00:00What are you seeing in the private markets in certain isolated instances that maybe reflect some anxiety that we're getting in the public markets?
00:07Well, I'm old enough that I lived through the last bubble, Caroline, and history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
00:14And there's definitely some rhyming going on, like, man, the valuations are high, and they're high early.
00:20The thing that's different is, my goodness, is there galactic level growth in these startups.
00:27The demand is amazing, and it sort of started at the model level and then went to infrastructure.
00:37The app-level companies are absolutely ripping now, and so it's an interesting time.
00:42It's different than 99.
00:43How are you, therefore, setting up as you're helping CEOs become from startup to scale-up mindset in 11 Labs, for example,
00:50which I hear time and time again getting adopted, even Jensen Wang saying how much he's loving that particular product.
00:54That's a CEO you're helping navigate.
00:56What do you say to them in these moments?
01:00So if I were a founder and I were worried it were a bubble, I would do a couple of things.
01:06First thing I would do is, in my next round, I would take a little bit of money off the table.
01:11The second thing I would do is I would raise a lot more than I planned, because if it is a bubble and it dips and it eventually comes back,
01:17you want enough to last through.
01:19Those would be the two plays.
01:202021 mindset, a little bit.
01:21A little bit, yeah.
01:22A lot of those companies in 2021, a lot of great companies just didn't kind of make it out.
01:25They didn't raise enough.
01:26They didn't make it through.
01:27And if you look at 99 or the bubble era, some good companies came out of there.
01:33Google came out of there.
01:34Amazon came out of there.
01:35Salesforce.com came out of there.
01:38And so even if the valuations are really inflated, if you can find some amazing founders,
01:43I mean, there's going to be a lot more than three that come out of this one.
01:47There's a lot more than three companies trying to get in on each other's space as well.
01:52And this is where kind of marketing comes in.
01:53And I want your brain space as someone who's helped led HubSpot, founded it.
01:57But also you've got this great new book out.
02:00I'm no deadhead, but I know many people are.
02:02You are a quintessential deadhead.
02:03You've loved all things about the Grateful Dead.
02:05But you think we should look at the Grateful Dead as a marketing model as well.
02:08What is it about community?
02:10What is it about?
02:11I'm sure it's not about bootlegging music that you think is the thing to repeat.
02:15Absolutely.
02:15There's so much founders can learn from Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.
02:18First of all, Garcia was like the ultimate and original Silicon Valley founder.
02:25Founded in Palo Alto, built an amazing company.
02:28He did a lot of interesting marketing things that all the founders I coach are trying to do.
02:32First thing he did was he kind of created a whole category around this thing called jam bands
02:37that lots of people follow him about.
02:38Hard to do.
02:40Second thing he did is he didn't use traditional ways to market his product,
02:43like radio stations and albums.
02:45He let people come in with all their equipment and record the concerts and trade tapes.
02:49He went, he was like the first viral marketer in Silicon Valley.
02:53The third thing he did that I think is quite remarkable is he didn't like that Ticketmaster
02:58and the scalpers made all the money and inflated the prices for his customers.
03:03So he disinformated those two layers and he said we're going to start a ticketing company
03:08and we're going to sell tickets directly to customers.
03:10We're going to cut out Ticketmaster and all the scalpers.
03:12So he fought in a very original way.
03:14He was a radically first principles founder.
03:17He rhymes a lot with Jensen Huang, rhymes a lot with Sam Allman, rhymes a lot with Steve Jobs.
03:22What's interesting, and I'm going to keep going with this Grateful Dead analogy because I love it,
03:29disbanded in 1995 after the passing of Jerry Garcia.
03:33And there's been different combinations since Dead & Co.
03:36We see some artistic differences.
03:39Dare I say it, there's a few artistic differences at Sequoia at the moment.
03:43And invention more broadly.
03:44You've been at Sequoia for a year.
03:45There's been a lot of change at the top.
03:46How are you seeing the venture community set up for this moment?
03:50What can they learn from Grateful Dead and from entrepreneurialism in this moment?
03:53I think Sequoia is particularly well set up at the moment.
03:56The two new leaders are fantastic.
03:58They've been there a long time.
03:59They have amazing track records.
04:01And I think of the stack as the hardware, the labs, the infrastructure, the apps.
04:06Sequoia is well positioned with amazing investments across all of them,
04:09particularly at the app level and particularly here in New York City.
04:12Last night, I had dinner with the CEO of Profound,
04:15terrific company that does not SEO, but like SEO for ChatGPT and Gemini.
04:21And the founder of Rogo, fantastic CEO.
04:25Rogo is like AI for investment bankers.
04:28I think this is emblematic of what's going on.
04:30The app layer is starting to pop.
04:31And Sequoia is in a lot of these things.
04:33Other great companies in New York.
04:34Basis is selling to accountants.
04:36You've got Crosby and Harvey selling to lawyers.
04:40New York is actually having a moment in AI.
04:42And it's kind of at that app level.
04:44The app level is where perhaps the productivity really starts to reign in.
04:48That is what the proof point is needed, many would say, for the market.
04:51When actually you and I are not just using it for our own personal life,
04:55but see productivity go up and to the right.
04:56And companies start doubling down on the purchase of these applications.
05:00When does that show up?
05:01When do we stop even talking about an AI bubble?
05:04Because we see the productivity.
05:05Well, there's just giant demand in galactic growth.
05:10One of the interesting things about all these founders is I'm like, well,
05:13you're certainly going to grow with less people, right?
05:16And they say, well, actually, no, we're hiring, really hiring aggressively.
05:20And so like this, some people are like, AI is going to make humans unnecessary.
05:25They're like, no, we're going to make users unstoppable.
05:28And that's sort of the mindset across most of these AI startups.
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