[Music]
the first thing else is I challenge that
there might be a founder here in the
audience that’s gonna do something big
it’s like the birthday paradox right
like there’s absolutely the chance that
someone in this room here today will be
the CEO CTO founder of like one of the
world’s most changing companies in the
next ten years you live in a really
special place where people get to work
on ideas where failure is tolerated if
you travel overseas to other places
there’s a reason why Silicon Valley is
so different and it’s because failure is
tolerated I realized that I loved doing
lots of different stuff it’s not that I
loved technology it was that I loved
doing lots of different stuff so I went
to boarding school and I was the guy
hanging a an antenna outside of my dorm
room window to do a pirate radio station
I was designing flyers for dances I was
deejaying like I just loved doing a lot
of different things and when I read
required reading in school our junior
year was this book called the new new
thing kind of the Netscape saga right I
read that and I said to myself like this
feels like an area of the world I can
come to and be myself and do lots of
different things and see what sticks a
little schizophrenic and how I treat
different ideas and go from thing to
thing but that’s kind of the ethos of an
entrepreneur to teach myself Ruby on
Rails and I was like this is gonna be a
really awesome skill so I learned that
learned about databases and learned
enough to be dangerous and this is like
one of the lessons in entrepreneurship
is that like you don’t have to be the
best but you have to be dangerous you
have to learn just enough to be
dangerous to build an idea concept it
and show it to the world and then it
turns out there are lots of other people
including all 170 employees that work at
Instagram who are much better at doing
all that stuff than I am but you’d need
to find people who can you know be drawn
to the idea that you build and then they
end up taking it and making it better
I think everyone’s experience is
different everyone in this room has to
take the idea that there is a perfect
next move and throw it out the window
there’s no perfect next move I had the
privilege of going to a Marine base once
and
walking two Marines about how they plan
their next move there’s this phrase
called bias towards action the idea that
you can spend all of your time thinking
about what the perfect next move is
trying to plan am I gonna work at Google
am I gonna work at Microsoft like which
one McKinsey or Bain like the next
perfect move and spending a tremendous
amount of time trying to figure that out
the Marines say you can spend all the
time you want but by the time you
figured it out you’re dead so like
sometimes you need to make a trade-off
of what is the action I can take with
the appropriate amount of information
and risk to move because moving and
progress is what gets us to the next
step by moving and learning it all adds
up that summation of your experience
over the last ten years is what makes
you into the thing tomorrow that will be
successful all the other jobs that I had
offered there were like two or three a
couple out of startup one at Microsoft
one at Google I took the lowest salary
of anyone any of the offers that I had
because I wanted to work in a specific
job at Google I didn’t care what job it
was actually I just cared that it was at
Google and I would surround myself by
amazing people that was the first lesson
that I learned just like go to where the
people are short term long term trade
offs just go to where the people are
being at Google and going to Corp dev
was an interesting move because I was
like I want to be in her startups again
I learned a lot about startups in school
but I want to be back in the startup
world and then 2008 happened and I’m not
sure how many people remember 2008 in
this room the economy kind of went to
crap I remember looking at my boss and
being like okay so like can we buy this
company he’s like nope can we buy this
company nope one of them and I won’t
even name the name but it was really
interesting company ended up doing
really well I wish we had purchased it
but the thing is he was like we’re
actually not gonna do many deals now you
should probably just go golfing and for
like a 20-something year old thinking to
themselves like I want to make a
difference in the world and your boss is
telling you to go golfing like maybe I
should just leave so I did and I
actually there’s a chapter in between
Google and and bourbon that not many
people know about but I ended up joining
a start-up of some ex-google folks
called next stop hugely transformational
for me because it’s where I cut my teeth
learning to program learning to build a
site and everything
I learned in that year at next stop
before starting bourbon was actually
like it made me ready to go do bourbon
so again every move you think needs to
be perfect it turns out just like
surround yourself by great people where
you can learn the most and great things
will happen but I didn’t go golfing and
that’s rule number two now I never know
I would be able to survive for 40 years
so I I call myself like a blind man
riding on the back of a blind tiger and
for 20 years
survived to today still surviving but we
want to make this company lost 102 years
so we finished only 60 years there are
86 years ago so you started in 1999 yeah
because in China everybody wanted to be
make company for last a hundred years
that this become a slogan nobody take it
seriously so if you want if you want to
give you know the KPI to your people
should be very specific then people know
it’s a series 102 years that we were boy
in 1999 alibaba’s who last a century we
had one year and this century want to
have a 100 years next century one year
102 cross three centuries so very
specific is a within our company we
