This Week in Startups - E1074 News: How VC can do better for underrepresented founders, Zoom shuts down Chinese pro-democracy accounts, Wall Street Bets, Reddit appoints YC CEO Michael Seibel to BoD & more with Lolita Taub & Tom Uebel

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

0:01 Jason intros Tom Uebel & Lolita Taub 5:17 George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests impacting Venture Capital, Angela Benton's tweets about her bad experience with Cowboy Ventures, how can VC move forward and be better towards underestimated founders? 17:37 Lolita & Jason reflect on some imperfect investor moments towards founders 23:55 How investor bias towards underrepresented founders manifests itself 28:23 Tom on focusing on diversity in hiring at the earliest stage of a companies life, how people with raw talent miss out on opportunities due to pattern-matching 39:23 Zoom's shuts down a Chinese pro-democracy account, importance of Data privacy at Command E, Jason's thoughts on Zoom only giving end-to-end encryption to paid accounts 52:36 Wall Street Bets, Meme stocks and a new generation of Robinhood traders 56:59 Reddit appoints YC CEO Michael Seibel to its board after Alexis Ohanian steps down, former interim CEO Ellen Pao has words for current CEO Steve Huffman 1:03:07 Issues of free speech & why relying solely on government organizations may be the wrong decision 1:05:45 Juneteenth observation, potential reparation ideas 1:10:27 Assessing COVID-19 recent death numbers & risk of getting back to work 1:23:03 Lolita shares her founder-investor matching tool 1:25:30 Tom demos Command E

This week in startups is brought to you by SendPro Online from Pit Me Bowes. Save time and money no matter what you ship or mail. Try it free for 30 days and get a free 10-pound scale when you visit pb.com slash twist. And Twilio runs an amazing program for startups that includes a $500 getting started credit, access to webinars made exclusive for startups, and full support via their Twilio Startups team. Sign up now at Twilio Startups.com slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of this week in startups.

It's our News Roundtable. And with us today, Tom, we have two guests who haven't been on the program before. We're trying to rotate in some new people for the News Roundtable. And Tom Yubel is with us. He is the CEO and co-founder of a startup called Command. E, which I put a little bet in. And my friend David Sacks invested in, correct, Tom? That's right.

He introduced us. And so tell everybody what Command E is, just so they know. Yeah, so Command E is blazing fast, search and navigation across all your docks and records. So we kind of spend our days jumping between all these systems, whether you're a salesperson, moving between Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Google Docs and Gmail, whether you're a product manager in and out of GERA, Google Doc, systems like that. It's just a lot of friction moving between them. So we make it as fast as possible to move to the next thing in your day, regardless of what it is. And that's something that's something like Spotlight doesn't do.

Is that what they call the Apple search when you hit the Apple space bar? You type QuickTime or something. That universal search doesn't go deep into the cloud, correct? Exactly. Yeah. So it's that same kind of pattern. You just hit command E no matter where you're at on your computer and we'll bounce you to anything in the cloud in less than a second is kind of the brand promise there. And then does that and why is this important? You know, when customers engage the product, why do they tell you they engage the product? Yeah. I think if you think about we just have so many things and so much context switching throughout your day as a knowledge worker. And you often can lose your train of thought digging for. for, you know, what is that document? I know what I need to go to next,

but there's just all this friction in getting to it and you lose your train of thought. So fast, speed. We basically let you. Yeah, at speed, I think performance as a feature. Yeah. We let you move as fast as your brain can, and so you aren't slowed down by your goals.

I just needed to do two things. I needed to search my email, Slack, and Notion. Because it's, or I need to, the other thing I need to do is search multiple Slack instances. Because I am now in a, dozen different Slack rooms. Does it search across multiple Slack instances? It does, yeah. So, you know, what I would do is I would just hit Commandee, search for Jason, and my Slack DM with you would be right there. I would hit Enter and I'd be there in less than a

second. That's amazing. All right. Everybody give it a shot. Go to get commande.com. Also with us, Lolita Taub. I pronounced it correct. Yes, Lolita? You did. And she is, a venture partner at next gen venture partners. And previously, I think you got started in venture, correct if I'm wrong, working with Arlen Hamilton, friend of the pod, as a principal at backstage capital, correct? That's right. Well, actually, even before that, I was at a venture capital fund in Madrid where I did my MBA. But in the U.S., yes, backstage was the first fund I worked for. Well, amazing. And then you were chief of staff at Catalite. Catillate.

Yeah. Cataly. What is that? Well, we're working on addressing the tech talent gap, and we do it in various ways. We do have an arm that is staff aug. So you need developers now in 48 hours. We can get them for you and to you. And they are seasoned seven plus years of experience across tech stacks, so on and so forth.

And we also have a second arm that was really the one that brought me in, which is an opportunity to bring people from all walks. of life and give them an opportunity to break into tech by using machine learning where we run people through an assessment, identify high potential for future developers, put them through training, and if they accomplish, if they achieve completing the program successfully, then we give them a job and put them to work. And is this explicitly for diversity and inclusion, or is it just to find any unappreciated talent that hasn't emerged yet?

Yeah, so for me, the way I would put it, it would be for underestimated people, right? And across the board, you have people from all walks of life, from social, economic spectrum, to education, to anything you really think of. Got it. And we're just giving an opportunity to all. Awesome. Well, it's very, obviously, prescient to have you on the pod, because we are sitting here in June of 2020. and it has been just absolutely stunning to watch the protests after the just horrific murder of George Floyd that we all had to just sit in shock and watch. And it's really created a moment, I think, also in the tech industry, where people are really getting dialed in and focused on exactly how people of color are treated in the industry.

and I thought it would be good to start with just one instance that really caught my attention, which is an old friend of mine, Angela Benton, who has been in the venture space and has been around the industry for a long time, called out on Twitter and on her Instagram. And she has a very big following, especially on Instagram. She's kind of a startup influencer in addition to being a founder, and she's the CEO of StreamLytics. and she went after another friend of the pod, Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures. And Aileen is a pioneer in venture capital as a minority woman in venture capital. So this really got interesting and caught my attention.

Here's what she says. Imagine my shock to see the statement from Cowboy VC about what they plan to do publicly despite the experience that one personally has with a partner on their team role this year, people speculated that partner was Ted Wang, not alienly. I don't know if that's confirmed in any of this. And I want to keep an open mind to everything here. But I think it's very important for us to discuss what she said her experience was, which is while pitching Streamlytics earlier this year, I had a fantastic initial conversation

with one of the partners. We were scheduled to do a follow-up, the following. We ended up getting rescheduled a few times. No sweat. Shit happens, understandably. To be clear, Cowboy V-C invest in our vertical and at our stage, and I was referred by a warm intro. So that's like everything's dialed in, obviously. I was stunned at the conversation that followed, considering our first conversation went so well. The following conversation was degrading.

The partner's behavior and interaction with me was dismissive as I went through demos of our products and included hand-waving to advance me through parts of the demo they weren't interested in. eye rolling, huffing and puffing, gas-liding as if I don't know how to articulate clearly the technology that we have built. This, my friends, is still racism and not ally behavior. For black people specifically who are venturing out to start something new, this behavior is traumatic. Despite all of my experience and credibility, after the call, I was admittedly worn down and reflected on what I could have possibly did wrong. I gave myself a day to mentally process what happened because I did not want to be react. During that time, I got checked how I felt what I experienced during that call through my VC network of both black and white investors. And that is when I realized as a black woman have a choice who I would like to accept money from.

The power dynamic that currently exists between founders and VCs are compounded if you happen to be non-white and belong to a group that has went through centuries of systemic racism. I feel like this was an opportunity for me to lead privately and let them know of the issues. So that it could be corrected internally. This is the email I sent. C-Ced Aileen Lee. Naturally, as a woman, I thought I would at least get a reply back from Alien directly. I did not. The partner did reply to apologize and use vague language on how he would self-reflect

to see where he went wrong. I'm making public because even with events of the past week, I have not heard from the firm addressing the clear issues on their team. This is not to say that I have. I'm looking for anyone to be fired. I'm not. But what I am looking for is VCs to move past the performance. Stop posting BS Black Lives Matter, posts when the problem is internal.

