people as well. And so whether his focus is on we have a really serious problem with mass incarceration or whether the challenge is what do we do in order to kind of have a good foreign policy, any of these questions, he starts with, what do I learn from you that can then help me figure out how to help us be better as a country? And then, of course, if he ends up with alignment and he says, look, can you help me with X, Y, and Z? At that point, he's speaking your language and has understood and has asked you to participate in helping being a good citizen. And if we could have more senators like Senator Booker, Corey, my friend, I think the world would be a much better place. Yeah, totally agreed. He's exceptional at asking incisive questions, and not just for the sake of asking the questions, but for actually listening to the answers. Michael, what is the book that

Starting point is 01:04:18 you have given most as a gift or books? actually reads book with a Ben, a Casanova, the, uh, a startup of you. And, uh, why,

Starting point is 01:04:32 why have you chosen that book? Uh, it just has a lot of principles in it for young people right out of a college or kind of in the middle of their twenties and such to think about how to pursue their careers. Got it. And, uh, what would be your, what would be your second book if you had to pick a second? Well, to young people, I often give them a simple book you've probably heard about called Getting Things Done.

Starting point is 01:05:02 David Allen. Combine that with The Seven habits of highly effective people, because I think the former helps you actually to, to action and the latter helps you decide which actions to actually, you know, take. So I mentor a lot of young people. And I think those two books together are probably good for them.

Starting point is 01:05:26 Wonderful. Yeah. We're going to, we QuestBridge in a second because I want to make sure that we cover that. Reid, what about yourself? The book or books that you've given most as gifts, besides the ones that you've been involved with directly? Yes. Well, obviously, I tend to give out my two books, The Startup of You and The Alliance, a fair amount, partially because you can sign it and you can make it very personalized and it becomes a very personal touch gift. I'd say the two books that I have recently most given out whole kind of thread is to say actually, in fact, how you can express, it's a book that opens with a discussion of Aristotle and, you know, not, not, not, you would be, you know, be surprised on a business book. So that's one. And then the other one is Sapiens by Yuval Harari, which is a very grand, it's one of the ones I've read most recently, a grand theory of humanity and kind of how does the evolution's cognition work.

Starting point is 01:06:47 And I don't know enough to know, like, is it really deep scholarly work or not, but it's exactly the kind of broad thinking book that I think should be more in, you know, general consciousness. And Michael, you mentioned mentoring. I think this is a good segue. Could you please describe QuestBridge and what QuestBridge does? Because of course, that's a common thread that ties everyone on this call together. the advisory board. I'm one participant on the advisory board and very honored to be part of that. But could you describe, and you of course are one of the co-founders of QuestBridge, could you describe for folks what it is that QuestBridge does and some of the results or numbers? Sure. I'll describe what it does and what the problem it solves as well. And you said, we just ahead of the advisory, and we've really appreciated your help also, Tim. So QuestBridge is, on one level, simply a common application for super

Starting point is 01:07:53 smart, low-income kids heading to top schools like Princeton and Yale and Swarthmore and Amherst and such. You can apply to all the schools for free with our application online. The schools help to offset the cost of the pool so we don't have to raise a lot of money and can focus on execution. The scale that it's reached is significant. At some schools, about half of their diversity, and we put in more low-income kids than all the other nonprofits in the country actually all combined. But there are a lot more out there.

Starting point is 01:08:32 And the interesting thing in America that people don't know is there's actually no shortage of smart low-income kids to use up all these kind of wonderful financial aid openings so they can afford to pay a full tuition award. It's just they simply aren't handing in applications. And so we're trying to make that process simpler. But in real numbers, we had over 140 kids accepted to Yale last year. Over 110 at MIT were accepted.

