Investing in Potential with Ali Partovi You&AI

The most important decisions are the people decisions. And the single most important thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to hire people smarter than yourself and just to be obsessive about holding a high bar and, you know, surrounding yourself with incredible people. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Welcome to today's episode of You and AI. Today I'm joined by Ali Partovi, a visionary entrepreneur, investor, and technologist. He was an investor in some of the most iconic companies in Silicon Valley— Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, Zappos, just to name a few. He's also the co-founder of Code.org and recently the CEO of Neo. A startup accelerator and VC that is taking Silicon Valley by storm and has raised over $320 million for their recent fund. Hello, how are you today?

I'm awesome. So great to see you, Thierry.

So great to see you too. Where are you dialing in from?

Oh, just my home in the Bay Area in California.

Great. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. We're so excited that you've come on You and AI as a guest. Would love to just start talking about how you even got started in investment in the first place. Yeah.

Well, for me, it's been a long journey, but what I'd say, I love mentoring and I love relationships. And so for me, investing really emerged as the business model for mentoring. And what I mean by that is after I sold my own first startup when I was 26, I was still young and I had friends who were starting companies and I had made some money myself, but I just enjoyed meeting with friends who were founders and giving them advice. And once in a while I would, you know, take on a regular weekly meeting with somebody to advise them. And then I started realizing if I'm spending my time with somebody, I might as well also invest. And so for me, investing was more about aligning my incentives with the people that I was already trying to spend time with and helping as a mentor.

And you know what, doing a lot of research on you, I definitely found the common thread, which seems to be people with you. And I can't wait to break that down a little bit further. so unique and so different to so many investors that I speak to in the Bay Area. I'd love to just take a second to kind of frame, I mean, you were early stage in Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, and so many others. How did you even come across them? What are some of your favorite stories on how you found those founders? How did you know to invest in them? Yeah, I would love just to understand that because I can only imagine the dot-com boom, you know, you being in the heart of all of that, you must have seen so many different things. So how did you find those founders? How did you know to invest in them? How'd that come about? Sure.

First of all, I have to be clear that I was early in Facebook and Dropbox. Uber, definitely not early. And Airbnb, I'd say medium early. But there are other companies that are maybe not quite as big household names, but StubHub and Zappos, early investor in those. So in general, I would say I don't have a I'd say a lot of my investing stories are actually stories about somewhat about being an idiot, but then getting lucky in one way or another. So, you know, like when, when I first met Brian Chesky from Airbnb, I wasn't even there to meet him. I was having dinner with somebody, having lunch with somebody else.

Mm-hmm.

And Brian was at the next table over and somehow ended up in conversation with us. And I was trying actually to kind of like end the sidebar with Brian to focus on the person I was having lunch with, which in hindsight, obviously had I realized how big Airbnb would be, you would think that meeting Brian Chesky was more important, but how could one know? And I really was impressed with him personally and with the idea, but I just wasn't in the mindset of thinking that I'm here to hear this person's pitch. So I didn't follow up on that encounter. And it wasn't until a year or two later that I invested in Airbnb. But I'd say the common theme in terms of where I successfully ended up having connections to companies really has to do with this cycle of helping build teams. The age-old adage for business was that business is about location, location, location. That's relevant if you're building a retail business, like if you're for a restaurant or a gas station or boutique, On the internet and in technology, it's people, people, people. And, and for me, building my own first startup, I was obsessed with trying to hire people smarter than myself. And guess what, Tiaran? Many of those smart people went on to start amazing things of their own. One of them was Max Levchin, who went on to start PayPal.

Wow.

And Scott Bannister, who went on to start Ironport. And I could go on and on with the list, but just having built an awesome team around our own startup, It made me become aware that, you know, this wasn't the only great team, but to just really spend time trying to learn who else was smart and doing great things and follow people and often to just help people authentically with whatever they needed help with. So I actually didn't invest in PayPal, but I took a number of calls with Reed and Luke in the early PayPal days to give them strategic advice and, you know, without any like expectation of something in return.

Yeah.

