Ann Miura-Ko: The Most Powerful Woman in Startups | HawkeTalk #99

You're listening to Hawk Talk. I'm here today with Ann Miura-Ko. How are ya?

I'm doing great. How are you?

Good. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Of course. So to get started, I assume You're born and you come out and you immediately start doing deals, looking for investments, wanting to fund all the technology in the hospital.

Boss baby.

Yeah, exactly. From the very beginning. Maybe talking to some LPs in the other rooms, like just making it happen. But to take it back, where are you from originally?

I was born in Santa Monica.

Oh, nice.

My parents are Japanese and my dad came here to get his PhD. And my mom came here sort of to follow my dad. And so we got started in LA.

And so, and what PhD was your dad getting?

He was getting it in mechanical engineering.

Okay. And so I always like to understand, like, how was it growing up? Did you grow up in Santa Monica then?

No, I grew up actually in Palo Alto.

Okay.

So my dad, my dad is literally a rocket scientist.

Nice.

You know, he worked at NASA.

Yeah.

He was helping with the space shuttle. So I grew up sort of around NASA Ames.

Yeah.

And that was sort of, that was my inception story.

And as a kid, what were you sort of into? Like, what were your hobbies? Was there like a point where it's like, this is what I want to be when I grow up, kind of? Like, not this meaning venture, but like, what were your kind of your passions as a kid?

Yeah, you know, I was, I was into a lot of different things. I was first and foremost, my brother and I have the same birthday. We're not twins, but we're 2 years apart. So I was obsessed with all the things that he was allowed to do that I wasn't allowed to do. So that was like a prime motivating factor early on. Distressing my parents was also another motivation. So I think at one point my mom asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I kind of looked at her and I was like, tell her I want to be a farmer. And I was like, I want to be a farmer. And she was like, a farmer? It's like, why do you want to be a farmer? And I'm like, because it's something you, you know, you probably wouldn't be thinking about as like the dream job for your daughter. Um, so I was like into— but I had all these like weird things that I really wanted. So, so the motivation around the competition, the imaginary competition in my mind against my brother, led to me wanting to play musical instruments, right? So my brother played the violin. I decided that he was being given opportunities that I was not, and so I felt like I deserved music lessons as well. This is when I was 2, and so I laid myself down on the floor between him and his violin teacher until I was granted my wish. My mom decided I was so bad at violin that she did make me stop at some point.

That's unusual. It's unusual for the parents to be pushing you to stop, not keep going.

You don't want to. She was like, this is not going to be your shining moment. And when I was 4, though, I was a little bit more reasonable and I said, I really want piano lessons. And so she found me a piano teacher. And I was one of those— I think I was a kid who was not pushed to do music. And so I would naturally practice as a 4-year-old for over an hour, you know. And so it was something that I really loved.

Yeah.

And so that— I did like roller skating at some point. Not like rollerblading, but literally roller skating. But my parents kind of entertained like the things that I wanted to do. I'd just say, hey, I want to try that out. My mom would be like, all right, let's go do it.

And did you ever get to work on a farm?

No, I did not. And it's probably a good thing I didn't because I definitely do not do well at growing things. It's not—

Not a green thumb.

My forte.

And so, like, tell me more about, like, it sounds like you had a little bit of renegade in you, but in terms of, like, as you grew up, like, what did you gravitate towards in school? Like, what was kind of your, you know, middle school, high school years? What was on your mind?

So I think there were a few driving factors for me as a kid. One was sort of I really believed in facing fears. And so one of the biggest fears that I had was public speaking. And I hated it. It terrified me. I could get up on stage and play piano in front of huge audiences, and it didn't really impact me at all. But I wouldn't be able to say the name of the piece I was playing, or the composer, or even my own name, to the extent that my brother would come up and announce everything for me. And I realized that that was ridiculous. And in high school, I decided I would face that fear. And the most direct way of facing that fear was joining the speech and debate team.

Oh, yeah.

Where did that come from?

I'm curious. Was that just innate to you? Or like, where did that ability to be, you know, sort of— most people will not run into their fears head-on. Like, that's 99% of people just avoid it and go with like, You know, you hear it like, I'm an introvert, or I'm an extrovert, and this is what I'm gonna do, and I'm not gonna— this is who I am, versus like, I don't want to be that, I'm gonna go do this.