What are you doing to make sure other people do not go through what I did? I think there's a lot more going on here. You can search and follow Angela Benton, who I think is just a tremendous founder and a force in the startup space. A lot of people look up to her for advice, A. Benton, B-E-N-T-O-N. and also Aileen Lee, who's been on the podcast, and who was also a pioneer in amazing. Ted Wang, if it is, in fact, Ted Wang, who did do a bunch of tweets about this. I don't know if he explicitly mentioned it, but he announced, and he's T. Wang, and he's been in the industry for a long time. The protests have caused the team at Cowboy Ventures to engage in self-examination while our intentions have been good.

We acknowledge that we have been complicit in perpetuating an unjust system we can and must do better. here's how we will start. And so overall, when you hear this, Lolita, as a founder and investor and woman of color, what do, what rings true here? What can we learn from this? And how does the industry move forward? Yeah, well, certainly what Angela Benton is talking about is something that's pervasive in the industry. I personally, in terms of Eileen Lee, I know her, I've worked with her at Allraise. In fact, I was looped into helping with bringing more intersectionality and representation in the Allraise community. And so I know this is very important to her. I don't know Ted Wang, so I don't know, you know, I don't have comments there. But I can tell you that what Angela is

talking about is something that is very real. And having worked with, many underestimated founders, being a woman of color myself, I can tell you that there is definitely a different type of treatment that you get when you are a person of color. And I understand and appreciate that Angela wants to share her experience and to say, hey, this is not okay. Don't do it. And if you do, we're not going to stay quiet about it. And I, and I, and I, I don't think it's, and again, I don't know, Angela, and so I might be wrong, but I, what I hear is just, this shouldn't continue. Can we please stop this?

Right. Can you get your act together, VC world? And I think that's a, that is a more than fair request in terms of, please don't just say nice statements about all the great things you're going to do, do them and show them through your actions, not just through your words, and show them through your, your, your, your, checkbook too. I think that is at the end of the day where the rubber meets the road. Are you investing in underrepresented founders, which I think is the term that most people like to use. Am I correct in using that term, Lolita, or should I say founders of color? How should we as white

men, as allies, hopefully, you know, sort of contextual speak about this, you know, in terms of a group of people. That's a great question, and I wish I could tell you one is better than the other. I personally, I think there's different camps in terms of what you use for terminology. I use underestimated because I think that this is a wider reaching problem, and I consider a lot of different intersectionalities when I think of founders going through these kinds of pains that Angela is talking about. But founders of color would, would, be appropriate, depending on what you're talking about, honestly. Yeah, I know. And I think it's important because I have gotten challenged many times, like, you know, oh, you had, as an example, Indians or

Pakistanis or Sri Lankans or Asians in the underrepresented founder cohort for our founder. dot university, our class to try to help us find more underrepresented founders. And so some people feel like they're overrepresented, so they shouldn't be included. and diversity efforts. And so it's a little bit harder sometimes to keep up and make sure that you're addressing this and using language correctly. Tom, I know you really, as a white male founder, want to get in here and talk about race in the industry. But in all seriousness, you've met with how many investors in your life? How many investors have you pitched, Tom? Ballpark, 50, 100, 200. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, yeah, it's obviously a very important topic and I think

unique moment to talk through it. I've probably, I mean, between our fundraisers to date and getting to know downstream investors probably met with somewhere between 30 and 50 at this point. Okay, great. We'll pick 40 as the number. Have you ever felt these type of specific moments that Angela's mentioned. In other words, come on, get to the next slide or just being, having a VC be dismissive with you in 40 meetings? Yeah, I mean, so I think first of all, I would just say that the fundraising experience is, even the most successful fundraisers, it's a taxing process. You basically, as a founder, need to put aside everything else.

There are so many aspects of running a business. You basically have to put everything else aside and say, for the next month, this is what I'm doing. I have had an investor who candidly I think highly of kind of give me the hand wave. Let's get to the next slide before. Before investing, not post-investing in a board meeting. We're like, okay, get to the point. This is before investing in you. So in other words, you've had investors exhibit rude behavior.

You know, it's hard. I don't want to opine on like her experience because I don't know. I don't know either of them well. But it was in the context of an investment conversation and it was, hey, I get this. Let's go to the next slide. And I didn't, to me, it wasn't super rude, but, you know, every, it's hard to opine on each. Yeah. I find it extremely rude when investors do that.

And I actually have given specific advice in my book and in training my people about how to do this. and we get back from this quick break, I'm going to tell you about this overall issue of just investors being rude and the blowback from it and why it should be called out and why investors need to do a better job when we get back on this week's programs. With Send Pro Online from Pitney Bowes, you can simply print postage stamps and shipping labels even when you're working remotely.

For as low as $4.99 a month, you'll get access to special discounts and save up to 40% off USPS priority mail. If you don't know what priority mail is, it's amazing. It's such a deal. Plus, for being a this week in Startups listener, you'll receive a free 30-day trial to get started and a free 10-pound scale to ensure that you never overpay.

Some Send Pro Online benefits include printing shipping labels and stamps, even when you're working remotely, scheduling package pickups and tracking shipments from departure to arrival, and save up to five cents on every letter and up to 40% off USPS priority mail. Starting at $4.99, you can calculate the exact postage online and print from your PC, avoid trips to the post office. All of this is going to save you a lot of time and a lot of money. So here's your call to action. Go to pb.com slash twist to access a special offer for a free

30-day trial plus a free 10-pound scale to get started. That's pb.com slash twist, TWIST, to experience huge savings in your shipping costs and a free trial of Send Pro Online from Pitney Bowes. Thanks again to Pitney Bowes for supporting the pod. All right, we're back. Lolita Taub is with us. You can follow her on the Twitter, Lolita T-A-U-B. And Tom Yubel is with us.

He's T-A-U-E-B-E-L on the Twitter. And so, you know, it's interesting, Lolita, I think, have you ever as an investor not been on your A game and maybe had a founder have an unpleasant experience with you when you were on the other side of the table? And then how do you think about really investor behavior when they're evaluating and working with founders? Yeah. So I mean, I think it's hard to say, hey, as an investor, I've always been perfect or vice versa, the founders have always been respectful because the facts are that on both sides of the table, sometimes there's behavior that you'd rather not see, right?

And I can tell you, for example, I was talking to a woman of color at one point, and it was reviewing her her deck. I jumped on the phone call. I asked her some pretty difficult questions in terms of her business, and she actually took it quite personally. and later on messaged to me and said that I had been I had I had been just like a white investor. Wow. Yeah.

And it was actually a very shocking moment because I couldn't even, I couldn't even digest that. And so, you know, I, and to be fair, I don't know. Like maybe I was being rude in my questions. Right. And I think here I open up Jason and I say, look, with vulnerability, sometimes even if you're a person of color, you can also have bias. Sometimes you can also be rude without intending to. Maybe you're having, you know, a bad day and you don't know.

And I'm not saying, because I don't want to excuse myself in this situation. That is what happened. Not all founders have had great experiences with me based on this one in particular, right? But on the other side, I have had, actually recently, a founder reached out to me, a woman founder looking to fundraise and I said, I'll write you a check. Just send me this. These are my due diligence docs that I need to look through and, you know, pending that. I'll write you, I'll write you a check. A couple months later, I get an email saying it was a bit of a passive aggressive email saying, oh, too bad.

you missed out on the round. We closed with X, Y, and Z. And I responded and I said, I told you to just send me the term sheet, actually. And I had gone through the stuff. And so that was a bad experience for me. Sure. So there's definitely, I think what people need to remember. And listen, I train the next generation of angel investors with angel.

dot university. And what I see happen all the time is people use these meetings, I think, on the, let's just start with the investor side. On the investor side, neophyte investors, people who are new to the game, in a lot of cases, they might come to the table with a lack of humility and they might be trying to prove themselves that they're smart, right? And so they ask very cutting, biting questions. And what I've trained people to do is in that first interaction, I just say let people talk and let them feel heard, right? And you want, it's not, you want people to come out of the interaction feeling better about you than, this is what I train my team. I want every interaction with the founder. I want them to feel better about their

relationship with us and our brand than they did when they came in. So that doesn't mean you have to sugarcoat it, but I do think you have to be careful that if you're too cutting or biting or critical, especially in the first meeting or two, you're doing it wrong. It's not an opportunity for you to list all the reasons why this will fail because, and 80% fail. So that's like saying, like, oh, you're going to do something really hard, you'll fail. Oh, you're going to the Olympics? Oh, you're going to the Olympics? Oh, you probably won't win the gold. It's like, yeah, most people who go to the Olympics don't win the gold. Like, that's the nature of going to the Olympics. Going to the Olympics itself is success. So celebrate that success. And ask your question.