That's just what I was doing when I was in my mid-20s. And once in a while, these things led to a great investment opportunity.

Wow. Okay. So people at the core of it. I'm sure through your time in the dot-com boom, there was many different pitches like Brian originally that came across your table that you didn't end up investing. Do you ever kick yourself on lost opportunities? How can you be around all of this opportunity and sometimes not kick yourself and think about The, the what could have been, even though you've already had so much success?

Yeah, I, I have way more mistakes and failures than success. So yeah, I'd be kicking myself all day long if I was focusing on that. Yeah, for sure. But you know, the, sometimes it's something that I did wrong or sometimes it's just, you know, something I didn't see or, but sometimes it's, there's also cases where I wanted to invest and I couldn't get allocation or so on. Especially now that I manage a fund, that's a bigger deal because like investing as an individual is a much smaller check where there's almost never a difficulty getting room to invest. Whereas as a fund, there's often only room for one fund or maybe 2 funds. And so there's a real sense of exclusivity that you have to kind of figure out. But on the whole, I think what's at least through my whole career, been wonderful about the tech industry is that there's always a tomorrow, whatever you're upset about and whatever you missed out on, whatever mistake you made, you know, things generally speaking are getting better over time and there's more opportunity ahead anyway.

Yeah.

So I'd say I'd like to think that I generally don't dwell on the missed opportunities or the mistakes, keep looking forward to doing better work, and hopefully my best days are still ahead of me.

And you know what? The work you have done and the opportunities that you have brought to the table have been a part of certainly more success than most people could ever ask for in a lifetime. So on that, your brother and you both co-founded Code.org. Would love to learn a little bit more about Code.org. How did that come about? Why education?

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Often easier to see, you know, to connect the dots looking backwards. First, I have to say, Code.org is really Hadi's brainchild, and my biggest role there was just as his, you know, kind of source of encouragement and support and wanting to help however I could. But it was after Hadi and I ran a startup together. This was my second startup, and it was also his second startup. And after we sold this company, we both had some downtime. And he started saying, like, during this downtime, a side project he'd like to do is something to promote computer science education and try to build a movement around making computer science standard curriculum for, you know, K through 12 schools. And he was the one driving it. Education has always been near and dear to both of our hearts. Our dad was a professor, and not just a professor, but a founder of multiple universities in Iran, we grew up. And Hadi and I were both tutors during high school, helping, you know, like we earned money or helped friends study for courses. We were both section leaders in college. And when I was graduating from college, I remember thinking one day I'd want to be a high school teacher if, you know, if I can fit that into all my other ambitions. So I've always loved education. I've always loved kids. And with CS education, there's this glaring glaring gap where if you look at all the people— this is 10 years ago— all the people who are succeeding in American business, it was all related to technology. And almost all of them had the same story where they were introduced to coding at a young age, but not by their school, by their parents. Why? Because it's not offered in school. And so to this question of why are, you know, this thing that clearly seems to be the common link between not just Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, but everyone successful in tech had this basically privilege that should be available to everyone. And it really felt both like unfair, but also a bit backwards because I learned to code when I was 8 or 9 from my parents. But that was like decades ago. Why isn't it that today it's still about somebody having like introduction to this incredible skill through their parents. What's the point of public education if it's not to give you access to the skills that'll be critical for you? So yeah, so that was the motivation. And like I said, it's really Hadi's organization.

Yeah.

And my biggest role was just always pushing him to think bigger and aim higher and not be afraid of taking on the most ambitious version of the vision. And it's incredible what Code.org has accomplished. You know, more than 100 million people now are learning computer science in class, in school, all the— more than 100 countries. And, and an entire generation of, of children all around the world are gonna have the skills and the, like, mode of thinking that will make them better prepared for, for the future because of it.

Wow, what a beautiful initiative. And the impact— I mean, it's not like you're just onboarding 10 to 20 children at a time, like millions and millions of children will be affected of this, of this around the world, which is phenomenal. So your brother and you are extremely close. That is also a rare connection. What's it like working with your brother and how did you, did you both get started around the same time? Would love to unpack that for a second. And, you know, somebody who has a sister in another country, I, I miss the, you know, I'm here at the moment in Australia. I miss being around her. I would kill to work with her. But I've never been able to push her on the journey to come to the US with me, um, for so many different reasons. So how did that come about? about how did you both end up in, in technology together?

