Sriram Krishnan - GP of A16Z On The Future of Tech, Creating Your Own Luck, and Seizing Opportunities

Welcome to the Casey Adams Show. I am your host, Casey Adams, and over the past six and a half years, I have hosted hundreds of interviews with world class entrepreneurs. On today's podcast, I sat down with Sriram Krishnan, a GP at the venture capital fund A16Z and someone who I have so much respect for. Sriram not only was an investor in my last company, which we'll get into, but he's someone that I've learned so much from and that has been so impactful for not only myself but so many incredible founders out there. He started his life in India, came to San Francisco, worked at some of the top tech companies to then became one of the potential candidates to be the CEO of X. After Elon Musk acquired the company. He's hosted Zuck and Elon on Clubhouse Rooms, has an incredible podcast with his wife, the Arthur and Shroom Show. And again, he's someone that is so humble, so informative and I know you will learn so much from today's episode. Before we dive in, please take a moment to subscribe. Drop a comment about what you learned from this episode. And with that being said, enjoy today's episode with Sriram Krishnan. Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by someone that I, I've been looking forward to have on the show for quite some time. That is Sriram Krishnan. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thank you for having me. Long time listener, first time guest. I feel nervous. I feel real pressure. You know, I, I don't want to screw this up. I may not get booked here again.

Oh, man. Well, I know that won't happen, man. You have quite the experience. I mean, you've, you've hosted the grades. We're talking Elon Musk, we're talking Mark Zuckerberg, we're talking you and your wife having a phenomenal show. So you've been here before in terms of on the mic, have an incredible presence and I'm just going to chat with you today, man. I know just for the context, the listener. We've known each other for probably two, three years now. We've met in person a couple times. I was so graceful to have you as an investor in my, for my last company and I've personally loved all of the content that you've been putting out over the last handful of years. So first off, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Well, thank you. I mean, that means a lot and if I could just repay that in kind and just tell a story Casey reached out to me, I think, online, and I think it was quite a while before you even met in person. And I don't think you know this, but Casey, and this is many years ago and you kind of come so far since then. Even back then, it was so clear, like, how freaking impressive you you were. And, you know, at the time I was like, I just want to be in business with you because you're so impressive. And I just say, you know, I've kind of followed your journey since then with everything you do in terms of, like, inspiring people with, you know, your workout. But the content over here, it's awesome and huge props to you. So. And I'm a huge fan of the podcast and I think it's like you're one of the. I think, you know, I was telling you right before, right before the start, like, I think, I think you're one of these topics x people who are going to be at the top tier. So. So, yeah, so let's see if, you know, Spotify, Apple, if you're watching this, back up the truck and give my man Casey here and lock him in because you know he's going to be at top of the charts.

I appreciate it. That really does mean the world. Thank you, man. So I know we were chatting briefly before diving in, but you moved to London last year to open up the A16Z office out there. What does that move looked like from a personal perspective? And how has that transition been moving from San Francisco, being in tech all your life, to then moving across the world to London with your wife and kids to open up a new office?

Oh, man. Isn't such an adventure. And just like in context is why the move happened. You know, as a firm, we have always invested in companies internationally, in the uk, but you never had an office. And there was this opportunity that came by last year where we felt that we could partner with the uk, a country that we loved. My wife and I love the firm loves. We love the talent, we love the people there. And we felt that we could go in there and have a real impact helping them build out an amazing startup ecosystem, especially focused on crypto and web 3. But I think in the spirit of here, what we're talking about, it has been an adventure because, like, a lot of people may be listening. You know, I visited London, love the city, but that is dramatic in terms of moving there. And so my wife and I, and we have two small children, we didn't really know what to expect. And it has been adventure. So few things. First of all, as a city, it's one of the most gorgeous places. It is incredibly livable, it is diverse. Anything you want to do in terms of restaurants, stuff for kids, if your parents trust me, it's one of the best safe places in the city, in the world for kids. That's been amazing. I think what's really surprised me is just the genuine warmth and kindness of so many of the people that I have encountered. Because, to be honest, you know, like when you're expats, when you're there, you're kind of always feeling a bit lost. And Aarti and I, we had spent 10 plus years in San Francisco in Silicon Valley. We knew everyone and just like a lot of people kind of been there. And so this is a new place and people just took us in with open arms and we built our own little community there. And that has been amazing. And I've learned a bunch of things. For example, I realize now that how powerful like London is in terms of being international, like this number of countries with presence over there, how quickly you can get on a flight to other places, I can see, oh, I can see why the city has been the center of historical trade and finance. I also think the UK is going through a very, very interesting time where post Brexit, they're about to have an election. A lot of things in the mix where I think they have an opportunity to kind of be the next great big tech ecosystem. And I'm hoping to part in that. But yeah, it's been, it's been total blast. The time zones are a bit of a pain with west coast and you know, just to coordinate, I was like, I was flying to la, I was like, hey, you know, this is my one shot to get on Casey's show. Right. Like, I got to get in there. But the time zones are a bit of work in progress, but, you know, can't complain.

That's so great to hear, man. And just I remember when you were initially tweeting about the move there, I was excited for you because seeing just that's a dramatic change. And I think with, with every dramatic change in life from moving even from like a personal context, moving from Virginia to Arizona right out of high school, like a dramatic move. And you said this on another show, just, it kind of allows you to take a step back and reset some of your habits and how you go about your day and like the new gym you go to and all the different things. It's like a clean slate.

Yes.

How did that feel for you? And before we really dive into your background in tech. I mean, being able to have that clean, fresh slate. How did that feel?