Starting point is 01:09:00 The majority of those accepted would actually go. So on the one hand, our numbers are large. On the other hand, we've probably gone from finding and having them apply like one in 14 of the qualified kids to one in nine. fail several times over every top school with smart, qualified, low-income academic kids for all the financial aid openings. And I'm sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt if you had more there. Oh, no, I didn't. My wife and I have been doing this now in some form for about 20 years or so and are hitting a good scale,

Starting point is 01:09:47 but are working with people like Reed and others to try to increase our scale. And also now we have about 8,000 students in our schools. How do you bring them into the corporate world and medical schools and things also? And for those interested, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal has had some excellent feature pieces recently on QuestBridge. Reid, you get asked

Starting point is 01:10:12 to participate in different projects, different startups, different nonprofits all the time. What is it about QuestBridge that led you to decide to participate, to contribute to it, to be part of it? Well, it's actually a very similar process to how I actually make a decision to be an investor. Not 100%, but close, which is, you know, roughly speaking, I think the mission of life is how do you maximize humanity? The expression of human potential, our consciousness,

Starting point is 01:10:48 our sense of ethics and ethos, our ways of being with each other. And when you look at QuestBridge, you say, well, here is actually, in fact, one very intelligent system design for exactly that. Because the way that you can change a life of this high talent low-income kid by providing a path and an understanding and a and a way of succeeding through a strong college is not only a way to change a life but also to change the world because you know those that not only do they change their own lives, but then they model for others, they can potentially give back to the community.

Starting point is 01:11:29 And also then folks who, you know, benefit from elite universities have the knowledge and understanding and compassion to, you know, kind of what are the challenges for lower income and can help participate in a really positive way. So part of, I think, if anything, Michael's being kind of socially apt and discreet and kind of saying, look, it's an application, but not only is it an application, it's a community. It's a community that helps those kids succeed through college and then connect with the world around them at large. And so it was a very quick and easy decision to join and help. Michael, what I'd like to do is just give an example of the type of thing that gets me excited

Starting point is 01:12:29 about QuestBridge. And please feel free to correct me because I know this is just a small part or maybe one example. But for those people listening, I mean, I'm involved with a number of non-profits but I try to apply, like Reid, the same level of scrutiny and high expectations to nonprofits that I would to for-profits.

Starting point is 01:12:51 And it turns out to be very challenging. But in the case of Questbridge, Reid mentioned earlier, part of strategy being solving the easiest, most valuable problem. And I think part of that is identifying, of course, the right problem. And as you mentioned, Michael, there's a lot of money out there. There is a lot of money. Colleges will give students more than $300,000 each to go to college. One of the issues is simply the lack of applications. These kids don't apply oftentimes, and they may not have the social support and may not even enter their minds to apply.

Starting point is 01:13:31 So how do you solve that problem? Because a lot of people are trying to solve the wrong problem by throwing more money at small example, which was in these communities where they may not even be thinking of applying to college, doing, for instance, an iPad giveaway or a giveaway of some type. to sign up for this giveaway potentially and win, just so happens to also be a standardized application that you've convinced 36 top schools to accept as college applications. And so these kids are incentivized in a way that is kind of culturally relevant to them. And then they get a letter in the mail saying, hey, by the way, Princeton University here, we'd like to offer you a full ride for four years. And it's just such an elegant solution.

Starting point is 01:14:31 And it's such an example, for me at least, of getting a very large result for a small input, a small intervention. And that's why I've been so excited to talk about QuestBridge. And I've been looking forward to this interview for many other reasons also, but to try to showcase it for people to say, not all hard problems have to be hard to solve. You just have to really surgically focus in the right place. So I'd love to ask, just as it relates to QuestBridge,

Starting point is 01:15:08 for people who want to learn more where should they go and there are many people listening to this show who are perhaps like me have recognized how they were set down a very fortunate path by having educational opportunities that are not available to everyone. So for people who might want to contribute to such an effective Archimedes lever like QuestBridge, where should they go and how might they be able to help?

Starting point is 01:15:38 Sure. I think to clarify the problem just so your listeners can understand it, before QuestBridge, about three quarters of the diversity was drawn from only 15 urban areas in the country. So you were more likely to hear about heading to a school like Swarthmore if you had a 2.8 from harlem and if you had a 4.0 from a lot of other areas in the country so questridge recruits it at uh you know in new york and chicago like other people do but also in like buffalo and syracuse and other areas of other country um in defense of the kids it's not intuitive that a school would give you $300,000 for free. Of course. So to get their application data, Quest is unique in that we have our own kind of success in attracting applicants to fulfill out a college application for a proposition unrelated to the application itself. So if it's a student who wants to get involved, they can simply go to our website at questbridge.org.

