IvyHacks: Fireside Chat with Ali Partovi (Neo, Code.org)

Hi, good evening.

Oh, hi, Jennifer. Um, hold on, do you— do I sound funny to you?

Oh no, you sound wonderful.

Okay, good.

All right, um, I will go ahead and make you co-host, um, as well as Ali when he comes.

Awesome, thank you. Where are you guys all calling in from today?

I'm calling in from Los Angeles, at least.

Nice.

Yeah, what about you?

Brooklyn, in my case. So a little bit later in the day for me.

Yeah. How is New York doing with COVID and everything?

Right now, pretty well. We are entering a sort of spike after months and months and months of a really, really flat low rate. So that's a bit concerning. But the city's been really reactive to it, which is encouraging. It's like an example of government seeming to work, which is, which is neat.

That's nice. Yeah.

And what about you? Do you have any air quality issues in LA or you're far enough south that you're safe?

It was really, really bad like 3 weeks ago and I have asthma, so I was just bringing my inhaler everywhere, but definitely better now.

Yeah, that is tough. Definitely tough.

Yeah, um, so hopefully people start coming in by 11:05 your time.

Yeah, no, no problem. So I assume that you basically want us to just hang tight muted for a few minutes and then we can, we can kick off when we have more folks.

Cool.

If you wouldn't mind just kind of giving, giving the cue and the intro whenever you're ready, I will make sure that I'm, I'm paying attention and ready too.

Yeah, of course. Also, Anne, since I assume you don't have access to our Discord, I'm encouraging hackers to kind of ask questions there throughout the fireside. So maybe at the end of the chat, like the last like 10 or 5 minutes, I could read out some of like the most popular questions, if that's okay with you. Oh, sorry, you're muted.

Okay, that would be perfect. Um, we have just under 10 questions I want to get through, and I can watch. Hopefully I get them done by maybe 11:50, but either way, I can pause and sort of hand things back to you.

All right, amazing.

Cool.

All right, welcome new attendees. I think we will start officially at 8:05 or 11:05 Eastern.

Hi, Jennifer, good to see you again.

Hi, Ali, great to see you.

Long time. Hi, Anne.

Morning.

Thanks for, thanks for taking the invite to do this.

Yeah, I'm delighted to. My husband and my dog are safely away, not going to make any noise. We're ready to go.

Nice. All right, it is officially 5 minutes after our scheduled start time, so I figure we can begin. Um, thank you all for attending this fireside chat with Ali Partovi, co-founder of Code.org and currently founder of NEO, a mentorship and venture capital community. This talk will be moderated by Anne Solmsen, co-founder and CTO of Athena. Anne can probably talk more about herself after I give this introduction. And yeah, we will spend hopefully the majority of the beginning of this fireside chat with Anne moderating. And as always, feel free to continually ask questions as they come up on the Discord under the event Q&A channel. I'll be looking through those, and at the end, I'll be able to ask your questions for you. All right, without further ado, let's begin.

Okay, thanks a lot, Jennifer, and everyone. So nice to at least virtually be meeting you. I'm really excited to be here today as Ali's interviewer. An important part of my bio that I'd love to include is that he was one of the first investors into my company. So I am really thrilled to be able to learn more myself and have you guys learn more about his founder journey and his experience as an investor. Ali, anything you want to say before we kick off?

Yeah, well, you might have all read my bio on the, on the announcement for this that went out, but I just want to share more about Anne. Anne graduated from Harvard, I think 2015, and majored in computer science and astrophysics and worked at an awesome startup called Mark43 after college for a few years and started Athena about a year ago, I think, which— and Athena is a service that provides modernized corporate training, starting with anti-harassment training. For large corporations. I don't know if I botched that, sorry.

No, it was, it was perfect. It's like you'd practiced. No, it was, it was awesome. And now I'll take the attention off me and where it's meant to be. So let's kick off with our, with our first question. Computer science has been a part of your whole life. What was your start?

Yeah, so for my twin brother and me, We started programming quite young. We grew up in Iran, and when we were around 9 years old, our dad, who— our dad was a physics professor, and he came back from a trip abroad with a Commodore 64, which was, as far as I know, might have been the first personal computer in Iran. And he taught us the basics of programming and got us started on it. And We just fell in love. And every day after school, we would, you know, try to program and learn more about it. And at that time, for me, programming really was an escape because growing up in Iran, this was 1980 or so, there was a revolution, there was the Iran-Iraq War. You know, most of the war was not near us. We lived in the capital city of Tehran, but our neighborhood was bombed sometimes, and people would sometimes just disappear. So my childhood was pretty filled with fear and uncertainty. And so in that context, programming really was a source of comfort. You know, it's a, it's an arena where there's rules and logic and where if things break, there's always a reason. There's always something you can figure out and correct and make things work again. And it's just the predictability and control of it is what, what made it really appealing to me.

I mean, I'd love to hear more about the transition from Iran to where we are today. When did you move to the U.S., and what was that transition like?

Yeah, so we were 12 when we moved. This would have been 1984, and at the time, much like today, the U.S. had a very, very xenophobic policy towards immigrants, and it was very difficult for for us coming from Iran to get— just to get into the country took a really long time and many different rejections for our visa application. And we basically left everything behind to come here. So when we arrived, we lived in my grandparents' house, which was a condo, and my grandmother, grandfather, my great-grandmother, And my parents and brother and me all lived in the same condo. In fact, I shared a twin bed with my brother. And I thought the reason it was called twin bed was because my twin brother and I shared it. I only found out later that not everyone else did that. And anyway, so it was very tight quarters. But I had a really very nurturing upbringing in the US because I was surrounded by cousins who had also all moved here. And we all went to the same high school. My cousin Dara actually drove us all to school, which we tease him a lot now. He was essentially our Uber driver. And yeah, and then a little bit later, this was around 7th grade, I was actually— due to the whole immigration situation, we came in on tourist visas, not on student visas. And so we enrolled in school. But our tourist visas eventually ran out. And so then we were deported and had to leave the country and had a period of enormous uncertainty as to whether we would be able to come back in. And fortunately did come back in on, on student visas. And pretty much after that, I was afraid to leave the United States until I became a citizen. after— shortly after graduating from college, and I still have kind of a phobia of borders, I think. Anyways, having this background has definitely— I'd say in some ways it was traumatic, but I would also say it has helped me because growing up I knew what it was like to be teased or treated differently because of something superficial like your accent or your place of birth. But at the same time, I, you know, by the time I got to Harvard, certainly I had no accent. And, you know, and I would say this makes me pretty aware of being privileged in that I have never felt like I'm judged based on my skin color or my gender. I don't have any sort of— I've never felt like I had any glass ceiling or any limit on what I could do. And I had started, you know, I had one or two role models who were Iranian, like my quantum physics professor at Harvard, and that makes all the difference to see someone And who's like you and to think I can be like them.