Oh, absolutely. So I think, you know me, I'm a huge fan of pro wrestling and. Huge fan. And in pro wrestling, there's this theme where let us say you have a character and this person goes off and they're like, hey, let's bring him back and kind of like freshen them up. And they do something called a repackage, right? Like, what they do is they sometimes give you a new theme music. Maybe you go from a good guy to a bad guy, or a bad guy to a good guy, you have a different outfit, a different attitude. Maybe instead of coming out and saying, I love you, la, you come out and say, LA sucks. Exactly. And. And so I feel like I got to do a little bit of a repackage of myself. When I went to London, I would say a few things. And this is in our context because, you know, wife and I, we are, you know, we just turned 40, we have two kids. It's very different, I think, in which stage of life you are in. So I can only speak for myself. I would say the first is we just gotten a lot healthier because I made a concert effort. And honestly, I would say I just. I honestly want to give you credit because seeing you in your journey on social media, right? I look at you running, I'm like, gosh, I'm so, okay, fine, I can't eat the desert now, right? Like, you know, but, you know, we were like, okay, it's a new city, so it's a great reason to completely rebuild your habit. So we're also lucky because we landed there just before the Christmas holiday break. So went there. It was intense, two months, and we had an entire holiday to basically, like, all right, how do we want to live our lives here now that we found a house? And so I basically said, okay, I'm going to start from the very basics. Like, when do I get up in the morning? What do I eat? Where do I go? How do I spend my time? And then you. I put in the blocks. I absolutely need it. Like, for example, I drop off my daughter, you know, to her school. My son has this other thing, you know, sometimes there are work meetings. Absolutely. Get to. Then everything else, right? I got to architect my life from scratch, which is easier because I was in a totally new place. And I said, for example, I totally fix my diet and, you know, start going to a different gym. And that's been like, a great trajectory for me. And My wife. So that's helped a lot. So that's been a huge part of it. London's also very walkable. So I start walking around. I just basically reset my. I basically reset my habits from scratch. And I used. To your point, I used the fact that it was a new city to just totally rebuild everything. That was one. The second part was that since sometimes when you move and sometimes you do it, even your trip, it lets you see your own life from a different perspective. And we also had a milestone birthday because we both turned 40. We were like, okay, you know. You know, we hit this milestone year, knock on wood. We are lucky. We're healthy, you know, in a good spot, bunch of ways. Okay, how do you want to tackle the next 10 years of our life and being in a new place? And sometimes you get this on, like, we're on vacation. Let's kind of have the space to go to that. Been doing that third part was we were like, you know, this has been work in progress and really shout out to a lot of people. We don't know anybody in London. I mean, we know a lot of people, but, you know, it is still new. So we've been slowly trying to build a community there. In many, many ways, the podcast has really helped a lot of people in tech, and that has been work in progress. So those are kind of three areas, but I've been happy. Can't complain.

That's so great. So great to hear, too. Just that perspective of that clean slate. And speaking of, like, your podcast, you guys talk a lot about being outsiders and then becoming insiders. For the people that may not know, I'd love for you to give context. You know, coming from India to now, to working in tech for decades, to being a GP at a 16Z. Where did this journey start for you when it comes to an ambition to want to get into tech and to want to go again from that outsider in India to then, hey, how can I end up in Silicon Valley and, like, really be all in in the world of tech? When did that start for you?

Thank you. You know, I've always struggled a little bit to answer this question, because for a long time, I felt one of two things, to be honest. One, sometimes I felt like an imposter, where I felt like, well, am I really, like, on the inside? The second part was I was like, you know, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to sort of talk myself up and, you know, maybe somebody else in a different situation than me. And this would not Relate to them. But doing the podcast, I think what my wife and I realized is that whenever we have talked about our story, somebody there can take something away from it from very different life contexts and that helps them. To your point, we had none of this planned. That's a cliche, I know, but really honest. Quick highlights are we grew up in India in a city called Chennai. It's in the south. Both our backgrounds were incredibly kind of traditional Indian middle class values, huge focus on academics, huge focus on getting top grades. Didn't really get into computers until we were teenagers. We were always both rebellious in our own ways. I think we had two huge lucky breaks. One was we met each other online in 2002. We were building a website together. We met on Yahoo. Messenger, which I'm sure is an app no one knows about. And you know, you kids these days.

And.

Thank you, Casey. You don't pretend you know what it is. You're way too young, right?

I do not know what it is.

Yeah, like, is it what, like, happened between World War I and World War II? But my go to line is we met online before. Swiping right was a thing. And that changed our lives. Because seriously, I think these changed lives because we were the only people we knew doing what we did, which was nerding out on computers and finding someone else from a similar life background. She was from my city, but was living somewhere close by. Was huge. Because I think anybody here listening has a thing where they're like, am I the only one doing this, Going through with this, identifying with this, and you find this other person, you know, and kind of going through a similar situation, it means so much. And ATI would like stay up at night, be like, oh, someday we want to be Steve Jobs or do this thing. And we're the only people in our college and they would all be out doing different things. So that was one.

So that you guys met just for context, in college. This was.

Yes, yes. Online. We were in different colleges.

Online in college.

Yeah, in different college. We were, I guess, what, 19 years old. 18 years old. And so we've been together ever since. We've been together for more years together than we've been.

Oh, so powerful.

Thank you, thank you. And let us see. Then I wrote a piece of code that somebody at Microsoft was touring India. They spotted me. And honestly, this is where, you know, I think one of the lessons I tell young people is if you just do end things, you can never sort of predict or control what the world wants or does to you. You can Only kind of control your things. But if you do enough things and just put yourself out there, you. You just increase the surface area and the odds of something great happening. So there's no way I could have planned any of this. And I don't mean in some sort of fake modesty. I literally couldn't have planned any of this. But I was just doing a lot of stuff, and somebody at Microsoft saw something I was doing. They needed a kid to go on stage with a very senior Microsoft exec, Soma Segar, who's now at Madonna Venture, Shout out Soma. And they were like, this kid doesn't seem random. Let's get him, right? And I think they couldn't find somebody else. So a lot of these things just came together, right, like, and so it's like, intersection of like, luck and opportunity. I got a reach out. They were like, come on over. So I, they flew me. I'd never been on a plane before ever in my life.

Kidding.

No.

First you're in college.