Yeah, I would say we've always been super close. If anything, like coming together was not for tech, it was more like we were together the whole time. But the second half of our lives, I'd say our paths have been more like intertwining in different ways. But we grew up in Iran and were pretty much joined at the hip most of our childhood. And I don't mean literally, but like we would go everywhere together.

Yeah.

Like we would read the same books together. So if you, you know, if I could transport you back to when Hadi and I were 8 years old, you'd probably see us like a family gathering where everyone else is having fun and we're in some corner sitting side by side reading the same book at the same time. So we'd basically like wait for each other to turn the page so that we could kind of stay on the same Spot. We, yeah, so we played piano duets together. So we were just doing all sorts of things together. And part of that also included learning to code. And I didn't know that, I guess there's a word now, pair programming is a term for it.

Okay.

We were pair programming when we were 9 years old, just because, you know, like I'd think of creating something and the first person I would talk to about it would be Hadi. And Then we would figure out how to build it together. And if I made a mistake, he'd help fix it. Or if he made a mistake, I'd help fix it. So yes, from childhood through high school, our summer jobs, we were software engineers generally working at the same place. And through college, we're pretty connected.

Yeah.

And after college, things shifted where I left my job at a big tech company to start a startup. And where I would say we really supported each other was he stayed in a stable job that was doing really, really well, which gave me the courage to know that even if I fuck up and like somehow fail, he would have the stability to at least like help take care of our parents. And, you know, essentially a sense that I could be more risky because he's being a bit more safe. And so that definitely gave me some courage in doing my first startup. Plus, he actually also helped. Like, in the early days, I would be sending it engineering tasks and be like, can you help write this code? We need this by tomorrow AM. And he would do it at like 2 AM after his, you know, while doing his other job. And then after I sold my company, which was very successful.

Yeah.

Now I had sold my company to Microsoft. He quit his job and started a startup. And so we were doing different startups. But I would say very much kind of inspired and helped by each other's success.

So I'd like to take a minute on that, right? Because you have been an entrepreneur and an investor and a mentor, what did you learn being an entrepreneur first that has helped you segue into investing in entrepreneurs and then now segue into the next part of this segment where we're going to talk about what you're doing with Neo?

Yeah. So, I mean, I could tell you 2 lessons. If there's one lesson, by far the most important thing is what I alluded already already, it's about people. And the most important decisions are the people decisions. And the single most important thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to hire people smarter than yourself.

Yeah.

And just to be obsessive about holding a high bar and surrounding yourself with incredible people. And when I was a startup founder myself, at first I didn't quite get this. especially in my case, I had gone to a top university. I was a high-performing student. I thought I'm brilliant, therefore I'll figure everything out. And this was a form of hubris. And I realized with time that the true superpower is to spot other people who are smarter than me, or at least who have the potential to be greater than me, and to believe in that and to bet on them and to— help them thrive, essentially.

Yeah.

And it takes a sort of humility and, and, you know, kind of caring more about other people that, that I didn't have when I was, when I was younger. The second thing I would say, Tiarnan, is— so if the first is bet on people and learn how to spot incredible people and really bet on them and trust in them, the second I would say is about overcoming fear and Hmm. Not shying away from risk, and especially first-time founders, I think, are often worried about, you know, we're all afraid of failure, and so the natural inclination is, given a choice of a dangerous path and a safe path, most people kind of want to go towards a safe path, whereas in the startup world, each time you do that, you're also reducing reward, you know, minimizing risk minimizes reward. In the startup world, I think you need to maximize reward, which often means choose the dangerous path. And it's much more easily said than done. Actually do that takes overcoming, you know, psychological or biological type instincts that, you know, that you have to suppress the feeling of fear. But it really comes down to if you, if you are, you know, trying to find a way to avoid risk, you're basically aiming lower than your potential. And, you know, and where these 2 lessons intersect is that the person who's doing the most ambitious things, the person who's doing tasks that might fail, actually attracts more smart people to them, you know, because the key to hiring people smarter than yourself, if you're building a team, is to show that you have courage and that you're tackling big problems worthy of tackling, things that could change the world, et cetera, that's what inspires people to wanna join you. And if you're— and so you might actually reduce risk, but in the form of attracting really brilliant people to wanna help you with your mission.

