The Tim Ferriss Show - #754: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ann Miura-Ko

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Starting point is 00:03:22 Pod 4 Ultra. They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives.

Starting point is 00:04:08 This episode is a two-for-one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about, and passed 1 billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes. And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my

Starting point is 00:04:46 life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at Tim.blog slash combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening. First up, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-born bodybuilder, star of Total Recall, True Lies, Twins, and the Terminator films, among many others, businessman, philanthropist, best-selling author of Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life,

Starting point is 00:05:31 and the 38th governor of California. You can find Arnold on Twitter and Instagram at Schwarzenegger. And you can join more than half a million subscribers to his newsletter, Pump Club, at arnoldspumpclub.com. I was looking at a very old photograph of, I think, your first major bodybuilding competition in Stuttgart. I think it was the Junior Mr. Europe. And I looked at this photograph, and what stuck out to me was, if we had just looked at the faces,

Starting point is 00:06:27 not the bodies, it was so clear to me that you were going to win and that you knew or believed you were training five hours a day. You always know why you're pushing and going through the pain barrier and why do you have to eat more and why do you have to struggle more? Why do you have to be more disciplined? And all of those things become much more clear. It's not like, oh my God, I have to do another 200 sit-ups. It's more kind of like, I can't wait to do another 200 sit-ups because that will get me one step closer to have the abs that I need to win that Mr. Universe. And that's my goal.

Starting point is 00:06:58 I see myself clearly on that stage winning the Mr. Universe. I see myself very clearly of getting the trophy, standing there with the trophy, raising it above my head, and having hundreds of bodybuilders around me, below me on stage, looking up and idolizing me, including the thousands of people that are watching the event. So that was always my clear vision, and that always inspired me to go all out.

Starting point is 00:07:23 So when I went for competition you have to understand i went to the junior mr europe during my time in the military and so what it took for me to go and to get on that train personenzug which was the people's train meaning kind of like it was not a schnellzug at the end of the fast train It was the slow train that literally stopped at every train station to let workers off and to bring new workers on. And that's what the train was. And so with that, you went all the way to Stuttgart because it was the cheapest way of going because I didn't have much money. And you didn't get hit by any customs officers or anything like that? Well, we got hit, but the minute we got through it. I didn't have my passport because

Starting point is 00:08:05 you have to give up the passport when you go into the military, right? You pass. I didn't even have a passport. Passport we got afterwards when we were finished with the military. So we got through and we got to Germany, to Stuttgart. And so there was this will there that no matter what it takes, even if I have to crawl to Germany, that I will be there at that event because that was my shot. When I saw the ads about this Mr. Europe Junior competition, Best Gebauter Athlet Europas in German. And that was my opportunity to really go and to make my first kind of entry

Starting point is 00:08:42 into an international competition. And I felt that I can win it. And that's what I was there for. I wasn't there to compete. I was there to win. And so that's why you saw that facial expression. There was a certain arrogance there. There was a certain way that I posed with the other competitors. I always felt during the pose-off that I had my act together much more than the others did. And then I'm going to make them feel inferior and I will win. And I will look facially and physically to the judges that I'm the champion. So you touched on something I really want to dig into, which is the psychological warfare of bodybuilding, of life in general. I really feel, and this is a compliment, I mean it as a compliment, a real master.

Starting point is 00:09:26 And if anyone who's watched Pumping Iron or anything, I think comes away with that as a takeaway. How did you develop that? And for instance, when you were, I guess, 17 or 18, how did you get inside the heads of those people at that point? I think that it came about when I trained in the gym. I always felt that people are kind of really vulnerable in certain areas. So that someone that comes to the gym and works

Starting point is 00:09:57 out because he wants to have a better body, that he most likely will be vulnerable. And that's during conversations that I discovered in Munich when I was a trainer in the gym. They were vulnerable when you said something like, well, you're fat. There was not even a doubt in anyone's mind. If 10 people would have looked at that guy or 100 people, they all would have said that that guy is fat. But he was outraged. He said, what? Do you really think I'm that fat that you're mentioning it?

Starting point is 00:10:23 I said, well, you're in the gym. I go to the doctor's office and say, I have have a cough I don't go and beat around the bush I say I have to tell him what the problem is and then he can give me the medication I said there's the same thing in the gym I said you come here because you're fucking fat and so that's so now let's solve the problem and so there's no beating around the bush there either and so you know so I could see that they were kind of like shriveling up and kind of shocked so I could see the vulnerability and then I tried different lines and people and you know we'll talk about the hair the hairline or we'll talk about the hair color turning gray and then they would just freak out you know about

Starting point is 00:11:03 little things like that so it was natural that with all the experience that i got now being a trainer and working with people and all this that i learned about people's psychology and about their weaknesses and their strength and all this how do you build people up because my whole thing was let's first discover and talk about the weakness and then let's go and rebuild everything so that was the idea to give this guy six pack to make him feel great to declare victory by next summer that he can go to the beach and that he can go and feel proud of himself and feel great and all this and then continue training so that was the idea so by the time i came to america and i started you know competing over here it was very

Starting point is 00:11:40 clear that when i said to someone let me ask you something, do you have any knee injuries or something like that? And then they would look at me and say, no, why? No knee injury at all. No, my knees feel great. And I said, why are you asking? I said, well, because your thighs look a little slimmer to me.

Starting point is 00:11:57 I mean, I thought maybe you can squat or maybe there's some problem with leg extension. I was like, this is really? And then I saw them all for two hours in the gym, always going in front of the mirror and checking out their thighs, if their thighs still exist or something. But, I mean, people are vulnerable about those things. So, naturally, when you now have a competition, you use all this.

Starting point is 00:12:21 And so you ask people, were they sick for a while? Were they looking a little leaner? Or did you take any salty foods lately? And they say, why? I say, because it looks like you have water retention. I say, it doesn't look as ripped as you were like a week ago. So that throws people off in an unbelievable way. And they get defensive.

Starting point is 00:12:42 And they walk away kind of like, oh, this didn't bother them at all. But then you can see, you watch them as they walk around the pump-up room and when you warm up for the competition and you could see them kind of thinking to themselves kind of then going to a mural and checking it out secretly and all that stuff so you know it works i just slowly developed it because i always felt that sports are not just a physical thing as a matter of fact i felt that the mentality and the mental strength in sports in the psychology in sports is much more important than the physical thing because in reality i mean i see when i watch a mr olympia competition or mr universe competition or any of those things, you know, they all look pretty much the same,

Starting point is 00:13:26 the top five guys. But what makes one emerge is the way he acts. If he acts like a winner, if he seems smiling, having a great time on stage and all this. So I felt, you know, one should use the psychology. One should use everything

Starting point is 00:13:39 in as far as food supplements is concerned. Use your best, you know, posing trunks. Try to use the sun out there and work out in the sun so you get tanned all around. Use the best posing routine. Just really give me a tan of everything. Then you have a shot of winning. And psychology was definitely part of that. And you developed this arsenal of intimidation through the bodybuilding.

Starting point is 00:14:05 Did you use that, for instance, in movies, waiting in line to audition against other people who were going into audition or anything like that? Did it apply to show business? I never auditioned. Okay. Never. Because I would never go out for the regular parts because I was not a regular looking guy. So my idea always was, okay, everyone is going to look the same and everyone is trying to be the blonde guy in California, going to Hollywood interviews

Starting point is 00:14:29 and then looking somewhat athletic and cute and all this. Okay, how can I carve myself out the niche that is unique that only I have? So I always felt like really strong about, I have to get into the movie business like Reg Park did or like Steve Reeves or Paul Wintel, Larry Gordon and all those guys that were in the muscle movies in the 50s and 60s. That's the way I'm going to get in there. Of course, you know, the naysayers were right there and they said, well, you know, this

Starting point is 00:14:56 time has passed. This was 20 years ago. You look too big, too monstrous, too muscular. You will never get in the movies. So that's what producers said in the beginning in Hollywood. And that's also what agents said, managers. They said, I doubt that you're going to be successful in that because today's idols, I mean, this is not the 70s, Arnold.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Today's idols are, you know, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Woody Allen. I mean, look, this is all little guys. You know, those are the sex symbols. Those are the hot stars look at you you weigh 250 pounds or something like that this is that time is over but i felt still very strongly and had a very clear vision that the time would come where someone would appreciate that and then sure enough when people saw me on talk shows they got inspired directors like barbara aferson and then bought the book of stay hungry and had it written into a script and then did the movie with me because he believed in me

Starting point is 00:15:50 that i had the personality and i had a certain strength and a certain kind of a look that would be great on the screen that the camera loves me and all that and so it worked i did stay hungry i did then pumping on the documentary i did. I did the Streets of San Francisco and worked then with Anne Margaret and with Kirk Douglas and the villain. And then all of a sudden, I got the contract for Conan the Barbarian. And bang, there we were, $20 million movie,

Starting point is 00:16:17 which today would be an equivalent of a $200 million movie. And Dino De Laurentiis producing Universal Studio and International Studio financing the movie. And Johnius a first class director directing it so my whole plan worked and i was so right even john millius after he has done the movie he said if we wouldn't have had schwarzenegger we would have had to build one because of the body and when i did terminator jim cameron said if we wouldn't have had Schwarzenegger, and we couldn't have done the movie,

Starting point is 00:16:47 only because he sounded like a machine, was it so believable that he actually played a machine. And that's where people bought in. When he says, I'll be back, it's totally different than when I say, I'll be back, kind of thing. So he was the greatest compliment. The very things that the agents and the managers and the studio executive said would be a total obstacle became an asset.

Starting point is 00:17:10 And my career started taking off. The not auditioning is really interesting to me. I knew you were very successful in real estate, but correct me if I'm wrong, you had become a millionaire in real estate before your first movie. Is that right? Not before the first movie, before my career took off. Got it. So I did not rely on my movie career to make a living

Starting point is 00:17:29 because that was my intention because I saw over the years the people that worked out in the gym and that I met in the acting classes, they all were very vulnerable because they didn't have any money and they had to take anything that was offered to them because that was their living. I didn't want to get into that situation. I felt like if I'm smart with real estate and take my little money that I make in bodybuilding and seminars and selling my courses through the mail order and orders, I could save up enough money to put down money for an apartment building.

Starting point is 00:18:09 And I realized that in the 70s, the inflation rate was very high. And therefore, an investment like that is unbeatable. Because buildings that I would buy for $500,000 within a year were $800,000. And I only put maybe $100,000 down. So you made 300% on your money. So you couldn't beat that. So I quickly developed and traded up my buildings and bought more apartment buildings and office buildings on Main Street down in Santa Monica and so on.

Starting point is 00:18:35 And the investments were very good and it was just one of those magic decade. The day you couldn't do it in that same field. There's another field in real estate where you can do that. But in this particular field, I don't think you will see those kind of jumps ever again. And I benefited from that. And I became a millionaire from my real estate investments. And that was before my career took off in show business, in acting, which was after

Starting point is 00:18:59 Conan the Barbarian in 1982. That movie came out. We shot it in 81. And in 82, it came out. So from that point on, my career took off because people saw, that movie came out. We shot it in 81 and in 82 it came out. So from that point on, my career took off because people saw, you know, that the movie was successful at the box office. Then, you know, I signed a contract to do Conan number two. And, you know, then that led to a contract, you know, for Terminator 1 and then Commando. You know, then the action genre.

Starting point is 00:19:21 Also, there was another fortunate thing each of those decades offered something very fortunate that was a little bit beyond my control but i benefited from that you know so that there was the action genre that all of a sudden took off in the 80s with stallone and fantam and all those guys coming in really was terrific and our salaries went in the mind i got like a million dollars for germinator 2 and then all of a sudden by the end of the decade i made 20 million dollars that's incredible and i wanted to talk about the mail order for a second because that was done with franco colombo or no with franco colombo who for those that don't know is a european was a european champion in powerlifting

Starting point is 00:20:03 and also a boxing champion and then became a bodybuilding champion. And then I brought him over here with Joe Wieters' help to train with me here in America. But at that point, there was no money in bodybuilding. That's a key thing that everyone has to understand.

Starting point is 00:20:19 Unlike the day where the top bodybuilding champions make millions of dollars, in those days, there was no money in bodybuildingbuilding and so when we didn't have enough money we literally had to go to work and so Franco and I since Franco's talent was to be a bricklayer and a very skilled bricklayer and learned that in Italy and in Germany we were able to go and start thinking about the idea of putting an ad in the LA Times, creating a company and calling it European Bricklayers and masonry experts, marble experts,

Starting point is 00:20:55 building chimneys and fireplaces, the European style. And this was also a time where everything that was European was huge in America. so we benefited from that you know swedish massages and everything had to be kind of a foreign name or japanese this and this so europe and japan and all these places you know were used the names were used because for some reason the other people just thought that was better and so we used that in the ad and we put the ad in the paper and literally a week later we had the big earthquake in los angeles and i mean the chimneys fell off the apartment houses and all this stuff and it cracked walls and all this and so frank and i we as a matter of fact

Starting point is 00:21:40 one of the friend of ours wife who was very smart and she worked in a supermarket, she did answering the phones and calling people back and all this just to make sure that our English doesn't kind of like set up to be the math genius. And that figures out the square footage. And that Franco would play the bad guy. And I played the good guy. And so we would go to someone's house. And then someone would say, well, look at my patio. It's all cracked. Can you guys put a new patio in here?

