So, Keith, thanks so much for joining us on the NFX podcast, and you and I have known each other for over a decade now. You and I hosted some parties together for founders of your house. We've had you talk at the end of fixed scale in the past, and and we've connected on more than one company, where we're co invested. So you You've got this powerhouse background, man.
You know, you got so many great inside stories from some of the most influential companies in the world and many moments, so many area moments that you were there because you're a product person, you know, because you're a business model person, you're a you're a person who really looks at your mental models and whenever we talk, I always love hearing about some of the insights that you're able to glean through all these experiences over the last 20 plus years about doing these startups.
So today, I'm hoping we get to unpack your brain a bit for the benefit of founders. I do that. Well, you know, I've got one question to ask you. A a fill in the blank type of a question. So everyone we have in this podcast has unique ability to see things that others do not. That's kind of what we're all about. And you know, you are certainly in that camp by far. So is there anything about you that you've noticed that allows you to see things others do not?
Some way of thinking, some way of learning, that that lets you have that superpower. It's a great question. I mean, I think you're right. Certainly to be an investor of one costume by definition. See things that we don't see, and appreciate them before other people do, or it's very difficult to be a successful investor. James is mostly true founders. I think it's a whole lot easier to build a business when you see the world differently.
At first, and allow yourself to kind of build traction with random development accumulated advantage before the rest of the world, sort of realizing that you're on the right track. Where it probably derives from is being surrounded by a lot of people growing up more on the political side, both in New Jersey and then at Stanford with people who are pretty left wing and never really being a leftist myself.
Always sort of forced me to think for myself because by definition, all the stuff Currier from my parents, and all the stuff Currier from my professors and most of my classmates as, as intuitively thought was wrong, but I had to re derive, you know, from first principles and for reading history and finding my own sources. I don't set up philosophies. And so that probably translated into other fields later. Even though it wasn't, you know, intentional.
It wasn't like, I'm gonna go think differently about politics, and then I'm gonna apply that kind of thinking to the business world that was, you know, a byproduct a decade later, not an intentional strategy at all. Yeah. It's interesting.
You know, you know, we have, very conservative senators with very liberal daughters and sons and then, you know, you grew up in a in a liberal family and didn't naturally accumulate that type of perspective, and I can see how that would force you to start to just re examine everything and make sure that you're quest you questioning everybody and what they're saying. Yeah. And I think that's where it started. Right? It's early. It's early 6th grade.
You know, the Currier were kind of the anti Nixon protesters types, you know, anti being a Morgan a lot of, friends and colleagues and you're involved in various organizations, you know, from 19 seventies. And then I remember when, Humbergo was running for president in 1980, you know, the perceived wisdom among my parents and their friend crowd was, you know, Reagan was Pete. He's gonna blow up the world. He was semitic and we were Jewish and blah blah blah.
And then, you know, you gotta watch it and some of the hostage just get home from our end. The world didn't pull up. In fact, it probably got better and you know, you know, you know, Scott safer, but it's most projects. And so you start rethinking everything once, you know, that's where the whole philosophy that you've been taught proves to be invalid. Got it. Got it. And so you grow up feeling comfortable, not seeing the world as others do.
You almost probably develop an affinity for seeing things differently. I remember talking with Stan Chodoski when we were building one of our companies and and, you know, the board said, you know, we've gotta build a really great technical system, and he says, well, the way everyone would do it is this way. So that's definitely what we're not going to do. And so and he and I and and, obviously, you feel very comfortable sort of starting from that perspective.
And, you know, Keith, you call yourself a contrarian, a misfit. You know, you if you've called yourselves those things in the past, what what do you think the basic principles of a contrarian are? I I think the the ability to think for yourself at the end of the day as it James to on any topic being able to derive a set of views independent of what other people around you think.
That's very difficult to get it, which is really because everybody's influenced by the 5 people who spend the most highly rated. There's lots of studies about this. So if you're a VC, you know, you're influenced by other VCs. You know, so for example, of course, eventually, we're working to now founders fund. We consciously don't spend too much time on your VCs because the average, you know, VC returns over the last 40 years are not very good.
So spend a lot of time with average VCs, you're gonna start thinking like average VCs. So, you know, post the we'd be very differentiated in the back then. And at Boundary Spa, our offices in the Presidio, we're geographically removed from other venture firms. It's very, very conscious strategy to be, like, outsiders so that we highly differentiate a perspective. So I think, yeah, I mean, I applied this to all kinds of parts of my life.
I have the kind of a philosophy of of, like, the anti fomo person I I coined this. I don't know if I coined it, but I just went to borrow this phrase and appropriated it called Jobo. My I've run my life about Joy. I'm missing out. So the more things I missed, the happier I am. You know, so I look at Instagram and miss all these things that makes me more happy. So you you tend to apply it to all kinds of parts of your life, not just business. That's fantastic.
And when you look at, if you look at companies, do you often, decide if an idea is consensus and actively avoid that idea? Absolutely. I mean, p so Peter obviously wrote a book about this, and it's here in a while where he talks about secrets, And, you know, basically, what secrets does the founder have or team have insights about the world, everybody else 6 or Rob, but true proved to be accurate. I think we don't we apply that. That's probably the founders fund pretty seriously.
So one of the questions we always ask ourselves is what what are other people just actually wrong about it. What are they gonna be Flint to? And if you don't have a compelling answer to that, we'll very unlikely to actually offer to a max. It is a first off screen. Yeah. Got it. And, you know, you said that, you know, the coastal ventures often avoids being like every other VC and founders fund.
You move from one to the other, and I know you wrote about how that was the most difficult business decision you made in your life. What what have you found to be different at this point about being over So truthfully, like, on a scale spectrum, all VC funds in the world, Coastal Ventures and Powder Fund are closer cousins than where they're apart.
You know, there there's a lot of consistency in terms of the kinds of companies, the ambition of founders, we want to invest in some of the differences are a Beller respond. We're very multistage. So we invest from seed I'd love to lead seed investments. We do series a and series b. Pretty common to venture, but we also lead growth rounds. So we'll invest $1,000,000 of the company and we'll $200,000,000 in the company, and we'll do both all day long and go back and forth.
That's very uncommon at Kandi. Kandi was mostly a Pete series a, engagement, street b investor, to high ownership mentality, buying a lot of original fraud, and then be delivered down to other people's money over time, which is a very conventional, very traditionally, successful venture for model. I found her son were high conviction investors. So we have concentrated positions over 17 companies like cross a portfolio where we have more than $200,000,000 of cost of the company.