How do you help founders overcome hiring people that are maybe perceived to be smarter or have a different skillset, especially when you're told you need to be the leader or the visionary or the, you know, how do you help founders on that journey? quite often come across a few founders that I, you know, I can think of top of mind who have really struggled with that over the years. You know, in their mind, it's seen as a weakness sometimes kind of hiring someone who might be a better coder than you, who might have a stronger background or might even have a PhD if you don't have one. So how do you coach them through that process?

Yeah, it's, well, for starters, I would say simply declaring that it's the goal helps, you know. So if you're conscious that you want a culture where everyone is trying to hire people smarter than themselves. So it's not just the CEO, but, you know, you want to hire people smarter than yourself and then help them hire people smarter than themselves. You know, that's how you really level up. Now, by the way, this is more easily said than done for anyone because a smart person wants to work for someone that inspires them and that they think they can learn from. So it's a goal. It may not actually be always achievable, but at least you should, I'd say, set the bar as high as you can and, you know, and aim for it. But yeah, I guess I'd say simply by stating it means it's not an admission of weakness that someone else out there is better than me. It's more aspirational. How I help founders with it is at every level, there's sourcing, There's interviewing, there's closing, and at every level of that, most of my career I personally helped with, and now with Neo, we institutionally help. So we have a whole database of cracked software engineers from 8 years of interviewing undergraduates since 2017 now. And so we have a sense of thousands of different profiles of who the, who the top software engineers to have graduated from American North American universities over the last almost decade. So that's the sourcing side. We do a lot of screening and interviewing of talent and refer them to startups. And then we help with closing. I mean, just this past week, I've taken multiple calls with candidates to help convince them to join startups in our portfolio. Now, the way I approach those calls, I'm not there as a closer.

Yeah.

I'd rather start— take it as the start of a new relationship. where it might be a different, you know, the young person, the candidate I'm meeting themselves might someday be a startup founder and, you know, lifelong relationship for me. So I present it more as helping them make the decision that's best for them.

Yeah.

Maybe that's to join the startup in my portfolio, but if not, I'll still try to be as helpful to them as possible. But when, when, when There's an early-stage company, like 3, 5, 6 people, every single candidate really matters. And so I spend many hours a week on phone calls with those candidates for those early-stage companies to help, you know, move the needle a little bit.

So I'd love to take the opportunity now to dive into Neo. So firstly, congratulations, you just closed $320 million.

Thank you. Wow.

Would love to know more about the vision behind NEO. How did it get started? What's the vision? Again, education seems to be pulling through. So yeah, what is the vision for NEO and how did it get started?

That's very insightful of you saying the theme of education pulling through. I view NEO as an educational institution in a sense. And I tell my whole team this, that the real goal is to build an enduring institution that's here 100 years from now. And of course, the technology might change dramatically between now and then, but I believe that things that won't change are the importance of people and the relevance of mentorship and community. And, you know, mentorship can go both directions. It doesn't mean that the older, wiser person is mentoring the younger one. I learn from young people every day. But bringing together exceptional people so they can learn from each other is, I'd say, the hallmark of what all great educational institutions do. And for us, that's the North Star. We consider ourselves a mentorship community. Investing, we think of as the business model of that. How do you make a business model that creates a sustainable institution and maximizes the you know, the value from bringing together lots of really smart people. But the true vision and North Star is around future generations of, you know, people who are successful in tech, helping the next generation and, you know, helping them learn from their mistakes and helping them maximize their potential. So in this context, a lot of what we do has this educational element. Now, the way NEO started, it started with really drawing from some of my personal stories of having bet on a young recent grad who started a startup and then helping them hire early employees. And oftentimes the person that my brother or I referred to join early Facebook—

Yeah.