Starting point is 00:22:20 And I would say yes. And then I would run around with the tape measure. But there would be a tape measure with centimeters. No one in those days could at all figure out anything with centimeters and we will be measuring up and i say what this is you know four meters and 82 centimeters and they had no idea what we're talking about and this is so much and then we will be writing up formulas and the dollars and amounts and and square centimeters and square meters and all this stuff. And then I would go to the guy and I said, it's $5,000. And the guy will be in a state of shock.

Starting point is 00:22:51 And he says, it's $5,000. I said, this is outrageous. I said, I mean, they didn't think that this is it. Well, what did you expect? I thought maybe it's like $2,000, $3,000, but $5,000. I said, let me talk to my guy i said because he's really the masonry expert i said but i can beat him down for you a little bit yeah let me soften the meat and then say i will go over to franco and we will start

Starting point is 00:23:14 arguing in german you know this is and this will be going on and on and he he'll be screaming back in Italian and some stuff. And then all of a sudden he calmed down and then we'll go to the guy and say, okay, here it is. I said, I could get him as low as $3,800. I said, can you go with that? And he says, thank you very much. He says, you know, I really think that you're a great man, blah, blah, blah,

Starting point is 00:23:44 and all this stuff i say okay i say give us half down right now we go right away and get the cement and get the bricks and everything that we need for here and we can start working i said on monday and the guy was ecstatic he gave us the money we immediately ran to the bank cashed the check to make sure that the money's in the bank account and then we went out and got the cement the wheelbarrow and all the stuff that we needed and went to work.

Starting point is 00:24:07 And so we worked like that for two years. I mean, very successfully. As a matter of fact, in the end, we had various different jobs where we employed

Starting point is 00:24:14 like 16 different bodybuilders. All the laziest bastards that you can ever hire, but nevertheless, because they all were interested in working outdoor and getting a tan

Starting point is 00:24:23 at the same time for their bodybuilding competitions. They were not interested in working outdoor and getting a tan at the same time for their bodybuilding competitions. They were not interested in working. But anyways, we all had a good time. We all made money. And this is actually then, I did this until I started my mail order business. And then that became the new source of extra income

Starting point is 00:24:38 so we could afford everything and then save also some money and so on. I've been very fascinated to look at your film career and hear the story of Twins. I was hoping maybe you could tell us the story of Twins, how Twins came together, and how you guys structured that deal, because I didn't know anything about that.

Starting point is 00:24:57 Twins came together because I felt very strongly that I had a side of me that is a very humorous side. And that if someone would be patient enough and willing to work with me as a director, that they will be able to bring that humor out of me. And that's something that is very difficult because you can be humorous in your private life, but cannot pull it off in a movie. There's many actors that have tried that and were not successful. So I felt, you know, that I should really talk to Ivan Reitman because I really loved Ghostbusters. And I said to myself,

Starting point is 00:25:39 God, it was so well-directed and all this. And I just happened to run into him when I was in Aspen. We were hanging out, there was Robin Williams and some other people, and we were all up there at Snowmass and we were skiing. And then at night and before dinner, we all had a great time sitting by the fireplace and choking around. And Ivan Reitman would say to me, Arnold, I listened to you and I see a side of you that has never really been on screen. And I said to him, I said, I would love to do a comedy and I would love to bring that side out. If it is the innocence of me or the naivety of me or the humor of me, whatever it is, I said, I would like to see that on the screen. I think it could be good.

Starting point is 00:26:19 So I said to him, I said, I want you to work with me and to direct me in a movie. Let's figure out what it should be. And he said, okay, I would you to work with me and to direct me in a movie. Let's figure out what it should be. And he said, okay, I would love to do that. I'm going to go home after Christmas, after this vacation, and I'm going to look into and develop a bunch of ideas. And then you and I get together and then pick the one that we like the best. He developed immediately within a short period of time, a bunch of ideas. I think there was five ideas. And the one that we both liked the most was called The Experiment, which

Starting point is 00:26:51 then became Twins. Experiment we didn't like because of my German-Austrian background. So we thought that it would be better to call it Twins. And we developed that project, got it written. I came up with the idea then of Danny DeVito, that it shouldn't be just someone that is acting totally opposite of the way I am, but it should also look physically totally opposite of the way I am. Ivan loved

Starting point is 00:27:15 that idea, and then we went after Danny DeVito, and I remember we sat in a restaurant, and we made a deal on a napkin, and wrote down, you know, this is what we do we're going to make the movie for free we don't want to get any salaries and we get a big back end and they eventually take this deal to the end with the agent to the studio and he took it to tom pollack who was then running the universal studio tom pollack said this is great we can make this movie

Starting point is 00:27:42 for you know 16 and a half million dollars if you guys don't take a salary. And you get a big back end. We're going to give you 37% of whatever it was together, Danny, Ivan, and me. And we worked out the percentage of what our salaries are. So whatever Danny got at that time for a movie versus what I got for a movie and versus what Ivan got for directing.

Starting point is 00:28:06 So we worked it out percentage-wise, and that's how we ended up dividing up the part amongst ourselves. And let me tell you, I made more money on that movie than on any other movie. And the gift keeps on giving. It's just wonderful. And I remember Tom Pollack, after the movie came out, he said to me, he says, all I can tell you is, he says, this is what you guys did to me. And he bent over.

Starting point is 00:28:30 He turned around, bent over, and he put his pockets out. And he says, you fucked me and cleaned me up. It was very funny. He says, I will never make that deal again. But anyway, so the movie was a huge hit. It came out just before christmas and throughout christmas and new year it made every day three to four million dollars which in today's term it will be of course you know double or triple but it was just huge and it just went up to 129 million dollars

Starting point is 00:28:59 domestically and i think worldwide it was like was like $360 million or something like that. So it was really very, very successful. And like I said, it ended up costing, I think, around $18 million, the movie. Amazing. So amazing. Now, when I hear a story like that,

Starting point is 00:29:16 I think of the deal that George Lucas did for Star Wars where the studio's like, ah, toys, whatever, sure, yeah, you can have the toys. And then they probably felt very much the same way. They're like, wow, we're not going to make that mistake again. That's right. I've heard you mention transcendental meditation in passing briefly.

Starting point is 00:29:31 Do you meditate? I don't meditate now, but I got heavily into it in the 70s. And I remember there was a time in my life where I felt like everything is just kind of coming together and I did not find a way or couldn't find a way of keeping the things separate. So it was always when I was thinking about it, I was thinking about it at the same time,

Starting point is 00:29:51 my bodybuilding career, I was thinking about my movie career, I was thinking about the documentary, Pumping Out, that we're shooting right now and the movie Stay Hungry that we just finished shooting and my investment in the apartment building and is this going to, do I get the financing from the bank? And all of this kind of stuff was always coming together.

Starting point is 00:30:08 And at the same time, I was training for the Mr. Olympia competition in South Africa. And I was training right here at Gold's Gym. And I remember there was all the camera equipment around five hours a day in my face. And then someone in the middle of squatting was trying to change the battery pack on my on my lifting belt and all this stuff so it was like you know eventually i felt like i got to do something about it because i have such great opportunities here and everything is happening and everything is going my way but i'm just clustering everything into one big problem rather than separating it out and having calm and peace and being happy. And so I, but total, you know, coincidence, I ran into this guy that I've

Starting point is 00:30:52 run into many times on the beach, very, very pleasant man who told me that he is a teacher in transcendental meditation. And I said, well, it's interesting you mentioned it, is it because I feel like I should do something because I feel like I'm just overly worried and anxieties and all this stuff. And I feel like certain pressures that I've never felt before. And he says, oh, Arnold, it's not uncommon. It's very common. A lot of people go through this. This is why people use meditation, transcendental meditation, as one way of dealing with the problem.

Starting point is 00:31:26 And he was very good in selling it because he didn't say it's the only answer. He just is one of many. And he says, why don't you try it? He says, I'm a teacher there up in Westwood. I would not be able to teach you since we are friends. And he says, there will be another teacher that will give you a mantra and blah, blah, blah, and teach you how to do it. And then I can help you after that because I will be teaching up there.

Starting point is 00:31:50 So why don't you come up on Thursday and I will be there. I will introduce you to the folks up there. And so I went up there, took a class, and I went home after that and then tried it. I said to myself, I've got to give it a shot. And I did 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes at night. And I would say within 14 days, three weeks, I got to the point where I really could disconnect my mind. And as they say, to find this few seconds of disconnection and rejuvenate the mind and also learn how to focus more and to calm down. And I saw the effect right away that I was much more calm about all of the challenges

Starting point is 00:32:27 that were facing me. And I continued doing that then for a year. And by that time, I felt like, I think that I've mastered this. I think that now I don't feel overwhelmed anymore. And I really felt kind of it was one of the things where in the transcendental meditation was kind of anxiety and pressure meeting around the corner tranquility you know this is kind of what it felt so i was happy from that point and even today i still benefit from that because i don't merge and bring things together and see everything as one big problem. I take on one challenge at the time. And when I go and I study my script for a movie, then that day when I study my script for a movie,

Starting point is 00:33:14 I don't let anything else interfere in that and I just concentrate on that. So the other thing that I've learned is that there's many forms of meditation in a way. Because when I study and I work really hard where it takes the ultimate amount of concentration, I can only do it for 45 minutes maybe, maybe an hour. But then I have to kind of run off and maybe play chess.

Starting point is 00:33:39 And I play chess for 15 minutes and then I can go back and I have all the energy in the world again and jump right back and then continue on with my work as if I've not done it at all today, right? It's like I'm fresh. And so that's another way I think of meditation. And then I also figured out that I could use my workouts as a form of meditation because I concentrate so much on the muscle and I have my mind inside the bicep when I do my curls. I have my mind inside the pectoral muscles when I do my bench press. So I'm really inside. And it's like, again, a form of meditation because you have no chance of thinking or concentrating on anything else at that time, but just that training that you do.

Starting point is 00:34:25 So there's many ways of meditation, and I benefit from all of those, and I'm today much calmer because of that, and much more organized, and much more tranquil because of that. This whole conversation makes me want to go tackle the world. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show.

Starting point is 00:34:45 This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food source nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs

Starting point is 00:35:25 with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. And now, Anne Muraco, a co-founding partner at Floodgate Venture Capital Firm, a repeat member of both the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, one of Forbes' most powerful women in startups, and a Stanford lecturer and member

Starting point is 00:36:05 of the Board of Trustees of Yale University. You can find Anne on Twitter at AnneAmaniac. Anne, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So there are so many places we could start. I was hoping to humanize the ever intimidating Ann Muraco, which I may only partially succeed at doing. But could we start with explaining why your brother used to introduce you or how he used to introduce you on stage? I had this brother, an older brother by exactly two years. We were born on the same day. And he was one of these guys who was so confident. He knew that he wanted to stay in cars and airplanes from the time that I could

Starting point is 00:36:53 remember him existing. And he was always confident with friends. And he was also confident on stage. And so as any good Asian child would do, we played musical instruments. I played the piano, he played the violin, and we would always have to perform. And I was painfully, painfully shy. And so I would get up on stage and I would refuse to speak. And my mother, knowing this, wouldn't let this get in the way of our performing. She would send my brother up on stage to help announce whatever I was playing. I have this real clear memory of being in junior high and having this happen. My brother got up on stage and said, you know, this is Ann Mira. She's going to be playing a Chopin Nocturne and go. And I looked over and I remember thinking to the piano, but I felt petrified speaking. And

Starting point is 00:38:06 that's one of like the clearest memories that I have of my brother and me and the difference that we had between the two of us. Why were you so shy or nervous about speaking? I've always been an introvert. So I think it comes probably directly from that. But I was also sort of, I was a strange child, I have to admit. I had a lot of different interests, but I loved to do things by myself. I wasn't really that interested in talking to other people. Like one of the first things my mom actually discovered about me when I was a little kid, when I was two, I only spoke Japanese. We were living in Michigan and I used to be this very hostile little child. And I would walk by anyone speaking in English and in Japanese, I would say,

Starting point is 00:39:07 I wish you would leave. So, you know, and like, I can't even, my poor mom, my poor mom. And so she was like, oh, we really should socialize, Anne, with people who speak English. And we're living in Michigan, so there's no shortage of these people. Just to hit pause, do you still speak Japanese? I do. So I speak Japanese to my parents. How do you say, I wish you would leave, just for people who want to mutter that to people in the park or wherever they might be? Do you recall or how might you have said that as a kid? Do you have any idea? I think I might have said, let me think about it.