So that's very different. 2nd, probably most, a key difference is we don't do Monday partner meetings. Well, now nobody does Monday partner meetings. But, at the time, Beller phone was pretty unique in not having an assemble partner meeting. We have a way of improving investments, but it's based upon a set of approvals, that are custom and unique each company. We never have everybody in the same room sit for a presentation of a company and then, like, vote on an investment.
So that and that's pretty different. So it effectively means that I have Mondays or you set up Mondays, available to meet founders, and work with portfolio companies for sitting in an insular meeting, debating investments. Got it. First Morgan. And, you know, in that you're a contrarian and a misfit, it doesn't just apply to your investing. Right? I mean, it applies to your life and whatnot. Are there other ways that that you feel like it expresses itself and the rest of your life as Beller?
I'll give you some of the some examples from a sliding relay. So the most is a lot of stuff. I mean, I have a sort of set of views about politics of the world. We'll skip over that for a second, but they give you some ridiculous examples. So I started, maybe 7 or 10 years ago. I had, like, 6 very different ideas about the world that were kind of considered crazy even among my friends and family. And, and what I said about basic crew babies.
So one of those, you know, sort of believed in, but it's becoming a little bit more normal. Is that the more stress you have in your life, the Beller, the healthier you are, the wealthier you are, the happier you are. There's a great book I now recommend called the outside of stress, by telling the Google Google out of Stanford, that sort of proves this. But when I started thinking this way 20 years ago, there was no research that really validated this.
Secondly, on a really ridiculous side, I actually don't believe that stretching is good for you. Like, if you look very athletic, like, a whole set of reasons why I don't see them stretched before playing sports. We can talk about that. Another one that's become very conventional at the time you know, when I was growing up, it was very differentiated. I I would always believe that sleep is magic that the more you sleep, the better you're gonna be relying, the healthier being more successful.
And it's sort of always been recognized by life for 4 years around sleep. So we follow-up. We try to get you out of our sleep. Now there's a lot of research post 2009 that confirms the benefits of sleep and the and the major disadvantages of lack of sleep. So, you know, that's no longer preparing. You want a kind of a fun silly one to close with. I happen to be a fan of Apple Maps.
I hate Google Maps. There's a lot of story behind this and I can give you lots of examples why, but, like, fundamentally half of my friends definitely think I'm crazy. On this topic, but, you can weigh the output fair amount. Yeah. Those are great examples. And, also, you had mentioned the the politics and and, we don't need to go there.
If you don't wanna, we can edit this out later, Keith, but I'm just really interested because I felt like, you know, we are, community in Silicon Valley of contrarians or or Pete who are trying to think differently than than the larger the larger world and and come up with new things. And yet, we've created an environment that might be hostile to people like Tim Ferris or Peter Tio that felt like they wanted to remove themselves from the community. You stay Pete, despite your political views.
How do you how do you feel about the that ecosystem that we're in in? And and your and your role in it and and what could be done? Yeah. I mean, it is I think the ecosystem is fairly close minded despite what people like to think about themselves. And you're right that a lot of people who are conservative or Republican or whatever Beller. If they have the luxury of success locked out, needing a couple examples, I can start to think of others, and there's more out of the way.
But, you know, what I do for a living, I felt the best place I could be was at the center of the ecosystem of startups and founders. I wanted to work with most interesting most ambitious founders and at least as of now, there's a high concentration of them instead of value. So that all did the professionally negligent me, So even if I can find other places, that would be more comforting.
But that said, you know, if you're contrarian, you're talking about, I grew up in a you know, anti war, household that love George McGovern. And, you know, and somehow not interested to escape that.
I don't know if it's a Stanford, which is incredibly leftist borderline social is for communist when I was there and, you know, survived that and I went to law school, which is full of, like, Buffling professors So maybe to some extent, I'm like, crazy if I was, you know, sitting around, you know, sitting around with concerns all day, and I I don't know what that would be. That's right. You're comfortable in that role. That feels natural. That's great. That's great. That's good.
So, do you think that we should and could have more contrarian Or by definition, does that ruin the situation? I mean Well, it's hard. You know, Jeff Bezos has a great quote about this. Right? It needs to be contrarian. It's extremely rare and difficult to be contrarian. Right? So they, you know, the consensus has a lot of truth to it.
So you can mint artificially Morgan contrarians, but unless they're seeing things that are insightful, you know, at some predictable basis or in some domain, it's not really adding that much value. I do think extending, you know, the debate top, the the window of bait is actually helpful. And just validate the truth, but, the challenge of being a contrarian is not being contrarian. The real challenge is the Venn diagram overlap of Right. Right.
And do you think it takes a, a misfit to, to launch a Falcon 9, for instance, to do something super ambitious like that? Yeah. I mean, at the time, your friends are gonna tell you, you're crazy. I mean, I and I've talked about sort of investing standpoint. When I make a a new investment, I really want half of my former VCs, to think of, like, crazy and, like, laugh at the end of the semester.
I don't want a 100% to laugh necessarily because then, you know, maybe I'm actually missing something, not them. But if none of them will offer 20%, then I'm probably not taking enough risk, and it's probably not a differentiated enough investment. So, you know, I really do consciously think about when I hear a pitch, like, a, what what are the people gonna miss and why?
And then b, is this gonna sound ridiculous to a reasonable step of smart people because then I know I'm taking enough risk and a factor that'll be compensated for being right if I'm right. And was there a time speaking of crazy, was there a time when you were running one of your companies where you thought yourself this is crazy?
You know, if I ever felt that what we're doing is crazy, I certainly would have bought me a very simply and, you know, hopefully, persuasively to whoever was making the final decision that we shouldn't be doing X Y or z. I do think there's download as high as you said many companies have been involved in in the world doctor crazy.
So for example, back in my PayPal is, red hernia, which at a time, was, you know, like, the center piece of Silicon Valley and tech, technology consent, consensus opinion ran this, cover story on PayPal called Earth to PayPal. And, you know, Peter never forgot this. Like, actually, when we celebrated our IPO, he held up Pete cover And when we celebrated our acquisition by eBay, you gave another speech falling off the Currier.
So, you know, we don't we definitely were considered to be weird on this fits at the time, but internally, I'm not sure, you know, that I actually thought we're well, and that's what I thought we were misfits, but I don't think we're wrong. It's the same same thing.
You know, I think the companies I was involved in, I think we're making, for the most part, quite wise decisions, and, you know, whether the world appreciated it or not, that that wasn't the key criteria, fortunately, and most of the companies Pete worked out. Got it.