Connected us to someone else who was starting another startup, who was starting Dropbox. And the person that we convinced to join Dropbox later left to start their own startup that we invested in. And a lot of the deals I've invested in follow this kind of continuous chain that you can trace all the way back to somebody a decade ago that I introduced to something. And, but this was like work that I was doing by myself or with my brother. I wanted to institutionalize this. What if you could build an institution that could systematically identify the highest potential people at a young age, meaning when they're still in college, and systematically make introductions to help them build out their own networks and systematically support them to help them maximize their potential. And how does that relate to investing? There's a few different ways, but the starting point was this belief that you can identify exceptional talent when they're still in college and forecast who will become—

Mm-hmm.

the future tech billionaires. What's been amazing, Tiaran, is it's only been 7 and a half years since this started, and I can definitively say this conceit that you can identify future tech leaders when they're still in college, we've crushed that. It's an embarrassing of riches how many of the college students that we picked out in 2017 or 2018 or 2020 or 2022 are now leaders of AI companies today. And, and so that, you know, when I started it, I had some insecurity of, is this even possible? Am I going to be good at this?

Yeah.

Can anyone build this institutionally? Whereas now I feel like, you know, it's like case closed. Now, how to build an investment firm around that is still, I would say, a work in progress. We've done really well as investors and, you know, extremely pleased with our returns, but There's a lot of room to do even better. So with, with the different names of companies, Cursor, we were the first investor in.

Yeah. Wow.

But other companies started by Neo Scholars like Cognition, Pika, we were not the first investor. We, we, or we, or we were in the first round, but didn't get the full allocation that we would want. Discovery is another one and Spur. There's many others. And What I would say is we've done an— I would give us an absolute A+, whatever grade higher than A+ there might be, at identifying superstar talent. And then I would give us a B+ in investing in the amazing things that they start. Sometimes it's because of failure on our part. Sometimes it's because of, you know, maybe decision on their part. But if we could turn that second one into an A+, I think we would be— the most successful investment firm in the tech industry. That's an audacious statement, but if you look at the, you know, look at the people, I don't think it's crazy to say that. So what's inspiring for my team and me is that potential that, you know, may not be achievable, but at least is something worth striving for.

So we can understand a little bit further, you have a few different programs. Recently, you have your accelerator program. Would love you to start. How often does your accelerator run? How many applicants do you take in? And how do you select them?

Sure, yeah. And just to prevent confusion, there are 2 programs. The accelerator program is for startups. Often it's first-time founders a few years out of college. The other program is the Neo Scholars Program, which is for college students who don't have a startup, and it's mentorship and community. Both programs offer mentorship and community, but the, The Scholars Program is how we started and doesn't have a transactional, like, funding component. There's nothing to fund yet. It's a person.

Yeah.

The Accelerator is— yeah, so both programs are once a year, and both programs are quite small. So 20 to 30 people in the Scholars Program and 20 companies for the Accelerator. So it's— I'd say we've, you know, the concept is definitely built on the learnings and inspirations from other great, you know, programs that have been, you know, that were built before us. The most important of which is the idea of a cohort system, meaning like everybody starts at the same time and ends at the same time. And that creates the feeling of community. And, but where I would say it's pretty unique is, first of all, our cohort is really small and incredibly selective. So about 20 startups, which means a total of like 40 to 50 people. And the other very unique thing is the first month of the program is almost a full month-long immersive bootcamp somewhere remote. So Sunriver, Oregon is where the program is going to be this summer, where every startup gets their own house and gets to live under the same roof with each other.

Yeah.