Starting point is 00:39:37 私たちの家から出てほしいな。 That is aggressive. That's really aggressive. Yeah. You know, I i was like you're not welcome in this house oh my god it was like it was i think probably more likely it was which is right right right oh wow that's even worse yeah right and so but it was always like something that like a drunk dad says yeah yeah it's kind of like shut up yeah you're really loud you're really irritating but like like a little intransigent two-year-old saying that to a grown-up speaking english in her home okay i don't want to take us too far off the rails but we may come back to that okay so so we were talking about you being introverted and shy and weird. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:40:28 And it was one of these things that I think it really held me back. And I knew actually it was holding me back. The strange part though was my mom was recently talking to me about this in a few years prior to that experience where I'm in junior high and I'm on stage, I had actually done this other thing, which was we had this summer school program where I would go to local community college. It was Foothill College and all these schools around the area. When they let out for summer, the students would go to this community college to take math classes and writing classes and whatnot. So a lot of elementary school students to high school students would be at Foothill College. And so my mom said, you have to pick two classes. And one class was a math class, obviously. And she said, you could pick your

Starting point is 00:41:20 second class. And my brother picked a normal junior high school writing class, and I was in fifth grade at the time, so 10 years old. And I picked a negotiations class. And it was not in the summer school program. It was an adult class. Why did you pick that? I picked it because I remember the book was getting to yes. Oh, yeah. that? I picked it because I remember the book was Getting to Yes. And my mom looked at me and she said, why did you pick this class? And I said, it's because they're teaching you how to get to yes. And I want to know how to get to yes. And I have this incredible experience at this community college of having a class with, I imagine they were probably 30 to 50

Starting point is 00:42:07 year old adults taking this class. And they were probably the most patient, wonderful people. And we had this experience where you had certain supplies that you were given on pieces of paper, and then you had to negotiate. You're on Mars and you had to negotiate supply lines and whatnot and create a real society but in the simulation they're taking seriously a 10 year old kid who's negotiating for supplies and I remember taking that experience and feeling like you know I was taken seriously in that environment, but it was a great experience because it was a small class. It was like 20 people. And in that setting, I felt okay speaking up, but then on stage, I didn't still. And so it was sort of these small steps that felt like I was

Starting point is 00:43:00 getting closer and closer to realizing, oh, I need to actually be able to speak up. I need to be able to say things in front of a large audience. And so there was this desire to face my fears. So what was the next step after that? How did you go about facing the fear of speaking on stage? I get to high school, and as every high school freshman's doing, they're looking for different activities to participate in. And I decide to dive into speech and debate. And speech and debate at this time at Palo Alto High School was not a very big activity. There were probably about 20 students on the team. And I found that I really enjoyed it. And it was a really great group of students.

Starting point is 00:43:47 And then not only from Palo Alto High School, but from the local community. And I just fell in love with the idea that you could really seriously get up in front of an audience and talk about really important issues, even as a high school student. And so I dove into that activity and I was frankly terrible at it. I think freshman,

Starting point is 00:44:13 sophomore year, I didn't win any tournaments, didn't even come close. That was sort of the way though I decided I could face that fear. What kept you going? I mean, there's the answer that, or perhaps potential answer you gave just a moment ago, which is you really enjoyed it and you loved it, but what did you love about it? What did you enjoy so much that you were able to persist through failures over those first two years? The first thing is just the people. I reflect actually on the people that I met in speech and debate, and they're doing incredible things. We have, just in my year alone, not in my team, but in my local community, professors, you know, one's at Harvard in government, one's in philosophy, University of Colorado. One woman is now on the morning show on NPR. We have several venture capitalists. It was just a really interesting group of people, all in the same age group, who wanted to talk about really interesting things. I also found that the actual activity itself, it challenged

Starting point is 00:45:22 me in a way that I hadn't been challenged before. So I was really good at math and science, and those things really came naturally to me. But getting up on stage and speaking was not something that was natural to me. But the piece that I did love that came very naturally was competition. And I've always been this way. No, I'm just chuckling because yeah, I would agree with that. Right. I love competition. You put in points on anything and I want more. I want more than the next person. And I remember the coaches that we had, we didn't have teachers at our school who

Starting point is 00:46:07 were able to coach. And so we had to go across the street to Stanford and find students who were willing to coach. And these kids were 18 to 21 years old. So they would pump us up by saying, hey, if you can get someone to cry in cross-examination, I'll buy you a slice of pizza. And so, you know, things like that were extraordinarily motivating. And if you feel like, you know, logic and arguments could get you a step further, it was just something that even though I wasn't good at it at the time, I just loved it. And I felt like if I could just do one more tournament, I'd become even better at it. And you would see that. So that's the thing that I loved. So do you have any memory? This

Starting point is 00:46:57 seems like a very, very specific example that you gave of the crying in the pizza. Did that actually happen? Did you succeed at making someone cry in cross-examination for a slice of pizza? Or was that just something that came? I feel like I'm not succeeding in my desire to humanize me and make myself seem like a less of a dragon lady. We'll get there. We'll get there but this i want to hear i want to hear this story so there's several stories so there were points in time where i remember people would cry in that they would crumble in the middle of cross-examination and run out of the room crying and my coach would see that and proudly bring me a slice of pizza after. This happened multiple times. This wasn't a single tournament. And there were moments where they had courtesy points too.

Starting point is 00:47:51 So it wasn't just about winning. It was also whether you were courteous during that. There were rounds where I got zero courtesy points and my coaches, they would ask why we got zero courtesy points just to really understand if we were just being mean. But a lot of times it was just because we were, you know, and I was particularly tenacious in cross-examination. And even at the point where I had the person stumped, I would just keep going. I would keep going, keep going at it. And so I remember at least four or five occasions where someone cried and left the room before the round was over. This was like the Cobra Kai of debating the bad team from the Karate Kid. It's my six-year-old at one point right before kindergarten said, hey, mama, I can make people cry just with my words. And I have to say it was like a really proud moment for me. And then I had to course correct and talk to him about that.

Starting point is 00:48:57 Now, for someone who is wondering what I omitted from the bio that I had in front of me. You had two years of not doing well. And then in the bio we have, she placed first in the national tournament of champions and second in the state of California in high school. And it goes on, I'll mention one more thing. It was part of a five-person team at Yale that competed in the RoboCup competition in Paris, France. All right, but let's focus on the debating. So how did you go from sort of miss, flub, whiff, not succeeding in debating to getting good at debating? Yeah, this is where I think it's the love of the game. Were your parents supportive

Starting point is 00:49:39 through all of these early trials and tribulations? No, no. So you have to remember, I come from very traditional Japanese parents who really want me to get into a great university. And my mom at one point, right after sophomore year, looks at my record. And my parents were incredibly supportive. They would go and judge these tournaments every single weekend, spend so much time doing it, driving us all over the state. And my parents pulled me aside and said, you know, this isn't working. You have a losing record

Starting point is 00:50:13 in this activity that you're doing, and you appear to be doubling down on your time with respect to this. And if you want to get into a good college, you have to perform well in whatever you're doing. It's not just about effort. You have to have results. And I remember my mom said to me, I've heard fencing is a great way to get into an Ivy League college. And I remember looking at her and I was like, how is it possible that she's my mother? She clearly does not know anything about my athletic abilities if she's suggesting that I move into f just work on it. And this is back before the internet. So working on it meant I was at Stanford Green Library reading philosophy books and reading articles about, I think they have 12 topics, 12 possible topics that they're going to pull from for the next year. And I just studied those topics. I lived in the library. And then I emerged that year to start competing.

Starting point is 00:51:31 And when they announced that first topic, I knew that topic cold. And then I could write my cases really quickly. I had already done all this research. And I remember going into my very, very first round and had this deal with my parents. If I didn't win one of my first two tournaments, or at least place, then I would quit. And I had this distinct impression walking into my very first round of debate that fall and feeling as I looked across at my opponent, that there was no way that they could have out prepared me. And so I knew that whatever they, they said, I would have five arguments against. And it was this incredible knowledge that it's not that you can be lucky

Starting point is 00:52:29 and turn your luck around. You actually make your own luck. And for me, that was a profound lesson because I placed in that tournament and I placed in the next tournament. And it was like that. It just never stopped after that. And I had a losing record all through my freshman, sophomore year. And it's like I turned it around

Starting point is 00:52:51 junior year very suddenly. And the main difference was that I was willing to outwork and outdo every competitor who walked in through that door. For people who don't know the format, and I'll be honest, I've been surrounded by, not surrounded by, but certainly in the same universities and so on where debate teams existed, but I've never seen a debate competition. What is the format? It's a bunch of nerdy kids dressed in suits holding briefcases and then maybe that's changed but that's what it was back then and then you have a resolution that's been announced nationwide and that resolution is generally has some philosophical elements to this is also lincoln douglas style of debate and you does that mean, if you know my name? One debate that we did, the principle of majority rule ought to be valued above the principle of minority rights.

Starting point is 00:54:08 Or resolved that education is a privilege and not a right. So all of these debates are really surrounding not a specific policy, but it has some application in the real world. And what you're trying to debate is a philosophical underpinning behind that statement. And what I loved about debate was you were actually forced to debate both sides. So you had to have cases ready for both the affirmative and the negative. So pro the resolution and against the resolution. And the format is the affirmative goes up and talks about this resolution and says all the reasons that they support it. And then there's a short cross-examination where the negative then cross-examines the affirmative,

Starting point is 00:54:59 asks questions of the affirmative. Then the negative gets up and talks about all the reasons that they're against the resolution, and then goes point by point against all of the arguments that the affirmative made and talks about why they're wrong. And then there's another cross-examination of the affirmative against the negative. And then the affirmative gets up for a rebuttal, negative gets up for a rebuttal, and then the affirmative does closing arguments. It's sort of shorter and shorter speeches towards the end. And how is the outcome determined? What are the parameters? So it really depends on the tournament. Aside from courtesy. Courtesy points. It's all about courtesy.

Starting point is 00:55:46 There's two different types of tournaments. Actually, when I was debating, one was where you had parent judges. And that I would say really the style of speaking, your flair really would come into play. Your sense of humor. It wasn't really just a line by line arguments. There was also places where you would go where college students were the judges or experienced coaches were the judges. And that's where really the line by line logic becomes much more important than just the style of your debate. So it really depends on your audience and you had to read the audience

Starting point is 00:56:25 correctly. And did they just then say, I choose A or B, or do they have to rank like sort of Olympic style one to 10 in some fashion? So you only have two debaters that you're judging and you vote for one of them. And in some of the rounds, you have just a single judge. And then in another, in the breakout rounds, the semifinals, you might have a panel of judges. They can't confer, they're just sort of voting individually on who wins. So you may be at a point now with debate and argument that you've reached the unconscious competency phase in the sense that in skill acquisition, one framework that one could use to think about skill acquisition is you go from

Starting point is 00:57:11 unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence, then unconscious competence. So I don't know if this question is going to be a good one, but I'll try it anyway. For people who want to get better at debating and structuring arguments and so on, are there any books or approaches or resources, anything, exercises that you would suggest? Well, getting to yes, I thought was always really good. I actually found the philosophical texts to be extraordinarily informative. So anything where you have that Socratic method in a book, I found really a great way of learning how people debate the greatest philosophers, Aristotle and Socrates. Even when you get into more modern literature around justice, you have people like John Rawls writing. That is actually a dialogue and a real logical debate. And I always

Starting point is 00:58:15 found those examples to be really great to read how people argue philosophical constructs. You know, presidential debates, to be honest, in politics aren't real debates because it's two ships passing in the night and you don't have real conflict between people. I've also found the British parliamentary system, if you've ever had the chance to see that on, I think sometimes it's on C-SPAN. That's actually an interesting observation of a real-world debate as well, because they will actually engage in dialogue around policy, and it's not just ad hominem attacks. point by point in teaching you how to debate. Because I think the how is much more around how do you engage in the idea? How do you read and research both sides of an argument? And what do you believe on both sides?

Starting point is 00:59:15 And so, you know, one way to do that would actually to take a fairly controversial topic and then actually read a lot of literature on both sides of the argument and then understand where actually the conflict happens. Are there definitions that people don't agree on? Are there nuances that people haven't thought about? Is there real conflict or are they two ships passing in the night? I think you could do that with even the gun control debate, or you could do that with immigration, or you could do that with abortion and really understand both sides of an argument. And that's the way to engage in the process of debate,

Starting point is 00:59:55 I believe. If we're reflecting back on your Cobra Kai training for slices of pizza, I'd be really curious to know if there are any particular approaches or questions or playbooks that you find very useful in a heated argument. And I'll give you some hypotheticals, right? Let's say that you are on stage at an event and you are doing a Q&A with the audience and you have someone who ends up being really hostile or attacks you, or it could be someone on stage. You're just having a contentious debate of some type. I find it fascinating to see how people, even with no real logical advantage, shut down opponents. And I'm not saying that's you in this case, but for instance, whatever people may think of our dear current president

Starting point is 01:00:45 of the United States, I do find it fascinating how effective he has been at saying, check your facts, right? And it just throws enough imbalance into the dynamic where someone's like, wait a second, maybe I did miss one piece of due diligence, that they're on their heels and it opens up a window and creates sort of an illusion of them being stymied that is really advantageous I'm like wow I mean it's kind of gross on one level but it's also kind of brilliant and I also have a lot of lawyers in my family so one thing that they'll do not to say they all love arguing but a lot of them do you'll say something and they will go so let me just get this straight.