Well, I think there's fears that you don't need to face, right? Like, if you really don't want to get on that roller coaster, you don't need to get on that roller coaster.

Yeah.

But I think there are certain fears that you, you realize at some point, oh, this is actually going to really hold me back.

Yeah.

And I think there was a moment in junior high where I was literally standing on stage And my brother was saying, this is Ann Miura. And the inner dialogue was, wow, Ann, this is pretty lame. Like, you should be able to say your own name. And if you can't say your own name, it's gonna, it's gonna hold you back. And I didn't know how it would hold me back, but I knew it was gonna be a liability. And I felt like this urge to do something about it earlier rather than later. And I think I had that, I've always had that sort of mechanism of introspection and saying, is this stupid? Is this something that I really should do? Or am I just afraid of it? And it's okay to be afraid of it.

Yeah, got it. And so, As you move through, so you joined the debate team, as you said. How'd that go? How was overcoming it?

So the first 2 years were a total disaster. It was loss after loss. It was a very unproductive few years. And at the end of sophomore year, I think my mom sat me down and she said, you know, you're really good at piano. You could double down on that. But like, we have this thing called college apps coming up. And spending a gazillion hours losing at debate tournaments is not really like great as a look. And she said to me something that'll stay with me. She said, you should try fencing.

Huh.

And the reason that stayed with me was, I remember I looked at my mom and I was like, wow, like, you really do not know me. And like, you must be so desperate to get me to quit to suggest fencing because like my hand-eye coordination is not the best. And I was just trying to imagine like, why of all the sports would it be that sport? And then also imagining the worry that had caused her to say these things. But it was a formative experience because I did realize at some point, following what my parents suggested that I do was not always going to lead to the best path, right? So if I just said, you know what, Mom, you're right, I'm gonna do whatever you tell me to do, I'm gonna quit debate, I'm gonna go do fencing, it just would've been a really bad— decision. And so what I said to her was, hey, give me the summer and I'm going to practice. And like, back in those days, this was pre-internet, so it was— you'd go to a library and read lots of books. And I essentially debated myself for 3 months. And they would release the topics And so I would create cases for all the topics and I would basically debate myself. And fall of junior year started and the promise had been if I don't place, I think it was the top 2 at like the first couple of tournaments, these are big tournaments, I quit. And I remember thinking that was a really bad deal that I'd made because I had never even come close. But this is what I really learned, was that in that kind of competition, the person who really loves the thing— and I really did love speech and debate— I, I could actually out-prepare literally anyone. And when someone walked into that room, I thought of every single argument that they were about to make, and I had thought of 5 responses to them. I thought about how I was going to corner them in cross-examination. And like, I had basically plotted out exactly what was going to happen in that debate round before we even walked in. And so it resulted in me never having won up until that point, and then suddenly starting to take first and second place, and consistently in each of these competitions leading up to the end of junior year. I took second in state, and then End of senior year, I won nationals. And so there was— there's a few lessons out of that, which is especially for this inception story, like, trust yourself. Like, you know, you know your own potential. And there actually isn't a test for human potential. There's like no— nothing your mom can ask you. There's no, you know, standardized test for human potential. Because it's a combination, it's this weird combination of passion and then grit, and then ultimately you sprinkle a little bit of talent in. And so there's no way you can test for all of those things before it happens. And I really grokked that in my high school years, and that was such an important set of lessons. Going into adulthood.

And what do you— so you said, yeah, so sophomore year, summer after sophomore year in high school, you spent the entire summer in the library studying debate. Not a common choice for a sophomore in high school.

Pretty nerdy.

Nerdy, whatever. I mean, no matter what it is, even if it was sports, like most kids aren't committing like that to something on their break. Was that because you were so put off by the recommendation of fencing? Was it really like that?

Probably.

Yeah, no, that's fine. I'm just curious.

There's some element of that, right? But there's also like, I don't know, sometimes when you find something that you personally love, and I went back to the Palo Alto High School speech and debate team, and I gave this talk where I was like, wow, there's like 90 students now on this team. When I was there, it was like maybe 10. To me, I was like, that means there's 80 people here, probably somewhere around there, who are here because it's good for your college applications, your parents told you to do it. And like, the problem is that's, that's pretty good motivation. There's going to be someone out there who's kind of like me, who just like for irrational reasons loves it and would spend hours doing it with like literally no one telling me to do these things. And how are you gonna outcompete that person? Like, you would have to be the grittiest person and have like the naggiest parents to compete against that like love of something. And so there's this element of you have to find something that you think is really interesting. And people call it passion, but like it's not love. It's like, it's, it is like a Inherent curiosity that you're drawn back to this thing over and over and over again.