And then there's a shared working space where all the founders, you know, work side by side. During the day or the night, and different mentors and speakers fly in to spend a few nights and to, you know, to visit and to do office hours and so on. Myself, as well as the primary mentors, are there for the whole duration so that we're— we get to know everyone extremely well. But really, I'd say a lot of this is inspired by college. I mentioned, you know, like, as you said, it's— there's a theme like education The, you know, the first month of college is such an immersive experience for anyone who's, you know, who's gone through it because you're meeting all these people and developing new relationships, you know, every hour almost, and doing these, you know, experiences with people that often lead to lifelong relationships. You know, I am still very much friends with people I met in the first week of college. And we create a similar kind of feeling of a—

Yeah.

like an undergraduate campus, but for a very tight and highly selective group of people. And so, and it's hard to do that if you're only showing up together once a week in a place. Living near each other and having meals together and all the experiences together for an immersive period is much more effective. So yeah, so it's—

Yeah.

We've done it for 3 years now. We'll see where it goes, but it's something that I wish I could be young again and be a founder again to go through it myself. It's definitely the nirvana for nerds in a way that we're building, and I kind of wish I could experience it myself.

Oh, I love that. And it's so nice to create an experience that is also rooted in the fact that people can bond together. That time is so valuable. I mean, now that a lot of organizations are fully remote, I'm sure that time coming together at the start is really important. So we'd love to talk a little bit about the mentor program because It's not a small mentor program. You've brought in some of the biggest names in tech, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Charles Sim, Russell Kaplan. I mean, so many more names I could pretty much just name drop for the next 20 minutes. How did you get them involved? And for the, you know, for those 20 companies in the program and the scholars, like it must be so amazing for them to meet some of, I'm thinking their idols in the tech space.

Yes, my idols as well.

Yeah, mine too.

Now, I want to be really clear. The names you just cited are— they've all— they're all connected to NEO. All of those have been at events in the last 6 months with NEO founders and NEO scholars. We don't call those mentors though, because generally each one of those is participating in some way, but usually those are like coming in for a few hours. to give a talk, spend some one-on-one time or small group time, but they're not compensated by us and they're not like on call for anyone to book time or to do like regular weekly check-ins. The group that we call mentors, you know, with a capital M, are compensated by us. It, you know, it's not necessarily a full-time job. It might be 5 to 10 hours a week or even 2 or 3 hours a week.

Yeah.

But they have like expectations of time commitment where they have a Calendly and anyone can book time with them. They do office hours, they, you know, visit the bootcamp that I mentioned and they consider it a real like commitment in their life that I mentor startups for Neo. I don't think any of the names you just cited, you know, view it that way. So the truly tech icon, you know, gods and goddesses like Sam Altman or Satya or Sheryl, I think for them, the promise of being close to Neo is just a chance to meet somebody who might be tomorrow's, you know, tomorrow's tech leader and to meet them when they're young and both to help them and maybe learn something from them. And, you know, for the same reason it excites me to meet a college student that I think this person might be one day bigger than myself. I think probably excites anyone. Yeah. So these, the sort of that tier of people are involved. But then the tier that our mentors are still also quite impressive. So for example, Kyle Parish, head of sales of Figma, is one of our mentors. Fazl Qadrosahi, the CTO of Notion, is one of our mentors. People who've led engineering at different companies or head of brand Notion or head of growth at Webflow. Currently the president at Cognition, Russell Kaplan, who was previously a Neo Scholar himself. So there's a range of people both from AI and from, you know, other tech companies who are not just giving a talk but are like on call to mentor our startups. Another one actually is Shyamal Anadkat, who is head of startup relations for OpenAI. So his day job is helping startups for OpenAI. for all the startups, you know, I think he's head of the team there, but he has a special relationship just for the NEO startups. And I'd say part of what makes this work is because it's not a full-time commitment, each of these people can still do their main identity, which, you know, is what their top priority is. And because our program is so small, they can be available because it's not going to be like a constant barrage of dozens of companies every week reaching out to them. It'll be 1 or 2 a week, and each one is going to be an experience that hopefully that they'll enjoy and learn something from. And, you know, serving as a mentor is exciting, it's fun, and they can get like a little hit of that each week, you know, in small doses.

Wow. Well, it's no wonder you were inundated with applications for your accelerator recently. How do you How do you sift through that many ideas and organizations that are trying to fight for your attention to get into a program like this?