Starting point is 01:01:26 You're, so I understand you're, you're saying that X, and they'll kind of take your argument and like inch it a little closer to absurdity, but just subtly enough that you'll say, yeah, that's about right. And they'll say, okay, so really what you mean is X, right? And they start to edge you over before they even counter with an argument to make you contradict yourself or kind of seem ridiculous. And then they just have to kind of finish you off. I've never taken debate, but I do find this really practical and really interesting. So it's a long-winded way of introing, but what are your thoughts on any of that? It's funny. My husband has said to me in the past, and this is a lesson that I continue to try to learn and relearn, is that life is not a debate.

Starting point is 01:02:19 Right. And you know what he's saying, and it's funny, he was a debater as well in college and in high school. And we joke that I would still have beaten him in high school if we had actually gone head to head. But I think it's a really important point that life isn't about winning the argument. And he's also said to me in the past, it's not about being right. And I think that's so true. It's something that I'm always trying to really practice in life. And I think it's the debater in me makes it really hard. The things that you're pointing out are what's important about it is that people have a tendency to have an inner dialogue where they're right. And instead of really listening to the other person, they're coming up with the next argument that proves that person wrong. So if you go back to what I really loved about debate and what I felt like I got out of it, it was actually this ability to see both sides of

Starting point is 01:03:20 an argument, to really delve into a topic and understand why the side that I actually naturally believed could actually be flipped on its head. And that was a really important skill to develop. And I think that was so much more important to develop than the skill to argue for my side. Because I think in the world today, what we don't see enough of is empathy for people you might even disagree with. And we get stuck in our version of truth and what is right. And we aren't truth seekers anymore as a result. We're truth winners. That's very true.

Starting point is 01:04:02 Yeah, very true. That's a piece that really makes me sad is that, you know, when people are like, oh, this debate skill is so great to have because now you can like ram people with your ideas. And I've never seen a situation where you shouted people down and convinced them you were right. I've seen situations where by developing true empathy for the other side, you actually create bridges and you create commonality and you create situations where you can actually work together. And I think that's the piece I would take away from my debate experience. I would say actually making the person cry in cross-examination probably is not the skill that I should be using in real life, although maybe sometimes I do. Just when you're teaching your son the black magic. I should point out, just so people don't

Starting point is 01:04:56 think I'm completely sort of drinking the Kool-Aid of the bloodlust of this potential sport, although I do find it very, very fascinating as an insight into some parts of human nature. But the book you mentioned, Getting to Yes, which is part or a byproduct of the Harvard Negotiation Project, as I recall, is not a book about proving you're right. It's a book about getting outcomes. And there is another book, which I believe was co-authored by one of the co-authors of Getting to Yes called Getting Past No, which I also really, really like. And it is about, well, both of these books, any book really on negotiation is about achieving a very particular outcome or arriving at a desired result as opposed to proving that you're right. So I just want to underscore that because there's a very real world difference, as you already noted, between, say, debate and negotiation. Toolkits are very similar, perhaps, in some respects, but

Starting point is 01:06:00 in debate, you're not going to have to think about, I wouldn't imagine, something like the BATNA that they talk about in Getting to Yes, your best alternative to negotiated agreement, like walkaway power or what your options are. You don't necessarily have to go through that thought process, but when you step into the real world, you're not just trying to prove that you're right. You're trying to get someone to concede something and agree to a certain set of terms or a price or whatever it might be, or amicably trying to break up with someone or get together with someone or have a divorce or whatever it might be, you're really trying to manifest some type of outcome or

Starting point is 01:06:36 damage control. It's really, really different from being a truth winner. And the world-class term that I mentioned in the intro that used a little bit of foreshadowing saying that I suspected it might come up a little bit later. So in doing homework for this conversation, I read, and I don't think this is a misquote, but that your dad, even when I think you were going to be photocopying in the dean's office, would remind you to be world class. Yeah. And he would ask you if you turned in a calculus assignment, is that a world class effort? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:07:17 Could you talk a little bit more about this? And that wasn't my experience growing up. My parents certainly encouraged me to do a good job. But tell us a little bit more about your dad in this particular case and how that was used. My dad grew up in Tokyo right at the tail end of World War II. And so one of his earliest memories actually is just planes coming across Tokyo and the firebombs. And he escaped to the countryside and then came back to Tokyo for high school. His father passed away when he was in college and he literally tutored kids.

Starting point is 01:07:56 One guy was like the prime minister's son so that he could make enough cash to support his family. He had three other siblings and he was one of these incredible academics. And so he was at the top of his class in one of the famous high schools in Tokyo, went to Tokyo University, was also then went to Toshiba, which at the time was one of these great companies to work for. And then he ran into a friend who told him, he was also a friend who was one of the top at his high school, who said, hey, there's great opportunities in America.

Starting point is 01:08:32 And this person had gone off to Princeton and gotten his PhD and was at that time working in one of the great labs in IBM and was also becoming a professor. And my dad decided that he also wanted to go to the U.S. and he was the eldest son. And so having a mother who's a widow and three siblings, he had to take care of them until he had saved up enough. All of his siblings were married and his mom had the courage to say, you know what, you can go, you can go to the US. So this is sort of the backdrop for who my dad is. He comes to the United States without speaking very much English, gets a PhD in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and then is in LA ultimately as a postdoc and an associate professor. My mom comes to marry him and they are the only family members living in the United States. So really no support.

Starting point is 01:09:35 So my dad eventually makes his way out to NASA at Moffett Field. And my memories of him, he was very engaged on the academics, but he would wake up at five in the morning and go to work. And he'd bring back reams of paper and would continue working late into the night. He loved what he did. So when he turned to me on anything I ever did from the time I was a small, small child, I would be writing something. And if the handwriting wasn't

Starting point is 01:10:06 neat enough, he would say, hey, is this world class? And I remember thinking to myself, you know, for a five-year-old, yeah, this is world class. But he would always push. He would always say, is this really, you know, the best that a five-year-old could ever do? And it was a constant message. And the story you're pointing to is one when I was in college. After living through a lifetime of this, is this world-class question? I had a moment where I was starting my financial aid package included, you know, 10 hours of work study. And I had the opportunity to work in the office of the Dean of Engineering. And what was really

Starting point is 01:10:53 funny to me at the time is since I'm leaving to go to my first day of work, I called my parents. My dad gets on the phone. He said, make sure you do a world-class job. And I thought, my dad thought I was like really doing something important in the office. And in fact, I was just photocopying. And I said to my dad, I'm photocopying and I'm And I remember standing in front of this photocopy machine with a stack of papers, thinking to myself, what is world class in this situation? And I decided it was really crisp copies where you couldn't tell that it was a photocopy. And so I remember really trying to make the color match and everything was straight. And I spent a lot of time on the details. And when I was filing things, I didn't just handwrite it. I got a label writer and I made sure it was printed out on labels.

Starting point is 01:11:59 And I really tried to do everything as well as I possibly could. And I remember I was getting donuts and I would make sure I got the fresh donuts instead of the ones that had been standing out in the basket for a while. So every step of the way, it was, what can I do to make this experience for the dean or for his executive assistant a delight moment. And it was a real lesson for me because it was a case of real ownership. I felt so much ownership of the job I was doing, even though from the outside, I think most people would have thought it was just sort of a grunt job. And I think that's sort of, again, when I come back to,

Starting point is 01:12:45 you don't just get luck, you create these opportunities for yourself, to me was a real learning experience. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, you're looking at the potential precursors of luck and trying to set the conditions, even though they might not always produce luck you can increase the likelihood of it happening which i think is a perfect segue to discussion about spring breaks don't worry this isn't going anywhere tricky this relates to shadowing i'll just that'll be my cue which might bring you back so all right where to lead into this? You were giving a man a tour around Yale. Yeah. Who is this man? Why were you giving him a tour? What happened? And I actually don't know all the detail. I just, I found two lines in a past interview and I was like,

Starting point is 01:13:39 you know what? I want to dig into this because I don't, there's more to this story. I know it. I'm a junior at the time at Yale and doing this office work. And the Dean of Engineering was this older gentleman, Alan Brombley. And he had no idea who I was. I'd been working in this office for, I think, two years, but he barely knew my name. He was just like this great, he'd worked under George Bush senior. He was a legendary physicist. And I really look up to this man. And so one day he, he pokes his head out of the office and the executive assistant was out and he said, who are you? And I said, I'm Ann Mira. I'm your student assistant in this office. And he said, oh, I've heard of you. I need you to go and give this friend of mine a tour of the engineering

Starting point is 01:14:33 facilities. And he's like, I know you'll do a good job. Sarah's told me you're great. And so I take this gentleman and I take him on a fairly thorough tour of the engineering facilities. And we just had a great conversation. And it started off with, where are you from? And I said, I was from Palo Alto. And it turns out this guy is also from Palo Alto. And we're just sort of talking about Palo Alto and the buildings that are around us and my growing up back in Palo Alto. And in the middle of it, he said, hey, what are you doing for spring break? And it just so happened I was going to go back home and visit my family. And he said, well, that's great because I'm wondering if you want to come and shadow me and see what I do for a living.

Starting point is 01:15:35 And in my complete self-centered moment of being a junior, I hadn't asked this guy what he did for a living. And so I said, well, what do you do for a living? And he said, I'm the CEO of Hewlett Packard. And I remember thinking to myself, I am such a moron. And I said, I think that would be amazing to be able to shadow you for a couple of weeks during spring break. And so this man, Lou Platt, invites me to just shadow him in 1997. And I am going around. He didn't have a driver. This was really just the Hewlett and Packard era of CEOs. He drove himself around in a Ford Focus. I remember this. We would go to different meetings and he took me around. And one of the days actually, Bill Gates came to make an announcement about.NET with Hewlett-Packard. And so it was an incredible event that happened. I got to sit backstage and actually take a picture of me talking to Lou. And I didn't really think about it, but after the fact, I get back to my dorm and Lou Platt has sent me a thank you letter saying, thanks for coming to visit. I thought you would enjoy these photographs. And there's two photographs in there. I've framed them in my office now. One is a picture of me sitting on a seat talking to Lou. And then the second picture is Bill Gates sitting exactly in that spot that I was sitting in talking to Lou Platt. And to me, mentorship means so many different things. I've had so many different examples and said, you know what? You have

Starting point is 01:17:47 something. I see it. And I'm going to show you something even greater. And to me, that is such a gift. It was so incredible because I hadn't even thought about my own personal potential ever. No one had ever described anything to me. And I came back from that with my mind completely blown. I met Ann Livermore, who was an executive, and I'd never seen a female executive in my entire life. And here's someone who I could look at and see, and I can see that people around her respect her. It's a life-changing moment. And it comes from that first comment from Dean Bromley, who says, I've heard of you. I heard you do a great job. And that's where the opportunities opened up. You're the woman responsible for my fresh donuts and crisp

Starting point is 01:18:38 photocopies. I've heard good things. Exactly. It's a little things. It's tucked up filing labels. Now, I should note, you don't have to go too deep into this, but in a way, you were perfectly primed for doing a good job with your photocopying and labeling after spending, was it summers in Kanazawa in the stationery store? Am I making that up? Yeah, no, my first job was literally helping my uncle and grandmother sell office supplies in Kanazawa, Japan at our store, Taikido. Taikido. Oh, man. Kanazawa is just such, I'd never been to Kanazawa. For those people who don't know, I used to live in Japan a long time. My first time out of the US was a year in Japan as an exchange student, which is a whole separate story.

Starting point is 01:19:27 But I never made it to Kanazawa until a few years ago. It's gorgeous. And it's not that far away from Tokyo at all. But such a cute spot with so much to offer. Yeah, it's actually incredible because it's one of the few cities in Japan that was protected by historians in the U.S. It did not get bombed in World War II because of some of the historic elements of the city. So it's almost like a smaller version of Kyoto, and it has a historic Japanese garden called Kenrokuen.