You know, I was just speaking of just quickly a PayPal and this long time ago, but now when you look back, what were some of the things you put your you can put your finger on today that that created such a mafia that created such a a flowering and sort of a Morgan explosion of entrepreneurship coming out of that one company. What were some of the elements that that you feel were there? Yeah. The number one, you know, credit goes through the PR docs for recruiting.
They had a philosophy of hiring and finding the right people and, you know, ultimately source a huge fraction of on network, through their personal networks, Peter, through, his connections at Stanford, and knocks mostly higher engineers out of either the space folks, Greater Chicago, or University of Illinois. And, you know, really brought the 2 teams together and mix them So they deserve emotional credit because they identify people with high potential at scale and mix everybody together.
Once we're in the building, I think there was a set of management philosophies that were very different at the time that had enabled us, you know, to be, successful with this Covia people, but then subsequently. So for example, we didn't really believe in general managers. So Peter was adamant that we weren't gonna hire people whose skill in life was managing. We're gonna promote the best person at each domain and each discipline to lead that discipline.
So, for example, the best engineer would become VP of engineering, the best designer would be exciting best part person to the part team, the science person to the CFO, and that led to, a building of craft, recording of craft, and and it's sort of a meritocratic Pete because everybody knew that their boss is actually pretty damn good at what he or she did, and you didn't have this demoralization of Beller, you know, I'm excited to ask by reports of the
person who has no clue what the hell, you know, I do or what I'm doing or why it's so important. So I think that was pretty fundamental. And then the third thing that was pretty important was that was a hard business. It was very challenging. There was a lot of obstacles, lots of people, and it'd be Sateepra like us from Visa Mastercarder to the federal state governments at different James, eBay, etcetera.
So, you know, we it's sort of a trouble by fire situation, and I think like the metaphor or, you know, they bonded people in that kind of environment and you get to see who's really good under pressure and trust and who actually, you know, doesn't thrive under the circumstances. So when people subsequently went to start their own companies, I think a lot of us have perspectives on how would this person do as a founder?
Because being a founder is, you know, even though I talk about all the time, it's like 2 boss, etcetera, not particularly fun. Hey, it's very painful. Requires a lot of, you know, self, self actualization and initiative. And I think we had pretty good insight into who was likely to thrive in that environment, and that's why some of the companies did really Beller. Got it. I think it would also be fair to say that you guys are sort of, exiting those companies for 5, 6, 7 years into the internet.
Which was a pretty prime time to start exiting and and start the companies. I think with your medical hindsight, that's clearly right, but time it didn't feel away. So, you know, PayPal would pull up in 2002. And, you know, Silicon Valley's nuclear winter was 2000,021,384.
And so when we exited PayPal and we're starting new investing or starting new things in 2004, called 2 to 3, 4, 5 depending on which company you're talking about, most of all didn't think that there was another wave of consumer innovation that was likely to be successful we happen to believe that, which is why we started all these companies fund each other companies, etcetera, and history or report that as being right, but it wasn't obvious at the time.
The reason why actually the PayPal network became kind of more essential to set up the value was there's backing. Most of the traditional networks in Silicon Valley weren't doing a lot of interesting things in 2000, 1, 2, 3, and 4. They're afraid and fearful. And so Pete came to us because they didn't really have a choice.
Like, we were running Chacks and willing to work on companies, Flint companies, that became the next generation, but there wasn't a clearer there wasn't clear visibility into there was going to be another generation of Got it. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. And, you know, one of the you founded a lot of companies, not only have you invested in so many, but you founded a bunch.
I'd love to hear a time where you threw out the rule book or and and it either blew up in your face or it went incredibly well. Like, what are some of these stories? You and I have talked about some of these things. I'd love to bring some of these out for the other founders to hear. In most illustratively, I clicked on as a lawyer in the same industry law. The already most field is in understanding the rule of really Beller, precisely, and then knowing when to deviate.
It's like knowing when to deviate, in art. I remember learning this this good sound for a, like, very crazy, but I remember being kind of a whip. Kind of, a delighting high school student that in the same English class and reading some of these, you know, great works of literature that would reach South Virginia a year. And noticing that some of that all time occasionally buy, like, ground rules.
And, you know, I've been a little crazy kid and we're like, well, you know, why is my paper marked up when I do this and, you know, some of the people's not very pissed. And, you know, the correct response by my English teacher was, well, when you master all the rules, you get to violate them. And there's a bit of truth to that. You know, it's like a value too that deviating from wool doesn't make much sense Pete se. It's no way why you're negating the rule.
Now, obviously, you follow the rule book, you're not gonna create a com an iconic company with scrubs. There is no rule book that tells you how to build the next SpaceX or Tesla. By definition. And so you need to know what rules you're gonna change. That's why I don't like the phrase best practices. Best practices just lead you to commoditize your replication of something else.
You can borrow best practices, but you need to know where your intentionally got following quote unquote best practices, or you'll just be in the middle of doctor, which is not the goal.
I had kind of for the other example, in 2003, I got basics, And, you know, I was so hesitant to get basics where lots of obvious reasons that, like, my colleagues Pete always laughing at you because I had scheduled appointments that canceled and we were submitted, like, for, like, 6 months they're terrified of somebody, you know, playing it in my eye or laser. And I remember what finally convinced me.
I went to this doctor's quite good, surgeon, high surgeon, and did all these tests on me, but, like, aren't happy. They lost to the room. And looks at him and smiled and said, I would tell you something you've never been probably happy to hear it before, but you're right in the middle of the dog and he's like, there's nothing that will go wrong with this procedure. This procedure was made for you and your eyes. And the only possible thing that go wrong is that I screw up.
And so that led me to realize that, you know, I should go forward with the future. I was trying to make a decision But, like, that's how you kind of have to think about the world is you don't really want it in as much career or founders. So you don't want to be in the middle of a golfer. You need to be, you know, at the extreme 1% and and it's consciously choosing those things would you wanna do differently. So, you know, that's just some things would be differently. PayPal management velocity.
Hiring philosophy. We hire different people, different backgrounds than with with standards, Silicon Valley, management, promoted them differently, etcetera. We use the different distribution strategies we talked about. So you always want to consciously violate, you know, some of the rules but it's it's a very intentional strategy. It's like an Apple WILA is optimal. It's like closed platform.
Look at both, you know, for 20 years of argue that you shouldn't build a closed platform etcetera, etcetera. There's lots of, you know, intentional. They're secret. They don't let people talk to each other like in the company that work by different teams. That's very unconventional. They don't actually use metrics for the most part to measure themselves.
