This is Kristin O'Brien, and you're listening to the podcast. Today, James Currier and Reed Hoffman discuss the path ahead for founders in a post COVID world. What you need to learn and unlearn to get your company through a crisis, frameworks for the tough decisions founders are facing today, and the way they see the world changing forever, opening new opportunities for savvy founders. Reid is a co founder and was executive chairman of LinkedIn and is now a partner at Greylock let's jump in.
Reid Hoffman, you need no introduction. You and I have known each for, I guess, almost 2 decades now. You and I are both members of Henry Crown Fellas program where we're we're really big fans of combining tech with humanities and, humanism, basically, and and philosophy. One thing you said recently I wanted to start talking with you about is is, you know, in the in this time of of change, you said be human first.
And since since our our our stuff at NFX is about early stage founders, like, when you think about being human first, what does that mean for early stage founders during this time? Beller, so part of the reason I said that is because the normal and very appropriate way of for founders thinking about their businesses is to be thinking you're all in, you know, you're at, a 150, 200% it's the organization and the business first.
And part of that's because, you know, this this expression that I use that's now widely attributed, which is startup is like jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. You need to be totally focused on, yeah, we there isn't balance in my life.
I'm really making sure that this this this this entity starts going and nothing, like, integrity and all the rest of the stuff matters, but, like, just turn the RIA stat up to 11 you know, put all your energy and all your sweat, all your tears, all your blood, make it happen. And then the people you're recruiting on board, you're basically asking for the same kind of commitment, the same belief in the mission. And that is by and large the exact right way to be an early stage founder.
On the other hand, when you get to unusual circumstances like this, you'd say, well, Actually, it's not a question about, like, whether or not you're relaxed on a Friday evening. It's not a real question about whether or not you're, you know, maintaining your hobby while you're doing your business. It isn't the question about, like, oh, in a couple years, when I get this going, I can take, you know, kind of a mini sabbatical or look a little bit of downtime I gotta be all in 7 days a week now.
Now the question is, well, what's going on with public health? What's going on with disease? Your family is probably under unusual stress, right, kids, your partners. What's going on with your your grandparents? You know, your parents are like, all these things are going on that are like, okay.
The network that has normally supported you now needs your support because you're the one who's the founder who's got the strength and the knowledge and the energy to do these things, people around you now need you. Exactly. And so and so part of the thing that that to is to set back from this normal reflex, which is the right thing to be in, and say, look, look, as I go to each day and as I get to each decision, I go, look, what's the what's the thing that I should do as a human being first?
And, yes, maybe I'm taking a little bit of extra risk with the company, a little bit of extra risk with the startup. That's fine. In these circumstances, you know, you make that decision for It could be anything from, you know, everyone's trying to work from, you know, when they're sheltering in place, work from home, but it's like, look, pick up kids. The kids interrupting, you go, look, you make sure, like, are you trading off with your with your partner well and and and managing kids?
Are the kids doing okay and the stressful thing? Like, you know, how do I help you be as productive as you can, but while I know that you're going to be spending time on these other things and you should be. And if you're not, I'm gonna be encouraging you to spend time on it. Because that's that's what matters in these times. That's the human thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And does and do you think it extends to to how you how you might reduce your force.
You know, a lot of these companies are having to do layouts. Yes. In a couple of different ways. So one is how do you make decisions around risks? Now sometimes you just have to. It's full stop. One thing is the question is, is there some industries which are just kind of as Pete, you know, slaughtered by kind of the staying in place. Travel. Travel's an obvious one. You know, sometimes it'd be like, like, you're assass business serving small businesses.
Well, okay, small businesses, a lot of them are gonna be intensely impacted. And so you might go, look, I have to do a riff because, like, there is, like, there's, like, the recovery pattern here for me is at least a year out. Right. It isn't like in 3 months, we're gonna get to a place where it's like, oh, okay. It'll be like a recession. We're like 20, 30% down. Growth Pete slower. It's like, no. No. No. No. This is slaughtered, and I have to do that. But then, okay.
The next question is is, okay. When you're doing a riff, are there options to do things like furloughing, are there options to do reduce salary, reduce bonuses? You say, look. This is what we're gonna do, and people can sign up for it or not. You know, that's the the next level down on it, because then you could say, look, we we keep more people in place.