and let people come out of it and feel better. And I have had people on their BlackBerrys back when I was an entrepreneur to date it. You know, I had somebody on their Blackberry while I was pitching and I stopped the meeting and I got very upset. But I didn't show how upset I was. I just stopped talking and I just stared at the person until their partners kicked him and said, oh, and I said, I just don't want you to miss this because I flew up here to meet with you and I've got 30 minutes and I just don't want you to miss this. And they apologize for that. you have to be super vigilant and careful because also on the other side of the table founders are putting themselves out there you got to remember they might have gotten 50 nose

right and they might be just absolutely exhausted from this process which you pointed to tom exactly how exhausting this is so anyway and this I'm not perfect in interactions either I had a lot of yC founders who got upset at me because I just couldn't understand their evaluations and I would say like, yeah, the valuation makes no sense to me. You want $12 million. I invested in Uber and and, you know, Com for $9 million combined. Like, you're not Uber or at the stage Uber or calm was when I invested. And I just stopped doing that because it just created too many bad feelings. So I stopped saying I'm not investing because of the valuation. I just said, I don't feel like it's a fit for us. But we'll, you know, we'd love to keep in touch. And then if a founder really

probes me, I'll open up a little bit more about my thinking, you know. But it's kind of hard. And I think making people feel bad on the way out or during the process is just something you have to be really vigilant about because we're imperfect humans, right? Yeah. Well, you know, I don't think it's, I think at the core of it, what I've learned in my few years and as an investor is to always just remember we're human first. And no matter how many rules or what best practices you practice, we all have off days on both sides. But that is not to excuse any of the systematic challenges

that we have in our industry that do relate to favoring a homogeneous group of people and marginalizing founders that can indeed build great companies. I mean, one of the things that really upsets me is that oftentimes when I've presented a deal to an investor who's more of a traditional investor, that's what I call it traditional. They'll say, oh, that's nice. Is this for charity? Oh. Is this?

And so there is this other aspect of even beyond. the rudeness in a pitch, there is this consideration that as soon as you are a woman or a woman of color or just a person of color or just an underestimated founder that sometimes just by default, the first thought that comes out in somebody's mind. And I've had this happen in conversations with other investors is, oh, that's nice. Oh, that's this SMB business. Or what is this hair product thing? Or what is because, because the, markets are not understood, but, you know, if you, if you step back and think about how we are, I mean, Gen Z's already minority majority population, you start to see that having a hobogenious

outlook on life is not going to pan out in the long turn. And it's really important to, to appreciate diverse founders for the edge in business and perspective that they, that they provide a market that's evolving into something that is not homogeneous anymore. Yeah, it was very interesting for us. When we tried to increase the number of underrepresented founders that we were meeting in order to invest, our free events didn't really help. We were doing these free events, and we still saw a very low number of people of color, lying. And I guess, you know, you could say, okay, well, you did a free event and not many people

applied. We did the best we could. And then what we challenged ourselves internally was to do an event just for underrepresented founders. And when we did that, the number of applications went through the roof. When we asked people why they came to this event and not other ones, they said, well, when I saw you were doing this founder university for women or founding university for underrepresented founders, Jason, Jackie, who runs it, I realized that you were really committed to this and therefore I applied because I knew you were taking it seriously and I should give it my attention. So I think creating spaces for these founders to have, you know, a hundred percent of the energy in the room has been a breakout for us. I don't know if anybody else can

benefit from that. But if you're not seeing enough deal flow, you have to ask yourself, like maybe people don't feel like contacting you, you know, that's a real phenomenon as well, right? I mean, you just saw Angela say, you know, I'm going to watch where I put my money, where I take my money, right? And other founders are saying the same thing. And authenticity in this game right now is real. And that is going to be, I'm seeing it be more and more of the currency. What are you saying? What are you doing? Where are you writing your checks? And what does your team look like? I have had several VCs, big names, call me and ask me, what do I do? And I said, it's pretty simple. Look at your team. hire people that are representative of the deal flow that you want. And make it real. Don't make it some sort of statement. That's for PR and marketing and hope that the fad blows over.

Because I don't think that that is what is happening anymore. I do think that there's a lot of stickiness to what is happening now. Yeah, it does feel like this is a tipping point in culture. You know, we've never seen anything like this in terms of the number of people protesting. it's really eye-opening and then people demanding change. Tom, I'm curious, how many people you have at the firm now? So it's just a team of five at this point. So when you're early stage like this, how do you think about diversity and making sure that you create a culture where people feel welcome? And have you given that a lot of thought in relation to what's going on right now in the

streets? Yeah. So we're about to hire our next wave of people, bringing on more engineers, is a designer, somebody to work with me on the business side. And it is something that one of the things I've been coached on early on is, you know, if you don't think about all these things early on, you can hit a tipping point where it's kind of too late to, I think, Lolita's point at a certain point, people do look at your team page and say, I'm not sure I'm going to be welcome there. At the end of the day, we just want good people that care about the problem that we're solving and that are extremely talented. And people, like that can come from anywhere, basically. So I think just, I, at this point, I do all my own work

on the recruiting side. I think that's super important. So yeah, it really is just making sure you're not overlooking potential sources of great talent. Yeah, and being remote, I think the movement to remote is going to help this issue tremendously because if you were in a region, that wasn't diverse and, you know, didn't have a lot of candidates who were people of color or women, whatever it happens to be that you're trying to solve for, well, you're going to just have a smaller pool of candidates if it's within 20 miles of San Francisco, right?

Or 30 miles of San Francisco, whatever the max distance is. But if you're remote, wow, you can look for people all over the place. And that's actually really worked for us as well. We have a number of employees in Canada, and we've been able to really find a more diverse group of people, you know, than here in San Francisco, let's say. I'd like to challenge you, Tom, a little bit on just finding good people. And this is because it really hits a chord in the community in terms of this idea that

there is such a thing as meritocracy and that only good people get jobs or leadership positions, which I don't know if you agree with that, but I certainly don't. do believe that there are people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, everything that can rise and provide the quality and output that any company is looking for. I do realize that within our spheres, it might be a little bit harder because within our networks, perhaps, you know, this is where the pipeline argument comes in. maybe within the sphere that you exist, it's harder or it seems to be unexistent. But we are here.

We are ready. And there's so many people that look all types of, you know, colors and sizes that have the skill set to do and fill any role. Let me ask you a question about that, Lulita, in terms of, and I'll let you respond as well, Tom. When you say the pipeline problem, I've heard people say there isn't a pipeline problem. There is a pipeline problem. it seems like a very charged word. So just looking at the supply and demand, many tech companies here in the Bay Area,

and I think on a larger basis for the last couple of years since they've been actually publishing their statistics and they want to change them, right? Like Twitter publishes their statistics, YC publishes their statistics. There's been a bit of what I've heard privately, and I think people don't want to say it publicly, there's such a competition for diverse candidates that there is, in fact, a supply problem.

There is a pipeline problem. But people don't want to say publicly there's a pipeline problem. And then there's a competition for the folks who are elite and maybe who have worked at two or three startups and who are a diverse candidate. What's valid about that back channel I've gotten? Why people will not say it publicly? Or is it bullshit? Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's bullshit.