So all of those three things would violate most of Silicon Valley norms, but they're very indispensable to handle success and there's a reason why the, I think, the most valuable company, certain most valuable technology companies there. Donna, so you when you were running companies and you're a management teams. You guys could decide which rules you're gonna violate and which unique things to do.
When you're an investor, you kinda have to take the set of violations that these founders are bringing you ever get that wrong? Do you ever do you ever say all that you can't violate that way? You should violate it a different way. Or well, I definitely asked question, like, what are you doing differently? Why? Sort of like, what are secrets, etcetera? What's special about this team and this founder and what are the, you know, what what why they like the unreasonable success.
I mean, if you think about it, it's our career, like, almost ridiculous assertion to have 2 kids in the proverbial of the rise, say I'm gonna change the world. You know, raise your hand. I'm gonna change the entire financial services world. We changed the entire real estate world. We changed this entire put out. That's kind of ridiculous in some ways.
So you need people who can kinda take on, you know, ridiculous ambition and whether you have the spark and you look at them and say, you know what? There's some shot there that they might actually be right. And you kind of feel that. Like, wow. I've never met somebody like that before. Maybe they could change the world. And that's how you really wanna feel especially early. In the company's trajectory as ambassador. So if you have a dialogue about, well, what will do you violating? Why?
And that allows you to see, you know, understand how the person's brain works and the calculations that we get. The the bad version of that conversation is they don't even realize they're violating the rules or they don't understand the reasons why they're deviated. It's not a very thoughtful conscious decision. That's usually disastrous. Kind of Pete for a mass because you don't wanna be violating all the rules. Like, you wanna select of leach.
There is a dark way to stick the evolution of, like, how humans behave and you wanna tap into some, you know, learnings from history, you know, standing on threshold or, a giant sort of thing. And so if you're trying to reinvent everything, that probably means you're not really successfully reinventing anything, and you're probably also creating a massive max side of your reinvention. So there's a it's a great dialect to have to filter out, you know, how savvy and insightful someone can be.
Got it. Got it. You know, in the past, you and I've talked about some of the the metrics that you would use to measure the business. I think you told me a story about Yelp having discovered a metric around number of messages amongst the Yelp Pete, in their local areas as being a key indicator of what was going to happen in the future in each of the cities where Yelp was spanning back in 2004, 2006. That that's stuck with me. And, you know, can you tell that story?
And now there are other stories of other companies you've been working with, whether it's Open Door or PayPal or the other ones found it or helped start. Absolutely. So I remember this was, even the probably second one meeting, that I joined, yeah, after I got the work of y'all, And I remember, you know, Jeremy Solomon, was finishing his presentation, the basic presentation we worked at.
And then He basically gave this vision of that y'all was really building a social product, which, you know, not everybody appreciated at the time, and it was a different social product. It wasn't the viral social product, you know, standard friends or email or whatever. So he was setting this up and framing know, the vision of the company and against the metrics. And I looked across the table and I said, okay.
Well, if you're building a social product, what's the key metric that'll tell you whether you're right or wrong, because you're working with an office, getting better. And he looked up without hashtaining, he says the unique number, the number of unique messages, 101 personal messages from one meaning of reaching other. And personally, at the time, I thought the answer was, like, ridiculous. That that would be the key metric for the company.
But, you know, very quickly thereafter, certainly within 3 to 6 months, I realized he was actually bright. That that was the key predictor for whether we were building a true community and whether people were attending events because they wanted to be part of community, whether they would craft reviews, they want to be part of me. So it's totally right. And but it's very extremely common counterintuitive.
Time, but that's also a good example of, you know, as an investor board member, I can ask questions about it in pro Beller he's right but he was much more right than I had older men. That's why his company and why he was successful at it versus the Vita story that it would have a miserable disaster. But, hopefully, once in a while, I was able to help him, you know, crack a couple of things correctly too. There's a few things is a lot of the way I helped with.
It's a good question is often easier and more productive than trying to actually come up with the solution. It's a great it's actually a great technique as a work member. I think 90% kinds of our member asking a question, it's the right way to go and have series of questions.
It is something that our law school says it's pretty native to people who requires like sort of this product dialogue kind of stuff, but a probing set of questions can get you to a better answer in a way that's more constructive than a standard debate Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Are there other examples of of metrics that you thought were incredibly powerful that helped you realize that either an open door or a yell or a PayPal was working or something else?
Well, I'll give you the famous PayPal example. It's been told, you know, occasionally publicly, but I think it's worth double clicking on because it's so shocking. There's nobody really Beller that eBay was a target market for PayPal. In fact, so there was an official list of top 10 Morgan applications for PayPal and eBay, which are all on the top 10 list. And, you know, there's documents that still exist in the top left.
And then, what David Sachs noticed was there was 54 sellers on eBay, which is a very small number, actually, but at the time, It may have hundreds of thousands of Beller. So 54 is a very small number, but there's 54 sellers who I can, typed into their listings. Please ping me through PayPal. And David noticed that in the first reaction, by the way, of PayPal executive team on day 1 was, oh my god. Why are these people using PayPal?
And we should get rid of them because that's not that's not what we're supposed to be doing. David came into the office the next day and said, I think I found it on marketing. And then, therefore, it started to invest in productizing what was manual labor for the Beller. So we created a logo, a PayPal logo that they could insert as post title. And then we created an automated way to insert the logo as opposed to manually do it and see my listing. These sellers have lots of listings.
So it basically became both the marketing, the market for the company folks on, as well as the guiding light for the product strategy for 2 years. Got it. So that was a very small signal in a sea of data that David Sachs had the skill and the the the acumen to understand this could actually be a scalable platform because there's already hundreds of thousands of people who wanna do transactions here. They're being underserved clearly as he's 54 vindicated, and let's make that easy.
Let's reduce the friction on that and see what happens. And we've you reduced a little bit of the friction, and it really took off. Flint the next 2 years, you just kept doubling down on that, and that's where. Create a shingle button, a shingle button that easily inserted and then create what we call auto insert where you're getting auto inserted at all your listings and, you know, that was basically an industry PayPal right there, automation.
You know, there's other examples to, I remember thinking, to map my Flint square, we were just launching And so we'd shipped about 10 or 20000 Square into the world. And we started to grow, and we weren't doing any marketing, like most things didn't come. Money to be marketing. Like, at the time, we we raised our series a, but that was Flint seemed to have real money that's been on Pete acquisition.