And then they then the next layer below that is you can kinda go, well, you know, is there, you know, kind of ways that I can help people kinda get their next jobs? Like, we're gonna do a reduction in force but we're gonna find the resources, give them the resources, actually ask people in the in the company to say, hey, be a reference if there's other things you know about, you know, refer people to them, we're gonna do things to to try to help that transition.
So I think it goes the whole stack down on rifts. Now the end of the day, you're doing no Morgan favors. If you say we don't do a riff, and then the thing just goes out of business in 2 or 3 months, that's that doesn't help anybody. So, actually, in fact, you know, I've a couple of my startups have done rifts. It's working through it. It's it's applying all these principles in terms of how you're doing it. Oh, and then the last point is the the kind of the point does make it.
The first thing is sometimes people go, well, my god, uncertainty. We just gotta go we gotta apply on no revenue for 6 months. And for the majority of our tech businesses, if you're really planning on no revenue for the next 6 months, that's a different universe. So I tend to say don't plan on that. Plan on really challenged and a recession, but don't plan on no revenue.
Like, if we're in a place where a B2B business and, you know, kind of enterprise and as no revenue, for 6 months, then you're actually you're in a different place altogether as an industry as a society, and we'll be sorting things through there. So with that plan, you also monitor because maybe you're maybe I'm wrong. So you go, okay. Fine. We we won't plan on no revenue for 6 months.
We'll plan on no revenue for a couple months or or, you know, 2 James 2 X's long and is only 60 or 70 percent, as much revenue is getting, and that's what we'll plan, but we'll be monitoring. To see if it's right or not in order to recorrect. Got it. And so what are some of the things that people you think need to be unlearning right now? If you're an early stage founder, you said, look, Normally, you're operating in 1 mode, which is just the go go mode.
Now you need to be a little bit more human and and realize that they need your support as much as you need their support form, you were out slaying the Morgan. What are some of the other things that we need to unlearn? You know, the mental patterns that we need to to throw out the window. So typically what you try to do as an entrepreneur is you try to simplify the problem that you're doing.
You try to have a a specific set of hypotheses that you're testing, usually around product market fit or scale product market Flint. Sometimes you know, micro ones on, oh, I'm gonna hire this person who who I think has the Flint, although not they have the experience. They're gonna learn. Like, there's a set of things that you're your testing.
The problem is that you have to kind of now do is you have to realize that there's a set of things that you're gonna be that you think you'll be learning now that you won't actually really learn. They're different. They're unique versus repeatable things, although you have to, learn and adjust and adapt to the new circumstances. And you have to be thinking about like, okay. So what are the things that we're gonna do that are now that are just getting through the the worst of this crisis.
What are the things that we can now learn that we wouldn't prioritize learning, but we're good to learn now. Like, so for example, a really classic one across the whole startup universes. Well, we should really learn remote interviewing. We should learn, you know, to say, okay. Separate from the circumstances. We wouldn't have bothered learning remote interviewing. It's just not a skill that's on the short list of priority, but we'll do it now.
And that could be helpful to us as recruiting talent from across the country around the world, opening up new areas like learning distributed work. Some places really should learn distributed work very early. Some places shouldn't bother learning distributed work until much later. Well, we're gonna learn that now, and then that could help us with Flint in being in Boulder and Austin or somewhere else startup.
So it's kind of a a shift of mindset about which things you're gonna learn now, why you're gonna learn them, learning them for just a crisis, learning them for repeatable work, and those are the kinds of things to kinda trade mindset. Now the other thing, of course, is the generalization of the point that I made is to say, like, for example, in typical world, you start making progress, you're gonna get financing. There's enough focus on entrepreneurship, new products like that.
We've product market Flint. We've got it scaled. You'll get you may not be the pricing you like. You may not be from who you like, but you'll get financing. Now one of the things is external financings are gonna be very difficult through probably, at least August. Maybe if you're really lucky, it's July, September, October. I think pricing may get reset, but it's but it's there. I think it'll be back there. But in that interim period, new financing from a new player is super difficult.
And so I've seen a couple of them happen and the and the 2 categories of which I've seen happen. One good for NFX and the other is scale companies where investors have been pursuing them from over a year. I said, well, we're gonna do a round of financing anyway. Wouldn't want to be in the be in this company for a year anyway. We're gonna go in no matter the fact. So where where the where the VCs know the founders already and have an established rapport and knowledge business.