That's amazing. And there are 2 things I want to call out before asking you more. One is for the group that doesn't know, what does Dara, your Uber driver of childhood, now do?

He's now the CEO of Uber.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's a little good one. I didn't want everyone to miss that. And the other thing I'd just love to call out, because Ali's really modest about it, is that throughout his professional career, fostering diversity and making sure that more of us feel that there's no artificial ceiling to what we can do has been a priority. In fact, in his community and venture fund, NEO, diversity is just a central tenet of how they operate, and importantly, something that he sees a lot of value in as an investor, and not just in making opportunity for other people, which is something that's really neat to be a part of. So tell us more about getting to Harvard and eventually working your way into the tech world.

Yeah, so in my, you know, at the beginning when I got to Harvard, I would say at the time the hot tech company— this was 1991— the company that was recruiting all the smartest people was Microsoft. And I, starting with my freshman summer, I got an internship there and I worked there and actually spent 2 summers there and really loved it. That was my first time ever thinking that like my skills as a computer programmer, which I always thought of just as a really geeky hobby, were of interest to the, to the actual like Silicon Valley or like to the tech world that I had only, you know, that I had read about and looked up to. And, you know, and I had not really thought of it as a career. I just thought of it as a, like a hobby that I loved. And my intent had been to become a doctor actually. That had always been my— what I thought my career would be. But after, after working at Microsoft, I really felt like I want to be in tech. And then my junior year, when I came back from my sophomore year, I was really proud of how awesome my summer internship had been. And I ran into one of my classmates and asked him, like, I was kind of showing off, asked him what he had done, and he had started his own company, which blew my mind. That, that was not in our vocabulary back then in, you know, 1993. And it was— I was immediately really curious and a little bit jealous and wanted him to include me in it. And he really introduced me to the idea of entrepreneurship. His name, ironically, was Adam Smith. And so he invited me to kind of do this with him. And this was technically— it wasn't a true startup. It was a student-run business within this corporate structure called HSA, Harvard Student Agencies, that he had started a new agency. But then later in my senior year, I also— I, a couple friends, a friend and my brother and I started our own consulting startup as well. And so I had that experience too. I didn't really do much for it. For our startup, my main contribution actually, I think, consisted about of 1 hour of work, but it was a very high, high leverage hour. We, we were about to get our first client and we were debating how much to charge them. And, you know, for our work, and the other 2 guys were like, let's charge $20 an hour. And I said, no, that's ridiculous. Let's, you know, let's charge more. And they were too afraid to do it. And so we had this long argument and I finally convinced them we should charge $35 an hour. And so we did ask for that and we did get it. And then I basically said, I've just contributed more than 1/3 of my share here. So I basically let the other 2 guys do the rest of the work. Not necessarily something to be proud of. But anyway, by the time I was graduating, I knew that what I wanted to do for sure was to have my own startup. And I'd say I felt very lucky amongst my peers. Most people graduate from college not truly knowing what they really love or where they want to be in 5 years and are kind of following a path because their peers are doing it or because, you know, it was something their parents suggested rather than coming from a, you know, place of deep passion. And in my case, I had absolute certainty that What I wanted to do was have my own startup one day, and anything else I was going to work on was going to help towards that direction.

I was laughing to myself when you said you did a very high-leverage hour of work. I couldn't imagine what it was, but I buy your story there. I do think that was more than a third of your value. I would love to hear more about LinkExchange, which was a startup that ended up— that that you started that ended up being acquired for almost $300 million. Can you start by telling us what it was?

Yeah, LinkExchange, technically, actually, the other 2 guys started it. I joined 2 fellow classmates from Harvard as their kind of 3rd principal after it was underway. And it became the first ad network on the internet. And it was also unique in that it catered to small websites. In 1996, the web was new. Advertising on the web at the time was limited to really big companies like Toyota or Pepsi buying ads on really big websites like Yahoo. And we believed that smaller companies actually were what the internet truly enabled and that little websites could both show ads and buy ads. And so we enabled— we wrote the first ad server, actually. The other thing, at the time when we were starting, if a website was going to have an ad in it, it was literally after they sold it, they would by hand put it into the page. And it was part of the same web page as the rest of the content. And for us, in order to be able to serve ads for hundreds thousands, millions of web pages, we came up with the idea of having a separate third-party ad server that served only the ads. And so this was kind of the business we started, and it expanded into a range of different services for small businesses. Anyway, I would say the 2 and a half years of that company were by far the most intense learning experience of my life. And, um, and that's what I recommend to anybody is that the, by far the, you learn more in like one month of doing your own startup than I think in years of school.

And— I mean, I have to ask what the biggest learnings were.

Yeah. So after I sold, after we sold the company, my twin brother Hadi, was starting his first startup, and he asked me actually the same. He asked me, what are the 3 top pieces of advice that I can give to him as a founder? And I thought about all the mistakes we'd made and all our best decisions, and I said to him, number 1, hire great people. Number 2, hire great people. Number 3, hire great people. And, and that has remained the top lesson that I've given every entrepreneur that I've advised or backed since then. And so, you know, my brother and I have been angel investors for a period of time, and gave the— you know, he's also given this advice to every company that he's been involved in, which include companies like— he was fortunate enough to be connected to Facebook when it was just like Mark and 9 other people, and gave them that advice. and encouraged them in particular to start hiring younger people from college and to build an internship program. And then through referring people to the early Facebook, we were connected to a lot of students, and that's how we met the founders of Dropbox when Arash was still in college, and we gave them the same advice. We became investors there as well. And encouraged them similarly to really invest in building an intern program and, and essentially focus on not just on what you can do yourself, but on building a team, hiring people smarter than yourself, and, and getting much more leverage that way. So for, you know, for those of you who are still in college, I would say start making relationships now. You know, look around, you're surrounded by smart people. And the single most important thing you'll get from college is the relationships that you build here. And I wouldn't— I never suggest networking. I actually kind of hate that word because it has sort of a selfish vibe to it. For me, what I think of as the best form of networking is to— I think of it as more as lifting up others.