I totally agree. I think that there's a fallacy with the pursue your passion thing because I think we can have passions that aren't careers, but having something that— there's a combination of like it's challenging enough, you're good enough at it that you see— like you saw the progress too. Like if you hadn't won in that junior year, you probably wouldn't have kept going with the bit. So yeah, it's— you have to get that positive reinforcement too. But like that's what you see with the top athletes, the top performers in general, is like It might be their favorite thing to do ever. It also could be something that they like to do and they're decently good at. And they, you know, they have— it's a combination of all that that I see flow into that.

It's also like, and this is something I learned in piano, which was like, there are days where you only do boring things.

Yep.

And that's discipline.

Yep.

And like, sometimes you just have to practice for 3 hours.

Yep.

and you feel like you made zero progress, but you practice scales, you practice arpeggios, and at the end of it, like, your fingers are just getting stronger. And, and I think, you know, that, that is such an important habit to develop and to know that you have the capacity to do those things.

Yeah.

You find it in sports, you find it in, like, things like speech and debate, piano, music. That discipline of like having to go through the motions and the time put into it is so important.

Entrepreneurship. The last person I interviewed on the podcast is the founder of Cloudflare, Matt Fruit. He was talking about like the first 3 years he was their main tech support. And so he slept like 2 or 3 hours a night and his phone would ring out the book. But like, welcome to discipline. Like, I was like, are you a guy that can— I'm like, I'm not a— I need 7, 8 hours of sleep. He's like, No, me too, but that's what I had to do.

Yeah.

So it really is consistent there. So, okay, so you did well at debate. Did you know what you wanted to go to college for? Did you have an idea at that point, like what you might want to pursue?

No, I mean, I was a little bit all over the place. There was a piece of me that really wanted to go to med school. I thought it was just like an honorable career. So when I started at in college. That was sort of the track that I was on. But I also was really good at math. And so the problem with a lot of the sort of pre-med degrees— there was one called MB&B, Molecular Biology and Biophysics.

Of course.

Yeah, and it didn't really require additional math. And that to me was a real disappointment. And so I ended up For— and I don't really have the logic of how I went from MB&B to this, but I ended up in electrical engineering.

Okay.

And some of it was like, at this time there was some talk of like nanorobotics and things like that. I was just kind of really interested in it. And, um, and so I signed up for electrical engineering, and, and I was at Yale. Uh, at Yale, you can imagine the electrical engineering department is not exactly what you would call huge. It was very intimate, but it was like, it was a great program because it was small. And so the professors, some of them would do oral exams instead of written exams, which is terrifying, but you would also really get to know your professors. You would get to know the subject really well, and I loved it. So it was just like something I studied and And ended up really like adoring.

And you were thinking to get into like biomechanical engineering, that side of things was—

Yeah, I mean, I didn't really know, but I was interested in— I was interested theoretically in robotics at the time. I was also interested in signal processing, like I like the math element of that. And so I, you know, I signed up for the MCATs. I took like all the pre-med classes too. And then there was sort of this realization of maybe I don't want to be a doctor. And that was hard because I had— I was taking the MCATs over the summer my sophomore year. And I think I had gone to the hospital for some—

Is that normal, by the way, to take them that early?

Yeah, a lot of people do.

Okay.

And so that was sort of the track that a lot of people were on. And it's either summer after sophomore year or junior year.

Got it.

So it was good that it was early for me because as I— I had something to do at a hospital. I went in, and as I was coming out, there was sort of this moment of realization where I kind of felt like I was watching my best friend, who was also studying for the MCAT, we were living together, And she, she was sort of the person that was everyone's confidante, and she was— she's just this wonderful human being. So Kathy was the person that I felt like should be a doctor.

Yeah.