Yeah, it's a tough question. And each year we're looking at like, what could we do better? Because it's, I certainly wouldn't pretend that we have it perfect. We probably could, there's probably companies we missed that we, or that we didn't move fast enough on that we should have accepted. And there's probably ways we could save time on it as well. The key thing I'd say that's different from our approach, as far as I know from others, it goes back to this emphasis on people. So we probably put the highest importance on the reference checks and on the videos from founders. The videos is a chance to watch the person speaking for 1 minute.

Yeah.

It might be 2 founders speaking or just 1 founder speaking. But getting a sense for, do we click with this person? Do they seem impressive? Between, you know, if you just look at their resume and their experience or their whatever, their credentials, it's much harder to get a real sense of the person. So the video is really an important aspect of feeling like, you know, just there's an intangible feeling of whether it's somebody that you're inspired by. But then the references—

Yeah.

By far, You know, anybody can make, I suppose, one good video of themselves talking, but references represent somebody that has known your work, maybe worked with you for years or months at least, vouching for your work. That person will know much more than anything I could glean from a video or a resume or a whole interview, right?

Yeah.

And so why not try to get that data from someone who has months or years of experience. Now, it's a real difference though. Like, most people use references as a confirmatory final step. Like, let's first decide who we want and then double-check with a reference, are we sure? Or like, see if any problem comes up. Whereas for us, references are like part of the first pass, which—

Yeah.

Which means a lot more effort for all the applicants. They have to go and ask people, do you mind writing a reference for me? And we get 2 references for each founder. So if you have 3 co-founders, that's 6 references. But for us, when I talk about investing in people, this is very much putting our money where our mouth is. Like, we'll spend time reading all those, and that's our best window into who are these people. That's more important than like, what's the idea? And even if we look at the—

Yeah.

When we look at the idea, we're trying to decide what does this say about the people? And so we're not trying to decide, oh, this is an idea we're backing, or this is an industry we want to invest in. These are people we want to invest in.

Yeah. And so talking about investing, I was reading a recent article and they were talking about some of your A-list— I'm going to call them tech A-listers that are investors. Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman were all mentioned, and among so many more other names. Again, how do you manage marquee investors like that with, you know, some of the unknown founders that are just coming up? I'm sure there's, there's quite a big gap there just in, in how they present themselves. So what's that been like kind of blending that? And yeah, how is your strategy getting them on board? I'm sure you've known many of them for a long time.

Well, first of all, Thierry, I should probably ask you the question and get some lessons from you since I think you're quite good at this yourself. But I guess I'd say It's been a journey and it's not like day one, all of those names were part of it. Some of them were part of it from the very beginning. You know, Reid Hoffman was actually like, if not the first, certainly one of the very first people to commit to backing Neo and his support helped get other people interested and so on. But I, you know, I owe a tremendous amount to him and I guess I hadn't thought of it this way, but I mentioned earlier on this, on this conversation how how I had been on a number of calls with Reid and Luke in the early days of PayPal. So karma sometimes works out 25 years later.

Yeah.

But in general, I guess I would say I have always taken an extremely long-term approach to NEO. So my main answer to what you're asking is I didn't say, oh, I must get these super famous names as fast as possible. I thought of it more as I want to earn the Earn that by showing, you know, not just by promising. And so the the really hard work that takes some time is this aspect of finding the great young people, especially the college students, and and then the patience of you know helping and mentoring them and seeing what they accomplish. And I'd say as those stories have played out, more and more of the you know, famous folks have noticed and taken interest. So, you know, but it's, it was a conscious decision for us not to put the spotlight on our celebrity investors in the early days. So I just told you Reed was one of our first checks. We didn't announce his involvement in the company until 2023, which was, you know, a good 6 years later.

Wow.

And, and this was a conscious decision of, We want to put the focus on the programs we're doing, on the college students or the young founders that we're helping, and get to where these things can stand on their own legs, and then unveil some of this other support. So, you know, I didn't want NEO's identity to be kind of entirely defined by one or two famous people who are involved. I wanted its identity to be based on the young people involved and, you know, the aspirational aspect of, Someone wanting to follow in their footsteps.