But I remember as as as to sit next to Joc and then this we actually did have a fairly refined dashboard for an NCS company. And I remember Joc pointing to his computer, like, a 2nd week there after we or 5:30. 2nd week after we shipped the squares. And noticing day by day, we're adding more users for that. For really consistent trying to 5 days, you know, start out spending 5 days, very statistically significant.
But, anyway, it was like 5 days, and it was like growing a little day and said, why is this happening? And I've caused just an understanding set of rules that really shouldn't have been happening. We weren't doing anything. To create a screen. There was no viral mechanism inside that you were tracking. There's there's no giant PR thing that was happening. I mean, we had that Pete EPR, like, a else in the company and things like that, but they're that was not in this data set.
So think about it for a few minutes. And I threw it in a hypothesis, and it was really only a hypothesis given the constraint. So uh-huh, maybe This is a function of people seeing squares in the real world, the actual device, and it's so fraction of them that see it signing up. Because it's the only thing I can think of that can explain this. So once you have hypothesis, then the next question is, well, how do you validate that? How do you test it?
So in true, there should be a ratio for every new square we shipped in every new customer Morgan every transaction and the rate of growth. Turns out there's a perfect relationship. It was exactly 1%. So Morgan 1% of all transaction, let's say James 0, we'd have 1% of sign ups the next day. New science, and they just who's perfectly consistent. It's like, this is amazing. We now have an actual viral loop, in the real world.
David Sox, actually, I had explained the story to David many years ago, and he wrote a blog post that combines the PayPal story the square story and he talks a little bit about the bird in his blog post so you can read about this, but it was really not epiphany. Now once I realized that, then there's a lot of tactics that occurred to me about what we should do X Y ID differently because we have this new this observability loop in a real world that's causing growth. But it was not at all obvious.
It this almost never works. It's a very rare example when this actually worked. Right. Where where you basically have people using the product and through word-of-mouth, like with an Uber. You know, you you're waiting for you're getting out of the bar. Someone calls an Uber. You get into the Uber with them and you said, how do you do He says, let me show you the app. And then some word-of-mouth sort of hand to hand combat, if you will, it grows by by word-of-mouth in the real world.
It was the aesthetic appeal of the device. This the consistency of the device with the James that you can remember. You see the squares where I remember it was signed up. But it worked. It worked for, like, 18 months. There were things later that you changed the equation a little bit, but, fundamentally, 18 months where we definitely would not had enough money that we could have raised just to grow on payback position. Obviously, payments is, you know, not the highest worth of business.
Your payback cycle is a little long. So pay marketing at best as a couple of it for Square, it it really can't be the primary driver. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Those are great examples. So do you have a kind of mental checklist? I'd love to dig into some of the mental models that you like, to use, when you're making decisions. Do you have mental checklist or approaches for decision making? Yeah. I mean, I think everybody does.
I mean, you kind of have to if you're making decisions, but there's an executive to make decisions all day long every day. As an investor, we're pretty much making decisions one way or the other, which we, even which we need to take. You know, it's not, quote, unquote, an investment decision. It actually effectively is. So, absolutely, it has a set of mental models for a whole bunch of different topics, a higher what companies I like to invest in, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
And actually, that's mostly how I work with founders post investment. The really great founders don't ask you you know, should do a or b. That's pretty rare way to frame a question. What the option will say to you is almost verbatim will be what's the cons what's the best conceptual way to approach this problem? Can you give me a framework for deciding between A and B? So, you know, I try to focus on how you frame an approach to solving a problem. And then that that's nice because it scales.
And so what what are some of your favorite ones that you find yourself repeating more often than not. Yeah. So, I gave a whole lecture, a Stanford, sponsored by Watch coordinator in 2013. On how to run a company about how to operate and walk through a lot of philosophy and exceptional frameworks on when to delegate, when not to delegate, when, you know, how to think about different organizational structures, etcetera. So I've already met that. There's a a transcript of it.
If you don't like watching a full boring YouTube lecture, reading the transcript is actually pretty good. It's pretty high fidelity with the slides, especially. Secondly, framework when I hire someone with experience versus when not to, when I hire someone with help and let me call it, when it moved versus later somebody, I've Pete, like, my invest my favorite investment formula. So I tried to instill things. I don't use the Peter Tilly in, like, 2 by 2 grid very often, but tier 1.
He's got some freaking frameworks in there as well. I only have 1, 2, 1 by 2 by 2 grid I ever used. But, yeah, I have I try to develop these And then, you know, I have, my former chief staff who's now principal founders from a 1,000,000,000 has a set of blog posts, like, trying to steal some of these so that, you know, founders can read the ACs, like, you know, called lessons for keyed. And if there's one such different topics, he he is, you know, written where they are still stopped.
That a lot of founders really appreciate. So I highly recommend those as well. That's great. Those are great resources. Thanks for doing that. You said you've also said that every problem is a leadership problem. I've learned that it well, I didn't actually quite this. This is a straight philosophy. But when I read it, not surprisingly, makes a lot of sense.
You know, it's like the version, the Netflix version of the same as every problems for their context problem of, like, Pete, people make poor decisions or to just, if you don't agree with, it's probably because they don't have the same context to do well. So you wanna give people as much information transparently as possible so that the rest of the organization making the same decisions as the CEO will.
This is the Stripe version is, obviously, the right person doing the right things, you're gonna get the right answers. Got it. And, you know, one of the things I've heard also is, a lot of the problems that we think we have, boiled down to recruiting problems which I guess then translate into leadership. Right? Yeah. There are it's it's a little bit, like, I happen to like sports or use, like, sports.
You know, right now, it's hard to watch sports, but fundamentally, Sports is a lot about building the right play putting the right players in the right position. There's people who would thrive, you know, as a second base unit, each turn also for base unit.
And part of the art is putting people in the right places so that they can thrive and understanding that occasionally they'll be wrong and then maybe the right answer is to try moving them around instead, you know, for example, the best relief pitcher of all time, started as a starting pitcher. He might have been a pretty good starting pitcher, but he wouldn't have been a first ballot Paul James, as a starting pitcher most likely.
So someone had the epiphany that, you know, maybe you should be our relief pitcher at a closer, in the rest of the story. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that I thought you said so well is you said that, the team you build is the company you build. Yeah. So I learned this from.
The note is on my board at Square, and he said this and that, you know, at first, Honestly, I found it, like, a little surprising because, like, typically Pete in Silicon Valley think about technology and technical advantage and IP, and then they think about distribution advantages and distribution strategies and network effects. They often forget the people And the way he expressed it is just so simple.