Okay. Unpack it, yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, think about the population. Think about how many, and I wish I had the stats right off my top of mind, but there are so many people out there that have the skill sets. And if they don't already have the degree, they have the capacity. I mean, this is one of the reasons that I joined Cadillight. We're literally taking people from all walks of life and saying, yeah, there is not a pipeline,

problem, there's just people who are not willing to invest or hire certain types of people. And so the keyword there is invest in. So you may not find, and I'm using air quotes here, perfect candidate might have been worked at Google, Facebook, Uber for five years in ad tech, right? But you're saying, hey, if you open the aperture a little bit and you're willing to develop talent as well, you'll find somebody just as good. They just maybe haven't had that opportunity before. Am I reading you correct in what you're saying there? To a certain extent, yeah. Yeah. Jason. I mean, think about it, right? Like, you might be super talented, but you didn't go to Harvard and drop out, right? You actually had to work a couple jobs and you're figuring things out. There's so many people with raw talent that just gets completely missed.

And part of the problem is sometimes in the startup world, I would think we have an easier time because we can do a lot of what we want. when you look into bigger companies and they have these job descriptions that say you must be a college graduate and you must be this or that, it starts whittling what is considered, you know, a good pipeline. But I don't think that I think that's an archaic way of looking at things. If people can get the stuff done, they can get the stuff done. I don't think there's a pipeline problem of people who can get stuff done. I think there is a problem of people pattern matching to a particular. profile and working through a particular process. And then they can backpedal into the argument of there's a pipeline problem. But I don't believe there's a pipeline problem at all. All right. Tom, anything to add to that or just any observations? Yeah, I think a phrase I've heard a lot that I tend to agree with and like a lot is that,

you know, talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. I can tell you with our own team, to Lolita's point. If you think about the founder perspective, you're generally working on something that you think is incredibly important and that if you succeed is going to move the world forward. You also have an extreme economic incentive, right? If we get this thing working in a big way, families are changed. The whole early team gets very rich. As a founder, you get rich. If you boil it down to that, unless you are extremely biased, or even if you do have some bias, you need to cut through that because all that matters is getting the right people that are going to deliver on the vision that you've been selling and that you believe is going to matter.

And so there's things you can do. We tend to try and get people writing code rather than going purely off a resume. I can tell you, there are people on our team that didn't go to college. Everybody that did go to college on our team actually went to state school, I believe. I don't think we have a single Ivy League. Yeah, I love that approach. I think, you know, if you're looking at really what people are being hired for anymore, it used to be Facebook and Google before them were very much looking for the people with the highest test scores.

There were people who actually looked at SATs. Like, I think famously D.E. Shaw was like they only wanted people who had 1,500 on their SETs or something. And isn't that where Bezos worked initially? Like, it was just a culture of like who was the smartest on those objective tests. And then obviously people have been hiring only Ivy League as an approach, right, and just paying double the salaries and paying for those higher education. And then today you look at it, it's like, what does it matter? I just need somebody who can push code.

I don't need somebody who's got a Harvard logo or an MIT logo. I need somebody who actually can code and who can solve this very acute problem, which I think being remote and, you know, hiring based on those really finite skills really does open things up. So I feel optimistic when we get back. We're going to talk about Zoom, which is just had a tremendous run in terms of doubling their guidance for 2020 in terms of revenue. And obviously we're on a Zoom right now doing this call and they've built a transcendent product. However, they are having serious issues with their relationship with China, having previously run calls and data and had developers in China.

and now they're having some edge cases around pro-democracy accounts. We'll talk about it when we get back on this week in Starlamps. Twilio is the cloud communications platform that's used by Uber, Airbnb, Shopify, and so many more, including inside.com, I use it in launch. And they're partnering with this week in Starves to bring their Twilio and SendGrid startup programs to our listeners. Yes, they really care about startups. They want to get in early with you and support you. And boy, when I tell you the call to action on this one, you're going to fall out of your seat.

Twilio, you know, provides you the building blocks to add messaging, voice, and video to your web and mobile applications. You just drop in that code snippet, you all know how to use it, and boom, you're off to the races. They are rooted in startup culture, and they are here to help you on your journey. In fact, Twilio's first product roadmap was written on the back of a pizza box back in 2007. Twilio gives you the power to build communication apps easily so you can spend more time focusing on what accounts like hiring and your customers, engage and delight your users while scaling globally, all from one API power platform. You can do SMS, you can do voice, you can do WhatsApp, you all know how it works. And now with their acquisition of SendGrid, email all in the same

platform. So here is the amazing call to action. Twilio's startup program is second to none. You get a $500 get started credit. You get access to webinars made exclusively for startups. And you get support from the Twilio Startups team. Plus, wait for it, you get $3,000 in Sangric credits. That's $3,500 if you go right now to sign up at Twilio startups.com slash twist. Twilio startups.com slash twist. That's Twilio startups.com slash twist. Thanks again to Twilio for supporting founders with the $3,500 offer. Well done, Twilio. All right, Lolita Taub and Tom Yubel are with us. And we are talking about what's in the news. And obviously, you know, the pandemic is still with us.

We could talk just about the pandemic and just about the protests here and the murder of George Floyd, obviously, for 10 hours. But we're going to round up some other news stories. Interestingly, this one is related to human rights as well. Zoom deactivated and then reactivated after public pressure, a Chinese pro-democracy account that was sell. celebrating the anniversary, I believe, of Tiananmen Square. And the quote from Zoom said, just like any global company, we must comply with applicable laws in the jurisdictions where we operate, and they operate, I guess, in China. When a meeting is held across different countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply with their respective local laws.

We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law and continuously review and improve our process on these matters. We have reactivated the U.S.-based account. Zoom also had servers in China, which they used to route calls that did not take place in China, and that raised a lot of concerns that the Chinese government, obviously, might be able to snoop on those calls. I can tell you, if it's going through China, they are definitely snooping on calls, and we, the United States, also spy on calls.

only large businesses that are paying customers will get access to end-to-end encryption, the strongest form of privacy. I believe that that may have changed. Nick, I'd like you to check on that if they change their position, Zoom, since we've wrote our notes on this, but they are getting hammered. How should we look at an American company operating in China, Lulita? You know, I hear this story, and I think back of my days when I, I was working in enterprise tech at IBM at Cisco.

And when I talked to my customers, one of their concerns, especially when it was cloud-related, was where are the servers? Are they in Asia? If so, where are they? Are they in China? I don't want to be part of that. And so there's a lot of sensitivity over who do we do business with and asking the detailed questions in terms of making sure that the security.

check boxes to the customer are checked. I think what's interesting with Zoom is that if it's a B2B transaction, there's that forethought in terms of a B2C where it's us consumers consuming and not maybe knowing or appreciating the security risk that we put ourselves out doing business or having a subscription to a service that has servers in China. I think that is, I think, what needs some transparency. I don't know what your question is in particular, Jason, but in terms of, I think people should just know where things are at and what the risks are.

And then people can make up their minds of whether they do business in one way or another. Do they care? Do I care that China is going to listen to our Zoom call today? No, I don't care. Right. But if you're doing a Zoom call about your plans for your business with your roadmap for the next two years your funding requirements and you were sharing information on your users, you would care very much. Then I'd care a lot, right? Which is, which is why I mentioned.

So do you trust Zoom or not? As an, well, look, if they have servers in China, I think that it's less about Zoom and it's more about what the Chinese government is able to do within their boundaries. And we, you know, it's their country. So they're going to do whatever they want. So I think it's up to us to make that decision. Do I trust them to keep my information safe if my information is being, again, transacted in China? No, I don't. Tom, what are your thoughts? And you are especially, I think, attuned to this because correct me if I'm wrong or not, you have to create a search index in order to achieve speed to make your product even viable, which means you're indexing my data in some way, or are you hitting the APIs in real time and you keep no data and

you have no search index on me? How does it work? And then how do you ensure that my search index is my search index and not available to anybody else. Definitely. Yeah. So data privacy and security has been a core tenant for us from day one. I was actually talking to an investor the other week that mentioned, you know, there should be a data kind of code of conduct where you make very clear to people, what are you doing and how are you handling my data? With Command E, we don't warehouse any of your data. You connect your accounts, but we encrypt it end to end and it's stored on your own It doesn't go to our servers or anywhere else. If you think about it, I think that's just, A, it makes the product fast because it's on your own device encrypted.

But B, it gives a lot of peace of mind. I think it's super important. The Zoom one, the Zoom situation is really tough for me. I think it's a magical product experience. I remember the first time I used Zoom. I was on a Google Hangout and I hopped on a Zoom right after and the performance difference was just dramatic. So they've built an amazing product. I think Eric is an incredible CEO.