You know, the more I hear you keep describing Neo, the more I just keep thinking of the one word, you're mission-driven. And I know like everybody says they're a mission-driven company, but you're truly living the essence of being mission-driven.

I appreciate that.

So on that, go back. You are. It's phenomenal to hear you speak and to see the passion. It's no wonder, you know, whether it's the tech A-listers that want to just be involved through to the mentors you've been able to recruit through to the investors that are turning and the students that you're able to attract, coach, and mentor, and now the companies that are getting success out of your program. No wonder you are where you are today, and I'm so excited to see where you go next. I just wanted to take a minute to close. What are some of the tech trends you're most excited about? I'm going to keep it at like the next 12 to 18 months because I think anything outside of that, the way the technology industry is changing so quickly— what are some of the trends you're most excited about? What tech Excites you at the moment?

I mean, I guess anyone could say excited about AI or agents, obviously. I'm excited about like rethinking the core of how we interact with computers. And, you know, like learning to type, I learned when I was like 9 years old. I wonder whether it'll be relevant in 10 years because you can speak to computers and, or just Even interacting with a screen. I don't know, to be honest, I don't know what the future of it will be, but I'm excited about completely rethinking very core concepts of, of like how you interact with the computer and also the computer as your pathway to connect to other businesses. You know, that today is in the form of apps or websites, but I wonder if it'll be something completely different in the future where— You know, where you just give commands and an agent gets things taken care of without you needing to, like, to even know that there's another website involved or so on. So yeah, sorry. I feel like this is not the most cogent way of expressing it, but I'm excited about that.

Yeah.

I'm also excited about— this is more backwards looking. I feel like there's basics of how humans communicate. That technology kind of has helped improve, but it's kind of left it in a shitty state. Specifically social networking, you know, like whether you're a grown-up connecting with your friends or high schooler and everything in between, the options right now, what is it like? There's Facebook, Instagram, there's a few things. They all suck in my opinion. And they all do more to show how badly humans need and want connection than to actually deliver on it. And so I think that there is a trillion-dollar business to be built to just build a better form of these networks that is more authentic. I will distinguish from social media. Social media is, you know, TikTok, YouTube.

Yeah.

That's actually, I think, serving us quite It's doing the job really well, whatever your views on it are.

Yeah.

No one's like, oh, I don't find enough videos that are entertaining. We know how to get that. But authentic connection with your friends is not something that the internet has managed to really deliver on. And then the last, I would say, I guess to bring things to a close, is education. I think that the way that young people learn is going through more change right now and over the next decade than perhaps ever in human history, and I'm just super excited for it. But, you know, I'll say a provocative statement. I think ChatGPT is primarily an edtech product. I think perhaps the majority of its users are students, and you can see from its— like, certainly from anecdotes of people saying how it changed their lives, most of those are students, or just the usage dropping during Thanksgiving or Christmas or summer. There's— but it's obviously not targeted only at students. But I think that just indicates how dramatically the experience of being a student has changed already. And I think it's going to change a ton more in the next decade.

Yeah, I'm most excited about connection. I travel a lot internationally, and I cannot wait to be able to use something that can translate instantly, especially on a business trip, just so I can have a more authentic, connected experience in local towns, especially throughout Asia and other places where I don't speak any Chinese. And that's what I look forward to. And I also think accessibility is the other word that really excites me. You know, when I hear you even speaking about education, there are so many kids that are left without the opportunity to explore and to have education. And I think to see, you know, obviously Code.org is one that's helping with education, but just on, you know, if somebody's not learning how to code, they just want basic access to education. I think AI and the new wave of technology certainly helps with that. So thank you so much. I'm so excited to, to have you here today. And I look forward to hopefully having you back as a guest and watching everything you achieve at NEO and all of the amazing startups that are coming out of there. Yeah. If any of them ever want to come on a podcast and talk about what they're building, we would love to have them as well.

Thank you, Tiaan. Great to spend time with you again today.