I've copied a clutter and they and I was like, the more I thought was one of these things that every minute you think about it gets more Morgan and more powerful in the cycle. So now, you know, for us, this is, you know, probably mentioned this to me 8 or 9 years ago, now I think about it every day. It really is the peep the team you built really is the company.
And the great people, he went up with a phenomenal company, but a lot of people have an eliminated disaster and most companies have somewhere between. Yeah. You know, this plays a little bit into this debate that, is coming up more and more about remote versus being in Silicon Beller.
You know, traditionally, if you look at the total returns and in tech, 85, 90% of all the returns have been in this in this Silicon Valley area, but, increasingly with the remote technologies and and people say stuff like, look, now I can go hire the best people no matter where they are. You know, how do you come down on that?
When you think about, you know, the company is the people you hire, And then it does depend upon the company where the company's, both vision is, how predictable to vision and how linear is it, and what skill sets you need. So for example, the benefit of being co located is mostly, extemporaneous conversations, dialogues, that wouldn't have happened by scheduled meeting. So, you know, I'm in the office late at night. I'm in the office of Sunday afternoon.
It's some random individual in the company. The property doesn't even court to me walks up to my desk and says, hey, Keith. I got this, like, yeah. And I look up and I say, you know what? That's actually pretty interesting. For exactly what we should do, but when we Pete to this way or we can riff on it, that could be a pretty good idea. And some of those ideas are really Nutanix ideas. Those are very difficult to schedule, like, by meeting, by fiat, by calendar and bio mode.
So that said, some companies have a very linear roadmap. It's very obvious with the value proposition. It's very obvious what you need to do, what the sequence is, and the innovation cycle isn't required. You know, it's small dose of time. That might work pretty Beller, roughly. Got it. So maybe with a B2B company or an enterprise software, on that end of the spectrum and then a a consumer thing on the other end. Yeah. But the it's the step function innovation that I do worry about.
Remotely hopping. I watched it. It had a lot of really good ideas. It came from spontaneous deals together, spontaneous late nights, almost, like, borderline, like, fooling around, you know, like, over a drink Morgan pizza. Somebody has a definition that got filtered out, like, over the pizza and beer, but, like, pretty good ideas too. And the same thing, square in my experience. So really good ideas hop in in, like, you know, random time intervals.
And so I do think that we'll use some of that innovation for the companies that need that set function innovation. We wanna consistently compete on that basis. Got it.
So as you're looking at your investment portfolio over the last 2 years, some of the companies are more remote, some of them are less remote, or do you find yourself just saying, look, I I want you're under thirty people, I want you all in the same office because we need an innovation curve that's gonna give us the 10 x, which will lead to the 100 to 200 to the floater decks. Returns on the investment, or you or you saying, you know, in this area, I'm okay with remote because of its nature.
It's linear nature. I I think in some areas, I'm okay over the sort of thrill. Like, so for example, the picture of that might need to be more okay. And there was a co founder we ran out of the preexisting relationship with the CEO and was gonna open an office where they where he or she had the network Okay. I can buy that.
So, for example, one of the companies that I've been involved in, you know, for years now with Super Bowls called FAire, FAire, they've always built their engineering team in Canada because 1 of the 3 co founders, they've been Canada. And then, you know, but he's a cofounder. And so they've been able to Pete other engineering there at, you know, half the cost, less entitlement, all the benefits.
But that works because he has a very significant preexisting relationship with his other chief programmers. A lot of us call them back. Now interesting, not a lot of the product innovation actually does poke to the Valley office and the CEO are down, but it made it work, but that that's one of the very circumstances.
Secondly, I think a lot Morgan time remote for the first time right now And they're finding it's not that bad, but remember, there's a lot of pre existing relationships, for the companies that suddenly switched on remote because of COVID. And I do wonder about what would those conversations look like and how high fidelity would the debates and dialogues be if there was no free existing relationship from the real world before that I go remote. So for example, I said I heard a lot of Morgan this.
Like, a little or BDC days or all of them as you call. And I, you know, I do 5 plus 4 meetings a week. The they've been moderately effective, actually. There are some differences. There's some things that are Beller, some things are worse. But one of the reasons why I believe it'd be moderately effective is In almost every case, I know the executive team and the other board members quite well, sometimes measured for decades. Often measure for years.
And so the social cues and various things that are more difficult to to deem from a conference call there may be other ways in preexisting relationships. They all accept that versus joining a new board from Scratch with people on their roles with before, whether they're investors or voucher careers in the executive team. So we'll see how that sorts out as me and other people start making investments where there's a whole new, you know, SunTrust. That's remote. Set of relationships.
The whole new set of relationships that are outside the existing framework. I I've worked with a lot of these. You know, I have fortunately, co invested a lot of great people. I work. I, you know, enjoy working with a lot of investors from other funds that serve on boards and we some of us have worked together to entrepreneurs, so us are co invested together for, you know, decade plus. Some of us are social friends.
So there's a lot of pre existing relationships that we're topping into on these two board meetings that I think make them together to be more constructive than if we were just throwing together a random assembly that people would say, okay. Now make support. Yep. No. I agree. It's funny. I'm I'm I'm sensing a growing sort of religious religiosity. About remote that's coming from a certain segment of the founders.
And I think in in part, it's, in reaction to a religiousness around VC is only investing in Silicon Valley. We'll 20 years. And so Yeah. I mean, but where we started, I I also dialed back to where we started, like, knowing the rules, I think there are some advantages to being co located in 1 headquarters in Apple, Amazon, basically.
But knowing when to violate those rules again, you know, his part of the art that Git GitHub has done phenomenally well for the only company from the very to very beginning. You know, I remember at KB when we Pete this Deepgram and there's something to think about it, but it is very clear that, you know, you had a very specific strategy. It was very thoughtful and very intentional and know, how to differentiate a value proposition and it reinforced some of the value proposition.
So, but it's it's been anonymous So it it can work, but I think it's a cautious decision to make it work and being very attuned to what one needs to change derivatively She's a poor dashwasher. It's interesting what what I'm hearing so often from you today as as I have in the past. It's just we've got these playbooks but, they can become too formulaic, and each company is individual. Each time is individual.
Each market is individual, and you have to make the right decisions for every new circumstance in order to make things grow really big and do really Yeah. A successful company is a custom group. Culture, distribution, product. And what it really works is because they become synergistic. Like, they tap into each other, you know, they could reinforce each other. And so there is no prescribed formula. There are prescribed trade offs.