Mm-hmm.

Think about how can you help other people. and authentically invest in long-term relationships. So, you know, I would say not just from my first startup, but throughout my life, what I actually— during the time I was running, during LinkExchange, I decided that the life skill, the most important life skill I wanted to develop was to learn how to surround myself with people who are smarter than me and different from me. So, uh, yeah, and probably is realizing, uh, now I know why he invited me to do this interview.

Well, um, I'm gonna pivot away from that, uh, and, and I do want to talk about something we, we touched on earlier, um, which is diversity as a really core part of excellence. I know that diversity is a pillar of both NEO and Code.org, and I would love to just Pause on that. Why is this— why has this been a personal priority of yours? Why is it important to you?

Yeah, so, um, you know, actually, I'm not sure if— is there a mechanism for the— for us to poll the audience? Uh, I would love to, before talking about that, kind of get a sense from everyone and everyone who's here. Um, raise your hand if you studied computer science in high school. Do we have the raising hand or yes or no? Sorry, maybe it's— I'm not sure if the Zoom settings allow it.

So on the participants list, you should be able to see.

Yeah, I see them. Yeah, some people are doing it. So I'm asking this because I'm gonna talk briefly about Code.org. There's fairly high Uh, fairly high response rate of people who did study computer science in high school, and by fairly high, it looks like maybe a third or so. Um, now, now keep it up if you studied it in middle school, if you had any sort of coding in school in middle school, and otherwise remove it.

How about elementary school.

So I bring this up because I want to just briefly talk about Code.org. Code.org is really not my thing. I helped my brother start it, but it's truly his work and is by far the thing I'm most proud of ever having been associated with. Code.org and the Hour of Code, which we started in 2013, are transforming those numbers. So just earlier this year, we passed the milestone of having 1 billion hours of code served on our website. More than 50 million K-12 students are enrolled in studying computer science on Code.org as part of their school. And that's The highest penetration is in the kind of 4th, 5th, 6th grade. So like amongst 6th graders in the United States, more than 2/3 of all 5th and 6th graders in public school, a supermajority, are studying computer science today as part of school on Code.org. And once you have that kind of ubiquitous penetration, you also have diversity simply by nature of, you know, if it's offered in the 5th grade, You know, kids aren't choosing whether to take CS. It's just part of school. And so as a result, the composition of these students studying computer science in 5th grade is something like nearly 50% female and 50% underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. And so that is going to completely change the composition of who you see in tech not too long from now. You know, these 6th graders will be where you are in about 6 years. And, and so with NEO, we've also— I would say my— one of my driving factors has been to try to make a community that will be a great place for these, you know, future leaders to fit in and to feel like they belong. And so we intentionally created a community that's very diverse. It's around 47% female and a very high representation of Black and other underrepresented ethnic groups. I think something like 15 or 16% Black. And that's the community, which is— we curate a group of essentially superstar technical talent of all different generations. And then our investing is 100% for profit. It's not explicitly focusing on diversity, but just as a byproduct of having a diverse community, our investments have also supported diversity. So, um, 54% of the capital we've invested in our, in our first checks has been in companies with a female or underrepresented minority founder. And, and 34% is in companies where the CEO is a woman or underrepresented minority. And those numbers are pretty high for the, you know, you know, for typical VC firms. And, you know, my thinking about NEO, I'm hoping to model Silicon Valley as it should be and, and as it will be in, you know, 6 or 8 years as this new generation of students that are in 6th grade today get there. Anyway, you asked why is diversity important to me, and I would say, I guess it's really 2 things. It's partly about fairness and actually partly about competitiveness. So from a standpoint of fairness, I think it's just wrong to prejudge anyone based on race or gender. You know, I judge people based on their ideas and on their potential. potential. And I think people deserve equal opportunity, and people also deserve role models. You know, it unlocks so much potential in a person to just see one role model that they feel like, I could be like her, or I can be like him. And, you know, you push yourself to excel when you see that potential of being like somebody else. And so there's so much potential to unlock if you do that right. And then as far as competitiveness, I think it's— I mean, my ambition for NEO is not just to be financially successful, but to be one of the most successful venture funds. And I think if we accomplish that, we will show that it's more profitable to invest in diversity. And I think the reasons behind that are, one is that people who overcome adversity are often stronger. If you're If you're underrepresented, that means you overcame adversity to get here. And, and also as a team, diverse teams are more resilient. The more, the more different the members are in any team, the fewer blind spots they have and the more likely— the less likely they will have some vulnerability or fragility to something that they haven't experienced.

So yeah, so it's, it's a combination of doing what's right, but also doing what's best for Yeah, that's awesome to hear, and I'm extremely proud to share that my co-founding team is one of those statistics. My business partner and our CEO, Roxanne, is a woman. So really neat to hear that we're actually in such good and abundant company there. And I'd love to talk more about your career as an investor. So I know you began angel investing about 20 years ago and that you've seen A lot of success. Just so the audience knows, this is companies like Zappos, Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber. So some serious investment chops. What is your approach to investing?

Well, since you mentioned your company, I'll turn that question back to you. What has your— what do you think— what has your experience of me as an investor been like?

Man, I guess I'll go with 2 halves. There was the, why didn't you invest, and what are you like to have as an investor? actually, you know, a good time to share some needs improvements with you. No, just kidding. But I think the why did you invest, it's really consistent with the lessons you shared with Hadi when he was starting his first business around hire good people. My understanding of why you invested in us more than anything was an investment in the team. Not that you weren't excited about the vision we had or the platform we were building, but at a The pre-seed stage, which was when you first invested in us, there isn't that much. Really, it's the people. And my perception was that that's what you and your team build conviction around. And as for what you're like as an investor, I mean, I can tell— I'll try to share this for anyone here who either is a founder or is thinking about becoming a founder. The thing that I most value about working with Ali and Neo is true thought partnership. The ability to go to someone who has put money and time and trust in you and actually solve a problem and not have to show them a falsely rosy picture, but to leverage their experience and their, and their brainpower when you have an issue to solve, that has been just absolutely invaluable.

Thanks, and I appreciate that. And that was really well rehearsed. It's almost as if I prepared you for that.

But he didn't. I just want everyone to know it was from the heart.