And I've been pursuing. And then the other one is series a's. And the reason why, smart folks are still doing series a's is because they go, look, as long as we make sure that we're we're doing a series a with 18 months plus of capitalization so that we're on the other side of this, then you got a pricing mismatch. Maybe the pricing is gonna get hit a whole lot more than we think now and what the pricing is. So we may make an error in pricing and investing now.
But the things we invest in now, we'll get money later. And so those are the only 2 other than that, no external financings that I've seen. Yeah. Right. And the companies with the series a's, I mean, the money becomes a competitive weapon. Yes. Right? Yep. As others were skipping or laying off or pulling back. If you've just raised a series a in this time, then you're gonna have a little bit of an edge in moving forward in the markets that are moving.
Yep. And the one thing I would add to the companies that did raise a series a, get that money to last you minimum 12 months preferably 18 plus months from now. We're saying 24, but, yeah, I think that's right. I think 18 24 is probably right.
Now one of the things that people have been telling us they're learning right that they hope to keep after the crisis is the DNA of frugality, learning how to keep costs down, reviewing, you know, the software subscriptions that everybody's signing up for, you know, real estate cost containment, not over hiring, that sort of thing. Number 1, do you think that that's a good thing to learn? Number 2, how does that play into, the blitz scaling concept?
Cause I know that would be an in a way, an opposite. I think I think probably Jeff Bezos has done both, but very few do both. How would you, see frugality as being a a new learned behavior? The depression, my grandfather, my grandparents learn to, you know, be very frugal and they stayed that way their whole lives. Learning Furgality is a good and smart thing to do.
This is actually, you know, one of the things that we in Silicon Valley get a little too lazy at is because there's so much capital and the capital's there because it knows it generates a bunch results that, you know, relative, you know, you know, I have done each other 20 years back when we started this. Oh my god. Capital was extremely Morgan. So it's about a 120 venture firms. Yes. Exactly. And you were watching every dollar because it really made a difference. Yeah. And now you're like, wow.
Hey. You know, rents are expensive. We'll still get the nicer place, and it'll be more expensive. And it depends to be more of that. And good to really be, like, strategic about capitals expensive, sometimes impossible to get, like, a, you know, kind of a pandemic, you know, adjustment period. And we should spend it as carefully as possible, and that's always a good thing to learn. Now that being said, within blitzscaling, there's 2 kind of, I 2 things in it. 1 is blitzscaling's relative speed.
It's a am I moving faster than my competition at being the first to scale? Either my real competition or the potential emergent competition or that kind of thing. And that really matters in a bunch of markets, especially those with network effects, right, all our NFX. And so the first, you know, we we call these Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross Markets, 1st prize, Cadillac, 2nd prize to recognize 3rd prize you're fired. The difference between 1, 2, and 3 really matters.
And so relative speed does really matter. Now that being said, it's relative speed. So if all of a sudden, capital's drying up and you and and, actually, in fact, everyone's being, okay. We gotta make sure we get to the right milestones Then what you're doing is not saying speed doesn't matter anymore. What you're saying is, actually, in fact, I can now be more efficient in my capital spend and still be moving faster than my competitors.
And that's the mindset that you need to essentially shift to with this. It isn't that the rule of first to scale really matters.
Now sometimes in your industry, it might be might say, look, actually, in fact, my, the one who's gonna be the first to scale is the one who gets across the pandemic desert, the pandemic crisis, and the one who gets across it Actually, in fact, it's the survival of going across that matters, and that's gonna be the speed because it's speed that compounds over time to scale, not speed today, speed this week, it's speed that is relative to when
you've really established your scale product market Flint, and have gotten the flywheel and the engine going. Right. Relatives of the market that you're in. Yeah. Yeah. And competitors. And your competitors. Yep. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Just just being the last one standing is often the, the path forward. Exactly. A lot of this is gonna come and go, and I'm just wondering if you've got any ideas already about what's going to change around human behavior.
Work or maybe social that you think you're already starting to see this adjustment being made to how we work or how how we're gonna be social. Some things will drop away. People say, oh, we're gonna get back to one's gonna be at the bars at the restaurants. We'll all be at the Golden State Warriors games within a year. It'll all be back to the same.