And today she is a doctor. She's an amazing doctor, you know. And, and I hate— I remember I said to her, I was like, I kind of hate hospitals. Like, I don't I don't like the lighting. It's like off, and then there's like dark rooms and it smells a little weird. And then the, the worst part of it for me was I don't really love it when someone is empowered to do something to change themselves and then they don't. And I felt like that would be a lot of medicine, and you kind of as a person have to be— if you love medicine, then you are empathetic to that person. And I knew, I knew myself, I was like, I would not be empathetic to that person. I would be like, you're a high-functioning individual, you should change your life in these ways, why haven't you? Um, and that, that was missing for me. And so it was sort of this— my dad used to always say, like, you, you have to be world-class at whatever you're doing. And to me, that meant like I needed to know how I could be a dent maker. And if I had superpowers, where did those superpowers align to allow me to be a dent maker? And in the medical profession, I would be muting my superpowers so that I could be a doctor. And that didn't feel right.

Got it. And so what'd you do?

So, um, so then I went on this sort of— I felt like it was like a walkabout, right?

Yeah.

Like, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. And one day my junior year, I'm giving a tour to this guy, um, and he, he's, he's telling me that he lives in Palo Alto. And so I said, oh, I live in Palo Alto too. And he said, well, what are you, what are you doing for spring break? And I said, I'm good, I'm gonna go home and visit my parents. And he said, if you're interested, you could come and shadow me to know more about what I do. And I clearly had had no context about who this person was, so I said, what do you do for a living? He happened to be the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. And at the time, like, and this is 1997, that is the— company in Silicon Valley. And this man was Lou Platt. He was sort of the last of that, this like kind of legacy CEOs that existed that people really, really revered. And I spent a week basically shadowing him. And at the time, I think Bill Gates came to give an announcement with Lou Platt. Actually, I even have the pictures here, but Oh, that's awesome. Um, that's like Lou Platt talking to, to me.

Yep.

And then he sent me this picture of Lou Platt talking to Bill Gates.

Yeah.

And these were like, I mean, and, and he didn't have to do that. Like, that— I took away some major lessons in mentorship.

Yeah.

And what it means to actually be a believer in people. I still get chills when I think about that because he didn't know me from Sam. He didn't know me at all, and he gave me this huge opportunity, and then he encouraged me in these crazy ways and created a really huge dream in me. And I remember I left Hewlett-Packard, and I was hooked. I'm like, this business thing, this technology thing, it's happening, it's happening everywhere. And I went back to Yale, and the, the unfortunate piece there was like people weren't into tech startups or things like that there. So I was encouraged to work at like Goldman Sachs for a summer, which I did.

Wall Street. Yeah.

And I, I tried consulting, and I, I really actually enjoyed consulting because I got to see see, like, a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, one of my friends had said to me, hey, Ann, if you're really into technology and you, you like business, like, you should think about venture capital. And, um, and I went back to that comment from my college days. This was like a kid who was super into finance. I had no idea what venture capital was. And so I ended up reaching out to a bunch of folks And a few years after having worked at McKinsey, I ended up at CRV, which was a venture capital firm out on the East Coast. And the second day of work there was 9/11.

Oh, wow. So how did that progress? Did they shut down?

So they had like a $1.2 billion fund.

Significant at that time too.

It was really significant. And it was a storied institution, but the partners were really real about it. And one of my first studies was, well, what size should this fund be? And they really let me just kind of run with analysis and figure out truth. And the partner I worked for, Ted Dintersmith, was just extraordinarily supportive in the work I was doing, giving me really great feedback. And what we came up with was like, wow, this fund needs to be a lot smaller. And in like a really courageous act that I didn't really even appreciate at that time, like what it actually meant for the firm, they reduced their fund size from $1.2 billion to $450 million.

Wow.

And it was just really like, it was an impressive act to me because it was analysis I had done, but what do I know? And they're responding to, okay, this is the work that we've seen. What's the right answer? They were truth seekers. And so they did. And over the next 2 years, it was just a very slow period in venture. And in that time period, I was trying to figure out what grad school I would go to. And I always wanted to go to grad school I'd actually applied and gotten into law school and decided that that wasn't the path for me too. So I have this history of taking standardized tests and then realizing that maybe I shouldn't have taken that.

We have that in common, and my wife actually.

I could be a great chocolate mixer.

My wife did the MCAT, did not go to med school, did the LSAT, same deal, looked at the GMAT, yeah.