Starting point is 01:19:59 Yeah, Kenrokuen is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So it's summers I would spend maybe like two blocks away from Kenrokuen is unbelievable. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So it's summers I would spend maybe like two blocks away from Kenrokuen. So it was an incredible set of summers. But yes, I used to man the cashier register at the office supply store. So I know my pens and notebooks and stamps, like nobody's business. Do you have any favorite go-to? Don't worry, I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but do you have any favorite notebooks or pens or items of those types

Starting point is 01:20:30 that you use today? Yeah, yeah, totally. So on pens, I love the Juice Up 04. How do you spell juice up? Juice up. Oh, juice up. Okay. Yeah. Juice Up 04. You can get them on Amazon. They're super thin pens. 04, that's like 0.4 millimeter or something? Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:51 Okay. Yeah. And then for notebooks, it's the Nuna. It's N-U-U-N-A. Some European brand, but I like any notebook that has the dot matrix on it. The paper quality is really great. I see. Dot matrix. It's not like graph paper. There are perpendicular lines that are dotted. Yes. Yes. I'm very particular. I could go on and on. It appeals to the Dungeons and Dragons nerd in me. Anything that resembles graph paper. So the

Starting point is 01:21:23 Juice Up 04 and the Nuna. Yeah. Definitely anything European sounding with a repeating vowel, I'll pay 40% more for. Maybe 100% more. Maybe 100%. You mentioned that you have these photographs in your office. I'm curious, you're sitting in your office right now? Yeah. All right. So what else? I'm sure you have photographs of your family, but outside of kind of the usual suspects, what are other items that you have in

Starting point is 01:21:45 your office that are important to you? I have the original Lyft pink mustache that used to go in the front of the cars, which I love. I have also a picture and a set of laser etched metal plates that students gave to me that have sort of a word graph of all of the words that they thought they ascribed to me. Students of what? What was the context for these students interacting with you? And what are some of the words? Yeah, so I teach at Stanford. So after my PhD, what I realized was I loved teaching more than anything else. And so I stayed in contact with Tina Selig and Tom Byers over at Stanford who run the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. And they've given me the opportunity to teach

Starting point is 01:22:41 a few different classes. But the one that I got these metal plates and the photograph from was the class of 2013 Mayfield Fellows Group. And they have words like thunder lizard, badass, inspiring, mother. So, you know, it's just really fun to see sort of what words they thought. What were you teaching these Mayfield fellows? We were teaching them basic concepts behind leadership and entrepreneurship. And it's sort of the first exposure that they get as juniors and seniors into really startup ecosystem. What does venture capital do within that ecosystem? What are the tough choices that you have to make as a leader within these types of organizations? What does growth look like in these types of organizations? So it's just sort

Starting point is 01:23:42 of a startup 101. But what I love about it is it's only 12 students and it goes for nine months. So if you get to be involved in it, you get to really know some of the students. And I've been mentoring students and sometimes teaching some of these classes since 2008. And you get this whole arc of the career path of young people. And I really love it. I think it's just sort of, you get to see students who start off as seniors, and then they start their career. They might go to grad school. Then they go back and get a job. They get married. And then I think one is now about to have a kid. So you just sort of see this whole arc and it's just about 10 years, 20 years behind where I was. And so I get to see this incredible progress that these students make

Starting point is 01:24:39 over time. So it's something that I love. And Miriko, mother of thunder Lizards, aka Mother of Dragons. We're going to come back to Thunder Lizard because there's a whole lot wrapped around that. But I'm going to try to keep my brain somewhat focused here. Is there a reading list for that class? Or do you recall anything that was on a recommended or required reading list for that class? Yeah. recommended or required reading list for that class? Yeah, so we actually teach a, I'm starting a class today at Stanford for the new spring quarter.

Starting point is 01:25:11 And in this class, what we're teaching is what I would call intelligent growth. It's a little bit different than Mayfield Fellows. But my hypothesis, my belief is that just like fake news in politics, there is actually something that we would call fake growth. Lots of it. We've worshipped at the altar of growth for about five to 10 years now. And what I've seen is that... And this is startup growth specifically. Specifically within startups, there's so much that we see that is fake. And no one has ascribed actual adjectives to growth until now. And so the class that I'm teaching to engineering students at Stanford is around what is actually intelligent growth. And so you asked about the reading for it. It's all around some of these case studies that we've seen. A great example of that to me is Qualtrics. We're going to have Ryan Smith, who is the CEO of Qualtrics, come in and speak.

Starting point is 01:26:21 And I think he's a great example because I think he was at $50 million in revenues before he raised a dime of venture capital money. And so as a result, he's going to own an incredible piece of his company when it exits and it will. And so I love the capital efficiency with which he built his business. I also think one of my companies, Lyft, is a great example of having that kind of discipline early on and not just wasting venture capital dollars in the early days when they didn't have product market fit. So they spent two and a half years working on this platform called Zimride, knowing that they had to get to density in riders. And Zimride was just, it was a platform where you could find carpooling arrangements and it was being sold

Starting point is 01:27:12 to universities and companies, but we couldn't get enough density to get transactions really moving fast. And it was two and a half years before they launched Lyft. And in the first six weeks, you could start to see that there was real traction there. And it was only after they knew what they were doing with Lyft that they went and raised a large round with Founders Fund and then an even larger round with Andreessen Horowitz. And that story of really, really hacking value before you go out and hack growth is something that I don't see often enough in Silicon Valley. So it's something that I'm continuing to seek. And I love to see companies, especially outside of Silicon Valley that do that. When we come back to hunting for thunder lizards, that's what I'm looking for.

Starting point is 01:28:05 When you mentioned the case studies, do you have written case studies that you're using much like, I don't know if Stanford uses these, but much like the Harvard Business School case studies, which are these kind of three ring binder, five to 10 page cases that are published, you use those? So the ones that we've focused on, there's a Harvard Business case on Floodgate that you can purchase off of the Harvard Business Review website. So anyone can purchase these. You don't have to be a student. Keep going because the format of these case studies is really interesting to me. And as an undergrad senior, when I took Ed Schau's class in high-tech

Starting point is 01:28:41 entrepreneurship, which is how I met Mike Maples Jr., who's going to be a recurring character shortly. I remember how useful they were. So that's the only interjection. Sorry to interrupt. No, exactly. So we use that case study for Qualtrics. There is one on Floodgate. So if you go to the Harvard Business Review site, you can actually just search for Floodgate or Qualtrics and it'll come up. they're somewhere between, you know, five and $15. So they're pretty easy to buy and download. But I think those two in particular are quite valuable. We have then also just people coming in and speaking about some of the things that they've learned and how to grow that business from zero to one and then one to X. And people like Michael Siebel, who is now a partner at Y Combinator, but also was part of Justin TV and Social Cam. We have Stephanie Schatz, who was the fearless leader on the sales

Starting point is 01:29:41 side for Xamarin. She had 18 straight quarters of beating the stretch target. So you can only imagine how incredible she is as a sales leader taking a company from zero to $50 million in revenues. So we have a lot of different types of people, whether they're CEOs or CROs or venture investors coming in to talk about the kinds of trade-offs they had to make and how they decipher growth to make sure that they have the real kind and not just kind that they're buying. Right. Just to elaborate on that for people who may not be in the startup world, if, for instance, you're sitting in on an incubator investor day and you see 12 companies in a row that have 20% month-on-month growth with very similar looking charts, there is a possibility that they have been inflating or manufacturing their numbers with paid acquisition to raise funding or do any number of things and it's relatively easy to spot once you know the symptoms but there are an end then there are i suppose as you know richard feinman would say the physicist you must be sure not to trick yourself or fool yourself and you are the easiest

Starting point is 01:30:54 person to fool you can also get very caught up with what you might consider vanity metrics but let me take a step back and just ask well before i ask people definitely take a look at the case studies for both harvard and if you search search Stanford GSB, which is the business school case studies, you'll also find a website with these profiles of companies and not just companies, but decisions they had to face generally where you can determine for yourself what you would do in a given situation, then read about what they did, whether it's MongoDB. I'm looking at this Stanford GSB site in the case studies right now, Sonos, and so on. How did you first become exposed to, say, venture capital? And what did you think you were going to do in college? When you were in college, junior year, what did you expect you were going to do when you grew up? I actually had multiple different paths. I started off when we were talking about my brother describing this kid who knew he wanted to work with cars or airplanes from the get-go. And guess what he's doing right now?

Starting point is 01:31:53 He's in Germany working with race cars. Amazing. And I was the complete opposite. I think when I was four, I wanted to be a farmer. Then somewhere along the lines, I I wanted to be a farmer. Then somewhere along the lines, I really wanted to be a doctor. And I wanted to be a doctor for a fairly long period of time where in freshman year summer, I took organic chemistry. I was in this pre-med track. I think sophomore year summer, you take the MCATs if you're pretty sure you want to go to medical school.

Starting point is 01:32:26 And that summer, I was with my best friend who also really wanted to go to medical school. And she is right now studying leukemia. She's a doctor at UCSF. So she's clearly gone down that path and doubled down on it. But I remember going to study for the MCATs with her and I turned to the side and I looked at her and I had this sudden realization, which was that, and this is two days before we're taking the MCATs. I said, hey, Kathy, I hate hospitals. I don't like actually being around sick people. I also don't love it when people

Starting point is 01:33:07 are always complaining to me. And I think that might get in the way of me being a doctor. And she looked at me like I was an alien. And she said, why are you saying this right now? We're about to take the MCATs and we need to go study for it at Kaplan. But I was just constantly observing her and she is just this incredible human being and she continues to be. But this realization of, wow, like the actual job of being a doctor may not be something that I actually enjoy was really a hard realization when you've been all in for this long. And so it was a realization that I really had to face. And I knew my gut that I was doing it because it was a really great path. It was a path where I knew what the next step was.

Starting point is 01:33:57 I knew what next class I had to take. I knew the next exam I had to take. Then there was applications. Then there was school. And then there was residency and fellowship. And it just felt like a really predictable thing to do. But the actual work at the end of the day was not something I was going to love or enjoy. And that was really disturbing to me. And so I really screeched off of that path. And it was hard because I had actually taken all of the requirements

Starting point is 01:34:25 except for biology. And the pre-med requirements did not actually overlap very much with electrical engineering. So I'd taken a lot of extra classes to make it a possibility, but realized also it wasn't for me. And that's where I was sort of in this state of not knowing what I wanted to be. And can I pause for one second? Yeah. So what you just described illustrates a degree of self-awareness, but also decision-making that I think is rather uncommon in the sense that I know a lot of people who have gone on to become doctors or lawyers or fill in the blank that has a lot of prerequisite training and schooling because of say, succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. Like, oh God, I've put

Starting point is 01:35:13 in so much time, even though I have this intuitive feeling, I'm not going to like it. I really should do it. And what was the conversation or the background that allowed you to step off of that path and not to beat the like Asian kid drum too hard, but let's be real, right? I mean, you're also, that would be a very admirable, well-respected, happy to share at a dinner party with friends type of path for your parents, I would assume, all the more uncommon that you would step off of that track. How is that the case? Why were you different? So I think it goes back to actually the moment in debate where my mom is telling me, you should do fencing instead of debate. There was this realization of, oh, my parents really love me,

Starting point is 01:36:08 but they don't know me. No one really knows me in terms of my capabilities and what I feel like I can get done. No one knows that better than I do. It was an important lesson for me because one other fact that I didn't mention is that as a kid, there was no sign that I was special except for these weird characteristics where I would go learn negotiations. But I failed the IQ test multiple times and the school district insisted I was not gifted or talented. My mom had to fight for me to be part of this gifted and talented program. As a two-year-old, after I was really hostile to people who spoke English, my mom stuck me in, tried to put me into preschool to socialize me. But I ended up biting the person who was interviewing me for a preschool slot, and they

Starting point is 01:37:09 put me in special education. I was one of those kids who got picked up in a short yellow bus from our house and taken to a state-run program for special children. And I think for a long time, my mom wasn't really sure what I was, but she just decided to be all in on the fact that I was gifted and talented, even if I wasn't. And she was really worried what I was capable of, even if the test score showed that I wasn't. And I knew that I knew what I was capable of, even if my parents didn't see it in me. And I think there's sort of this moment in time that people need to have where you realize that there's no test for human potential. There's no recognition for that. It's something that you have to find inside of yourself. And I think for me that one of those tests was actually going back to, am I going to be a great doctor?

Starting point is 01:38:26 And if I revisit this question that my dad had always asked me, can you be world-class? I knew I couldn't because I looked at Kathy and she was going to be world-class. She loved helping people and she loved helping people from that kind of caretaking perspective, which is not where I was going to be world-class, but I felt like there was something in me where I could be great at something. That just wasn't it. And how did, you have all of this technical training

Starting point is 01:38:58 by this point, I mean, you have the chemistry, but you certainly also have the, let's see here, at that point, the electrical engineering, probably. How does finance and investing or startups, I don't know which came first, enter the picture? So having grown up in Palo Alto, I was actually exposed to a lot of startups. Even as a kid, I used to babysit for a serial entrepreneur, and he was always tinkering around in his garage. And I remember thinking to myself, he works for himself, which is very, very cool. I also, on my debate team, was Lisa Brennan Jobs, who I didn't really realize she was the daughter of Steve Jobs until I was in her house. We were talking about debate. I was a senior at the time,

Starting point is 01:39:42 and I was helping her through learning the ropes of speech and debate and Steve Jobs sort of appeared out of nowhere. And I remember thinking to myself, what is Steve Jobs doing in this house? And so, you know, it was just sort of, it was all around. And so venture capital was something that actually a friend of mine had brought up when I was still struggling with this notion of what should I be. And he was a real finance guy. And he said, you know, you're really good at technology and you're now interested in business because of this exposure to Loot Plot. You know, have you ever thought of venture capital? And I remember kind of reading about it and having heard a little bit about it growing up,

Starting point is 01:40:25 looking into it and realizing, oh, you have like all this work experience you need to have. I talked to a couple of former Yalies who were venture capitalists and sort of had that in the back of my head. And so, you know, I went off to work at McKinsey as a consultant for three years. And then in the process of trying to figure out what to do next, I met a venture capitalist by the name of Ted Dintersmith. And in that interview with him, we spoke about not about technology, not about the research I'd done or my work experience, but he wanted to know what books I was reading. He wanted to know about the music that I loved. And in that period, I was really into modern American literature.