In college, I get a cold email from Microsoft.com email ready, which is like having like, I don't know, like the rock send you a cold email. It blew my mind. And then, you know, they were like, hey, they talked. They wanted to make sure I was not like a weird, crazy person. And when they were like, then they were like, hey, we want to fly you over to Bangalore, this other city, and why don't you do this demo in front of 3,000 people? And I had never been on a plane, never been a hotel before. And I was like, great, let me do this. And at the time, it was, I was just like, I'm just along for the ride. I have no idea. I'm just going to grab every opportunity. That went well. And that he, the exec, Soma, was like, you kids, me and my Aarti, he was all there. You kids should work at Microsoft. And then a year later, they wound up hiring me. So anyway, the reason I tell the story is, you know, I think a lot of people, a lot of our listeners are very young. They're often from India or other parts of the world. And sometimes Silicon Valley can seem so far away, right? And I didn't really realize they look at like an Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or somebody, you know, and they're like, that just seems like this other universe I can't get to. And I think I always want to tell them in the, like, no, it's actually not very far away. You're just like one or two hops and if you do the right things, right, like, you're just going to be in that universe, right? Like, because I was there, I remember being like, you know, like Sergey Brin or Larry Page or Mark Andreessen. The guy I work for now seemed like universe away, you know, but then it was just two hops away. So anyway, did that fast forwarding that led to a series of jobs. They flew us to Seattle, which is at Microsoft, which is where we grew up. We learned to really speak English well. We learned how to live in the United States, you know, became resident of the United States. That is great. We love Microsoft.

So you was the intention growing up just to kind of interject right here. Was the intention growing up to did you have a desire to move to the US or what did that look like?

Good question. I think, like a lot of people, we felt like we wanted to do something better and different. And we didn't feel like at that time, and I think things had changed. We had that opportunity in the community, in the place we were in, right. Aarti and I, at age 19, we'd be like, someday we want to start a great company, right? And we said, like, you should have, like, a really tall building, which is kind of a silly thing, you know, but we just kind of dream about that. And so. And at the time, and I think things have changed in India now. And If I was 20 years in India, I'd probably just stay. I was like the United States and Silicon Valley, that's the place to be. Because I also grown up on US Pop culture. Like, I'd grown up on, like, Star Trek and, you know, every movie from Hollywood back then. And we were like, so we did aspire to it. And so when 2008 happened, we were like, great, this is our chance. Let's go there and try and make something happen.

Wow. So you end up Seattle and then sf, you said? Yes, got it. I wanted to jump forward. You talk about, like, these jumps that you make in life. I. You said that very well. Where I relate so much from being in a small town in Virginia, in the context of my story. Grew up in a small town where I didn't fly on a plane until I bought the plane ticket myself, you know, and we were talking about so cool downstairs. You know, my parents don't have passports and I didn't grow up traveling. And it was just this very small circle of, in my eyes, like the realm of possibility, that then when I got injured when I was 16, where I was in a neck brace for six months, almost paralyzed. It was during that six month period where I kind of was able to take a step back and go down these rabbit holes on social media and just kind of see like, whoa, like the Tony Robbins, the Gary Vee's, like there's things that are available in the world today. Why don't I go try to make those, as you would say, like those two hops. Like, how can I go meet great people, how can I learn from them? How can I create something? And in context, back to your story when you made that.

Actually, can I ask you a question? I'm curious.

Yeah, please.

Was there a very interesting. Because was there a moment? Because I think that's a big jump and there's a lot of work being done and said, why can't I? Because a lot of people don't make the jump from you know, going, watching everybody on YouTube to being like, I should go do that. Yeah. What was the catalyst that made you want to send out a cold email or a DM and make something happen?

It's the timing of these questions is, is so great. So yesterday there was a friend of mine, his name is Caleb Maddox and we were just catching up yesterday when I was 15 years old, I'm 23 now, for context, he was so this, It's. He was 14 years old. I didn't know this guy. I was 15 in Virginia. He was one of the first people that I saw online that gave me the simple mental framework of why can't I. He was 14 years old. For context. He, he would open up speaking on stage for Gary Vee. He self published six book his father's amazing. He helped him through this process as a young adolescent and teenager. And I remember seeing this 14 year old kid putting out content, speaking on stage, putting out books and I'm there and you know, you see the Gary Vee's and maybe that's like unrelatable in terms of like how it relates back to your life. And I think that's sometimes what a lot of people need to see, especially nowadays where like, oh, you see that five year video that Mr. Beast puts out, you're like, oh, if he did that, like why not me? And I think a lot of people, creators, business owners, entrepreneurs, once you have that light bulb moment of you can find someone that you can relate to, to then pull it back to yourself and look in the mirror and say, huh, why can't I do this? That, that was for me a huge, I guess you could say, like momentum started building. When I saw that and, and I think too like being naive to not care what people think and to just wanted to put things out there. I think I, I didn't let myself get in my own way where now being 23 and like having matured and grown so much these years, I'm like, oh, I see how people can get in their own way. And I recognize how I do that sometimes. But I remember being just so obsessed with change at 15, 16 years old that there was no other alternative besides like, let me just keep. As you said, like throwing sticks in the fire and trying things and as you said is increase that surface area of luck. So thank you so much for the opportunity to.