I think a lot of us look up to him and just has an incredible story. It is challenging the way I think Lillita nailed it. I can trust Zoom as much as I want, but anything that goes through China, I think intellectual property theft is kind of part and parcel of the way the Chinese Communist Party operates and it's challenging. They brought in Alex Stamos, who I think anybody in the Valley will tell you is a very serious person does great stuff. So they're taking it seriously. But do I trust China at the end of the day? No. Yeah.

And so that is the rub is that none of us can trust the Chinese government. And it's an authoritarian country for folks who are in America. Oh, and here's the update. The near future, Zoom will offer an end-to-end encrypted meeting mode to all paid accounts. logged in users will generate public cryptographic identities that are stored in a repository on Zoom's network and can be used to establish trust relationship between meeting attendees.

So I guess they only plan to have this encrypt in end-to-end encryption on paid accounts, which is super lame and the wrong decision, Eric. I know you listen to the pod and I know you follow me on Twitter. That's the wrong decision. It makes it seem, and you may not have done this intentionally and there may be cost to it. It makes it seem like you're doing this deliberately

that you're not making end-to-end encryption available to everybody deliberately. Terrible decision, Eric, on Zoom's part. You've got to just go ham. You've got to go all in on making it encrypted for everybody at all times. These end-to-end encrypted meetings will not support phone bridges, cloud recording, or non-Zoom conference room systems. And that's from May 7th. So let's break that down.

Phone bridge is hard to do, I guess, because it's not on their network. I understand that. that's just a warning right cloud recording now why would cloud recording not be encrypted and that's probably a cost issue or non-Zoom conference room systems that makes sense as well they can't be responsible for what you do with your webcams etc so that's just a good warning let me break this down for everybody make it really clear zoom's a transcendent product you should not trust any products that are built in china or that work on servers in China. And so, and arguably, if a company is too in bed with any authoritarian government regime,

you have to wonder about them. And we have that here in the United States with Palantir, right? We're like wondering like, hey, Peter T.L. Trump, Palantir. What's going on here exactly? You have to be vigilant, even in a democracy with a lot of checks in place. But then you go to China, those checks don't exist. And in fact, you know, if you're an American, I think you have to take a moment and assess if you want to make 20% more money, 30% more money, 10% more money by operating in China. There's one argument that engagement with China leads to them trending towards democracy, trending towards better human rights. The truth is, we have not seen that. What we've seen is China roll over Hong Kong. We've seen them put people who own bookstores or practice a certain religion in jail

and tortured and reeducated. I'm using air quotes for reeducated, but reeducated means tortured. And so as an American, whether you're the NBA or your Disney or your Zoom, you have to decide do you want to hand over users to the government, which is what Yahoo had to do when they were operating over there and why they got out because it made it untenable? and why Google is not there and Google doesn't have their service there. Once you're operating in that country, you're going to be turning over people to be tortured and just let that sink in. Now, if you're Zoom, they've done an amazing job responding to this, but they have to, they have a higher level now to prove to us that they are not in the Chinese communist parties,

the CCP's parties pocket. And that means you have to disengage from that country, or you have to have a different product there in a different subsidiary and then be prepared. to hand over people. And that's the long and short of it. And I choose to not take money from my funds or in my life from authoritarian governments. It's just not in my interest anymore. It never has been. And it shouldn't be if you are, you know, if you care about human rights.

Now, if you don't care about human rights, by all means, go all in. many would argue Apple has figured out a balance here. The criticism of Apple is, hey, you know, they built the phones over there and people are being paid horrible wages and they're living in barracks and it's inhumane and they're working six days a week. Another group of people who are also very smart would say, well, the standard of living has gone up. Those people are becoming westernized in their entrepreneurial spirit. They have more resources and then they can stand up to the government even better. And they're not keeping Apple servers over there, and that's a good thing. So we'll continue to debate this issue, but we're not going to solve it here.

But I do think people have to think about where do they want to make their money. And do you want to change the ending of your movie to appease the Chinese Communist Party? Do you want to silence people in the NBA who are fighting for Black Lives Matter on one hand and then tell them they can't fight for Hong Kong lives? Really? I mean, it's just the hypocrisy is crazy. We need to fight for anybody who's being, who's suffering. And I think that's, you know, important to keep in mind.

The suffering, there's a lot of suffering out there. All in my rant. Anything you want to add to that, Lomito or Tom? Sorry to go off. I had to get it off my chest. I love strong opinions, too. And I'm super fan of Zoom. I use Zoom.

And I'm rooting for the company and I invited Eric on the podcast. I know Eric's not happy with, you know, some of the things I've said. He sent me a nice headspan at one point. and I appreciate that from Plantronics, and I very rarely accept a gift or something like that, but he was thankful that I was talking about how great the product was, and he sent it to me, and it was a great headset.

Thank you, Eric. But come on the pod. I've invited you 10 times. Let's talk it out. Let's talk it out here. I'm not sure he's going to want to come over after you just shared what you shared. It is.

Go ahead, Tom. It is a tremendous product, and I do think, you know, it seems like we're almost ready for the great reopening, but you also do have to commend the way they've stood up something that supported, you know, the whole world, basically, as we were all stuck in our pretty amazing studio apartments. And still continue.

And still continue to do that. I've been so impressed because how many companies can just turn on the world after we go into work from home. It's pretty incredible. And they also just absolutely dominated Microsoft Skype, Slack calls, and Google Hangouts, Blue Gene. I mean, all these companies just make products that were too complicated. And they just made this one that's a transcendent amazing product. So congratulations. But don't blow it is what I'm saying by, you know, killing consumer trust.

I mean, Elon kicked it out of Tesla for a reason. He just felt like this was too dangerous to have in the company the way it was rooting people's windows machines, et cetera. So you got to – and I think it becomes an Achilles seal. I actually think that if there is going to be a competitor to Zoom or a co-existor, the way they're going to make it work is by offering encryption to everybody at all times and making it the safest version of what Zoom could be. So Zoom might as well just go right into it. All right, we have a new generation of investors,

millennial investors, Gen Z investors, and Robin Hood is part of this phenomenon. Robin Hood, I think, has over 10 million members. Nick can check that for me and dump it into the... dump it into the chat room. And that has created this incredible Wall Street Betts kind of subreddit phenomenon of people essentially looking at buying stocks, as I would say, not just for their future and for wealth creation, but maybe as a pastime.

And there are a number of these meme stocks like Nicola, which, and the recently bankrupt hurts, which had got dragged into this massively popular and unbizarre race where Nicola became worth $30 billion without having a product in market.

They make, you know, trucks that are electric trucks and I guess we'll compete with Tesla's semi. And on top of that, Hertz, which filed for bankruptcy, kept going up,

even though people know that the likely scenario is that the equity gets wiped out. So I guess the question here is how much of an impact this is making on the market. Oh, and then just adding to this, the barstool sports founder Dave Portnoy, who I want to get on the pod because he's just endlessly fascinating. I know I'm late to the party and following him. But his Periscope had over 100,000 views today, and he's doing Davey Day trader and saying, I guess the meme is stonks only go up.

Another way of saying stocks only go up. And then today, the Dow plummeted. So I don't know what this crazy behavior means, but any thoughts on it, Tom? I guess the first thing I would say is everybody should check out Wall Street bets. The subreddit is hilarious. The memes are tremendous. I think you have a lot of people with more time on their hands than they know what to do with right now, not spending as much money as they might as we're all kind of confined to our

apartments. Ah, that's a good theory. So yeah, I mean, my hope is people that don't know what they're doing, hopefully just play with fun money. I started playing high stakes poker when I was 15 or 16, so I'm in no position to call anyone else a degenerate. But yeah, I mean, their reformed finance major in me has to say, you know, build your emergency fund, max out your IRA. throw the rest on wealth front in some index funds. I know you'll like that wealth front plug, Jason. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, index funds are the way to build long-term wealth and to write out these storms. And if you want to gamble, by all means, go ahead and gamble and learn how to trade stocks, but do it with the amount of money you can afford to lose. Like you as a gambler, a high-stakes poker player, and I don't wait. I don't do sports betting, but I know a lot of people who do. I find that like you don't have any control of the outcome, generally speaking. I know some people think that. I know some people think that. they can handicap really well. I don't know if that's proven to be true that often. But I do feel like this is positive because they're actually learning a lot about how the stock market works.