Are there other things that you think that you can anticipate changing Beller, I I tend to think that the changes, we all see the changes that have happened, like shelter in place, much of the stuff. The changes that persist tend to be the ones where there is either a a negative force to keep that in place or a absent of a positive where people kinda go, well, we were were doing a bunch of that, but maybe we didn't need to do as much of it.
So I tend to think that some of the changes will stay as I think and I think there'll be a a a slower return in the events business because I think a lot of Pete, and and especially travel as well, because the people think, look. Well, actually, in fact, I can get a bunch of this done now that I've actually really had to dig into it, see how video conferencing works. You know, now I can get a bunch of that done this way. And that's actually much more time efficient for me.
That still allows me the things. And I think you'll see more virtual events, though. Like before, when people said, We're gonna do a virtual. It's like, I'm just gonna wait to do the in person 1. The personal one's better. It's like, well, actually, in fact, maybe some of these events or some of these things I will do is virtual Well, I think that Pete. I think similarly distributed work.
I think people will say they'll learn things like, well, actually, in fact, getting a day, a week working at home or day a week working with no meetings Morgan day a week or 2 half days, you know, doing no meetings and so forth. That's gonna be much more productive. We're gonna do that. And I think those kinds of things, and a set of tools that go with it, I think, Beller will will play it out.
It does feel like the days of the 5 day work week in the officer over Morgan least information workers. Yeah. Or at least a version of it that says, hey. We're gonna focus on the these kind of new pieces of productivity we found. And so even if we're all gonna go to the office, we're gonna actually do, like, it's like, you know, no meetings, Wednesday. So nothing nothing scheduled that so we can kind of work through those things happening.
I also think, by the way, unfortunately, it's one of the things we need to put most attention to is I think the restaurant business will come back more slowly in part because I think people will have the residual worry about, well, what happens if the disease kicks off again? And this is space. It isn't so much they didn't like the restaurants, didn't didn't didn't enjoy going and seeing people.
It's just I think it will be a a slower return in which case, that will be a that's an industry that employs a lot of people, provides a bunch of service and glue within the culture of the community. And I think that will be one that will be in terms of life will be slower as well. Yeah. And given that some of these things are gonna change and, and persist, are there things are there opportunities you see for the startup founders?
A lot of people talking about, oh, I gotta do a roof or I can't get capital or, you know, it's it's hard for me. Well, yeah, it's hard, but where is the opportunity within that that changing landscape? Are there some things you see people doing? There are.
That's a little bit of the reason I was mentioning, like, remote hiring and interviewing, you know, kind of patterns for asynchronous or distributed work, the tools, and improving the toolset, you know, kinda getting the, you know, how do we make the 2 to 3 hours of work by my without interruption efficient, right, as part of productivity? Like, all those things that persist. A lot of people tend to say, oh, we're gonna do stuff because it'll be the the market driven by the pandemic.
And, you know, obviously, there's some areas where that's super testing equipment or kind of measurement diagnostics that maybe it's just for a while. There's a bunch of the stuff that's like, no. No. You gotta think about, like, like, the real product market fit that you're always working towards is 2 to 3 years out. And as part of that kinda 2 to 3 years out, you gotta think Alright. I know things are gonna be weird this year, but what do they like to be, like, next year?
And in which case, target that. And that's a little bit like the earlier lesson I was mentioning is like, there's some things that will look like lessons this year that are actually only lessons for this year, not lesson for 2021. And you won't fully know. You have to make a informed, you know, intelligent risk Pete on it, but that's the kind of thing to do.
And so I think patterns of work, patterns of company operations, I think, will be persistent I think some parts of, product market fit will be persistent, but some will also just be, highly volatile. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen a lot of companies renegotiating all their contracts down to lower their total cost basis. We've seen them resetting all the salaries, including the founders Yep.
Down. We've seen, some of the companies go after competitors just directly go after their competitors saying, okay, we're gonna take market share. Yes. Exactly. Because they're on their heels, and we can choose to be on our heels, and we can choose to be more aggressive. Yep. I've seen some some of these companies are are moving to virtual products. So these these events planning company. They're they're they're moving toward, you know, how can we turn this into, you know, using WebRTC?
How can we now create a product that does something, digitally that we used to do physically. Yes. And and so that some of these major pivots, I think, are giving opportunities in the desert at this point. Yeah. And I and I think that's totally smart to do. It's good to recognize. This is a wildly different time. It's not the only super crazy people think that 2 months from now, it'll be just back to, like, where it was in January. That's the that's the insane point of view.