No, no, I mean the question. I think, I think there's some two really powerful things in just what you said. But this is your show. But it's so interesting is the first one is I think that the power of seeing someone you can relate to. And I think that doesn't need to be because they're from the same background or the same race. It can be like there is something about them. Maybe they look like you, maybe they have same interest, or you're doing something they're doing like, oh, that is so powerful. And honestly, a lot of why ATI and I do the show is because we like, somebody can see us and be like, oh, I'm nerdy, just like them and you know, or whatever. And let me go to that. That's a big part of why we do this show. That's one. I think the second really powerful part is I think I about once a week, I'm sure you get this, somebody maybe successful is going to hit you up and you're going to be like, how do I start a great podcast? How do I start, you know, going wild on Instagram? I always give them the great same advice. I'm sure you do too. And I bet a 95% of them in my case never do anything with it, right? Because they're so afraid of like, oh, well, I look silly. What if I don't get likes? Nothing happens. It's a great start. About 90% of podcasts don't make it to episode 20. Be 90% after that don't make it to episode 40. I think one of the most powerful things when you're young and honestly if you're older, you can just harness it. It's just harder for people. It's just to go try, right? You just try this thing. You're not worried. And podcast can't especially is hard because when you're out there. The universe doesn't care about who you are and you maybe yourself don't know exactly who you are and what you're trying to get across. And it takes time. And that is brutal. Right? You're putting out content, no one's listening. And you know, and we can get into this later, but my wife and I do it together. So taking all this time for after dinner with our kids and we're doing the thing, I was like, you know, there's 10 people watching. I'll give you this maybe fun in retrospect story. My wife's parents were amazing and delightful. They live in India, right? Like, they don't really watch a lot of content. They're not really savvy. And one of our episodes, for some reason very well, didn't do really well. And we were really proud of it and we really crushed. And they said, they said, you know, they said we watch entire video. I was like, oh, thank you. Why? They were like, well, you only had like three views. You want to make sure it goes up to four. And I was like, man, you don't want to hear this from your mother in law. Okay. Right. And Arjun, we kind of had sex in other places. So we know. Obviously pushed past that. But thank you my in laws for still watching and supporting. But I do think like, you know, your point is very powerful because when you're young, you have that mindset which I, absolutely everyone should have. It's like, I'm going to try a bunch of shit and see what happens. And this thing is a slogan. It takes a long time. You know, I was talking to our mutual friends Michael and Lauren Bostic about this. It takes a long time before you figure out your craft. You're an audience and sometimes easier to be young when you don't, you don't have like, you don't worry about like looking silly.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that, the context and even the opportunity to throw questions back. I love that. I want to talk about the podcast that you have with your wife.

So.

And even I know you mess up. You referenced this statistic of like the average podcast puts out 20 episodes and then never puts out another one. I remember being 17 when I started my show. I started on a pair of wired Apple headphones and I would always say, like, I don't want to be in that statistic. And then more so I, I think it was the first year I put out a hundred episodes and I was so obsessed with output where like the outcome of listenership wasn't the there was the goal for me. It was how can I meet great people, how can I learn from them? And how can I create business opportunity through those connections? And I was so abundantly clear on my why. And I always think how, whether that's giving advice to someone that wants to start a podcast or even leaning into it from an entrepreneurial business endeavor perspective, like understanding the why behind things, in my opinion is so powerful. So when you and your wife RT started the show, I remember you guys had the biggest clubhouse presence. You're hosting Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, all these characters and then that pivoted to the podcast. What was the why early on? And how has it shifted over the years to go from Clubhouse Room to the podcast? And now, just for context, like being repped by WME and having this incredible show that you guys have now had for years.

But thank you. It is a very accidental journey. The way we started was it was Covid December 29, 2020, and nothing was happening. We're just going to hang out at home. Nobody was doing anything. Clubos was the number one app in the App Store. It was super hot. And we were. And I had grown up watching Leno and Letterman and kind of late night comedy. And we had a lot of friends in tech. And so one evening, and this is really aarti, my wife's idea, she was like, hey, why don't we just start getting these people on and we just call it a show and it'll be fun. And we had no grand design, which I think is really powerful because if you have a grand design, you can easily kind of get lost in that. It's a little bit like when people try and make these movie franchises and their first movie hasn't really worked. And so it really helped us if it's just a silly idea, right? And we got a couple of friends, you know, my boss now, Mark Andreessen. I hadn't joined the firm yet. This is prior to you joining the firm. This is a month before I joined the firm and this is where it gets interesting. So we go in and Clubhouse just super hard and we very quickly become one of the top things people listen to on Clubhouse. That is great. And then. And I've known Elon for a while and I was trying to kind of get him on. And this is way before Elon nowadays is much more public and he's bought Twitter and all that, but he was a little more reclusive then. And he said one Sunday, he says, okay, I'm going to come on your show. And then he tweeted it before telling us. And it went. It blew up my phone. And this was. It had a lot of things. One was we were super nervous because it was a big deal. I was also going to join the firm the next day. And so I had this weird situation where I was like, oh, I don't want to make the firm look stupid if this whole thing, if Elon doesn't show up, because we just announced it. And so anyways, that's kind of the first thing. And I think, in a way, it was a blessing and a curse for us because for 24 hours in our first two weeks of doing the show, we were the number one news story in the country. We were covered on Good Morning America. It was super weird. And the great part was, like, everyone kind of remembers us, knows that moment. The challenge was. It was so hard to get back to that. And we had a fantastic of guests, you know, Mark Zuckerberg. And sadly, before he passed away, I mean, before he passed away, sadly, Naomi Osaka. And we were kind of on this kind of Elon chasing high. We were like, what is the next big guest we can get? And I think this was bad in a few ways, which took us, like, a year to realize. One was it was bad for the audience because they were, like, kind of tuned to, like, oh, let's just wait for the next big guest, Which a lot of you, like folks listening to podcasts, that treadmill is not a treadmill you want to get on. The second part for ourselves was getting a great guest was not always in our control, and that was not what robot was really motivating us to our question. So which kind of a long segue into, I think, already asking a very good question, which, if you want to do a podcast, I think you need to be really honest with yourselves about what your motivations are and the work it needs. And, for example, for our people, the motivation is, I want to be famous. I want to be Rogan. I want to be Lex. I want to be Chris Williamson. I want to be Alex Cooper. Right? Pretty soon, I want to be Casey. Right? Like, but that is perfectly fine, right? But, you know, but what you got to realize is that's like saying, I want to be LeBron James. But that means you got to put in 10,000 hours of, you know, practicing your jump shots and doing the dribbles and the basics without having any success, right? And unless you enjoy those 10,000 repetitions, you know, you will burn out. And I think everyone doesn't get it. Like the if you. For Aati and me, it took us a year to realize. Like said I, unless we enjoy this conversation, right, we will burn out. Our audience will sense it and the show won't go on. So it is. Any of this content stuff is very much an endurance game. I'm sure you obviously know it. You've been doing this a lot longer than I have. So my advice to anybody watching this is it's fantastic if you want to start it. But what we realized was over the years was our motivation. We had to be honest with ourselves. Our motivation. We were like, okay, well, we kind of want a platform. I'm not going to deny it. Like, we want to be top of the charts. We're very competitive. On the other hand, what makes us really happy one was when you had a great conversation, right. Even if you're not a famous person. Right. Some of the best conversations have been not top tier people. And some of the top people are not so fun either. And you get both ways. That's number one. The second thing was we realized that we love it when. And I don't want to sound this fake, this is really true. When somebody would send us a DM and be like, hey, I listened to this and I was inspired by you and I'm going to do this other thing or somebody on the road will stop us and say, hi, this happens. Airports made our day, right? It totally made our day. It just happened to a couple of days ago. Oh, this is the best thing ever, right? And we're like, okay, so we love it. The conversation is great. And we love it when we think we are having an impact on people's lives. So let's do that. Not that we don't want to play the game. We don't want to do the shots and the metrics and because you got to play the game. But unless you love the core, you don't want to get that if you're an NBA unless you get up at 5am and you're putting in the work, right? Like, you will not make it to the top. And so once we kind of crafted that mindset, now a lot of times we're doing it because, like, are we enjoying it? Aarti and I, right? And here's the funny part. When you start doing this, and I'm not going to pretend it is like one day we are the epiphany and we got it right. It was a journey and we go ups and downs and we are a married couple, which is a whole Other interesting dynamic which we can get into. Yeah, but we were, like, our audience started sensing it. And one of our moves recently is, like, a lot of audience, like, hey, we don't really want the guests. We just want to cure both of you. And we've been doing a lot of what we call solo episodes, both of us talking, and that's been just as fun.