And yeah, if you bet on a bankrupt company or you bet on a company whose product's not in market, you're going to learn a big lesson because Nicola, in all likelihood, in my mind, is not going to be worth $30 billion next year or the year after or for the next 10 years. I know I would be very surprised if their product even makes it to market. I don't know what a public, why there's a public company for a product that's not even in market yet. They did some reverse merger. Any thoughts, Lolita? I mean, if you're a gambler and that's your thing, that's your decision.

I think that in terms of it, the implications of these gamblers gambling in the market, I think there are bigger fish that will move the needle and not these millennials on Robin Hood. I definitely think the COVID impacts of how we're driving supply chains and moving products around and living and selling, I think those have more impacts on the market than the Robin Hood investors. All right. So let's go to something less controversial Reddit and some of their subreddits. There's been a lot of talk about Reddit. and maybe they were kind of a dark corner of the web for some period of time.

They cleaned that up, but many people felt they should have gone a little faster, including Alexis Ohanian, who was just on the podcast last week or the week before, and said he felt like some subreddit should have been cleaned up faster. He, in a video that went viral, decided that he would leave Reddit's board and asked them to replace them with a black candidate. And a couple of days later, Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel was named to their board of directors. He was YC's first African-American partner. And previously co-founded Justin TV and Social Cam.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman released a statement on the George Floyd murder. And Black Lives Matter, we do not tolerate hate, racism, and violence. And while we have work to do to fight these on our platform, our values are clear former CEO. I think she was actually, in fairness, the interim CEO. I don't know if she ever had the permanent CEO title. Ellen Powell responded by Twitter, I am obligated to call you out. You should have shut down the Donald, which is a subreddit about Donald Trump, instead of amplifying it and its hate racism and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet.

You don't get to say, BLM, when Reddit nurtures and monetizes. white supremacy and hate all day long. So thoughts on the balance of running an open platform, freedom of speech, as well as the job Reddit has done and Ellen's criticism of them, Lolita. Yeah, so this is a hot topic, right? Freedom of speech versus making sure that we're not allowing on platforms. communication that can spur violence or, you know, just bad things happening to all sorts of people. I think Ellen Powell has a strong argument here in terms of, hey, what has happened?

What have you done to date? I do like that. They brought in Michael Siebel. I appreciate that. And I hope that him coming in is a turn of another page, another chapter. where the company hires have more representation of people that represent the population, so that as a team, they can be more vigilant and do the right thing for the community, because ultimately it is a business, but because of the power that social media does have on society, I do think that it is very important for companies to look at themselves and say, who do I and what do I stand for and stick to that. And so if Reddit is going to say we stand by this, I hope it's not just one hire, I hope it's more than that, and that they lean forward on making sure that their values and their actions are aligned.

Yeah, I mean, one would argue the fact that they hired CEO Ellen Pow to be the interim CEO or permanent CEO, maybe Nick, you could look that up for me, just so I get it right, shows that they were pretty progressive in wanting to go after this. She was a very polarizing figure, obviously. And I remember when she was named to it, it created, you know, like a really disgusting backlash on Reddit, which they would anticipate because shutting things down that you can be sure the Reddit crowd or a large portion of Reddit's core audience is in the freedom of speech camp, not the censoring of speech or the policing of speech. I think their position would largely have been back in the 10-year-ago Reddit world. If you don't like it, don't subscribe to the subreddit. If you don't like the show, don't watch the show. If you don't like the book, don't read the book. If you don't like this group marching down the street, stay home that day.

That has changed in a major way on a generational basis, and we can talk about that. But Tom, just generally, how do you think about this issue of balancing freedom of speech and Reddit's at-scale community? I mean, it's one of the top five or ten websites in the United States. So it is not an easy task to police it. It's also not an impossible task to police it. Yeah, it's definitely a hard balance. I'm excited to see them bring Michael on board.

I don't know him personally, but kind of universally heard good things about him and him opening up doors for people that might not have. Yeah, and then on the freedom of speech versus censorship side, it's definitely a tough issue. I tend to lean very hard in the freedom of speech camp. I think more speech is better. I really like the argument Van Jones made.

And I don't know exactly where the line is. How would you encapsulate? So he was talking about safe spaces and kind of people saying, I don't want to be exposed to speech. And his point was, it's tough, it's challenging, but I want you to hear stuff and I want you to work through it. He said, like, I don't want to take the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. But yeah, it's tough. I do think the thing that,

this isn't Reddit specific, but one of the things that I found somewhat troubling on the free speech side is as you start to see platforms decide, are we editorializing or are we a platform that's completely neutral? YouTube recently said, you know, we're going to take down anything that goes against guidance from sort of official bodies like the WHO. And I found that pretty surprising, considering this was right after we had just seen the WHO basically parroting Chinese talking points. That was YouTube. That was YouTube. Yeah, sorry, if I'd said something else.

No, no, I was just trying to remember, yeah, if it was YouTube. And that was a really interesting way for, I think, Google and YouTube to say, we don't want to deal with this. Just whatever the WHO says is wrong. Well, you know, you have this longstanding tradition of government organizations getting it wrong. I mean, we had institutionalized racism. We didn't let gay people get married. So if you're going to go with the government, what are the things they're also still getting wrong, right?

I don't feel comfortable with the government being the arbiter of speech or any government organization. I would like to know it for myself. But you do have this issue of people spreading deliberately false information on social networks. And that actually has to be addressed as well. what do you think, Lolita, of Jack's approach at Twitter, which is, I'm not taking down the president's Twitter handle. That's ridiculous. He's the president of the United States. We need to hear from him. We can't exclude him from the platform. That's a really severe step. But if he does say something that is absolutely incorrect, we are going to put a disclaimer on it or say, here's where you can get more information about this tweet, which people have reported as problematic. What do you think about their approach? Or, And if you were in charge, would you just take Trump's account and turn it off? No, I, so I wanted to talk about Jack, actually, because when you look at how Mark Zuckerberg

is dealing with Facebook, when you look at how Reddit is doing, you know, when you look at all the platforms, I actually think that Jack has taken the best step forward if I think about the balance between freedom of speech, but also being responsible enough to call out things that may be misinformation or may cause harm to others. I really appreciate that you have this note, you know, at the top of the tweet that says, hey, this has been flagged. Take it with a grain of salt. In a world of I don't have the exact answer of how to do this because it's quite complicated and in many levels subjective in many situations, I really like the approach Jack has taken. And I actually see Jack has being quite progressive.

I mean, he just... Very progressive, yeah. He's just, I mean, I loved how he announced that Juneteenth is going to be a holiday for both Toadero and Square. And I really appreciate that. So I think there's space for there to be freedom of speech, but at the same time being responsible about it. And I think his approach has been the best that I've seen so far. Yeah, and explain June 19th, correct? June 10th.

June 10th. I mean, it's literally the first I've heard about this is in the last week. I think probably for many people this is the first they've ever heard of this holiday or proposal. Is this an existing holiday that people were celebrating or is this a new proposal? Well, I'd love to hear your explanation of it, Jason. I don't actually understand it. I literally got hit with it today saying, are we taking June 19th off before I got into

the show? So maybe somebody can pull it up for me and I'll read it. Yeah. And Nick, I think, could do a better job of explaining it because this is definitely part of the black community in its in commemoration of their history, of their people. And I think it's wonderful that amidst everything that is happening, that there is a person who's saying, hey, this is something that you celebrate in your communities. And we want to honor that and be inclusive and make it a thing so that you can actually take the day off and do your thing. Got it. And so it's known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Celebration is an African, an American holiday celebrated on June 19th. On June 19th, I'm reading from the Wikipedia 1865, the emancipation proclamation, which had been issued on January 1st, 1863 in the United States, was read to enslaved African Americans in Texas by Gordon Granger. So that's the background on it. And great. I mean, I'm for anything that helps us move forward. help heal these wounds. I've been thinking about it a lot in terms of opportunity, and I'm no

expert on reparations, but I did do a little research on it. I was just thinking, like, they're, I know very hard to execute on reparations, but we just poured trillions of dollars into the economy. We gave people PPE loans or PPP. Is that what it is? PPP. PPP. I'm getting PPE and PPP mixed up. But we gave people all these incredible loans. We sent people $1,200 stimulus checks, but we can't address the actual issue of reparations. Well, we just did a global money drop. I would suggest we maybe bring this topic up of reparations and say, anybody who's African-American in this country, you don't have to prove anything,

but we're going to make, I don't know, two-year colleges available for free. We're going to give $50,000 or small business loans and actually create an opportunity path for people who maybe have had opportunity, you know, not given to them and taken from them for 400 years. It's a really easy solution. A $50,000 loan paid back over 30 years if the business succeeds. If business fails, it gets wiped out, obviously. Why don't we start some programs like that? Well, Jason, you know, I mean, that's a good point. But just even looking at who was the recipient of PPP loans and who were the communities that were having the hardest time

to get these loans? When you look at it, I mean, it's a little bit embarrassing, a lot embarrassing that you would say, hey, let's do these programs. Well, how about just allowing these people to get the programs that exist?