never talk to your succeed successful
not because we think they’re 86 years
next to 86 years there are many chances
they fail so that’s why we say don’t
talk about your successful 86 years
later we’ll talk about it and this is
something we know how to make this thing
happen so I think generally I’m a
positive but next two to three years
maybe have problems because they were
Anti Corruption this but think about
anti-corruption and rule by law is
laying a great foundation for the market
common economy you don’t want to go to
business by bribery you don’t want to
have an unfair environment the market
coming is by rule by law and market
economy is about a clear transparent and
fair and I think this year does here bad
but this is why we need entrepreneurs
ship this is why we need that the
business to drive the economy so I’m a
positive and people when people worry
I’m happy when people do happy I start
to worry
because and I don’t worry about the
things the president is worried about
worry about the things that nobody worry
about and this is the opportunity so I’m
positive because I’m not I’m not I’m
positive but I’m not stupid I know do we
have a problems but you have to solve
the problems later by little and for
just a minute I’d like for the moment to
have you have you pretend I’ve made you
a great offer and I’ve told you that you
could pick any one of your classmates
and you now know each other probably
pretty well after being here for a while
you can think you have 24 hours to think
it over and you can pick any one of your
classmates and you get 10% of their
earnings for the rest of their lives I
ask you what goes through your mind in
determining which one of those you would
pick you can’t pick the one with the
richest father that doesn’t count I mean
you’ve got to got to do this on merit
but you probably wouldn’t pick a person
against the highest grades in the class
I mean that nothing wrong with getting
highest grades in the class but that
that isn’t going to be the quality that
that sets apart a big winner from the
rest of the pack think about who you
would pick and why and I think you’ll
find when you get through you’ll pick
some individual you’ve all got the
ability you wouldn’t be here otherwise
you’ve all got the energy I mean you’ve
got you know the initiative is here the
intelligence is here but some of your
going to be bigger winners and others
and it gets down to a bunch of qualities
that interestingly enough are self-made
I mean it’s not how tall you are is not
whether you can kick a football 60 yards
is not whether you can run the hundred
yard dash in ten seconds whether you’re
the best looking person in the room it’s
a whole bunch of qualities that really
come out of Ben Franklin or the boy
scout coders or whatever it may be I
mean it’s it’s it’s integrity is honesty
its generosity it’s being willing to do
more than your share it’s it’s just all
those qualities that are self selected
and then if you look on the other side
of the ledger because there’s always a
catch to these you
free gifts and Junie joke so you also
have to and this is the fun part you
also have to sell short one of the your
classmates and pay 10% of what they do
so what do you think is going to do the
worst in the class this is way more fun
yeah and think about it again and again
it isn’t the pit isn’t the person with
the lowest grades or anything of the
sort
it’s the person who just doesn’t shape
up in the character Department we look
for three things when we hire people we
look for intelligence we look for an for
initiative or energy and we look for
integrity and if they don’t have the
ladder
the first tool will kill you because if
you’re going to get somebody without
than energetic so it’s that third
quality but everything about that
quality is your choice you know you you
can’t change the way you are wired much
but you can change a lot of what you do
with that wiring when you write down the
qualities of that person that you’d like
to buy to ten percent of look at that
list and ask yourself is there anything
on my list I couldn’t do the answer is
there aren’t there won’t be and when
you’re looking a person yourself short
and you look at those qualities that you
don’t like if you see any of those in
yourself he get tells them whatever it
may be selfishness you can get rid of
that I mean that is not ordained and if
you follow that yeah and then Franklin
did this and my old boss pentagram did
this of early ages and their young teens
they’d just been grant looked around and
he said who do I hire you know and he
wanted to be admired himself and he said
you know why do I admire these other
people and he said if I admire them for
these reasons maybe other people will
admire me if I behave in a similar
manner and he and he decided what kind
of a person he wanted to be and if you
follow that at the end you’ll be the
person you want to buy 10% off I mean
that’s the goal in the end and it’s it’s
something that’s achievable by by
everybody in this room learning to tell
a story is critically important because
that’s how the money works the money
flows as a function of the stories and
what are the critical things I would
incur
learn that’s way more important
important in my world than anything else
is how to ask a question because you
want to have the person comfortably
telling you what he thinks is important
so that you get for a long time we don’t
understand the product or the market
while we’re listening so we have learned
to string questions in a way that
provides the entrepreneur with a way to
explain what he wants to do how long
it’s going to take who the competition
is how much money he needs without
feeling threatening for many of the
investments we’ve made we didn’t
understand the answers but we constantly work on developing the questions
the first thing else is I challenge that