Yeah. So I ended up like seeing this opportunity for cybersecurity and risk modeling just in some of the conversations I was having and couldn't get people to really start a business in that area. And so decided, hey, I'm going to go and get a PhD in math modeling, risk assessment, and cybersecurity. And then when I emerged from that, there's still going to be all these problems. Like, that's never going to go away. And so, I got to go back to Stanford, so go home and start a PhD program.

Nice. And how was that? Was that like to take a step back out of work? Because you said it was slow though, so it seems like it probably was a welcome change.

It was an interesting period. There was sort of this moment where companies were actually starting to come out of the morass. And so this is like when Google was still pre-IPO. And, uh—

What was this, about '04?

'03.

'03, okay.

And I talked to some recruiters there who were like, we're looking for people with your background, do you want to come work here? And I went through this whole, do I just actually do this PhD, or do I go and work at one of these companies? Um, specifically, like, do I go work at place like Google. And I remember having this conversation with my husband of like, oh, I think this intellectual itch is something I have to scratch. Who knew, like, how much money you leave on the table by scratching an intellectual itch? But it was sort of a gut instinct. I said, you know, I really want to do this.

Yep.

And so I ended up back at Stanford in 2003. Nice.

And how long was the program? How long did it take you to get your PhD?

Depending on how you're counting, I got out in 2008 or 2010. The actual graduation happened in 2010.

Yeah.

But I started my firm here, Floodgate, in 2008.

Got it. And so you graduated and immediately went to start your own fund, correct?

Yeah, I started my fund while I had not yet graduated.

In 2008? Great time to start a fund.

It was actually a really good time to start a fund. Not to the outside, but on the inside, it was really great.

And so tell me about that. Was it easy to get the money you needed to start it? Why did you feel like that was great timing?

Yeah, so I actually originally got started in 2007, sort of picking my head up and saying, I might start a cybersecurity startup company. Like, now is the time. And for me, the context was like, I had seen cybersecurity essentially go from, you know, it was vandalism. Like, people would come in and like do something to a website.

Yep.

To by the time 2007 hits, there's actually like nation-state warfare happening. And we were still using exactly the same tools for defense.

Right? Yeah.

And so, in my PhD period, like, the risk had just grown at an astronomical rate, and then people were not managing it well. So, I felt like this was the moment. And I started talking to some angels, and one of my professors said, you know, you should really talk to this guy, Mike Maples. He sees a lot at this early stage. And so, I went and talked to Mike, And then one of my asks was, hey, I'm— I've been in this like academic institution for so long. Can you let me see the deals that you're seeing? And I had been teaching some entrepreneurship classes, so I'll give feedback to you. And he was nice enough to say, Wednesdays, let's just get together. And we did this for a few months. And one day I'm driving up to Tahoe with my husband. I have an 18-month-old. And Mike calls and he's like, I have this great idea, which is always like, okay, he's going to say something crazy. And he says, okay, this isn't a venture-backed startup, but like, I've been starting to talk to limited partners. This could be a backed venture startup because like no one's building like a new startup venture capital firm And we could be at the forefront of this new movement. And it was true, like, we were seeing just founder after founder. Like, we could not have openings on any Wednesday because there were— it was back to back.

Yeah.

People who are looking for not $5 million, not selling 50% of their company, but something a lot less. And then we're always saying to our founders, like, you have to have some sort of insight. Like, what's your insight? I had a technical insight, which was I saw AWS launch in 2006. And I knew, like I knew then that there was something big there because of just even on the research side of things, what kind of impact that could have.

Yeah.

And then thinking about it from the startup perspective and the cost basis. So we were primed and Mike was seeing it just from the startup. And when we combined those things, we're like, there is an inflection point happening right now. And there's, and then it's a moment in like the financial crisis. So everyone's running scared and there's this huge gap in the market. And I'm like, we should aggressively run and fill it. And like, I don't think the limited partners at that point were hearing such a different story and why we really believed that this was an opportunity. And so we raised, we basically said, let's just close our eyes and raise and then Whatever we have at the end of like a month, that's our fund. And so we just basically ran with that.

And so what was fund 1 size?

It was $35 million.

Wow. I mean, that's great.

Again, it was— Which to us was like, it was huge.

But the people that are running scared and a first fund and you're coming out with your PhD, you don't have a venture background. Like, that's amazing.