Yeah, and we can start there. It had to do with banking, too. Like, if you just think about banking, I was watching across my portfolio of people who were applying. People who had the more, let's call them elite banks, the less consumer banks and the more elite business banks, we're having a much easier time calling their banker and getting shuttled through the process.

Now, if you had a commercial bank that, you know, is one of the big brand names that everybody has and, you know, is for not just big business, but for individuals, they had a harder time getting an answer because those people are not staffed to pick up the phone. and so you just had this systematic, systemic? No, systematic. Systematic would be a better word for it. Bias built into it.

Well, I don't think it's just about the axis. I think there's racism in there too. Oh, really? You think people specifically looked at it and said, this person's black or this person's Hispanic? I'm not going to process their alone as quick as a white person's. I do believe that that happens. I can't say that everybody, but does that happen?

Yes. Interesting. Yes, I do think so. Yeah. Okay, yeah. I mean, I haven't heard a claim of that, but it could very well be happening. I mean, we just saw somebody get murdered, you know, in a nine and a half minute video when they were completely unnecessary, obviously. All right.

Let's talk about COVID and getting back to work. The stay-at-home order is in effect, has been an effect in California. California, I believe, since March 19th. No, no, or maybe... Anyway, we have... I think it's California, Oregon, and Tennessee are still shut down while everybody else is opening up. The Bay Area was earlier.

I went into quarantine on the 12th, which was a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So I think it was 15th, maybe we went officially on a Friday. But we're still not going back. Does it feel like we're being too permissive in going back? or too conservative to you, Tom? It's hard to say.

I think we'll know a lot more soon when you look at some of the states that have reopened and a lot of the protests that you've seen throughout the country. I think that's a pretty good test. If we see no spike in cases from these protests, I think it's a pretty clear, hey, be cautious, but masks work. Let's get this thing going again. There is, it's been hard to see the amount of suffering you see helicopter shots. of people lining up for food banks. And you do really have to say, we need to get this thing

going as quickly as we safely can, but be responsible. Yeah, so I'd love to see it go as soon as we can as long as we can do so responsibly. And I think you're starting to get good test cases and we'll know a lot more soon. But it'll be interesting to see how everything shakes out. It's been wild ride the last few months. Lulita, same question for you. Too early to soon. Too soon, too late. What do you think? Should you open up? I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves. I was talking to Tom earlier. This is just my personal perspective. We don't have a vaccine and there are people who are acting like nothing is happening. And so if everyone went out, opened up and wore a mask and did all these things, I'd feel a lot better. But because we don't

have a vaccine, I don't feel safe. I am probably going to just stay at home a lot until we do have a vaccine. And, uh, I think that- So would you go, would you sit outside at a restaurant? I, I wouldn't, not now. Okay. So I'll take out or I, in fact, I have gone as far as trying to just make food at home. Yeah. Wow. Uh, as much as possible. Okay. How's that going? I'm serious. I'm serious, Jason. It's, it's scary. And, you know, I was telling Tom that my mother lives with me. And what, what is scary is not necessarily what can happen to me, because as what we've seen from the data, it's okay. You know, younger people are okay. But it's those older folks that that can, that can really have severe things happen to them, even death. Right. And so that's where it starts getting,

to me, it becomes very much paranoia over, well, what if I, I'm a carrier and I spread it to other people or others do the same and I have this impact on my family. It becomes a very serious thing. And I think that there's also, because of the summer, I also understand that there's been some data out there that that says that Corona will probably be a lot, the cases will be a lot lower because of the weather. But then as soon as the winter hits, what's going to happen then? So there's a lot of speculation. I get it. I am definitely paranoid. And I'd rather do work from home as much as we can. But I knew that those people with parents, as I was telling Tom, they don't feel the same way. And they're okay with going back to

work immediately. Tom, what about you? Are you, would you eat in an outdoor cafe in San Francisco of the Bay Area in this week or next? Would you feel safe doing that? No. I'm in no rush to be candid. So you wouldn't go to, if I said, hey, let's go get some ram, we'll sit outside. No. Yeah, no, I mean, I just, I don't see any need to take extra risks as we try to run this company. I am getting to the point where I will. I'm now open to meeting up with friends who have taken quarantine as seriously as I have masked up and everything and outdoors. But I so you'll go for a distance hike. You'll stand next to somebody.

You'll sit at Dolores Park on a blanket with somebody if they're wearing masks. Exactly. I'm more of a Golden Gate Park. like Chrissy Field kind of guy. You're Chrissy Field Camp. I got you. I got you. Respect.

And it's fascinating. I think the thing I'm looking at above all else is the daily deaths. This is to me the North Star now because there are so much testing going on that anytime anybody talks about testing, they're like, oh, my God, the number of people, you cannot, or it's very hard to get the number of deaths from coronavirus wrong. you could misattribute somebody who died with coronavirus as opposed to from coronavirus, which Mayor, which Governor Cuomo has been pointing out because they're only, they're down to 30, 40, 50 deaths a day the last two weeks. And he says, you know, even these numbers when it's this low, you know, there's a possibility that people died from a heart attack and they were infected with coronavirus, but they didn't die from the coronavirus.

And the doctor, because it's positive, puts it in coronavirus. Some cynical people have said there's an incentive to label the deaths as, and this feels like a bit of a conspiracy theory, but I wouldn't rule it out, that you get more money if it's a coronavirus death. So that would lead people to tag a death where somebody was dying from a heart attack with that. Like somebody got hit by a bicycle. I think there was one example. And they said it was coronavirus death, even though they died from trauma. But this is the one to watch for me. And it's gone down.

The number of tests and the number of positive results is going to go up. if you keep doing more testing. And Trump pointed that out, and I don't want to agree with Trump on anything. And his conclusion was idiotic. He said, we should stop doing tests so that the numbers don't go up. You should do more tests and be happy the numbers are going up and the deaths are going down. That shows that it's survivable and that this herd immunity might be the wrong word, but a large number of people having it makes it harder for other people,

it to transmit. And I think my gut is telling me that being out being outdoors and wearing masks creates some really good drop in the number of the transmission. And then people who are high risk are actually quarantining themselves and isolating themselves as you pointed out, Lolita. And that that will lead us to accepting. And this is where I think I had a little debate on Twitter. People are like, we cannot accept, you know, 300,000 deaths a year from, COVID-19. And I thought about it for a second. I was like, I actually think Americans by and large are accepting that fact, that 300,000

people, you know, 800 a day, a thousand a day, 700 a day are going to die from this, and that we will have 10% more debts from coronavirus. It was 2.9 million people die a year in the United States approximately last year. I think it was 2.85 or something. Americans are going to accept a 10% higher death rate. in order to have their, and I'll use quotes here, freedom, or be able to go back to work, what do you think of that possibility of how we're going to approach it, Lulina?

Well, I definitely think that there's two groups of people and a spectrum in between where some, I could not believe it. I mean, I saw videos of people down in Encinitas here in San Diego protesting and saying, hey, this is my right to be here. And, you know, more poor to them. If they're good with that and those people are probably accepting of it. And then there's also people in the spectrum of, hey, this is all a conspiracy. You know, China did this or the government did this or the aliens.