Starting point is 01:41:14 So I was really into E.L. Doctorow. There are a few books that I just absolutely loved. And we talked about that for a little while. And then when we turned to music, I've played piano, classical piano since I was four. And he and I talked about the classical musicians that I really loved. And he happened to be an English lit major along with being a physics major. So he loved books as much as I did, maybe even more. And then he was an opera nut. And so we had all these things that we could talk about. And two hours into that conversation, never having touched upon technology, he then basically said, how would you like to come work with me?

Starting point is 01:41:59 And I was living out in Palo Alto at the time. This was an opportunity in Boston. And I remember not even hesitating, knowing that I wanted to work with this person, this human being sitting across the table from me. I jumped at that opportunity. And it wasn't the fact that it was in venture capital, but rather, I really wanted the chance to be working around someone like Ted Dintersmith at that time. Let's talk about that interview for a second. So that I think would strike some people as a very unusual interviewing style. Yes. Do you think in retrospect, and maybe you know, that he had already decided you were fully capable of doing the job, therefore didn't have to check that box and just wanted to make sure that he could work with you and spend time with you? Was it that he was using that interview

Starting point is 01:42:47 to sell you so that when he made the offer, you would say yes? What do you think was going through his mind before, during, or after, or I suppose before and during that conversation? You know, I think Ted is a very unique human being in that I used to have this perception that networking was work in a room and like you shake a lot of hands and hold a lot of babies and you learn a few names and you move on. I learned from Ted that networking is actually a deep curiosity about the human being who's sitting across the table from you. So I don't think he necessarily had that kind of purpose in mind, but that he was just really interested in what I was interested in. And we happened to find commonality and he was trying to understand how my mind worked and what I was interested in.

Starting point is 01:43:47 I've taken that as a real lesson because I love the way he would network. He learned so much about people in that process. And that's how he ministered to his entrepreneurs. He also was capable of providing advice at the right time because he really knew those people. And so for me, I felt like it was a really unique interview. It stood out from all the interviews I've ever had, but I think he was learning more about me than most other technical interviews could have gotten to. And then, you know, his other partners, I think Isar Armani gave me sort of more of a case study and could dive into that. But Ted always had a deep curiosity about the human being and not necessarily just the skills. What else did you learn from him or in that position, in that job?

Starting point is 01:44:46 I thought that Ted was also an incredible first principles thinker. So my second day of work at CRV was 9-11. Oh my God. black hole economy. And so it was a really terrible time for Venture. And they had just raised this $1.4 billion fund. So that's, I mean, for Venture, that's a huge amount of money. And it's a huge accomplishment to convince so many investors to invest in your venture capital firm at that amount. Then Ted took the time to actually start to do analysis with me on how much capital had gone into venture capital at that moment. And then the exits had stopped. There were no more IPOs. No one was acquiring companies. The economy just came to a screeching halt. And he decided, along with the other a venture capital firm makes money, the way you have any salary or the operating money that you have for the firm is a direct

Starting point is 01:46:11 percentage of the fund that you raise. And so by shrinking the size of the fund, you're shrinking the size of the management fees that you get pretty dramatically. Oh, for sure. Very dramatically. I mean, for people who don't know, I mean, you hear very often, it's not always the case, but in venture capital, 2 in 20, 2 in 20, and that means 2% management fee based on the sort of assets under management, meaning that particular fund, and then 20% of the upside for people who don't know.

Starting point is 01:46:43 They decided to give back those management fees. And to me, that was really, really impressive because you're facing down a really terrible economy. Not only are you shrinking the size of your fund to reflect that, you're also shrinking the size of your management fees and you're taking that blow. So things like that, I learned. I learned also how to shepherd companies through that kind of difficult time and how to be a true partner to an entrepreneur. And so, you know, I think it was a really important lesson to learn because I would argue most people haven't seen real cycles. People seem to think 2008 was a real significant dip in the economy, but anyone who lives through 2001 knows that 2008 was a blip compared to a real downturn. that knowledge of having survived 2001 as a crisis period is something that I hold with me. Really, in my war chest, I know how to get through that kind of time period,

Starting point is 01:47:53 and I don't think a lot of people do. Yeah, it makes me think of a lot of what I heard in Silicon Valley, still here, before moving to Austin, which makes me think of, I'm going to paraphrase this, but it's a quote from Sir John Templeton, I think it is, which is the most expensive words in investing are, this time it's different. And it has been quite the bull run. You mentioned first principles thinking. I want to tie that into something you mentioned related to your class, tough choices for leaders. What are some of the toughest choices for leaders, I suppose, in this context, CEOs or high-level execs, co-founders

Starting point is 01:48:34 of companies? What are some of the toughest decisions that nonetheless seem to come up fairly commonly? I think the most difficult thing for a startup founder, CEO, leader, you witness multiple phase changes in a business. And so if you imagine you're going from absolutely nothing to something, that's what I call the zero to one phase. You're searching for product market fit. You're trying to find the best customers. You're trying to find where your 10x advantage is truly valued that's a very different business process and truth-seeking than when you're going from one to x which is now that i know what my value proposition is i'm going to add to that, but I'm also going to pull on some of these growth levers. The fundamental job of a VP of marketing who is in that zero to one phase changes dramatically in one to X. It changes dramatically for the salesperson in zero to one to one to X. And you go through this incredible Bermuda Triangle where you have to navigate that change. And so what I see challenging for startup founders is actually being comfortable with your

Starting point is 01:49:57 fundamental job shifting from every three months, you would have a massive shift in what you need to focus on and how you need to develop. And I think a company is a multi-dimensional thing. And in Silicon Valley, we spend so much time thinking about product and product market fit that we forget that there's this huge emphasis you might want to place

Starting point is 01:50:23 on the fact that a company is also an organization. A company is also a category that you're building. A company is also a business model. A company is also a team. And so it's the skill set actually to balance all of those things and knowing when you fundamentally need to change out the talent in your team, knowing when you actually need to let go of a product, and knowing actually, to me, this is probably the hardest piece, knowing the difference between a winning strategy versus a strategy not to lose. Could you elaborate on that, please? Yeah. So to me, a strategy not to lose is a lot of different things. It's to not to lose to a

Starting point is 01:51:13 competitor, not to lose talent, a strategy not to lose out on revenue. So it's all these fears that you have of captured ground or the fact that you might have someone take over something that you want to do, a competitor who's breathing down your neck, versus a strategy for winning is about where do you double down on? What do you do to capture ground, to be aggressive, to play offense and not defense. To me, there's a huge difference between that strategy of I'm going to win in this market versus I'm not going to lose. And not losing often involves a lot of hedging. And when you feel that urge to hedge, you need to focus and you need to be offensive. In what ways might that hedging manifest? What would be examples you've seen or hypotheticals of the symptoms of a defensive strategy in the form of hedging?

Starting point is 01:52:17 It might manifest itself in, I am going to go after two very different customer segments. One is large enterprises. The other is small, medium businesses. And the reason why that's really hedging is you have two completely different ways of selling to those organizations. And you're afraid to pick one because maybe you have some revenue in both. Right. But in that situation, by not choosing to focus on one group or the other, you're probably a shortchanging your team because you don't have a specialized team to go after that opportunity. You're shortchanging your business model because you aren't pricing your product correctly. And you're shortchanging the opportunity because probably your product isn't optimized for that customer set.

Starting point is 01:53:15 Your customer service isn't optimized for that product set. And your team is ultimately confused because you're heading in two completely different conditions and directions. And so that's one of the most common ways that I see people involved in a strategy of not losing instead of we're here to win it. Yeah. All of those things you mentioned also contribute to lighting money on fire, right? I mean, that split focus. The bonfire. The bonfire of funding or cashflow, depending on where it comes from. This is really important, and you know this, but I want to underscore it for people listening and give a few other examples that might be worth, people might enjoy exploring.

Starting point is 01:53:56 So this winning versus not losing distinction seems really subtle, but you can get an intuitive feel for it in a few different ways. One is there's actually a, I think it's a three-part miniseries podcast called The Making of Oprah. And it talks about the rise of Oprah. I know this seems like an odd segue. Oprah impresses the hell out of me in a million different ways. And after you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. But she would constantly tell her team, many of whom wanted to respond to say Donahue, who was the 800 pound gorilla at the time, like we need to race our own race in the sense that if you're on a thoroughbred horse and you're in a race, you need to focus on your race. You can't be looking side to side at the competitors, the racers next to you,

Starting point is 01:54:45 or you get yourself into a lot of trouble or you get really injured. And the second is, if people want to Google Dan Gable on aggression, there's a short video I put on my blog that hits this point exactly. And I'm giving examples from different disciplines because it is cross disciplinary. It's not just investing in startups. Dan Gable is the most legendary wrestling coach, certainly of the last, I would say a hundred years in the United States. Also won a gold medal in the 19, I want to say 72 Munich Olympics without having a single point scored on him. That just does not happen. And this video will show you a lecture that he's giving one of his athletes after his athlete tied. And he said, you lost to him twice before. You just didn't want to lose. He said, you never win that way.

Starting point is 01:55:32 You got to tie. And that's exactly why you got to tie. And the difference is just so powerful. It's worth, I just thought, taking a to to underscore it because I think it's really a critical distinction that you brought up it's also like I think about it I love to ski and I had this instructor once I was complaining about going through powder and I was saying how it really hurt my my thighs he's like my thighs are burning and he looks at me he said it's because you're not leaning forward and like the minute you lean forward, suddenly you're just gliding. And it's scary in that moment when you lean forward because you feel like you're going to fall. And yet it gives you so much more control. It's so much less effort counterintuitively. Definitely. And that to me is like the perfect example of, oh, like you have to actually have a little

Starting point is 01:56:31 bit of aggressiveness in order to have the win. I think you are well-suited in that respect. How did you meet the man who so famously tries to trick, not trick, that sounds too strong, who so commonly will say something like, well, I'm just a Southern boy. Maybe you could slow down and explain that one more time, which by the way, if you ever hear anything like that, like really stop and pay attention because you're about to be tricked or misdirected. I've actually borrowed that and I use that for Long Island a lot. I'm like, you know, I'm just a slow Long Island boy. Take a second. Maybe you can explain that to me again. How did you meet Mike Maples Jr.?

Starting point is 01:57:09 Yeah. So this actually happened in one of the classes that I was teaching at Stanford. He was one of the mentors for a bunch of teams. So we had all these teams who were creating business plans for their own version of a startup company. And we had incredible mentors to each of these teams. We had, I think, someone who was the former CEO of VeriSign. We had, I think, Diane Green might have been a mentor to one of the teams. And we had Mike Laples. Can you explain to folks who Diane Green is for those who don't know? Diane Green is now the head of Google Cloud. She was also the CEO of VMware. Big deal.

Starting point is 01:57:46 Big, big deal. So big deal. Big deal. And what we did was we would team up some of these entrepreneurs or people in Silicon Valley with a student team. And Mike was one of them. And for people who know Mike, he's just this charming boy from Oklahoma. He calls himself sometimes a washed up enterprise VC or washed up enterprise entrepreneur, but he's not. So he came to our class

Starting point is 01:58:14 and he was mentoring this team, but he was actually being too nice. And so this team was having like all sorts of weird issues. They were fighting and they came to my office hours and one of them started to cry. Spotting a theme here within proximity of. Right. I did not make this team member cry. It was they were making each other cry. I'm just screwing with you. was just kind of, I was really, I was kind of mad at Mike because part of the role of the mentor is to help shepherd them through this tough point. And he was just kind of checked out on that front.

Starting point is 01:58:53 And I emailed him and he said, oh yeah, my team's doing great. And I said, well, I kind of beg to differ. They were just in my office and one of them started to cry and they're fighting. And right now, if they don't pull it together, they're really going to fail the class. And he just wrote me this message that said, well, I think they're going to get an A plus. And so I said, well, so far not tracking. And so we just sort of had this friendly banter and actually the team does turn it around and they ended up getting an A plus in the class. Now, did Mike intervene, or did he just throw some turtle shells on a desk and divine his way to that outcome? I'm not really sure, but I actually take full credit for the turnaround, because had I not starting to get to a point in my PhD where I was thinking of starting my own company. And I had started my PhD in computer security

Starting point is 01:59:54 exactly because I knew that it didn't matter when I graduated, there would be a computer security problem out there. And I wouldn't be at risk of market timing. And it was sort of a perfect opportunity because just as I was going through my research, it was from 2003 to 2007 at this point, we had transformed from this world of where security used to be a bunch of vandalism problems to now there were companies involved and like real money was being involved. And so real crime was being created here. And then towards the end, there was really like nation state warfare starting to happen. And so my research was really in risk management of computer security. And I knew that this was becoming a huge issue.