And I've loved them, by the way.

They've been great. Thank you. So it's been. It's been, like, quite the journey for us for the last two years.

It's so. It's so true in every aspect of life, too. Like, putting in those 10,000 hours. And I'll be the first one to say it, too. You know, I've. I've hosted this show for six years, and my love for it and like, that deep core, I don't even want to say passion, but just how I feel from when I. When I do interviews like this and how I have zoned in on my craft over the years. It's something that I literally have written down in my journal since I was 18. Like, I'm into this forever. And it's the way it's compounded into a fun fact that I was like to reference and I think you'd appreciate. This is for Media gets. The last company, we had about 37 angel investors, and about 80 to 90% of those initial angel investors were past podcast guests on the show. So for me, like, that ability to. To build true relationships with people that have depth in your life. Right? Like the ability to sit down with someone and expedite a relationship where you can spend an hour with them, like, actually spending time with them and listening and wanting to learn about them and who they are. It's compounded in so many ways. So I want to pivot, though, because I know we talked about our mutual friend Michael and Lauren Bostick hosting a show with your wife. What has that experience been like? And I know when I was speaking to Michael about it just two days ago, he's like, look, I can't say do or do not host a show, but it comes with these set of challenges. And I believe as someone that got engaged last year that's getting married next year, I have always thought about launching something with Jacqueline. She was the CEO of my last company, and she's very competent in the world of tech and media and understands that. And seeing you guys host the show and people like Michael, it's always been inspiring to me to see a couple do something in a public format. So I'd love to dive into that as just your experience there in terms of working with your wife alongside the media company.

The caveat I always have is, like, everyone's story is a bit different, and our story is kind of weird. We've been together for 20 years. We kind of worked with it in the past first. It's just awesome because we always want to work on something together. And one of the things I think it gives. Let me kind of work a lot of the good stuff, right? And one is it just gives us a project to do together, which is kind of fun, right? Like, you know, and this is a craft, you know, that is you get better at it. Like, just for example, last 30 seconds, just watch how Casey took my previous answer, made a point, and then smoothly went to the next question. Ladies and gentlemen, that doesn't happen on day one. Right there. And you're building this craft together, and that is awesome because you're learning it together, and you're kind of experiencing all this success together. That's great. And for us, it also works because we were like, okay, we have a lot of podcasts out there. How do we stand out? And we were like, okay, well, we are a couple in tech. We both are individually doing well for ourselves, but together, it's kind of interesting. Dynamic, right? Like, it is different. And our guests like it, too. And one of the reasons we connected Michael and Lauren is because our audience are nothing alike. Right? But we are the only sort of two couples doing these things together. So we connect a lot. It helps a lot because we can sort of complement and know each other very well. Like, for example, if I'm just rambling, aarti, we need to do these things. So she'll kick me under the table. I remember hearing that. And I'd be like, oh, okay, it's not me. She'd accidentally do it. I'm like, stop. You have to be careful with your kicks.

Okay?

Come on. Like, I'm picking the right signals over here. So that's all fantastic. I think the other part of what you have to understand, I don't want to say the downside is you're now going to be in sync emotionally on everything that you're doing on the show. So if you have a good day, if you have a good episode, but it's not an episode, it's like you're building. For us, we think of it as like a company, right? Yeah. It's content we're putting out there. We have customers. We want to deliver a great product. You know, we want to bring on partners soon. We have all these other plans and sometimes your good days and your bad days, and then you're going to be in sync, right? And you got to figure out how to deal with that. And some couples are very good at that. There are sometimes where you're lifting each other up and sometimes you're kind of amplifying each other's emotions, good and bad. So you got to deal with that as well. Then there is the practicalities. You got to schedule stuff, right? And if you have kids, where do you slot in the time? And you know, and maybe one of you doesn't want to do it. And if you're in a bad mood, maybe in a business partner, you may not say that, but if it's your spouse, maybe, you know, you can, you have a little different dynamic. So how do you kind of make the difference between home and work? But I do think if you can figure it out, it is amazing and beautiful. It also really helps for Aarti and me that we have very different vibes. So for example, she'll always notice something about the episode as it is happening, which is very different than me. She will notice the guest is sometimes feeling uncomfortable or the guest often, I'm talking too much and the guest wants to get a word in. And I'll notice some different things. So that really helps to complement each other. It's a plus. But I've only done it this way, so I can't speak for any other way.