Yeah, anyway, so I guess I'll answer the question myself that, you know, when people ask me about investing, actually, I cringe a little bit because I don't— I think of myself as first as a mentor and really second as an investor. And I think of investing as like more the business model of how do I get to do what I love doing, which is mentoring people? And yeah, and I would say I'm an awesome mentor because I've made so many mistakes in my life, and so I have so many lessons to impart. I have 20 years of making lots and lots of mistakes, both as a founder and as an investor, and some of the biggest ones were right after, you know, 1999, after selling LinkExchange. I was 26. I had a lot of hubris. I was probably at that, you know, for about a minute, I was probably the most successful person from my graduating class at Harvard. And, and at this time, some of my smartest friends were starting their own companies. And I had this very, I would say, egotistical approach of trying to decide whether their business plans were good and whether you know, because I was potentially going to invest in them, but I was bringing my superior business judgment to it. And so I missed out on some good opportunities where I knew the person, where I knew they were brilliant. I could, you know, probably should have realized they're smarter than I am and missed out because their business plan wasn't something I believed in. So a couple examples might, My company actually had this younger engineer who was 22 at the time, who was just prodigiously smart. He was unbelievable, and we all knew that. And he left to start this company PayPal. This is Max Levchin. And the business plan for PayPal was kind of a joke, but Max was and is brilliant. And, you know, I could have potentially invested in it and missed out on it because You know, because of this hubris. And around the same time, one of my smartest friends from Harvard, he'd been doing a PhD at Stanford. I had kind of lost touch. He'd gone the academic route while I had become successful in Silicon Valley. And he emailed saying, hey, I'm finally doing the Silicon Valley thing and you've been so successful, maybe you can come give us advice or funding, and he was going to be the first employee of this new company, Google. And, you know, and I could have engaged at the time and, you know, didn't. Again, I would say because of hubris and missed out on that as well. And I would say that today I look at investing and I would say most VCs, actually the whole concept of venture capital has an inherent hubris to it. And, you know, because, you know, if you're pitching me your idea, um, and I'm trying to decide whether it's a good idea, there's an inherent hubris to that of assuming that I'm the smartest person in the room. And I'm, you know, if you as an entrepreneur have decided to commit your life to something and, you know, quit all other options and 100% focus on this, surely you think it's a good idea. And so if I'm evaluating and trying to decide whether it's a good idea, that inherently implies that I think I'm smarter than you are. And my approach today is to reverse that. Instead of trying to question people's ideas, I think of it as, is this person smarter than I am? Are they potentially going to be greater than me. And that's what I'm seeking to find. And, you know, and I've had, I would say one of the true privileges of my, of my life has been to have been a mentor to many, many cases of people who grew up to become much bigger than myself. And so anyway, so my approach as an investor has really been to focus on the people, try to assess the people, and invest in people. And investing in people starts with investing my time, you know, and mentoring people. I mentor way more people than I invest in, something like 10x more. And, you know, you never know which person might someday be an incredible founder and entrepreneur. For example, actually, Anne, your friend Maxine, I don't know if you know, I've been talking to her.

Yeah.

She's not even, part of Neo, but I've been helping her in the last week with some, some struggles she's been having. So I somehow end up like drawing as many people I can mentor to myself.

I just want to ask the group, like, is anyone surprised to hear that he has a large community of mentees? Yeah, I see some soft head shaking. Yeah, absolutely not. Me neither. It's easy for anyone, even if they've spent a grand total of 36 minutes with you, to understand why this happens, why everyone is so excited and lucky to learn from you, who who can. Um, so I, I would love to, to ask what advice you have for someone who is thinking about entering the startup world, and how would you suggest that they weigh, um, joining a startup, starting your own, going to a more traditional job?

Well, I'll say that, um, in general, whether joining a startup or starting your own It is, you know, it's always terrifying. I mean, it can be really intimidating, and the feeling of risk is— it never gets easier, you know, even if you're successful, that doesn't mean you become less worried about whether the next thing you do will succeed or not. And actually, Anne, I would love to hear your answer, like, what was it like for you starting a company? You worked at a startup straight after college, but to leave that job and start your own thing, um, how would— how did it feel and how did you, uh, approach the feeling of risk?

Yeah, as long as you promise to come back to your advice, I'd be happy to talk about it. Um, I feel like this is something I maybe shouldn't admit in public, so if I could just ask the Ivy Hacks community to treat this with discretion. You know, I didn't necessarily have really high conviction that my business would work when I started out. And my understanding of the risk profile wasn't, is this going to work? Can I convince myself that this is definitely going to work? I wanted to convince myself that we had a really good shot, which I did. And I felt that really early. But what I had high conviction in was that I had an amazing business partner who I really wanted to work with. I believed we could do something really exciting together. And also a belief that if it didn't work, that was going to be an experience of learning and growth and not a failure. So when we had nothing and no guarantee of success or forward progress, I was really excited about our then 2-person team. There are over 10 of us now, and I'm still as inspired by the folks who have joined us as I, as I am by my partner Roxanne. And a feeling that this experience, wherever it led on the sort of spectrum of traditional success, was going to be hugely valuable for me. And the reason I say you have to treat this with discretion is because when talking to investors, I said I had, you know, my confidence was so high it was going to work, I couldn't believe that they could ever have any doubt. But really, I didn't. We've gotten more confident as we've grown and succeeded and sold our product into big companies. But That was not— that was a risk I was willing to take. I just wasn't willing to risk working with someone who wasn't amazing.