I didn't even have a PhD. I was like, I was candidate.

Yeah. I guess you do have those couple of years, but still, like, There wasn't like a huge track record people were betting on. It was a thesis. And probably you two in the room, frankly, probably did a lot.

Yeah.

That's awesome. And so, give me the path from there. So, that was 2008. How's it been since? What was the trajectory? Has it just been go bigger and bigger and bigger? You got some wins, just kept going straight up into the right?

Yeah, it's been a few things. So, the first 2 years was crazy. promised myself, some of my mentors, like, I would finish that PhD. And this was more like, I had a couple of, like, women executives who were like, Ann, like, you are so close to this PhD, it will give you so much credibility in the market, you are to finish this thing. And Stanford, to their credit, was hugely supportive. When I was like, hey, by the way, I'm going to start this venture capital firm, they were like, great, how do we help you finish your PhD? And so for academic institutions, incredible. And like to add a little bit to the chaos, I was like, and by the way, I'm about to have my second child. So I became pregnant with my second child a few months after I started Floodgate, and in April of 2009, I give birth. And I had had preterm labor, so I my original. thought pattern was, I'll defend my PhD when I'm hugely pregnant, no one will ask hard questions. Then I had preterm labor. And so they're like, no, we're rescheduling it for 6 weeks after you give birth. And I was like, that is so unfair. It's like, you have no idea what you've done to me. 6 weeks after I defend my—

Well, yeah, but ours just turned 1. So I've watched the me of a thinker and a wife. So you know, you know. Yeah, for a mom, that is—

Tell her to do anything at 6 weeks postpartum.

Honestly, the 3-month mark, because I think kind of standard is 3 to 6 months maternity leave. The 3-month mark, I don't even understand it. It's crazy.

Yeah. So I was like, all right, 6 weeks in, I guess that's what we're doing. So I defended my thesis. And I made my first investment in 2009. And so like this, there's this whole period of like, I'm building a firm, like, I'm starting my investment career, I'm finishing up my PhD, I'm having a second child, my first child's freaking out because she doesn't really want a brother. Like, all of this is happening, but I think what that taught me was, you know, a lot of people, they'll plan out their lives, so, and it will make a lot of sense, right? You're like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing, and then 12 months later, this accomplishment. And sometimes, like, life is better when you just throw it all in like it's like a big bowl of soup. And you just cook it and then you see what happens. And like, that was my life for 2 years where I was like, if I— if anyone had described to me the day-to-day, I would have been like, that's just stupid. But you, you as a human being can take that day-to-day and you can emerge from it like knowing, oh, like that was hard, but it's doable.

I'm still here kind of thing. Yeah. And I made it through one day, I can make it through the next. Yeah.

But don't ever tell me what that was. Again, like, I don't want to know about it.

I don't want to be back there. I don't want to do it again. But you, yeah, you realize in those tough times, oh, I can't do this.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's—

yeah.

And so how has it been? You know, you've built this firm, you've been rated the top 20 VCs in the world. Like, how has that process been? Have you always stuck to cybersecurity too? Are you still focused there?

Oh no, like, we do— I, I invest all across the board. I think, so one of the things that I've always been, I've thought a lot about is where is my superpower?

Mm-hmm.

And so we are really good at what I would call the negative 1 to 0 and the 0 to 1. So if you are, if you've figured out your business and you just need to scale this thing and dump tons of money into the fire, that is not me. I, I just rolled off the board of Lyft like 2 months ago, having been on the board for 13 months, 13 years. But like, that is very, very unusual for me. What I do love is we only make 2 to 4 investments per partner per year. And so we're deep in that story of like, what's the decision that you're making? Why are you making it? Then actually being retrospective about, did that work? Why did it work? Why did it not work? We have 15 years of history collectively across multiple partners to know those storylines. So what is the superpower there? It's partially just understanding these journeys because they're not science when they're at this point.

Yeah.

Then the second piece is actually knowing the patterns around the humans that make it possible. And so we are really good, and I'm really good at spotting people even before they have their idea to know, okay, this person actually is really capable of building something not just good but exceptional. What are—

what would be those patterns?