I've even heard aliens. Yeah. I've heard all sorts of things. So are some people going to be accepting of that? Yes. Are there going to be people like me who are just like, you know what? I don't need to take that risk. It's been really hard to get to where I am and I want my family to be safe. So I'm just going to lay low. It's all right. It means I get to spend less money. So I'm

going to save a little. So if I want to, you know, go and gamble on Robin Hood, then I guess I have a little bit more money for that. There you go. There you go. Tom, any thoughts on the sort of American approach to this, which is we're going to accept a certain number of deaths? We're going to go back. and we're going to go to Vegas. We're going to jump in the pool. We're going to protest even in the streets. And we may or may not wear masks, but we'll just accept 10% more debts per year in the United States.

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously an awful situation. Nobody's excited that we are here. And it was a scary period early on where we didn't quite know what we had on our hands. I think we're getting to where we have a good baseline level of knowledge. and then you do have to decide what level of risk you're willing to take. There are a lot of people like me and Lolita who can kind of run our lives without much interruption from our homes on our laptops. But Main Street is just getting absolutely crushed by this.

There are a lot of people who that's just not a reality. So, I mean, you have to realize, I think, that, yeah, there are things we're going to do that there are going to be incremental deaths, but it is, this isn't an apples to orangeous things. there are a lot of people who staying hold up at their home means that there are going to be incremental deaths on that side too.

So hopefully we kind of can weigh the options that we have. You know, you play the hand you're dealt. It's unfortunately not a great hand. Not a great hand. It's a lose-lose-lose, as people said, right? Lose-lose. And so we're going to have to pick what we lose

our livelihoods or some number of people's lives. I think one thing that's encouraging for me, Nick, if you go back to that daily death chart and you look at the 70s, day moving average has a checkbox under there. When you look at that seven day moving average, a seven day moving average, because a lot of this data is suspect because on the weekends it plummets. It's not that less people are dying on the weekends. It's that their reporting is not perfect. At the peak, we were at over 2,000 people a day dying, and now we're way, way down to 800 people

a day dying. And that's a seven-day rolling average, so that's pretty accurate. The protest started 10 days ago. I'm not sure the exact first day of the protest, but I'm going to guess it was 10 days ago. And this thing has a week or two incubation period, and then you probably would have a week or two in the hospital. So somewhere between in another, what's today, the 10th, the 11th, I think we're going to know in this chart what exactly the risk is of 100,000 people, or maybe 10,000 people and 50 cities going out and being in a confined outdoor area.

area. And that is going to be very telling. So we are running experiments here in the United States in a way that, boy, I never anticipated when we were at that peak we would. But Vegas is the other one I'm looking at is those people who went to Vegas and sat at a poker table, Tom. I mean, would you sit at a poker table right now and touch chips? I mean, I keep hand sanitizer with me every time I play poker and I have to touch chips and I'm just constantly washing my hands. It was funny. I was having this conversation with a friend the other night because the comps right now to go are just ridiculous. They're trying to get people back. But no, there's, I don't see myself getting on a plane or going to Vegas or doing anything like that through this year, personally. Yeah. What do you need to see to go back to Vegas? What would you need to see? Vaccine or debts go down to a hundred a days or some number you've got in your mind or you're just, going to take it month by month day by day. Yeah, I think personally I'm still in wait and see mode.

We've got a company to run a lot of stuff to do. So, yeah, I'm just kind of leaning into work. All right. So this has been a great episode. Thanks to Lydia and Tom for joining us. Lodita, anything to plug? Anything that you're working on that we can share with the audience for them to check out? Yeah, well, I think it's an excellent time to be looking at investing in

underestimated founders. Underestimated. I love that term, by the way. I'm going to use it. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a few opportunities for you out there. If you follow me on Twitter, I'm constantly sharing information so that you can connect

with a pipeline that does exist. And I prove it by showing it to you. In fact, last week I put together a tweet that asked for a tweet pitch. And so there's, I think, something like 200 companies pitch. So if you want to look at underestimated founders, you can find them on my Twitter thread. I also started an investor startup matching tool. And this matches investors based on their criteria with founders who are raising. Very much focus on bridging the gap and getting those connections to the underestimated founders.

The underestimated founder matching service. This all you have to do is go to my Twitter. It's a pin tweet and the link is there. How does that work? I just say, is it a Google sheet or something? Yeah, the input, the input form, there's an input form and then I have a program in the background. Then my husband, I ask my husband to volunteer with me and I are putting together.

And so there's two forms, one for investors. So if you're an investor who wants to be part of the beta program, again, you could just go to that link. And then if you're a founder, you can submit your company and... And after I submit my name, what does it do? It sends me 10 companies I should look at, or it actually matches me with them and says, meet with this company? No, no.

So what it does is if, so Jason, you send me your criteria and I'll run the tool and it'll match you and it will only send you deals that are in line with your criteria. Now, it's not 100% perfect right now because it is the first few weeks that we've done it. But so far we've had over 10 introductions, three investments that have taken place. And we're just really excited to see more underestimated founders funded. and investors having the ability to say, hey, you know, they exist, we exist, here we are. So come at me. I'm here.

Twitter.com, Lolita, T-A-U-B, L-O-L-L-I-A-T-A-U-B. That's right. And Tom, any plugs? Can people use Command-E if they just wanted to go sign up right now, or is it in private beta or do we have to pay? What's the story? Yeah, definitely. We launched a few weeks ago.

made it available for anybody to download if you just go to get commande.com. It's available for Mac and PCs. I can give you a quick one-minute demo if you want to do that. Oh, yeah, go for it, sure. Let's do that. Let me share my screen real quick.

Cool. So you can see I'm in Zoom right now. The nice thing about Command E is I can be anywhere on my computer and the next, when I'm ready to go to the next thing in my workday, I just hit Command E and our search box pops up. it'll get you to your next thing as quickly as possible. So you can see we have a bunch of different services, over 20 of the most popular workplace services.

Superhuman. Notion. Very good. Yep. Slack. Front. Yep. Kind of all the big players, Gmail, Google Drive,

and connecting something is super quick. You just kind of click on that logo and say, hey, connect my G Suite account so that I can find my Google Docs really quickly. and basically you can have our app downloaded and be up and running with all your accounts connected in less than five minutes. And then I can quickly jump to a superhuman email. So I just got set up on Kota the other day. So I find the welcome email in Superhuman.

I just did enter there and you'll see it's going to quickly bounce me over to the superhuman app. And what's interesting is you also had Koda as a LinkedIn profile page for Koda. if I was typing in commandee or code and I wanted to find out about it, I would like, oh, I wonder who the CEO is or founders are. Boom, I could just jump over to LinkedIn as well as going to my email thread. Yep. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm now in my email and maybe I want to go check out. We have this music channel in our Slack where the team kind of shares stuff they're listening to. So I just search for music and you'll see every search returns in 10 milliseconds so you can move kind of as fast as your brain can. It's just really nice. So I'm going to go to that channel and it's going to

quickly bounce me straight to that Slack channel. So we'll get you to any channel or DM really quickly. Yeah, that's what I want is I want to go quickly to the Slack channel so I can hit pound small wins and go to the Small Wins channel at launch or on this weekend startups or on my launch founder network. And that's a really cool one to me because that takes me three or four clicks. This would take me one click. right so i'll just show you two more real quickly say i'm a salesperson um and i'm pursuing this company called info scout as an opportunity i can just search for info scout and bounce right to the sales force opportunity record super quickly um so you see you're just moving as quickly as your brain

moves instead of being slowed down by your tools uh last say i wanted to look up your um oh there go. Your LinkedIn profile. Yep. So I just do that and it's going to quickly jump me out to that. Amazing. There it is. Boom. That's me. There we are. There's Jason. There I am. Yeah. So it just lets you kind of fly through your workday and makes everything a lot more pleasant. Awesome. All right. Well, well, done. Everybody go ahead and check out Get Command E and then hit the Command E key. Thank you, Lolita for being on the program. Thank you, Tom, for being on the program.

thanks to the team here at launch. And stay safe out there, everybody. We'll see you on the next episode of this week in startups. Bye-bye.