Makes sense. Well, it seems like you applied the same principle I've applied of focusing on people rather than on the idea. So I'll share my own, I guess, some of the stories from my own career in terms of how to deal with risk and approach risk, and then I'll try to give some general advice. So, you know, the feeling of risk really is, like I said, always terrifying. In my case, if I look back at some of the key points in my life, a unique advantage I had is that I had a twin brother who was very much like myself and who was, you know, actually in many ways much stronger than myself. And we grew up financially insecure. And so after graduating from college, I, you know, we both had student debt. I was pretty obsessed with not only how to take care of myself, but how to someday take care of our parents. And so to do the startup LinkExchange in 1996, I had this real feeling of risk, not just of, you know, we didn't have funding, I had to live off savings, And then what, what if it didn't work? And for me at the time, my brother Hadi was my hedge. He had been much more successful than me. This was, you know, we were 23 at this time, but he had already done so well in his job. He worked at Microsoft and in 2 years his stock options were already worth a few million dollars. And so I felt like, okay, no matter how much I might fail, he'll take care of our parents if necessary. And that gave me the courage to do something that otherwise might have been very scary. The other factor was that my career was doing so poorly that I felt like there was no, no, no lower it could go. So we had both graduated with, you know, sort of great credentials from Harvard, and then our paths had really kind of diverged. And I had gone from a, I would say, sort of a not so great corporate job to working at some other company that then was failing. And I felt like I was hitting rock bottom and I had an A/B test with my identical twin brother who was crushing it. And so I was definitely a little bit ashamed and insecure and felt like I need to do something to, you know, to redefine where I was at. And so starting a company, Was partly based on I didn't feel like there was much, much to lose or much lower I could go, I guess. But to turn things around, you know, fast forward from then to you know after having become successful financially, it doesn't change the feeling of fear of when you start something. And I guess I'll I'll share the story from Code.org. Code.org technically is my brother. I mean, my brother is the one who really has done the work there, but I helped a lot in the first year. And, you know, today it's reached, you know, like I said, 50 million students enrolled, etc. But in the early days, it actually, I would say, had a much more modest vision. And I would say my main contribution was giving my brother Hadi the courage to dream bigger. So the original concept for Code.org was actually very limited, almost a joke. It was just to make a viral video and to try to inspire people to— young people to think about computer programming as something that would be— instead of thinking of it as intimidating and nerdy and, you know, something to avoid, to think of it as something that is fun and easy and wonderful, and to overcome some of the perceptions that popular media have built around computer programming. So, you know, so basically the idea was, let's have this video that makes coding cool, and it'll be viral. And that was the goal. And at every step of what to do with it, you know, Hadi would ask me for advice or feedback and I would kind of goad him to dream bigger, almost taunting him. So he would be like, you know, what domain name should we buy to put our video on? Is it just going to be on YouTube or should we get— the available domain names were like codingiscool.com or something. And then the most expensive option was to buy this domain name code.org. And it was like, more than $10,000, and is it worth spending that money? And I was like, of course it's worth spending that money, and if you don't do it, I'm gonna do it. And so, so I basically convinced him to buy this domain. And then similarly, he was choosing to hire a video production crew to help produce this video, and he had already convinced Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and a number of our other contacts to, to be in it. And should we use this more affordable production crew in Seattle or this award-winning, you know, Sundance Film Festival award-winning producer from LA that I knew? And the difference in cost was substantial. And again, I pushed him like, if you don't pay for the expensive and more expert producer, I'll do it. And so, so I kept pushing him to to spend more, but to be more confident and to dream bigger. And when we came to launch it, Hadi was asking me to help with the PR to sort of, you know, we're basically launching a website that had a video on it and, you know, a few other things. And it had a signup form with a petition to, you know, sign your name if you believe computer science should be taught in every school. And And I was talking to reporters to help kind of build up anticipation for this new launch. And the reporters were like, what is Code.org? Talk about the organization and what's the long-term vision? And I sort of started talking about how we had these visions of bringing computer science to every school and, you know, just like made up stuff on the fly on the phone. My brother was like, what the hell did you tell them we're gonna do? And I essentially kind of snookered him into a much larger vision than, than what he had had, or not than he had had, but then he basically had no choice but to then kind of go after this much broader effort, which is now, you know, includes curriculum, teacher training, and lots of marketing to try to make computer science ubiquitous in schools. And then back to, I guess I'll come back to my own story with launching Neo. Neo isn't exactly a startup, but it was a new venture, a new firm that I started 3 years ago. And, you know, at this point, I'm, you know, I was 40-something years old, had already been somewhat successful, but I'd say being successful doesn't make it less scary to start something. If anything, it makes it more terrifying because there's an expectation that, you know, that you'll be successful. And if something new you do doesn't work, it's, you know, I'd say there's more feeling of insecurity or shame to it. But I, in some ways, I also snookered myself into it. So I had been thinking about the idea of creating a community that identifies really amazing young computer scientists and cultivates them and invests in them. And I'd been thinking about this for, you know, for more than a year, you know, and it was an idea I had been developing in my head and building up the confidence to start it. And then on a— it was in October, I think, in 2016, that actually my brother called and asked me if I could go to an event instead of him. He was invited to an event to promote Code.org. And it was an event that was bringing together successful venture capitalists with the— with basketball players from the Golden State Warriors team. And some of the top players like Steph Curry and Andre Iguodala and others were going to be there. And he wanted me to go basically in his place. So I wasn't invited, but he said, like, can you just go as me or, you know, instead of me and put on a Code.org hat, and his goal was to try to get somebody like Steph Curry to be a spokesperson for computer science education. So of course, I accepted the invitation, and I went. I had my Code.org hat on, and I was kind of looking around, feeling a little bit out of place, and trying to build up the courage to— What was your name? go up and introduce myself to Steph Curry. And so I finally found the opening. I went in and I like, you know, started talking about Code.org and computer science education. And I started feeling like this is not what anyone else here is talking about. The purported— this event was to introduce— the members of this team were interested in how to invest in tech companies and talking to venture capitalists about how can they get involved in Silicon Valley? And I started feeling really weird, like I'm talking about a nonprofit for child education and it doesn't belong. And I could sort of tell that he was looking around to see if there's anyone more interesting than me to talk to. So I, on the fly, I was like pivoting. I was like, how do I connect computer science education to, um, to VC investing and to basketball? So I said to him that In computer science, as in athletics, you can identify incredible talent very young. You can spot a high school student or even a middle school student, certainly a college student who has the potential to change the world, to be, you know, the best in the world. And that a lot of bigger companies like Google and Facebook are recruiting college students to join you know, for jobs, but there's nobody from the VC world identifying incredible college students and cultivating them and investing in them the way that, for example, the NBA does for, for basketball stars. And that I basically said, and that I intended to start a company that would do that. And so having told Steph, and he was suddenly very interested and was like, I want to follow up on this. So that basically snookered myself into now I had to do it because I had just told somebody, you know, very important that I was doing it. So, um, anyway, aside from these stories, I'm trying to figure out, you know, how to weave this into something, you know, that's applicable advice for, for all of you. But I guess one thing I would say is generally I've used the word risk a lot here, but I actually try to take that word out of my vocabulary because the word risk in this context of starting things or joining startups, it is unnecessarily negative. And I would suggest replace the word risk with the word uncertainty, because uncertainty could mean failure, but it could also mean success. And uncertainty is, is terrifying, but it is also where the reward is. Uncertainty is the path to great success. involves steering directly into uncertainty. And if, you know, and that's hard to do, but it's something you have to kind of find ways to train yourself to do that. And so my general advice, not only to myself but to others, is to not to try to reduce uncertainty or avoid uncertainty and actually try to steer into it. And a great way to to prepare yourself or to train yourself is to expose yourself to it when you're younger. And, you know, I think the best way to do that is to work at a fast-growing startup, as Anne did, for example, right after college. And, you know, I think as a college student, what I've seen is most college students are drawn either to working at a big company like Google, or starting their own and applying to Y Combinator or something. And I think it's interesting that really there's a continuum where from Google to various different companies like Stripe or Robinhood or smaller companies down to the, you know, the limit case of a small company is one that you start by yourself. But there's many points on the continuum that are actually probably a better place to gain experience. Yet I think that it's probably actually a feeling of ego that drives people, that draws people to the extremes, either joining a company that is famous like Google, which has a certain credential to it and a feeling of like, okay, I got into Google, it's comparable to I got into MIT, or starting your own has a certain ego to it of I'm the founder and I'm the, you know, I'm, you know, doing something all by myself, and, or I got into Y Combinator. Whereas working at some startup that no one's heard of yet doesn't have that same satisfaction in terms of the credential or ego, although I would actually say it is the best place to get comfortable with uncertainty and, and to gain skills and experience that are directly relevant to starting your own company.