Starting point is 02:00:48 And so I started to think, I'm going to make a company. So at that moment, I turned to some of my advisors. And my advisors were nice enough to say, hey, if you're thinking about starting a company, you've been in the ivory towers for literally four years. So you should get out of the classroom and go check out some angel investors. And then Mike was one of the first people I turned to and I asked him if I could see his deal flow. And he was nice enough to say, sure, why don't you just come in and take a look at my deal flow on Wednesdays. And so we would sit next to each other and look at companies. And deal flow means the top of the funnel companies that he's considering potentially investing in.

Starting point is 02:01:33 Right. They would come in and pitch for between 30 minutes and an hour. And then at the end of that, I think it was March of 2008. He calls me as I'm actually going up to Tahoe to ski. He calls me to say, hey, Anne, I have this great idea. I just raised my first fund. It's $35 million. And I think that you should drop out of your PhD program and join me. And it's not the venture-backed startup that you've been thinking about, but it's now a backed venture startup. Let's go. Oh, I like that. That's really good. Now, was that an immediate yes,

Starting point is 02:02:18 or was it a let me sleep on it? I actually thought he was crazy because, first of all, I was literally, again, I was a nobody. I'm a PhD candidate. I don't even have my degree at Stanford. So there's all these business school students. There's great angel investors milling around. The major question was, why does this guy think that I would actually be a good investor? And then the second piece was there weren't a ton of venture capital firms that were being started up. So even when I went back to people who were my mentors, some of them said, why would you go to a no-name VC? Why won't you go and be an associate at Kleiner Perkins or Excel or Sequoia. And I didn't really have a good answer. And just to set the stage for folks who don't know maybe the recent history in Silicon Valley, at the time that Mike had proposed this to you, sort of microcap venture capital was barely a thing. There are a lot of funds of all sorts of different sizes now, but at the time, this was very unusual. Yeah. And so it was, you know, at this point in,

Starting point is 02:03:33 when we get to 2018, there's probably, you know, 30 funds being pitched a week to a limited partner who invests into these venture capital firms. But back then there was very, very few. And so it was really a question of, is this the smart thing to do? And I think this is sort of where, when you turn to an entrepreneur, this is the feeling that they get. What I sensed was there was actually a major change afoot. All of the students around me at Stanford

Starting point is 02:04:03 didn't need $5 million to start a company. And that's what venture capital was offering to startups at that point. They would say, I will buy 50% of your company for $5 million. Right. It was predicated on the entry costs being very high in some respects. Very, very high. And at that point, we suddenly have open source software. We really have what's starting to look like cloud computing. We have all the shared resources. So even though I was helping to run servers in the closet at my grad school in our lab, that was starting to become something that we didn't need. There was actually services that you can use

Starting point is 02:04:45 where you could rent services. And so to me, there was a dramatic change that was happening. And so you had to change the financing environment. So I felt like I could see something that everyone else didn't see that Mike was also seeing. And he used to say 500,000 is the new 5 million. And then the second piece for me was this guy, Mike Maples, had a skillset I had never seen before, maybe in like

Starting point is 02:05:13 one or two other people in my entire lifetime. But he was this incredible marketer. And I used to believe you either built things or you sold things. Everything else just seemed like an extraneous skill set to have. But Mike was incredible at storytelling and positioning and strategy, like real strategy for how do you create a new category and how do you build that category and how do you create the king of that category and as an engineer I hadn't thought about what you do after you build the product and so this magic of category creation to me was something that almost felt like magic. And so I looked at Mike and I thought, I really need to learn from this person. And not only is it a great skill set that I'm learning from, he is also genuinely one of the best human beings that I've ever encountered. And so it was just sort of this magical combination of someone whose values really aligned with me and how I wanted to build a firm and the things that I wanted to do with that and how I wanted to build a firm and the things that I

Starting point is 02:06:26 wanted to do with that and how I wanted to treat entrepreneurs and a person who was a mad genius. And so that combination to me was irresistible. And so a couple of months into it, I said, sign me up. A couple of months. All right. So question number one, just for people who are wondering, and I know a lot of people, you seem very good at avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. And this is so, so, so key, this cognitive bias. When you were looking at the quitting of the PhD program, I don't know how it works at Stanford, but did you realize you could kind of, you didn't have to quit? I did not quit. So that first year and a half of my life at Floodgate was crazy.

Starting point is 02:07:10 Because at that point, I joined Floodgate and I have an 18-month-old child, my daughter, Abby. And then I think it was four or five months into it, I am pregnant with my second child. I've promised my mother as any good Asian daughter would that I will finish this PhD if it's the last thing I do. So I'm waking up at like four o'clock in the morning, doing research until seven when my daughter wakes up, then taking her to daycare and then working from like 8.30 to 6.30 at Floodgate and then coming back, doing dinner and then working on my PhD again, rinse and repeat. And then I got pregnant with my second child

Starting point is 02:07:55 a few months into that and then decided I was gonna defend my PhD. They set the date for six weeks after I gave birth to my son. So I not only did my first set of investments, but also gave birth to a child, cared for another one, and managed to stay married and finish this PhD all between 2008 and 2009. And so, you know, to me, like, that's like the most creative and probably productive period of my life ever, and probably will be, but also showed me that I can actually do a lot of things that everyone around me was like, why would you do all of those

Starting point is 02:08:40 things at the same time? This is going to seem like a non-sequitur, it kind of is, but how does your mom say your name? Because Anne is sort of an unusual first name. Oh no, but that's not my first name. My first name is Reiko. Reiko. Yeah. So how does my mom say it? She's like, Reiko! Reiko-chan.

Starting point is 02:09:00 Reiko-chan, sugoi ne? I can barely... That's another word everybody should look up and learn. S-U-G-O-I. Sugoi na? That just means sort of awesome, impressive, a whole sort of things. Because I can barely manage to brush my teeth

Starting point is 02:09:15 and shower on a daily basis. And yet, you're doing all these things simultaneously. I have to pause at this point just to try to fill out some of the colors of who Reiko-chan and Mirako is. What have you struggled with? Have you had any dark, really, it doesn't have to be dark, but difficult times, dark times that you could tell us about? And were you really struggled? Or is that not part of your sort of lexicon? No, I think we all have struggles, right? So I think even in this moment of

Starting point is 02:09:53 like the PhD and caring for my kids and caring for myself and my husband, my family, and trying to do a good job at work. Like, things slip, right? And I struggle with this still today. And this is where the darkness comes in is like, am I doing anything well? Like, am I a good mother? Today, my six-year-old is on a field trip. And he asked me, why is it that you never get to come on a field trip. Like those are all these moments where you wonder, like, am I failing at being a parent or I'm not able to get to the dishes?

Starting point is 02:10:32 And I had a moment where my front door neighbor is actually a Japanese woman, a nosy Japanese woman. And she went up to my mother and she said, you know, your family is so strange. I always see the husband doing the dishes, but never the wife, never the wife. That is the most nosy Japanese neighbor thing to say ever. It's like I spent two days in that front window doing dishes. And at some point I was like, oh, screw this. But it's like, you know, it is this constant

Starting point is 02:11:06 battle of how do I figure out what my priority is so that I have like minimum viable progress on some fronts. And then the thing that really matters, I'm going to make massive progress on. That's where the darkness creeps in. I think, you know, for me, my really loser moments have been things like early on, I just described to you early how there were tests that always said, like, I wasn't that smart. There were lots of examples where I wasn't good at a lot of different things that other people found very normal. Like I was horrible at standardized tests only until I got to like senior year or junior year in high school did I finally figure it out. Like there's so many places where so many people

Starting point is 02:12:00 said distinctly average, maybe not even that smart. And I think for me, it's been learning to tune out the naysayers and knowing that there are certainly a lot of things I'm not going to be good at, but there are things that I can actually be great at. A really good example that actually is my PhD. I remember when I got to my PhD at Stanford, and I'm starting, first of all, like I took a math class, and there were college freshmen in this class, and it felt like the math teacher was speaking Greek. And the freshmen are flying through this material because they're like little kid geniuses. And I remember thinking to myself, well, clearly I should not be getting a PhD in math. And thank goodness this is an operations research. Then I had this second experience where the new professor came in across the hall from me.

Starting point is 02:13:00 His name was Ramesh Johari. He was my age because I had taken five years off to start my PhD. He was literally my age and he was incredible. He could remember things about different papers and theorems and how they were proved from like years past, compare and contrast them. He just knew things that I struggled to remember. And I remember looking at him and being in one of his seminars and thinking to myself, that is world-class as an academic. I'm okay at it, but I would have moments where I was like, I'm actually not even good at it. And then I would go to a conference and like when you compare yourself against the world of PhD students and obvious then you start to develop a little bit more confidence then you go back to

Starting point is 02:13:51 Stanford and you see what world class is and and I was thinking to myself this isn't the path and there's a place where I actually can use the skill sets that I do have where I can be really good at the things that I'm doing and so if I'm sitting here saying, oh, I was always good at everything that I did, that's just not true. There are so many moments where I realize it's like being a doctor. I said, I would not be good at being a doctor. I would not be great at being an academic. I would not be great at a lot of different things. Just knowing and having the self-awareness of where I would double down is, I think, what I was good at. And so it makes this emergent life where I was going from one track to another. I was going to be a doctor,

Starting point is 02:14:41 and then I went to McKinsey, and then I went to VC. And then I went to McKinsey and then I went to VC and then I went to get a PhD and then I went back to VC. This is all self-discovery rather than a stated path that I had career planned for a long time. Well, it strikes me also that, and maybe I'm trying to create a narrative where there isn't one or a connection, but it seems reasonable that Mike's superpower or one of his abilities to help create categories and then sort of mint kings within a given category is actually a different species of something that you're also good at, which is kind of a Jack Welchian in a sense. And that is you're looking at the different paths you could take. And if you can't be say number one or number two in that thing,

Starting point is 02:15:32 it just gets rolled out. And you're asking this world-class question over and over again. And one way is to find something where you can dominate and really be world-class. And the other is to create an entirely new category in a sense. So it seems like you and Mike are very complimentary in that way and have that shared programming. I've heard people describe you as an investor, one of your strengths as being technical, which I suppose seems self-evident given your background. But how would Mike, let's say, describe your... If I asked him, what are Ann's superpowers as an investor? There are a lot of investors out there. What is Ann's superpower or set of superpowers? What would he say?

Starting point is 02:16:13 I think for me, the superpowers I have are a few folds. So one is because of the technical capabilities that I have, when someone is describing particularly anything that has to do with math, and luckily for me right now, math is having this incredible resurgence in artificial intelligence and in cryptocurrency, I can get that piece. I can get that piece better than I would say probably 99% of the investors out there. And so if I get a math paper, that's something that I love to dig into. And that technical insight is something that I think I'm better at than most other investors out there. And then from there, I can also start to piece together what that company will look like around that technology. And so it's not just, I'm looking for great R&D projects,

Starting point is 02:17:15 but ones that are ripe to be big D and little r. And I think that's a superpower, especially at the very early stage. So one of the companies that I invested in back in 2010, Ayasti, they've gone over $100 million in financing at this point. And I found them when they were, they didn't even have a business plan. They had four math papers that they sent to me. And so to me, that's something that I double down on and it's a part of the types of investments that I like to do. That's very different from the TaskRab, it's Refinery29 and Lyft that I've done in the past as well. I think the other superpower that is a little bit less evident

Starting point is 02:18:00 is more evident as I'm working with people is I feel like I have a pretty good sixth sense about the people dynamics within an organization. So I can tell when there's actually infighting happening. I can sense when an executive is starting to disengage. And those are things that I work on with a lot of the CEOs that I work with. And then the last piece that I think I really love to engage in is the fundamental data behind the business. And so I love looking at the cohort analysis and really engaging on data because that's a piece of the puzzle that I feel like I'm also good at encoding, unencoding. What are you looking for now? And what are thunder lizards? We mentioned hunting thunder

Starting point is 02:18:48 lizards earlier, and I promised I would come back to it. So maybe we define that first, and perhaps you could tell us what you're looking for at the moment. So a thunder lizard is inspired by Godzilla. It's a term that Mike, my partner, used to always tell the story, which is that we are inspired by entrepreneurs who are like Godzilla. And so what is Godzilla like? He's born from radioactive atomic eggs. So the DNA of that entrepreneur is already fundamentally different. And then he swims across the Pacific Ocean. And depending on if you're Mike or me, he lands in either the Bay Area or Tokyo and starts to wreak havoc and eats trains and automobiles and buildings and then proceeds

Starting point is 02:19:43 to crush that industry and creates disruption and then build something out of that. And so that idea of disruption is something that I always liked that imagery of like the journey across the Pacific Ocean born from something fundamentally different and then really starting to turn things over. So when we say, okay, what are we looking for right now in terms of where do we think the new thunder lizards will exist? There's sort of two different areas. It comes back to the math that I'm really interested in. One is I do think that artificial intelligence is about to disrupt a lot of different types of enterprise software. I think that enterprise software still sucks. And if we're going to be

Starting point is 02:20:33 able to really transform the way a business is actually operated, we have to take the software that just basically records data and spits it back out to you into something that's actually more intelligent, that tells you something that you didn't know, that gives you superpowers. And I think that we're going to see more and more of that in the industry. And so as an example, like baseline examples, why do we spend millions of dollars on Oracle or NetSuite when the CFO still has to make a budget for next year? Why doesn't that financial planning just automatically, automagically generate itself based on all the history that it knows, plus all the data from the external world?