there might be a founder here in the
audience that’s gonna do something big
it’s like the birthday paradox right
like there’s absolutely the chance that
someone in this room here today will be
the CEO CTO founder of like one of the
world’s most changing companies in the
next ten years you live in a really
special place where people get to work
on ideas where failure is tolerated if
you travel overseas to other places
there’s a reason why Silicon Valley is
so different and it’s because failure is
tolerated I realized that I loved doing
lots of different stuff it’s not that I
loved technology it was that I loved
doing lots of different stuff so I went
to boarding school and I was the guy
hanging a an antenna outside of my dorm
room window to do a pirate radio station
I was designing flyers for dances I was
deejaying like I just loved doing a lot
of different things and when I read
required reading in school our junior
year was this book called the new new
thing kind of the Netscape saga right I
read that and I said to myself like this
feels like an area of the world I can
come to and be myself and do lots of
different things and see what sticks a
little schizophrenic and how I treat
different ideas and go from thing to
thing but that’s kind of the ethos of an
entrepreneur to teach myself Ruby on
Rails and I was like this is gonna be a
really awesome skill so I learned that
learned about databases and learned
enough to be dangerous and this is like
one of the lessons in entrepreneurship
is that like you don’t have to be the
best but you have to be dangerous you
have to learn just enough to be
dangerous to build an idea concept it
and show it to the world and then it
turns out there are lots of other people
including all 170 employees that work at
Instagram who are much better at doing
all that stuff than I am but you’d need
to find people who can you know be drawn
to the idea that you build and then they
end up taking it and making it better
I think everyone’s experience is
different everyone in this room has to
take the idea that there is a perfect
next move and throw it out the window
there’s no perfect next move I had the
privilege of going to a Marine base once
and
walking two Marines about how they plan
their next move there’s this phrase
called bias towards action the idea that
you can spend all of your time thinking
about what the perfect next move is
trying to plan am I gonna work at Google
am I gonna work at Microsoft like which
one McKinsey or Bain like the next
perfect move and spending a tremendous
amount of time trying to figure that out
the Marines say you can spend all the
time you want but by the time you
figured it out you’re dead so like
sometimes you need to make a trade-off
of what is the action I can take with
the appropriate amount of information
and risk to move because moving and
progress is what gets us to the next
step by moving and learning it all adds
up that summation of your experience
over the last ten years is what makes
you into the thing tomorrow that will be
successful all the other jobs that I had
offered there were like two or three a
couple out of startup one at Microsoft
one at Google I took the lowest salary
of anyone any of the offers that I had
because I wanted to work in a specific
job at Google I didn’t care what job it
was actually I just cared that it was at
Google and I would surround myself by
amazing people that was the first lesson
that I learned just like go to where the
people are short term long term trade
offs just go to where the people are
being at Google and going to Corp dev
was an interesting move because I was
like I want to be in her startups again
I learned a lot about startups in school
but I want to be back in the startup
world and then 2008 happened and I’m not
sure how many people remember 2008 in
this room the economy kind of went to
crap I remember looking at my boss and
being like okay so like can we buy this
company he’s like nope can we buy this
company nope one of them and I won’t
even name the name but it was really
interesting company ended up doing
really well I wish we had purchased it
but the thing is he was like we’re
actually not gonna do many deals now you
should probably just go golfing and for
like a 20-something year old thinking to
themselves like I want to make a
difference in the world and your boss is
telling you to go golfing like maybe I
should just leave so I did and I
actually there’s a chapter in between
Google and and bourbon that not many
people know about but I ended up joining
a start-up of some ex-google folks
called next stop hugely transformational
for me because it’s where I cut my teeth
learning to program learning to build a
site and everything
I learned in that year at next stop
before starting bourbon was actually
like it made me ready to go do bourbon
so again every move you think needs to
be perfect it turns out just like
surround yourself by great people where
you can learn the most and great things
will happen but I didn’t go golfing and
that’s rule number two now I never know
I would be able to survive for 40 years
so I I call myself like a blind man
riding on the back of a blind tiger and
for 20 years
survived to today still surviving but we
want to make this company lost 102 years
so we finished only 60 years there are
86 years ago so you started in 1999 yeah
because in China everybody wanted to be
make company for last a hundred years
that this become a slogan nobody take it
seriously so if you want if you want to
give you know the KPI to your people
should be very specific then people know
it’s a series 102 years that we were boy
in 1999 alibaba’s who last a century we
had one year and this century want to
have a 100 years next century one year
102 cross three centuries so very
specific is a within our company we