Yeah, could, could not agree more. I was engineer number 5 at the job I was at for a little 4 years after college, and it was exactly in that spot and extraordinary. So as much as I can encourage anyone to pursue that kind of path, I would pile on. And Jen, to make sure that we have questions for all the folks in Discord, I will put myself on mute. But before I do, Ali, thank you so much for answering all my questions. I hope everyone listening loved hearing your answers as much as I did.

Yes, thank you, Ali, for sharing your narrative. Truly inspiring and amazing. One of the questions we have on Discord Discord that has several thumbs ups is, do you think business skills are learned more from school and education or by doing and through experience?

This one's an easy one. I mean, most, most questions have nuance, but this one, 100% experience. And I would say, you know, in 1 or 2 months of doing your own startup is equivalent to years of business school. And doing your own startup, like I said, is the limit case, but working at a small startup, working at a startup right now, would be far more educational than a year of school.

Yes, definitely. So I would encourage the audience to ask kind of more questions on Discord, or just to make it more interactive. Maybe if any of you guys have questions, you guys could raise your hand in Zoom and perhaps ask it, like unmute, share video, and ask it directly.

We can also let Anne keep going if, if you want. By the way, I can stay a little bit later. I don't know, Jennifer, whether it's— I know that the next session is about like machine learning, but It's surely not as exciting as our session, so if people want to stay longer, I'm happy to stay a bit for people who want to ask questions.

All right, I see—

I have a question. Okay, sorry. Should I go?

Yeah.

Yeah. So you mentioned that we probably should join fast-growing startups to maximize our our learning. So how do we know which startup is worth joining?

Yeah, um, so, uh, it's a really good question. It's not— I'd say it's quite difficult as a college student to, to figure out, well, what are the good startups and how to choose one to join. Um, in fact, a lot of what NEO does is try to help people specifically with that. So we run an annual application process where hundreds of the top CS students in the country apply. And we, we try to identify roughly like top 50 to 100 students and then really help them with this. And, and then we also run a competitive selection to identify amazing startups that are good places for students to work. So one shortcut for this would be if you go to neo.com and click on our— click on the blog link. There's an article about the, um, uh, the virtual career fair we recently organized called Startup Connect, and the title is Startup Connect: Recruiting Reimagined. And, um, and, uh, you'll see there a list of the companies we identified. It's about 30 or so companies. But in terms of the what to look for, uh, or how to evaluate, it's an investment decision, and You may not have any experience investing, and so I can see why it's a bit intimidating. I, as an investor, you know, as I think I've indicated already, that the number one thing I focus on is to evaluate the people. So the single most important factor in choosing a startup to work at is assess the people, and in particular, assess the founders. And Think about, are these people— do they seem smarter than myself? Do they feel like— do they seem somebody like I would be excited to wake up each morning and work with them? Do I wish I could be more like them? And if you get those feelings from a startup that you're interviewing with, I think that's the strongest signal for it being a good place to work. The other thing is that besides being It's good if a company is small, but more important is how rapidly is it growing. And, you know, because being in an environment where new people are joining and company is doubling in size is an amazing experience where you will sort of prematurely be put into positions of seniority simply because you're there as new people join and they look up to you as one of the senior people or older people. And a proxy for that is to look how much funding the company has raised, how recently, and what's their cadence of fundraising, and what's their historical growth been like as a predictor of their future growth.

Thank you.

All right, we have a minute left of the scheduled session. Um, just wondering, um, does anyone else in the audience perhaps have any last-minute questions you guys would like to ask Ali directly?

Well, I'll stay longer for anybody who wants to have a smaller group. If the Zoom allows. I also have office hours that I offered. Most of them are full already, but I think there's one slot left if anybody wants to sign up for those. Those are like in a couple hours from now.

Yeah, and the link to sign up for those is on the schedule on TeamUp in case you do want to sign up. Yeah, so I think I do have to run to the next event, but I can keep this Zoom call open in case any of you want to have one-on-one conversations and maybe ask questions some more. Does that sound okay with you, Ali?

And do you have to run, or do you want to—

I'm going to be abandoning you just right at noon, but before I do, anyone who wants to unmute themselves and just give Ali a quick round of applause, that would be The last thing I needed before I head out. Thank you again, Ali, and thank you, Jen, for all you've done to organize this. Hope everyone stays on and takes this opportunity to find a new mentor.

Okay.

All right. All right. Thank you all. Goodbye.

I think, can we ask questions, right?

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, so I, I really liked your talk. I learned a lot. I wrote down a bunch of questions. So yeah, you mentioned that your classmate from Harvard who inspired you to join a startup. Okay, no, that was answered. Sorry. So you said that relationships are very important. Have you had experience with someone who was brilliant but you have been screwed by them, that you didn't have a good experience with them?