It's so good to hear. And just the dynamic. I remember Aarti saying how you're more of the creative, you love the forward, future based thinking guests in the show concept and she'll kind of bring it back to reality sometimes.

Oh, gotcha. And also the more lazy one. Often I'm like, I don't feel like doing an episode. You got to get out, got to get it out. So it's fantastic.

So great to hear. Well, if everyone's listening, make sure you go check out the show if you haven't already. There's one thing you said earlier that I want to bring us back to and you know, and that's just your relationship with Elon, but more so just the way where you spend time in tech. Overall, I remember seeing, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. When Elon was making the acquisition of Twitter Now X, I believe it was that you were in the running to be the potential CEO. Is that correct?

That has been reported.

Okay, okay, okay, got it. I remember. I just Saw the article. So what. What are your thoughts? Is someone so deep in tech, what. What do you think about what's happened post acquisition at X? Personally, I love it. I've spent more time on it since the acquisition. I'd love to hear your thoughts overall.

Oh, yeah. Well, let me give you something which maybe a lot of people don't know the whole. I've known Elon for a while and I always want to talk about it because I think he gets so much attention. But the whole thing with X did not happen because I was at Andreessen Horowitz. It happened because I'd known Elon previously and we used to talk about Twitter all the time. And for folks that may not know, I used to work at Twitter for several years and I'd interact with Elon in that capacity before, and we had a bit of a history. And then when the acquisition happened, he basically just asked, hey, do you want to come on board and help out? So. And I was like, it's gonna be a great life experience. So I was there. The. Let it sink in there. I was there a lot of the meetings that Walter Isaacson describes in his book. You know, I know exactly what happened there. Look, first of all, I would say, like, our firm is an investor, so. And we're obviously, you know, very. We are big fans of Elon, but personally, I just think. Think it's fantastic in a few ways. First of all, the product has changed. We can now do podcasts, we now have subscriptions. We have a lot of things that is not possible. I think that it has brought in a new set of people who weren't usually doing stuff before to the forefront. Like, for example, I think of Rune, who's an AI guy, or the tailored person, dye workwear. He does all the men's tailoring stuff or cultural tutor. It has brought a lot more people to the foreground. The vibe has shifted. Right. For sure. Right. I'll also say, just to be honest, a lot of people don't like the new vibe. They don't like Elon. Right. And that's fair. And you know what, in some ways, maybe that's healthy because you're getting this explosion of innovation in other social media platforms. And look, I'm a social media maximalist, so if people want to go there and go find that community somewhere else, that's also fine, because I want to have as many people do this as possible. I would say, look, I'm very, very bullish on Elon. This is a guy, to quote a friend of mine who's made rockets land on their butts and he's made the electric car industry basically happen. So betting against Elon hasn't usually worked out well for anyone, but it is early days. But guess what? One of the things I ask people is about a year ago a lot of people predicted the death of Twitter. Those people are still on Twitter and tweeting and Twitter is doing better than ever. And think about all the world events that have happened in the last year from say, amazing fun things like memes or some really tragic things like what happened in the Middle east or, you know, like someone like Navalny dying Twitter. And X or X has been the place to be for that conversation. So it seems to me like it's stronger than ever.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the context there, for sure.

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people say, what do you think?

What do I think about X? I mean, I've. My usage, just from the usage perspective has increased as I briefly mentioned post acquisition and I've loved it, like the ability, like small features. Like, you know, it was so controversial of like, hey, pay for the verification and oh, hey, like is that gonna be a thing? And you've seen time and time again it's like, okay, that happened. People are upset. I want to say maybe, but I love like for example, something like the verified organizations and be able to see who's a part of an organization and affiliate like small things that stand out to the long form podcast. You know, we're posting a lot of long form stuff on there as well. I've loved it. Right. And I think too just the, the change I felt and I remember speaking with my buddy Raz on the show. He, he owns memes.com and he's like wave OG and like the domain world. And I remember us talking about it and I remember him saying, you know, that type of disruption in social hasn't been a thing. It's kind of been like the same trucking along Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And what Elon did was sort of like a out of left field move, at least to someone that's just a user. It was like, whoa, it felt different, it feels new and it feels refreshing. And I think that that was exciting for me as someone that's putting out content and has always seen the landscape as just like chugging along and you know, it's, it is what it is. But he kind of threw it through a wrench in it and changed a lot of things.

Can I, can I note it a Little bit on what I think is going on Twitter.

Yeah.