never talk to your succeed successful
not because we think they’re 86 years
next to 86 years there are many chances
they fail so that’s why we say don’t
talk about your successful 86 years
later we’ll talk about it and this is
something we know how to make this thing
happen so I think generally I’m a
positive but next two to three years
maybe have problems because they were
Anti Corruption this but think about
anti-corruption and rule by law is
laying a great foundation for the market
common economy you don’t want to go to
business by bribery you don’t want to
have an unfair environment the market
coming is by rule by law and market
economy is about a clear transparent and
fair and I think this year does here bad
but this is why we need entrepreneurs
ship this is why we need that the
business to drive the economy so I’m a
positive and people when people worry
I’m happy when people do happy I start
to worry
because and I don’t worry about the
things the president is worried about
worry about the things that nobody worry
about and this is the opportunity so I’m
positive because I’m not I’m not I’m
positive but I’m not stupid I know do we
have a problems but you have to solve
the problems later by little and for
just a minute I’d like for the moment to
have you have you pretend I’ve made you
a great offer and I’ve told you that you
could pick any one of your classmates
and you now know each other probably
pretty well after being here for a while
you can think you have 24 hours to think
it over and you can pick any one of your
classmates and you get 10% of their
earnings for the rest of their lives I
ask you what goes through your mind in
determining which one of those you would
pick you can’t pick the one with the
richest father that doesn’t count I mean
you’ve got to got to do this on merit
but you probably wouldn’t pick a person
against the highest grades in the class
I mean that nothing wrong with getting
highest grades in the class but that
that isn’t going to be the quality that
that sets apart a big winner from the
rest of the pack think about who you
would pick and why and I think you’ll
find when you get through you’ll pick
some individual you’ve all got the
ability you wouldn’t be here otherwise
you’ve all got the energy I mean you’ve
got you know the initiative is here the
intelligence is here but some of your
going to be bigger winners and others
and it gets down to a bunch of qualities
that interestingly enough are self-made
I mean it’s not how tall you are is not
whether you can kick a football 60 yards
is not whether you can run the hundred
yard dash in ten seconds whether you’re
the best looking person in the room it’s
a whole bunch of qualities that really
come out of Ben Franklin or the boy
scout coders or whatever it may be I
mean it’s it’s it’s integrity is honesty
its generosity it’s being willing to do
more than your share it’s it’s just all
those qualities that are self selected
and then if you look on the other side
of the ledger because there’s always a
catch to these you
free gifts and Junie joke so you also
have to and this is the fun part you
also have to sell short one of the your
classmates and pay 10% of what they do
so what do you think is going to do the
worst in the class this is way more fun
yeah and think about it again and again
it isn’t the pit isn’t the person with
the lowest grades or anything of the
sort
it’s the person who just doesn’t shape
up in the character Department we look
for three things when we hire people we
look for intelligence we look for an for
initiative or energy and we look for
integrity and if they don’t have the
ladder
the first tool will kill you because if
you’re going to get somebody without
than energetic so it’s that third
quality but everything about that
quality is your choice you know you you
can’t change the way you are wired much
but you can change a lot of what you do
with that wiring when you write down the
qualities of that person that you’d like
to buy to ten percent of look at that
list and ask yourself is there anything
on my list I couldn’t do the answer is
there aren’t there won’t be and when
you’re looking a person yourself short
and you look at those qualities that you
don’t like if you see any of those in
yourself he get tells them whatever it
may be selfishness you can get rid of
that I mean that is not ordained and if
you follow that yeah and then Franklin
did this and my old boss pentagram did
this of early ages and their young teens
they’d just been grant looked around and
he said who do I hire you know and he
wanted to be admired himself and he said
you know why do I admire these other
people and he said if I admire them for
these reasons maybe other people will
admire me if I behave in a similar
manner and he and he decided what kind
of a person he wanted to be and if you
follow that at the end you’ll be the
person you want to buy 10% off I mean
that’s the goal in the end and it’s it’s
something that’s achievable by by
everybody in this room learning to tell
a story is critically important because
that’s how the money works the money
flows as a function of the stories and
what are the critical things I would
incur
learn that’s way more important
important in my world than anything else
is how to ask a question because you
want to have the person comfortably
telling you what he thinks is important
so that you get for a long time we don’t
understand the product or the market
while we’re listening so we have learned
to string questions in a way that
provides the entrepreneur with a way to
explain what he wants to do how long
it’s going to take who the competition
is how much money he needs without
feeling threatening for many of the
investments we’ve made we didn’t
understand the answers but we constantly work on developing the questions
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