Oh, people who've screwed me over. I'm sure there are, but I would say one of the, one of the interesting, one of the great things about the tech industry is that at least So far it's been continuously growing, you know, and in industries that are more static or shrinking, it's much more about how to, you know, like fighting with other people for your share of the pie, you know, like my slice is this big, yours is— people are much more antagonistic about how to, you know, who gets a bigger piece of the pie. And if the pie is shrinking, that becomes, you know, much more important. Whereas when the pie is growing, that's— it's just, it's a distraction to worry too much about that, and it's much, much better to just forget that and focus on how to make it grow faster. And so I'll— actually, a great example of this that's inspiring to me is not from my own life, but my uncle who started computer programming actually kind of after college, he was, you know, taught himself Java and JavaScript. This was like 1999 or 2000. He decided he wanted to kind of for fun build a spreadsheet that would work in a web browser. And he built this and he had a co-founder and he tried to make it into a company. And then his co-founder had all sorts of strange— I forget the details, but there were like, his co-founder created legal claims to kind of suggest that he owned more or that he owned the technology. And, um, and basically, uh, my uncle didn't want to deal with this co-founder anymore, but, uh, also didn't want to have a lawsuit. And so he literally just walked away completely from from the thing he had created, and he let the other person own it, even though, you know, in theory, there could have been some kind of legal path to protect himself. He just said, forget it, I'm gonna walk away, and I'll start from scratch. And he also threw away all, you know, basically ditched all of his code. He had come up with a new approach to doing it that was much more based in, in JavaScript and AJAX and started literally the same project, but all new code from scratch as a new company and got nothing for like, he spent, I think, 1 or 2 years on the first version of this company, threw it away. The second version became successful and I was actually an advisor and investor in it. And he sold it to Google. It became Google Sheets. And he spent the next 15 or so years as the head of engineering for Google Docs and Drive. He's now head of product engineering at Slack. But this was a case where somebody, he could easily have spent years in a lawsuit or kind of trying to fight to protect, or, you know, what he had built, and instead just said, screw it, life is too short, I'll start over.

Yeah, you mean because the industry is growing so fast, so we don't need to preoccupy for these small things?

Yeah, dwelling on the past is, is an unhealthy thing in general. And thankfully, the industry is growing so fast. So that's— the future is still, you know, so bright, and it's the antidote to all of these types of issues.

Yeah. So when you decided to join LinkExchange, you made a decision because you knew the founders and you wanted to work with them, or because you liked the mission and vision of the, of the company?

All the above. I didn't know them that well. I knew of them. They were, you know, top CS students at Harvard and My brother knew Tony better and, you know, vouched for him. But also I had spent 2 years, even though my, my job wasn't that, wasn't that exciting, I had spent 2 years looking at other startup ideas or dreaming of startup ideas and poking holes in them, evaluating them, and discussing them with my friends. So I had a group of people to discuss startup ideas with. And so I would say that by, by this age, you know, by age 23, I had become somewhat prepared and I had really been exercising the muscle of evaluating startup ideas. And so as a result, I could intuitively tell immediately this was something I was going to fall in love with. And, and yeah, and it was a mix of things, including the people and the business model. They had some amazing early traction. I made the decision very quickly. It was because they also had some urgency. They had built it, it was growing fast, but it wasn't a scalable architecture. They needed to rewrite everything they had written and they needed to do that in a very short period of time. Like, they had 2 weeks to rewrite this huge architecture. And so they needed somebody to join them. Instantly. So I met with them on Sunday evening. And then on that Monday, the next day, I quit my job and joined them. So it was an extremely fast decision.

And I assume, how do you develop the muscle of how to evaluate ideas?

I mean, I would say I would suggest doing what I just, you know, told you that I did myself. Have a group of people and, you know, you can basically play fantasy venture capitalist by evaluating ideas in your head and discuss them with friends. And having friends helps because you can see different angles that you might not have thought of. Have— having friends who are different from you will give you a different perspective. But if you're, you know, if you're actually thinking of doing your own idea, The most important thing is to talk to potential customers. So you might think of something and say, oh, I bet people would want this. That's— you really need to confirm, like, do people really want it? And the way to have conviction about that is either if you have enough experience that you know they want it because you've been in the world long enough that you— it's something you know that you would want. Or go out and talk to enough customers to really validate that. Anyway, I will say, in terms of evaluating ideas, I, I talk to a lot of young founders who are thinking of doing a startup and pitch me an idea and ask me whether I think it'll be successful. And, uh, you know, I actually would say one of the most common mistakes or the common advice I would say is don't ask, will it succeed? It might seem weird, but instead of asking, will it succeed? Ask yourself, if it succeeds, how big will it be? And there's a big difference here. You know, instead of dwelling on whether it will succeed, just assume it will succeed, assume that it'll be successful, but will it be big enough to be worthy of your time? You know, because if you do a startup, that means you might be spending the next 1 year, 2 years, 5 years or more working on it. And the opportunity cost of your time is, um, is probably more important than any other factor. And doing something, if it succeeds but it's small, uh, might not be worth it. Also, uh, to raise money to be able to make it successful, it's more effective if it is a big idea. And one tactic I encourage people to use when they're thinking of a startup idea is take your idea and put it into a sentence of the form, imagine a world where blank, and, and just see if that phrasing, does it inspire you? Does it speak to you as, oh wow, this is something that is I'm gonna change something about the world for the better, and I'm excited to do that. And if you have trouble putting your idea into a sentence of that form, it might suggest that it's not inspiring enough to you, which means it may not be worth the multi-year commitment to do it.

Yeah.

I guess, can I just interrupt and say, if you're a freshman or sophomore in college and you're thinking of just doing a startup, as a side project for 6 months with some friends and then drop it, that's different. By all means, do that for sure. That, I mean, I did 2 of those essentially in college. And if there's no stakes, if you're not raising financing, if you're not going to have any long-term obligation, then it's more like, it's more like practice. And I would say, you know, that's equivalent to if you're learning an instrument, you learn a piece that is helping you develop your skills. It's not the piece that you're going to dedicate your life to or something. And so that's, you know, for sure, I would say, don't have such a high bar for that. Just jump into things and try them out, but don't drop out of college for that. And don't raise money unless you feel that level of excitement and inspiration that it's something you can really commit many years of your life to.