Like, I think one of the other things is to Pete best work to do in federal experience the board member hierarchy data is constantly highlighting trade off. There's the the grass is a Beller reader. There is a, you know, natural reaction to all humans for the next set of options and what we call you're not doing and say, oh my god, that'd be magical. Everything would be perfect. Usually nothing's perfect. There is no free lunch and there's trade offs.
So one thing I try to do is highlight for the hunger. It's like, yes, you can do that. Just know that the following 2 or 3 things being on that deal and so make sure that you really care about it. Because one thing you're gonna achieve.
1st of the trade offs, they're gonna sacrifice that's why you also see founders actually scoped back and forth, among strategies and and distribution strategies and organizational philosophies is they realized that they needed to tune where the disadvantage is and that is the decision making trail. You know, with some of the more savvy founders that work with actually, I asked you that question Flint blank saying, How would I know if this isn't working the way I want it to?
Like, where what should I be looking at moving forward in advance? That would be the signal that things are a little bit of nuts before they're leaving. Yeah. And maybe maybe the superpowers of the founders end up boiling down to what things for them aren't painful. That would be painful for another set of founders, and so they can they can balance in a different way than other people. They can, and they should also be quite about TV both company deal.
They also should be complimenting themselves with people who find things they find painful to be painful. That's a great, you know, way to meet you success. Not forcing me to do things I don't wanna do. I'm not very good at it. I hate to do every prostate to do it by someone who likes to actually do those things. Because it turns out, like, there's enough people in the world that probably for everything I don't like to do, there's someone who actually enjoys it and is quite proficient at it.
And, you know, I can be very happy doing what I like to do and find someone who wants to do another stuff, and then we can both be both one plus one equally 3, but also be more intellectually and emotionally satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. And if the company in general has that capability, then the competition won't, you can you can excel. You know, when someone works with you, Keith, after a few years, what do you think that they feel like they've been learning from you? What's that experience like it?
Boy, now that I've been working with Keith for 4 or 5 years, I've learned this. I've learned. What what's the thing you think you bring to people when you're coaching them that that they might have gotten elsewhere? Good question. It's really important to me. You know, I think it's easier in a company as an executive to how people learn last versus, watch, you know, shadow and pick up various things. We'll talk about what what they, like, learn.
As you see, as an investor, it's more challenging it's very difficult to bring people with you in a full immersive way all the time. There's a lot of constraints on that. So it's harder to teach as an investor, and hence, maybe a harder scale of extra fund because of that.
So as an executive, though, you can work with people quite closely And what you want them to learn is, like, you know, one of my one of my colleagues who worked for me for 6 years, who worked with me for 6 years, is to say there's, like, the route 1 count, which is, like, a lot of a lot of early feedback, like, what's not working. 1, and then people can learn, certainly independently, you know, like learn resources. Not even really learn resources really well.
Some people are, like, prefer to run the resources, actually, and some people are just really don't like it, and it will be taught by specific principle. But, the most important things I think, the people who pick up the vast are what makes migraine work, what would be underlying some principles. Sometimes they actually can extract it in a more sustainable way than I can. It's really easy for Washington.
I definitely had, interns and former colleagues in record reports who could play back to the my answer or my philosophy. Yeah. It was done before. It's surprisingly, insightful to hear your self thinking and someone communicated better than you at Florida. But then you lock that in the ring, that's the right way to describe it. Also occasionally, like, I'll borrow or Pete something or a way of expressing something.
And I'll kinda steal it and then shout, like, you know, like, there's no one, like, saying something in a microcosm, and also to realize that, wow, that's actually extractable for all kinds of problems. We're gonna apply across the organization. I'm gonna talk about it on podcasts. You know, etcetera. So there's sometimes it's also learning from them having an eye on, you know, what they're doing or saying that's interesting or different.
And realizing that it might be something that actually is, leverageable for everybody or a lot of Pete. And, you know, platform, either because you're running a rotation people kept Twitter Beller, whatever, to scale that philosophies. They try to and it actually works both ways. But, ultimately, the number one skill that Pete who observe the forward deputies of mine that got us to do interesting things on their own is it can hold the business equation in the brain.
So every business is like an equation among you, and that's what I think the word strap just to get means is that you understand the action between variable. It's exercise wise and z equals success. And sometimes, the reason why it's important to hold all these in your brain is Sometimes the right move is not to try to force x to be greater because you've actually hit the mentioning article in terms of where you can move the x to.
It's to actually change the y or change the z. So let's talk about it today. Attangible, that's not a conceptual approach. They can enterprise software company. Often enterprise software companies have issues with SalesLoft. Fee. Right? We're not selling our customer fee, you know, it's customer's, like, thinking forever, blah blah blah. Well, there's an interesting set of questions there, which is already targeting the right customer. Returning the right decision maker and the customer?
Are we placing the products correctly? Are we trading the value proposition correctly? Are is the product actually the right problem? There's a set of, like, 6 or 10 of these costumes, and the art is knowing how they all relate to each other and knowing what order to change the dial. And that's what a good CRO for example or CEO actually has a field Morgan intuition for. Like, how do these all connect? And which ones do I toggle when I'm not talking to the results?
So I think the first step for founders to write out the business equation because the other business equation is different for each company. And understand the weighting of the variable and then try to get the variables into the right places and then figure out if we're not if you're not happy with which where to choose and what order to achieve.
And most of the people that I've worked with closely can do this after a year or 3 years of working together you do it quite Beller, and it's actually surprising. It's surprisingly rare. So a lot of Pete sort of Flint this out to me that you know, that so and so and not surprisingly can do. You can do this. Nice. That's a good way to say it. And and is there a myth of a founder archetype, Pete, and is that archetypes static?
And, you know, what I what I wanna get at here eventually sort of how you how you think about the founders that you choose to work with. And one of the things you've said is that the good founders will not ask you about should I do a or b? They should ask you, how should I think about this set of of, of decisions? That's that's a, a founder architect or a behavior that you might find in the archetype you're looking for.
Do you have a founder record type that you've articulated for yourself or, or not yet? I think there's three comments. I think there are attributes of founders that tend to thrive, but not architect. So for example, the way Peter Kiel expresses that's the way the the powerful is you would not want Elon to be running Airbnb and be that one would want to ride a chest. He'd be running with SpaceX.
So I think it depends on what's the company trying to keep what's the hardest challenge or the hardest that one of the really cool challenges for that company. And it's the founder of world class inside of college at those kinds of skills. So I think it matters, like, what's the product, what's the market, what's the head of landscape, that was the best possible founder and how we came but that's to set aside problems. So that's always critical.