Starting point is 01:16:56 We have an application actually open now for this fall's application cycle. We have access to about half a billion dollars of financial aid from our universities. And we'd like to harvest more of America's latent talent from areas that we haven't reached earlier. your listeners to make sure that your local high school actually uses our application in that only about a third of the high schools in the country have handed applications in. And then for people who would like to create their own intervention, let's say for low-income kids wanting to do math and science or low-income women or low-income people from the South or almost any interest, they can even reach out to me directly. And on your blog, you can feel free to put my email address if you'd like to. Okay, wonderful.

Starting point is 01:17:55 And would you like to give that out now or would you prefer it just in – Sure, yeah. Yeah, it's michael at questbridge.org. Great. And by prizes, you mean people could offer some type of... What might a prize look like? Yeah, it's really odd.

Starting point is 01:18:14 It could be non-monetary, like we'd like to, say, have a leadership award at the White House or something. But it can be as simple as we ran a pilot for Native Americans where we gave away 20 laptops, hooking the actual university application up to the prize application. And we grew from having only 34 applicants one year

Starting point is 01:18:40 to over 350 the year after that. So for everyone listening, I just want to really encourage you. I am very, very, I have a very, very tight filter,

Starting point is 01:18:54 tightness filter when it comes to working with nonprofits. And this, this one is worth your time. So I would just encourage you to

Starting point is 01:19:02 look at it. Forget about the label nonprofit as an intervention that can better humanity. As, as Reed mentioned, this is, this is one of the rare gems out there in my opinion. And,

Starting point is 01:19:14 you know, other organizations that I've worked with, like donors choose, for instance, Charles Best is a huge fan of QuestBridge. And he said, the first thing he said to me when I mentioned a few years ago that Michael, you and I connected,

Starting point is 01:19:24 he said, that is an excellent choice. That is an awesome choice. So people, check out questbridge.org, and you can reach Michael if you'd like to discuss collaborating in some way, michael at questbridge.org. So I'll just ask one more question, guys. It'll take one or two minutes. Let's start with you, Michael. If you could have one billboard anywhere

Starting point is 01:19:47 that said anything, what would it say and where would it be? I'd probably have people do what you do, Jim. Pick something you're afraid of every day and kind of go after it. And I'd put that on kind of people's way to work, I suppose. What about yourself, Reid?

Starting point is 01:20:16 Well, this is kind of a funny reflex, but just something I was thinking about recently. I think I would take the billboard in Washington, D.C. I think I would target Congress people and I'd say, have you worked with someone across the aisle today? Because what matters is not partisan conflict, but how do we govern our country to actually have a better future? Here, here. Definitely. Last question, guys. Do you have any ask or request for my audience? Reid, we can start with you.

Starting point is 01:20:44 And then where can people find you online? Where can they ping you on social networks, et cetera? Well, on the social networks, it's very easy. There's this service that maybe a few people have heard of called LinkedIn. You know, findable there. I'd say two things. I would also echo the fact that QuestBridge is a scale way of changing the world for the better, of actually making us more of the, for us in the U.S., the American dream in terms of the ability for talented, low-income youth to actually you know uh live in a meritocracy so i think it's awesome and whatever way you can support whether it's contributing or helping or you know pointing out the right talented young kid at it is all great and then the second is you know last year i published a book called the alliance uh your audience tends to be highly literate, not a surprise given you.

Starting point is 01:21:47 And so in as much as they're thinking about how is the nature of employment and how is the nature of the relationship between an employee and a company changing, I think it might be something that could stimulate a few thoughts. Definitely. And I have a copy of that book at home in SF, everybody. Highly worth the read. So highly recommended there. Well, gentlemen, this has been wonderful. I've really enjoyed the conversation. And for everybody listening,

Starting point is 01:22:15 I will put everything we discussed in the show notes. So we'll have links to QuestBridge, the book recommendations, and so on. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and click on podcast to find that. And guys, I really appreciate you making the time. This was a lot of fun, and I have pages and pages of notes just for myself.

Starting point is 01:22:36 Tim, always a pleasure and always an honor. Thank you for the conversation, Tim. All right, guys, until next time, thank you. And everyone else, until next time, thank you for listening.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #101: The Oracle of Silicon Valley, Reid Hoffman (Plus: Michael McCullough)

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