So there's a great blog post by this guy named Eugene Wei from five years ago. It's called Status as Service. And this is going to get a little bit wonky and nerdy, but bear with me, it's fun. And what basically every social media company or product out there is really all about who has status and how do other people get it, right? And that is the game, that is a scorecard. So if you go to Instagram for a long time, the most coveted thing was a blue check mark, like getting verified, right? And then it's maybe followers. And the kind of people who had status on Instagram were very different than the kind of people who had status on, say, Snapchat or on TikTok. And that has always been like a pattern. And one of the historical ways new social media companies have evolved is you basically take a set of people who, who don't have status, who are not popular, and then you give them a new platform where they can be popular. And I see this multiple times. You know, for example, with Snap, right, It was high school kids often nearby, we are in la, who are like. And that really exploded. People like Kylie Jenner, right? She became hugely popular. Then the Instagram, it was a whole other set of people, right? Like you had like the athletes, you had, you know, the Kardashians. It's a very different vibe of people who became really popular. Then TikTok came around. What happened? They said, okay, we're going to prioritize humor and dance and short form looping clips. Guess what, right? You get somebody like Charlie d' Amelio who has all those skills and she becomes hugely popular. Interesting is none of these people could have been popular on some other platform. And also usually a celebrity on one platform doesn't usually become the top person or another because they already have that platform, right? Like if you get somebody like Jimmy and Mr. Beast amazing on YouTube, right? But Instagram, he's great, but he's not going to be number one because there are other people better. Now, the reason this is kind of a long wind up is Twitter had an existing social hierarchy, right? It had these people who were at the top, but there was a huge flaw in how that is constructed, which was Twitter didn't give you a ladder to get that hierarchy for yourself. If somebody had 2 million followers, right. A lot of people did. It is very unclear as to how do you get 2 million followers, right? And TikTok kind of fixed this because the algorithm could make it, but Twitter didn't have those things. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is Elon came in and he basically took this whole status hierarchy and shattered it and flipped it over. Right? And so what happened is everyone who had status is freaking upset, right? You know, they are like. And these are all the people used to have the blue check marks, right? And they had all the altamboost or Twitter 10 years ago, gave them a million followers and they're not active at all, right? And all of a sudden you have new people who are like, you know what is a great quote from Game of Thrones? Chaos is a ladder. Well, guess what? Chaos the ladder, right? A lot of people like, well, I'm going to climb the charts. And you see a lot of these people doing it because now it's, you know, it's open season and you can go build your million followers or build your audience. So I actually think that's what's happening at Twitter because the existing status hierarchy has been shattered by Elon. And what happens now? If anyone's guess, I obviously are very bullish, but I think that's my sort of like, I know, right? In a theory of situation.

Very, very well said. I appreciate that perspective immensely. Thank you for sharing that. I want to talk about the day you joined a 16 in the firm. So to go back to that point, you had Elon on Clubhouse, then you joined the firm the next day. What led to you joining the firm? A 16Z. You know, for people that may not know and love for you to expand on it in terms of the size and scale and just about the firm overall. But I mean, this is one of the most notable venture capital firms of all time. If not the. What led to that moment for you and how has it been being a part of the firm?

Yeah. So maybe I'll try to unpack this a bit. Firstly, for folks who may not be from the tech world. So Andy Schneider's A16Z is a venture capital firm. We invest in basically technology startups. It could, from the earliest of stages in the probability of two people in a garage or over a zoom meeting, all the way to companies which are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. Our whole jam is it has to be about technology. That's kind of what we do. We don't do, say, real estate or we don't do trading. It has to be about technology. It has to be about entrepreneurships and startups. That's our core thing. It has been around for 12 years. It was started by Marc Andreessen who invented the web browser, and his partner, Ben Horowitz. For a lot of people, the venture capital industry can be very opaque as to how do you even get in, how do you get a job in there, how does it work? Because it seems to me like these are people who have money, who have power and I want to get in there and you know, so I want to talk about my story because, you know, for, I think mine is a very non traditional path to getting into venture. Usually there are two paths people do. Like one is you start a company and you sell it for a lot of money and then you do venture next. Exactly what Mark and Ben themselves did, right? Or you kind of come to the ranks as a VC yourself from an engage and then do it. I didn't know either. Like I'm not a, you know, I didn't sell a company for billions of dollars and I haven't been in venture for a long time. And so, and I think so a lot of people go like, how did this guy kind of get in there? I think a few things happen. And this really comes back to the theme of, you know, you just do a lot of things and create potential energy and then opportunity will come find you. So for the last five, six years before this, I had a variety of roles at, I was at Facebook, I was at Twitter and I was doing a few things. One was I was putting out content. And I can't emphasize how important putting out, especially tweets really, to be honest, was to my career even today. Right. Like, you know, it's basically the way people get seen, spotted, you build your brand. And that because I was kind of became a known figure, that led to some other things I think you kind of pointed out and how you raise capital for your company. Founders and entrepreneurs are reaching out to me, right? And that led to me starting to do a few things. One, angel invest, where I would put in small amounts of money, some very interesting companies. And second is kind of getting known by the VC ecosystem, other VCs because they were like, hey, who's this guy who's kind of investing? And you know, he's kind of in the mix. He's in the game, right? He's in the around the hoop is what somebody would say. And so that was happening for three, four years. And so to be honest, at this time I had no ambition of being a vc. I was not interviewing with anyone. And to be honest, you can't even interview for these jobs, right? These are kind of bespoke one off Things, which is sometimes buying a sports team, right? You can't angle to buy a sports team. Sometimes somebody just need to sell it or something happens, and you just, you know, I. People just show up there. And so for me, I had no plans of doing that. And what wound up happening was one, I was building these very good relationships with Andreessen Horowitz, right? I knew Mark and Ben. I was sending them deals. They saw my tweets, they saw that my name was showing up with other founders and entrepreneurs. I just want to be honest, that's kind of what they were hearing for whatever reason. So they were like, okay, this guy is kind of in the mix. Second, and this is very important. One of the most important things as an investor is your reputation with founders, because in a day, we are selling the most commodity of product money. Everyone has money you can get from a lot of places. So why would you want to take it from us or me instead of the next person, right? And one of the most important things is, do founders want to work with you? Do they find you your product valuable? And that could be your advice, your personality, you know, your every kind of deep dive in the technical details, the business details, how to close sale, doesn't really matter. But do they find you valuable? And do they want to work with you? And do they tell other founders, hey, take money from this person. He's going to be an inflection point for your company. Right? And I had just done a bunch of work over these years, kind of have some founders who I think, thankfully, and, you know, I'm very grateful them, like, working with me. So they're going to all this buildup of potential energy. These are the only things I can control, right? And there's the only thing I can do, right? And so then what happens on the Andy Snorbert side is code happens. And, you know, and Mark and Ben have some project. They're like, hey, come hang out with us, right? And because a lot of firms are always trying to spot talent, and so. And just on zoom, so I would kind of jump in on a zoom meeting, hang out for a while. And at the time, somebody was leaving the firm, and they were like, hey, you know, you know, this guy, he's here. A lot of founders want to work with him, and let's get him in. And so. And you know, and I was very grateful because I'm a huge fan of the firm, the culture, the platform. And I've been there for over three and a half years now, and it has been brilliant. And you asked me a question of just to finish off, like, how it has been to be a vc. It is so different from being an operator. It's kind of having like. And it's different way because end of the day, I am not doing the thing. I'm working with people like you who's actually doing the thing. And you've got to really realize that, like, my job is to find you, to get you to take my money, to say no to other people, you know, who may not be building the kinds of things we are looking for, and then help you build a great company. That's the job. My job is not to actually go build a company, right? And it took me a while to kind of flip that time of kind of frame of mind. I think A lot of VCs especially comes from kind of building companies what they stuck with. That's number one. The second part is that I, I was very uncomfortable saying no, right? Because saying no, somebody's building a company and their life's work, and they're so heart and soul. It's just so painful, right? But the nature of the job is you got to say no like 95% of the time, 99% of the time, right? And so that was. I had to kind of get over that. And that was very painful because I'm like, a lot. I just want to please people. I want to be happy. But I'm like, hey, this thing, which is your baby for whatever reason, because it's not the right time, or we can't. We can't invest in you. And that, that was a hard part for me. But on the other hand, there's some amazing things. The first is getting to work with amazing founders, people like yourself. That is brilliant. Some of the best, smartest people in the world come to you, tell you how their world works, and they're like, come work with me. Great. Sign me up, right? And you're gonna meet these people all day. That's great. That's number one. Second is you kind of. It's such an. If you're a curious person, you can just do anything you want, right? You can be like, hey, today I want to, you know, explore like this crazy new technology area, right? And I want to go find some. And the truth, the reality is people don't care how viewed find the great founders, as long as you do it right. Maybe you're hanging on Reddit all day, or maybe you're hosting a great event, or it doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you're actually finding the next Google, the next Facebook, the next Airbnb, the next Instacart, and I think that's very powerful. So, anyway, I can go on longer, but it's been amazing.