I understand. So you said that to evaluate the ideas is to practice doing like the small projects and also choose the friends that you have. So when you choose your friends to seek out different opinions, were they all from the computer science department or what? They were from business, engineering, from history? Were they all from different backgrounds? Or were they all from CS?

In my case, it was not diverse, and I would say that was a weakness. It was all men. They were all either my class or 1 or 2 years older or younger, and all, almost all engineers. Although there was actually, now that I think of it, there were 2 or 2 people. It was a group of like 7 or 8 friends, and 2 of them were not engineers. But if You know, in 1994, the internet was new and the tech industry was very techie. So it was just a different thing. If I was doing this today, I would for sure have a more diverse group. And because the tech industry is far more accessible to the general population, whereas back then it was, you know, most people didn't own a computer and most people had never heard of the internet. Hey, um, I had a question.

Yeah.

I loved your point about how a lot of students these days are, after graduation, either going to or aiming to work at a big name company or starting their own thing. And like how the primary motivator for that is sometimes just ego. And I very much feel that within myself as well. And so my question for you is, How do you combat that feeling of ego and how do you prevent it from drawing you one way or the other? Well, certainly the best antidote is failure. I know that might seem weird, but, you know, if you are at an Ivy League college, that probably means you've not yet had a real failure in your life. You might have gotten all A's or been a valedictorian or so on. Failure, until you experience it, is much more terrifying and, you know, can cause you to make poor decisions, basically because you're afraid of this thing you haven't experienced. And experiencing it is humbling in a way that I think is very good because it makes you kind of reset your ego and get a better sense for what really matters to you in life. And so that's, you know, it's probably not super comforting because no one wants to go out and fail just for the sake of the experience, but in practice, that is certainly one, you know, one easy way to kind of get over that. I guess I would say the other advice I would have is while you are in college, the stakes are lower, and now is the time to spend a summer internship working at a fast-growing startup or take a gap year and work at a fast-growing startup or both. And, you know, it's great to spend a summer working at a big company like Google and, you know, see what that's like, but you have, you know, through your college career, you have 3 summers. That means you get to do 3 internships and This is a very scarce, wonderful opportunity. Basically, in your whole life, you will only get 3 chances to do internships. You know, internships is not something that grown-ups do. Like, basically, once you graduate, you know, the idea of doing a job with the intent to stop after 3 months is really a unique thing available to college students. And so use that opportunity to do something that, that might seem a bit intimidating, such as working at a startup and experiencing it will automatically help change that, that equation as far as ego to realize, oh wow, this is exciting. I'm working with super smart people. And even if the— my parents haven't heard of it, or even if it's not famous yet, you can gain a sense of confidence about the company growing fast and doing well, or you might learn that you chose a shitty startup and it doesn't have those things. But because it's just a summer internship, it doesn't have nearly the same stakes of, you know, threatening your ego or so on. If you ended up deciding it wasn't a good experience, you return to school and keep going. So, you know, general— I think I said earlier that the number one goal of college, or the number one thing you'll get out of college, is the people, the relationships you form. And finding people who are better than you or different from you is, I would say, the single most valuable thing you can get out of college. But I'd say number 2 is to figure out what you love and the self-discovery of really to find what it is you love enough to go exclusive, to commit to it and You know, in my case, it was to have my own startup, but each of you might be different. And the best way to figure that out is to explore. And, you know, if you're at an Ivy League college, you're probably, like I said, like experienced. You're probably very good at climbing to the top of any mountain, and that's not what you need to get better at. What's more important, or the skill that's more important to develop, is to learn which mountain you want to climb. And I would say the best way to develop that is to explore, to try out really different things now while the stakes are lower. Thank you so much. All right, I think I should wrap up now. I haven't had breakfast yet. Was there one more person who wanted to ask a question? I see your video just came on.

Hi, my name is Sarika. Hi, Sarika.

Okay, last question.

Yeah, sorry.

I was just kind of curious, with kind of COVID-19, the coronavirus, kind of taking over right now, I was just kind of curious how you kind of see VC landscape kind of shifting, or what kinds of patterns you think you might be seeing for the future in this Yeah, COVID-19 has created so much disruption, and while I can make my predictions, I mean, the—

I think the thing I could say more confidently is that no one really knows. I think that— so what I have seen, and I actually predicted this right from the beginning, was that it wasn't gonna hurt the VC the early-stage VC world at all. And I think there was a lot of totally misguided press saying, oh, VC investing will slow down, and startups need to be more careful. And, you know, there was actually also then a self-fulfilling prophecy, where because people said that, startups started being more careful. I told all of our startups the opposite, like, don't stop spending money, don't worry about raising money. put your foot on the accelerator pedal, and if anything, spend more. And, you know, that seems to have been borne out, you know, 9 months later, in that VCs at the early stage, if anything, I would say the business is more exciting and vibrant than ever. And it's a bit sad, because I think trends that were already kind of problematic, have just been accelerated, or the gap between the tech world and the non-tech world has become bigger, where, you know, it's very worrisome how much some industries are suffering and people are suffering in non-tech industries. These are trends that were already happening. They've just been vastly accelerated, where adoption of You know, having a Zoom call is something that before COVID-19 was kind of like an occasional thing. Now it's like 10 times a day, and the adoption of technology has really helped every aspect of the tech industry. I would say the part of the tech industry that has the best like benefit from COVID is the early-stage startup with, you know, a handful of people who are well-funded, pre-revenue, just building their thing, because that's, you know, you can do that work from anywhere, from your parents' house or from a, you know, from, you know, wherever you want, work with a small group. If you have the funding, and if you're not worried about revenue for the first year or so, you know, building your initial product, It's an easier time than ever to recruit people to join you. And a lot of people have spare time on their hands, whether it's college students who are bored and have extra time, or people who, you know, are out of college, you know, 2 or 3 years out, they have a job, but they have no social life anymore. And so they have like twice as much time in their life and can can do side projects or work for startups. And so I think the innovation and entrepreneurship and creativity happening right now is super inspiring. It's, I think, more than I've seen really in my entire life. And so as an investor, I'm very excited about it. And I think there's no better time than now to be doing something entrepreneurial. So yeah. I do have to temper that by saying I feel guilty that I'm in a part of the industry or in a part of the economy that is doing so well when other people are, you know, doing so poorly.

Thank you so much.

My pleasure, Sarika. All right, thank you so much, everybody. Thanks for staying. It was really an honor to talk to all of you.

Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Bye.

All right, bye-bye.