Now some things are more opportunities. Some things are are because, like, for example, your competitors might be really slowing down, etcetera. You've raised the series a. Your competitor hasn't. You have an ability to to grab customers, do things, your ability to figure out a go to market motion that that may actually, in fact, be be lighter weight and Morgan, globally distributable. Like, these kinds of things, those are good opportunities to grab.
And then sometimes you also have to say, well, but, actually, in fact, we also have to focus on cost and longevity. Yeah. Totally. And are there some areas where you think that founders should be focused on in terms of making an impact over the next few years as we come out of this next year or the year after, where where there are startups that are needed to put people back to work where there are startups that needed that might not exist.
I mean, certainly all this, I mean, we've we've seen a a torrent of sort of remote working applications in the last few years already So it's always hard to know which ones of those will catch on and be big. Yep. But beyond that, are there areas you think that, founders will start to see, you know, a greater return to speed that could really make an impact.
You know, the natural impulse for most people is, like, how do I, like, get medical tests to, you know, the hospital, equipment to the hospitals which was a very good thing to be doing a month ago. How do I finance science and vaccinations and inoculations? You know, how do I support my local, restaurants and so forth. And I tend to think that the the the top focus, obviously, for most starter be is like, look, if I can get a really good business going, I'll be creating jobs.
That'll be a a a back to work kind of thing for people and that that is actually a super important thing for me to do, and I shouldn't get too distracted.
Now that being said, on a kind of a secondary order, it's kind of the we're gonna make our products free for hospitals and first responders when we're gonna be catering at our kind of startup as we're going back to work, we're gonna make sure that we're gonna be ordering food from from restaurants around like, choose some restaurants to help get back on their Pete, and we're gonna be a persistent orderer from them, right, is by doing it. I think those things are also very good to do.
But things that kinda say, you know, I'm focused on my startup and my business first because that creation of jobs and industry mean, we're gonna be in an X quarter's recession. And the question is, is it a small number or a number x or large number x? Is the only real question with that. Yeah. That's right.
I mean, it I think it's, it's an instinct to try to take care of everyone around you in the in the in the micro I think this idea that just by creating a scalable enterprise and creating a foundation that could produce 100,000 of jobs in the future is actually quite an ethical thing to do. Yep. Exactly. And it's important. It doesn't mean that you don't care. Right?
You care deeply, and you could do things that you can to help, but that the only way that this recession really gets back in that, like, you know, the SMB jobs Pete recreated, everything else, is that we move out of recession back into the normal growth of an economy and that sometimes you have to have a long term focus for that. Yeah. No. Agreed. Agreed.
It does feel as if what you're saying is that the the changes that we're gonna have here for the next one need to be around the shelter in place because the economic impact of this, the economic virus that this is may prove over the next 2 or 3 years to be more impactful than the virus Beller. And we have no idea, but it it it could very well be. And the response of shelter in place is probably not the optimal response we can have.
So it's almost as if we need some cultural entrepreneurship, not just entrepreneurship entrepreneurship, but cultural entrepreneurship to shift what our playbooks Pete. As as a community and a society. Yeah. We're in the emergency playbook, which is the we fumbled. Right. We're going you know, Pete back. I mean, like, the kinds of things would be is say, well, look, the moment that we see that we, a pandemic start to happen, you say, look, we're gonna shut borders for the moment.
And we're gonna ramp up testing intensely. Like, we go for that. We need to make sure that we have high testing capability. And and by the way, we've done that Pete. We might have been able to shut the borders, like, just shut the borders the US for a week, ramp up testing, be capable on Beller care stuff, and it would have been an entirely different curve that we were in.
Yeah. The the the network here is interesting also, though, because because this virus connects all the countries, if one country tries to do, you know, herd immunity and the others don't do that, it creates a lot of suffering for the ones to do shelter in place while someone else is just outfrolicking and then their people are spreading the virus around.
So it's interesting that sort of network effects, if you Beller, the different cluster implications of of, of how everyone's policy rolls out because we're all interrelated now. A 100%. It basically says doing shelter in place doesn't really help you very much unless you also close the borders, right, for that relevant time. And one of the weirdnesses in the US is you got some states, you know, California, Washington, now New York going, okay. We're gonna do the shelter in place. And then, okay.