Yeah, so there's There's sort of inherent characteristics which are in a founding team. We're looking for what I call a super builder, which I think is fairly obvious in the sense of they're really good at building things. But there's a second dimension to it, which is they're a little bit unemotional about the things that they build. And the reason that's really important is that they're willing to throw things away. as much as they are willing to build things. Because if you hold on to an idea in too precious of a way, that will actually get in the way of you finding the true, the great idea. And so we're looking for, for that love of building that is pure in the sense that they just love to build. The second is what we call super thinker. And we describe this in the form of an idea maze. So, uh, Balaji over at a16z has talked about this in the past, but we really love to see people who care deeply about the space that they are in. They understand the history of it, they understand the competition, the probable competitors, what's been tried, what hasn't been tried, why. Who they've talked to. Like, they have this whole mapping of the past, the present, and the future. And any question we would ask, they have thought about, and they've thought about 3, 4, 5 steps deeper. And they chase information like the super builder chases building. And when you have that combination, it's, it's like complete magic. But those 2 traits are extraordinarily rare. And so we look for that. And every time we've found it, sometimes the idea almost doesn't matter.

Because they'll figure it out. They'll pivot. They'll try things until it works. They will. Yeah.

And so we, we do have to have affection for something like the space or the insight that you have.

We always say you've got to bet on the jockey, but we can't bet on a jockey riding a donkey.

Yes. So those are the things that we really look for. And, and sometimes we'll be talking to founders, you know, 6 months to a year before they start something. And we're helping them like navigate that idea maze. We'll give them, hey, here's some things that we're looking at. Here's some competitors that we think exist in the market. You know, what do you think about pricing or business model? And we're trying to identify, is this a team that will juke and jive very, very well?

Yep, makes sense. 2 more questions for you. Number one, what's next? You're just gonna keep going the rest of your life? Is this what you like doing? You're in your pocket, you found it.

So I am continuing this path. Like, I, I love learning more about how we spread the news of being a founder of like a truly scalable large business. Um, I love spreading the news about building something that actually matters and, and doing something that really makes you a dent maker in the world. Um, and, and leveraging— it's sort of what I, I said about myself, figuring out my superpowers and then You know, my dad said, be— go be a dent maker, be world-class at something. It made me shut doors. I said, that's not a door that's going to maximize my capacity. Um, and I look to people to do that. And I, I feel inspired when I'm teaching. So I get to do that at Stanford. Um, we're also doing that with other founders and would-be founders. We're doing that with angel investors. And so everything that we know, We try to teach to other people because we think that that maximizes the chances of creating dentmakers in the world. And so that, that's my passion, um, and I, I love talking about that all the time.

I love that. And last question for you, and you've given some great tips here, but if there was one thing that you either did hear or wish you heard that helped you pursue this, stay with it, have the grit through having your second child and building the fund and getting your PhD, And all the way through to like really pursue your dream. Well, again, either wish you heard or did hear, what would be that one thing you'd tell to someone else that's trying to get there?

Yeah, my, um, my partner Mike the other day was talking about this, this talent that he called being disagreeable. And, and I'm not sure if that's exactly the right word, but there's something about letting go of people pleasing at some point in your life. And for women in particular out there who are listening, I think like it's really important for someone in your life at some point to tell you that it's okay to go against the grain. And I fortunately got that lesson early in life. I, I, speech and debate, we actually only had college student coaches. And one of my coaches would pay us in pizza slices if we would make the other person cry. And so I was ruthless. Like, I got zero courtesy points. And I remember one of my coaches said, it's okay. It's okay if you get zero courtesy points as long as you get the win. And I mean, that was like probably not the right lesson, but at the same time, It taught me this skill of being okay with myself, not just always being polite and being a people pleaser. And I think that's a really important characteristic to develop in yourself and to know actually when you're trying to please other people, but then also know when you make the decision to go against the grain and why you're doing it. But I feel like that's given me real leverage in my own life. And then the last piece to that is actually having people be a believer in you gives you the latitude to do that. And so once you have that latitude and you realize, oh, I have gotten beyond that point of pleasing other people, then it's your chance to actually start to pay it Back. And then you go back and you tell people how much you believe in them, and you give them the latitude to go against the grain. And I think that's just sort of that cycle that we want to create. And that's what I think is really beautiful about Silicon Valley is that's something that I see constantly here.

I love that. Well, Ann, this has been amazing. Thank you for coming on Hawk Talk.

Thank you so much. Of course.