There Pete times when, like, we're the Iowa ambassador founder because they're working on my office is the perfect problem for you. And it's just so obvious that they have more classical. He's tackling the single biggest sports of fortune. And then there'd be other challenges in other companies maybe they wouldn't be working for. There's probably subset of their everything, but that's pretty rare.
And then third answer though, I think there are, like, Keith more central casting quote unquote Pete founders, where it's very clear when someone moves then as an angel investor, some of my other investor Pete them. I need them to try to provide them where they were just like, yeah, you should work with there there is a set of people that, you know, you're just instantly communicating very efficient, extremely productive. Right? But I think that's, you know, the least important.
The most important is is this founder going to be unlike, highly unlikely and positive grade 16 of this problem because there's something about him or her. And then the am I the right partner for him or her maybe, and if not, I'll provide a partner, you know, or a or a partner, a founders line that might be their fit. Got it. So you actually take the time to think about that personality Flint as you think about decisions.
Yeah. I think there's a way I mean, this is, like, it it is, like, as, you know, lots of people talk about, but in some ways, it is like a marriage. And it's a certain long term relationship, that goes through trials and tribulations now. And then watch someone that a counterbalances, do a day. Go on the stage. Chronically all about it. Right? Now that you can describe. Like, so it's almost super stressed in the calendar. The last thing I wanna do as a board member is out stress.
I actually want to cooperate you in the last few of that. And then there's times when I think founders may be too protected, and I need to talk with a little bit, like, is moving a flash. You know, like, that's the time when you want to ask Pete good question. So it's understanding about our psychology, their framework, and then being like a cushion for them and then sometimes being, you know, more demanding.
And it's not always obvious for us to be, like, when things are going well, Actually, if I wanna be more demanding and things are going badly, actually, if I wanna be more supportive of each of them, paradigm. So I think it's not just a a personality that can you be in the package? You have constructive dialogue with 1+1 with the deals that we're doing. Right. And so what are those things about people that you won't give up on?
I mean, what what what makes for great raw material because you could be an Elon personality. It could be Brian Chesky personality, but still there's some commonalities that that you get a sense of and that you're you're know, the founders find people say, oh, this guy's gonna love Keith and he's gonna love him. What what are those? Yeah. I mean, tenacity, with that, the safest source quality of the program population better than mobile relations capacity.
Fast learner, a quick very quick pick up Pete. Not very impatient in explaining things, meaning, like, I like to explain this once and expect that people immediately profit. There's probably nothing that frustrates me more in life socially even worth it, unfortunately, is repeating myself. Like, it drives my friends and partners crazy, I just really, like, I have a very, your blast or whatever training with very good memory.
So if you have a conversation with me once, and we're never gonna forget about that conversation. I can recycle conversations that I have 30 years ago, usually. So it drives me crazy to repeat myself. So people who tend to, like, pick up really bad fast Pete. People who like, people who are vicious definitely. I mean, you're there's ambition and ambition. There's, like, different levels of ambition. We would never fund something to educate your founders on that doesn't have a solo ambition.
But I tend to like outrageous. So, yeah, this is people borderline a little crazy. I can leave. You know, when when people say key calendar, it means it implies often that keep you deal with looking at business. People wanna change the world or, you know, have screens somewhere, usually. You know, some data speed jobs, Apple, commercial, about being different.
There's a bit of Pete to the automotive, and I I said I've worked well, I've certainly worked with and worked for a lot of people that did that DNA. So it doesn't the thing bother me. I don't expect the best part of what makes the person, super impressive is that they're going to see the world different and with definitely, and they're gonna occasionally have very strange reaction to the world. And that that that isn't a problem for me. I think I, you know, I I can work with that.
And so then that's not every that's not for everybody. And people really wanna walk through the walls you know, walk through that wall one way or the other, but that's basically the most Morgan. And then the IQ and horsepower to understand why they're walking through Right. To understand the playbook and understand where deviate, it's within. And so, if you're thinking about these Olympic athletes, that are out there trying to change the world and are highly ambitious.
The difference between number 1 and number 20 is actually fractionally small. Do you what what's the sense, that you have that what happens differently for that number one per because that's the that's the business that we're in. Right? We're looking for that monster outlier. And it's it's actually gonna be one of 2 days. It's either they're outrageously really a bit of webinars. Like, and I mean outrageous. And we'll talk about this, like, off the road map.
It'd be an isolated element that I should say, I have never seen somebody who's, like, asked people. Like, they're in the top 10 basis points to ask you the top 10 basis points about the top 10 basis points of total. So extremely world class of 1 and then, you know, they've got to the ballpark. Or they so they were extraordinary extraordinary in that sense. Are thinking about another model that sometimes works. Oh, it's the compounding.
It's just the rate of learning across many things it can you know, it's a slog games, times 3, 5 days a year, times x years. It's actually one of the hardest things to do as an investor too because what you're ultimately doing when you meet a founder especially Morgan CDMS inter angel last night is for Jazz. Not only is this person capable of today, but what's this person gonna be like in 10 years? And that's a rate of growth question. So you're looking Morgan sustained rate of growth.
But sometimes when you have to make a decision, you don't have a lot of pieces of history in the founder. It's very hard to make a judgment call on the 20 minute 40 minutes, 60 minute meeting about the Pete of growth over the next 10 years. You're applying Align on one data point, which is awesome. You know, if you're not gonna be possible. So that's what you're trying to do though. And so the more data points you have, the better it's a whole lot easier for Pete.
What I need a calendar that I've known before, which is what could be, what's the company I was involved in, you know, pitch me at some point, you know, whether in their life, drawing online is actually a feasible task, you know, realistic, you know, goal for me is what's that, what can I still look like? Part of the slope on one of the initial new data you know, like, that's, like, all the things that you kinda have to do. Right?
So, like, for example, the easiest way to make mistake, we could say, okay. Great. I'm gonna find a space company. I'll reply next to you. The last way you wanna try to do that is to go look at you on today and try to retrofit today's email address. Days KnoxLab channel, whoever, into what you're trying to Flint today because neither Elon or Max looks like what they do today when they were 22.
And what you're really trying to do is find out someone who looks like a twenty two or twenty four year old. That's actually not not a forty year old. With a compounding rate of growth. So that's that's the most that's the other thing. It's either if they're not the single nationals of the world at some dimension right away, they have some compelling road that looks absurd. And then, you know, you work with them over 5 or 10 years. You just go home for the ride.
It's a lot Well, I think it's very well articulated as always, Keith, and I really appreciate you spending time with us. It was a great day today. And, thank you so much. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll see you soon.