Well, should we do? Should we then say, okay. No one from any of the other states is allowed to come unless you've gone through your own quarantine process. We're not gonna allow it baseline intelligence to say, a quick, brief, shelter in place coordinated then actually has the least economic impact and the highest impact on the R naught of the spread of the virus. And we need to at least understand the math behind that and then educate the decision makers about that at every stage.
So when the next one comes there, Yes. Exactly. Do you think there's any role that, Silicon Valley has in what happens next, or is everyone just mad enough silicon Valley at this point about our social media and all the chaos that that causes that our voices just aren't really welcomed anymore. You know, crises come with opportunities and obviously people were pretty decades of of the of the young swashbuckling technology entrepreneur being the hero.
Dread pirate Roberts or the, you know, the Johnny Depp character where it's actually heroic. And then, you know, the last 5 plus years has been, you know, the tech clash and people pretty angry across whatever things like, you know, did social media break democracy and truth telling did is the disbalance of wealth, you know, causing, extra suffering and we're not taking the responsibilities from things we should be doing. And some of that tech clash, I disagree with.
I think some of it you know, the media being, extra unhappy because people aren't paying as much attention to the media as they like or the business models are being challenged and those kinds of issues. And so they they amplify that without you know, kind of taking honest responsibility for that being part of the the the perspective and motive there. But I think that the opportunity for Silicon Valley is to say, look, step up and help people in this crisis.
Like, what are the things that we, like, we as a valley?
What are the things we can doing in terms of you know, kind of, helping people get back to work, helping with jobs, you know, helping with, you know, vaccines and inoculation and pandemic, helping with information, like, you know, you you see some defensive game going on right now, which is like, well, let's let's stop the spread of bad pandemic in right, which is the kind of thing that that social networks need to be doing more of, which is, you know,
stop the flow of what is just very clearly bad information anyway, but let's also now figure out how to help. How do we get good information? How do we build those trust things? Like, so, like, what are the things we can do where people said, okay. You stepped up and you did a lot more than you had to do, right, than the minimum to help the rest of us navigate this pandemic. And I think there's an opportunity there, and I think people should be doing Yeah.
And what is there something that's going on that's really unnerving to you right now? That's the thing that sort of stands out is, wow, you know, that's something we need to stop right away. Or that's a that's a mindset or an attitude or a set of language that's You mean within Silicon Valley? Within Silicon Valley, in particular. The state focused on the the environment that these early stage founders are in there listening to this.
Well, this may be less the early stage founders, but the one that I've been particularly irked about is that Silicon Valley because of its focus in the future has all has been beating the drum on, you know, UBI universal basic income. And the way that they've been beating the drum is this kind of really terrible marketing. It's like misleading and terrible marketing. It's like, hey. We're creating all these technologies. It's gonna take all these jobs away from you don't worry.
We're gonna put you on welfare. And it's just like, oh my god. Flint, you're wrong. The the speed at which the jobs are gonna be taken away and change is not the speed at what you're envisioning. I understand you understand the speed because of the the speed Pete which the technology industry moves, but, like, take one of the favorites, which is like truck drivers. Like, right now, there's a massive shortage of truck drivers. And you said, Beller, but AD is gonna take it away.
It's like, well, yeah. Okay. When the autonomous vehicle trucks start getting manufactured, 10 years from then is when they're gonna be at rough scale that actually, in fact, the truck driver industry will be hit. Okay. So when's one of those trucks gonna be manufactured? I don't see it in the next couple years. Like, maybe it'll be manufactured in the next couple of years, and that will be the first one, not the scale manufacturing auditor. Stop with this, like, say, hey, guys.
Don't worry about the tech industry because we're all gonna put you all on welfare. Stop with that discussion. Say, look, There's a lot that we're doing with technology. It's gonna be creating new jobs. It's gonna be no. There's gonna be adaptability. There's gonna be transition. It's like the same transition from agriculture industry, there's gonna be pain, and we're gonna need to help with that.
We're gonna need to participate because, yes, it's not to say there's zero pain, but that the UBI thing is a ways out. And by the way, the precise limitations of the pandemic, response of kinda writing minimum wage checks will show the exact current gap between now and a Star Trek Future of UBI. Because if you go to most people and say, would you like 6 weeks of minimum wage check to answer? Absolutely. Yes. Of course, I'd like Would you like that, or would you like your job back?