Starting point is 02:21:20 So I think things like that we're going to start to see happen more and more. I also think, you know, fundamentally, the scientific method may also be dead. Like we used to have the scientific method is developed in a time where we didn't have enough data and data was actually the fundamental bottleneck in scientific research. Well, that's just not the case anymore. And so why is it that we form a hypothesis, then look at the data, and then come to a conclusion? We should have all of the data, then have an analysis of that that leads us to a hypothesis or a belief system that we

Starting point is 02:21:59 fundamentally test further. So I think these massive changes are coming. And you see it even in cryptocurrency. There's also really philosophical, interesting debates happening around, well, you have this massive pull towards centralization, whether it's in AI and ML, where you have to have all of that data in one place in order to really train. ML being machine learning. Machine learning. there's lots of really interesting themes that are just at the start of being discovered. I'm really excited about what's going to happen with autonomous vehicles and the technology that is going to be required to make that a reality. And so all of those areas, I think, are just fascinating. And so it feels like the period of real intellectual abundance and that we're headed into a period of real great creative energy.

Starting point is 02:23:12 End of time where a lot of your philosophical training and reading will be put into practice in the real world, right? Where we have people can look up the trolley scenario. It's typically thought of as a thought exercise, but if you're programming, not take us too off on a tangent, but if you're programming for autonomous vehicles and there's some type of act of God, a hailstorm, a huge boulder falls in the middle of the street and the car has to swerve left and hit two school kids or swerve right and hit five geriatrics. How does it make the decision? What is the logic embedded into that machine? It takes a lot of these philosophy 101 thought exercises and translates them very directly into the real world with real consequences.

Starting point is 02:24:01 It is a fascinating time. It's also like how much do you want to know, right? So in deep learning, it's actually very difficult to know what's happened inside of this black box. And so there's more of a demand for, let's know what's actually happening inside of this black box, especially if lives are at risk or billions of dollars are at risk and we need to be able to audit these algorithms. I think there's real interest in new technologies now that we can actually audit and know what's going on inside the box so that if the trolley example happens, we actually know how the machines will make their decisions. And so I think there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of

Starting point is 02:24:43 opportunity, but also a lot of thought that needs to go into how we want to regulate all of this. Tricky, tricky, tricky. Yeah. Well, it's going to be going to be exciting. Interested to see how all these things coalesce, right? Also, you're looking at these gigantic companies, the Facebooks, Googles, the Fang's, right? That are more and more so converging onto the same territory to see how that resolves, if it does in some fashion, is also really, really exciting to me. Or how something like Y Combinator,

Starting point is 02:25:16 just to do a little bit of inside baseball, can say, we are interested in this type of company or this particular aspect of engineering or fill in the blank and kind of steer the attention of thousands or tens of thousands of would-be entrepreneurs into a particular sector, right? Or type of project is also just really interesting to think about from the ramifications five years down the line but anyway maybe we have i mean like i think we have

Starting point is 02:25:45 so many incredible societal problems that need to be solved and i believe that the private sector is most capable of solving these problems whether it's energy or health or the fact that we have so much trash how do we solve that? How do we get clean water to people? It's not just about the next social network and how do we deliver better advertising to people, but the beauty of this type of entrepreneurship is that there are huge societal problems

Starting point is 02:26:21 that still need to be solved that I think is a really exciting opportunity also to build great businesses around. And so I think that's also what gets me up in the morning and makes me believe that what we're doing is important work. Yeah, it is important work. I don't think that sort of collective interest and self-interest have to be misaligned, right? They're not mutually exclusive. You can solve, and there's a long history of solving public problems with private sector technologies and companies. And let me just ask, I know we've gone a little bit

Starting point is 02:26:58 longer than expected, which I should have expected. Let me ask you just a few more questions and then we'll wrap up with where people can find you and learn more about what you're up to. Besides getting to yes, are there any books that you've given a lot as gifts or reread a lot yourself? For me, right now, there's a couple books that I think are super interesting. So my mentor, Ted Dintersmith, just wrote a book called What School Could Be. And this goes back to sort of education as a critical societal question. How do we fix education? And what he did was he went on a 50-state tour to look at schools and discover that the answers are actually already there.

Starting point is 02:27:52 And our incredible school teachers throughout our country are already finding solutions to teaching our kids the most important skills they need to have. And I think reading that book has not only given me hope, but also a desire to see real change in the public school education system. But I think that's a really important problem for all of us to actually engage in. And so that's one book that I would really push on to other people. The other one that is completely on the opposite end of the spectrum, but it is a fiction book. It is by Khalid Hosseini, who also wrote Kite Runner. He wrote this book called A Thousand Splendid Suns, probably one of the most beautiful books that I've read in a long time in terms of fiction writing. And I would encourage people to read it because it gives you a sense of Afghanistan's incredible history and the role women have played within that history. And I just loved that book

Starting point is 02:28:51 because it just was eye-opening to me in a very different way. So two very different types of books, none of them like straightforward business books, but ones that I think are meaningful for our society to read today. What School Could Be in 1,000 Splendid Suns? Yeah. Is there any purchase of $100 or less, that's kind of arbitrary, right, but just not a Bugatti or something, that has most positively impacted your life

Starting point is 02:29:18 or positively impacted your life in recent memory? $100 or less. It could be. I mean, look, if it's like a foldable kayak that you got for $400, that's fine too. But it could be anything. It could be $2. It could be free. It could be any recent addition to your life. Oh my gosh. So it's actually a foldable chair. So I go to my daughter's soccer tournaments a lot and there's this incredible foldable chair. I don't know what it's called. You can get it on Amazon, but it has this flip over sunshade that goes over your head. And for any parent who has been at a swim tournament or anything,

Starting point is 02:29:59 this is life-changing because oftentimes I'm just baking in the hot sun and you can be anywhere and you have your own personal tent that like folds over your head. It's like saved me on multiple weekends. My husband bought two of them. I love it. Can you send me a link to that and I'll put it in the show notes if you can track it down. So for people wondering, I'll put that in the show notes at tim.blog forward slash podcast, and you can find this miraculous foldable chair. If you could have a giant billboard anywhere with anything on it, so metaphorically speaking, getting a word, a quote, a message, a question, anything out to millions or billions of people, can't be an advertisement. What might you put on that billboard?

Starting point is 02:30:46 Wow. I wonder if it's like not losing does not equal winning. Sort of one of my themes these days. I like that. Yeah. And I think actually finding your world-class life is probably the other one that I would think about. We'll give you two. Find your world-class life is probably the other one that I would think about. We'll give you two.

Starting point is 02:31:06 Find your world-class life. And I think the reason for that is, to me, everyone is capable of that. And I think oftentimes we forget it. And for every person, it's different. That's the beauty of humanity. What do the characters for Reiko mean? Oh my gosh. So it means it's a small round bell. And the reason for my parents naming me that was they were originally going to name me something more like, you know, really beautiful child or, you know, genius child. And my mom took one look at me when I was born.

Starting point is 02:31:43 She's like, no, none of those. She said, your face was so perfectly round when you were born. It reminded me of this like perfectly round bell. And I'm like, mom, like all these other friends that I have, especially Chinese friends, they're super intelligent, world-class, dominating dictator for life, CEO, child. And I'm like, small bell, child. Reiko-chan. And where can people find you online, say hello, learn more about what you are up to? I think professionally the best place is to see my Twitter, which is Animaniac. A-N-N-I-M-A-N-I-A-C. Or on Instagram, it's A-M-I-U-R-A. You'll see more of my life there. A-I-U-R-A. You'll see more of my life there.

Starting point is 02:32:46 A-M-I-U-R-A. Yes. Three Bays. Is that what that means? Miura? Something like that. Yeah. Twitter Animaniac. Instagram A-M-I-U-R-A. M-I-U-R-A. And best website?

Starting point is 02:33:02 Floodgate. It's floodgate.com. Floodgate.com. Why Floodgate? What is a Floodgate. It's floodgate.com. Floodgate.com. Why Floodgate? What is a Floodgate? Or why is it called Floodgate? Yeah, because we think we're at the forefront of like the headwaters of innovation. And it sounded, I don't know, kind of big and audacious.

Starting point is 02:33:25 Good enough reason. Audacious, audacious. Yes, audacious, aggressive, but still the mother of dragons. There is a nurturing mother-like. There is. Den mother quality to Anne Mureko. I call myself like a mama bear. I'm very protective, but also I'm going to push my kids and people around me to be the best they can be.

Starting point is 02:33:56 Just don't get in between the mother and the cub. Good guideline. And I will say for anybody who's wondering, what would it be like to just go sort of mano a mano with Ann? I would say, you know, you're one of the few people, I would put Sam Harris in this category, where if you are willing to engage in like a public debate with either of you, you just have to make sure that you have practice defending against having your face ripped off in like the most logical, complimentary way possible. I'm just very impressed by you, Anne, and I've really wanted to have you on the show for a long time. And I'm thrilled that you were willing to carve out a few hours to spend chatting. And it's always fun chatting.

Starting point is 02:34:38 It's always fun. Tim, you've been there from the very get-go. You were the person behind my very first investment in TaskRabbit. So I have a lot to thank you for as well. Well, the adventure shall continue. And I will certainly, I'm not as involved as I used to be in the tech scene, but I'll be cheering from the sidelines. Is there anything else that you'd like to say or suggest or mention, any parting words before we wrap up?

Starting point is 02:35:05 No, I hope your audience enjoyed this. And if they got anything out of it, that they, if they want to contact me, I'm always open to more conversations and hope that some of my story shows that even if people tell you you can't do something that, that you can. Can indeed. Just got to spend the summer reading up on those 12 topics. That's right. You can't always out-talent everyone, but if you out-prepare them, you might as well have out-talented them. Maybe the billboard sign is effort matters.

Starting point is 02:35:39 Effort matters. Because it really does. It does. Well, Anne, thank you so much again. This has been such a treat and a gift. And I look forward to hearing what people have to say on the interwebs. And perhaps we'll do a round two in person during one of, what was the name of the, was it the Tim Ferriss Wine Hour? What was the treat? Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:36:02 At the offices. They call it Ferris time. That's what Mike calls it. Ferris time. Which was the little wine, a pair of teeth, just smooth out the edges. We could describe that.

Starting point is 02:36:16 He just grabs a glass. He's like, I think it's Ferris hour. I'll take it. I will take it. And I will talk to you soon. See you soon, I hope. And to everybody listening, you can find links to everything we discussed,

Starting point is 02:36:34 the books, the fold-out share, and much more getting to yes and so on in the show notes, as you can with all episodes at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun

Starting point is 02:36:59 before the weekend? Between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I

Starting point is 02:37:37 share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Eight Sleep. I have been using Eight Sleep Pod Cover for years now. Why? Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like a fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod, and I'm excited to test it out, Pod 4 Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it elevates automatically. More on that in a second. First, Pod 4 Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping you and your

Starting point is 02:38:30 partner cool, even in a heat wave. Or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying to crank the AC down. This solves all of that. Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding experience. And for those snore-heavy nights, the pod can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve airflow and stop you or your partner from snoring. Plus, with the Pod 4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables on the nightstand. You won't need them because these types of metrics are integrated into the Pod 4 Ultra itself.

Starting point is 02:39:07 They have imperceptible sensors, which track your sleep time, sleep phases, and HRV. Their heart rate tracking, as just one example, is at 99% accuracy. So, get your best night's sleep. Head to 8sleep.com slash Tim and use code Tim to get $350 off of the Pod 4 Ultra. That's 8sleep, all spelled out, 8sleep.com slash Tim and code Tim, T-I-M, to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra. They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform that powers millions of businesses worldwide, including me, including mine. What business,

Starting point is 02:39:50 you might ask? Well, one way I've scratched my own itch is by creating Cockpunch Coffee. It's a long story. All proceeds on my end go to my foundation, SySafe Foundation, fund research for mental health, et cetera. Anyway, Cockpunch Coffee, it's delicious. The first coffee I've ever produced myself. I drink it every morning. Check it cetera. Anyway, Cockpunch Coffee, it's delicious. The first coffee I've ever produced myself. I drink it every morning. Check it out. We use Shopify for the online storefront and my team raves about how simple and easy it is to use.

Starting point is 02:40:13 It has everything we need and nothing we don't. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or getting ready for your IPO, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It doesn't matter if you're selling satin sheets from Shopify's in-person POS system or offering organic olive oil on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform. However you interact with your customers, you're covered. And once you've reached your

Starting point is 02:40:38 audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. And Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution behind Allbirds, Rothy's, Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more than 170 countries. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way if you have questions. This is Possibility powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y, shopify.com slash Tim. Go to shopify.com slash Tim to take your business to the next level today. One more time, all lowercase, shopify.com slash Tim.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #754: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ann Miura-Ko

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #754: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ann Miura-Ko

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.