They're like, I'll work out what the 6 weeks works. Like, give me my job back. Right. I really need the job. That's what we're gonna see. And so that would do what I would say. Now that's not a Silicon Valley activity thing as much as a way that we talk for the rest of the world. Yeah. No. It does feel tone deaf to realize the to suggest that people don't get meaning out of their work Yeah. And that they're happy on welfare.
Yes. And and actually, in fact, the truth of the matter is there's gonna be a lot of work for at least the next 20 years and probably longer than that. And so next 20 years, well, 20 years is, like, 20 years is half a career of someone who's graduating this year. So instead of, having no jobs, it's just a matter of having to adapt to new types of jobs Beller 10 or 12 or 15 or 20 you know, and and and how to help with that is the actual focus.
Anything else that's going on that's unnerving you, is there anything that the VCs are doing that's that's, bugging you? Or Well, not particularly. I mean, I do think that I I'm less of a fan of what some VCs do, which is go back and try to renegotiate drastically term sheets or other kinds of things. I get it responsibilities, Pete, and so forth, but it's kind of a shared thing.
And so I tend to think the the right approach is how do we share the pain in creating, like, what James us awesome about the industries we build and thing we do as investors and thing we do as entrepreneurs is we play these non zero sum games and we go and build something that's that's new and much bet bigger and additive know, 1+1 is 10, not 2. So that tends to be the share of the pain. Don't say, well, okay. It's a 0 sum game. You know, you're in a position where you're in dire need.
I'm gonna try to get every last penny out of it. It's like, look, you know, let's, let's let's share the the pain through this and, you know, some VCs are kinda going and and being a little bit more rapacious. Than they should be. It's more individuals than firms and so forth, but, but that's not I don't think it's the industry. It is interesting how people snap back into a 0 sum thinking. Sometimes Flint times of crisis.
It's so hard to train people out of it to begin with and then not back into it. Exactly. Yeah. I I remember that, moving out of Europe and the East Coast and finding how much non zero sum thinking that is out here and how different that is, how fundamentally different that changes the human relationships between people and, you know, maintaining that through ups and downs is is pretty critical. And it's it's a cultural thing. It's a it's a earned thing.
It's a it's a network thing where because you feel that way, I feel that way because the 2 of us feel that way. Other people are forced to feel that way, but, it starts to break down and it can get bad quickly. Yeah. And it and there's a direct tie. Obviously, it's that's, it their their siblings. Between non zero sum thinking and growth psychology. Right?
Because if you think that, actually, in fact, the pie is growing, yes, you wanna make sure that you get a good portion of the pie and everything Beller, but if the pie is growing, then it isn't a, well, for me to win, you have to lose. Right? And that that growth psychology, that non zero sum thinking is part of how we make progress in the world. And so holding on to that and making that the way the world works. Is super important.
Now, Pete, how much of your time are you spending investing these days? And what sorts of what sort of stages are you investing in? There's a there's a these days pandemic days and there's a these days outside of pandemic days. So these days pandemic days, you know, it's mostly working with portfolio, my own across Greylock.
And so if there's a bunch of my partners are still out there really looking at at at new businesses and so forth, but I'm kind of doing I'm probably playing more of a when a when a entrepreneur gets introduced to me right now, I'm like, hey. You know, meet Sarah Guoah, you know, meet Josh McFarlane Pete, you know, and I'll help them work with them on it just for the the the the near pandemic days.
Generally speaking, I'm, part of how I describe a venture investor to to be glued to understand the business that you 600 to 800 deals a year and you do 0 to 2 of them. The benefit of my network is I don't have to look at 6 to 800. I can look at a smaller number, but I'm still doing 0 to 2 deals a year. Just like every GP. Got it. Good for you. Well, it's been great to see you today, man. I really appreciate you taking the time out.
Yep. Likewise, look, the entrepreneurship stuff is really Morgan. You guys are doing it out on effects is is is great and really, they're shining a spotlight on the things that matter, building the new global world, these businesses with network effects, really matter. So it's awesome. Yeah. Well, it's great to see you, my friend. Thanks for the time, and, we'll see you soon. Well, be safe. Alright. You too.