It's so cool to hear. And just the lead above that, as you said, it's not something you can apply for, and it's something that. Right timing. Building core relationships. I want to talk about that, like building relationships throughout your career. You know, for me, I always reflect on like this podcast has been like the backbone of being able to sit down with people like yourself and people throughout my network to really learn from them and get to know them more. When you were first moving to Silicon Valley and working in tech, how did you view, like, building relationships? You know, there's like this love hate game with like, go to network, right? For me, it's just like building core relationships and being yourself and looking for ways to provide value and. And you know, that compounding over time, you can create a lot of opportunities. But how do you do that for yourself in terms of building relationships in the early days? And what's your advice for early founders out there that may be starting something new, that want to again, go from being the outsider to the insider in terms of meeting great people, learning from them, and just building your network overall.

This is maybe I think the biggest reason for any sort of success I have, which is building relationships over time. And I think it's very important topic because there is sometimes a sense that, oh, I can't get in this industry because I don't know the right people. Right. And I get that. I appreciate that. But the reality is, especially in tech, it's so easy to get to know the right people with just building some amazing relationships. So. And so if you, if we are listening to you have the mindset, I just don't like people. So I can't get. I'm like, you're wrong, right? You're just like one stop away. And so when I came here, I came here. I remember we came in 2011 to the Bay Area and people like, oh, you guys are the weird Seattle big company folks. You're not Silicon Valley. It's crazy. And for two years, we talked about this last day. We were like, man, we never want to be part of Silicon Valley. We're always outsiders. We come from a different part of the country. We come different part of the world. We come from Microsoft. Everyone hates Microsoft over here. This is awful, right? But what we did is we slowly started to just meet people And I think this is why, if you're doing this, I think the first thing I'll tell you is, like, you've got to enjoy meeting people for its own sake, not to get something out of it. And I'm not saying this as sort of an altruistic, this is how human beings should behave. I'm just saying this because human beings can detect it when you want something out of them, Right. And you cannot hide it. And so the best way to build meaningful relationships is you've got to be genuinely curious in the person that you're talking to. Right? So that's number one. And you got to find. And you got to find a way to do it. Either you hack it or you find a way to connect with the person. But if you can't do that, nothing else, it has to be general, authentic, because otherwise human beings can sense it. Yeah.

I got to interject. When I interviewed Larry King, he said a quote that has always stuck with me. He said, I've never learned anything while I was talking. To just be a listener and to let your curiosity lead in conversation.

And it's very spot on because his book. And I think you did a fantastic episode with him. Like, his book was actually one of the books I used on interviewing people a lot. Oh, yeah. His style is so unique and different. But you're right. And so let's say you meet somebody, right? Like, let's say meeting somebody at networking mixer or a coffee meeting. Somebody sent you an intro. It's an interesting person in the company. What do you do? Well, here's what I do. I used to do this for years. I can still do some version of it. First things, I'm like. I'm like, hey, tell me your story. Let me tell you my story. Like, here's my childhood. This is what I did. Here's how I got my job. What does that does is immediately that person going to tell you that story, right? And then I'm telling you, like, let's find the things we can have connect over. Maybe it's our job, some shared interest, and very soon you're having just a good conversation. And I'm not looking for anything out of it. I just want to understand this person. I'm trying to understand where they are in their life, where they're in the world. And my sort of thing that I try and do, not because I'm a nice human being, but because it's just. I think the only way to do this is find a way to give them value, but expect nothing. In return, right? And it could be anything. It could be like, hey, you should check out this blog post, or, I have a friend. You should meet this person, right? And you do this, and you do this a couple of times, and you ask, like, who else can I talk to? Right? Within, like, a year, right? This is going to compound so much that in any industry, right? You'd have met, like, lots of interesting people, right? So it is. And you've done, by the way, a fantastic job of it. Like yourself, most people mess up a couple of things. One, they never offer value. They'd be like, you know, I want a job, or, I want this deal. Everything is fine. You need to do it, you know? But often people like, hey, you know what? You know, take me out for dinner, right? Like, you know, first, right? Like, so they want, you know, be genuinely interested in them and try and give them some value. The most. Next thing with people, most people mess up is they never follow up. I know a lot of people, they're like, I was amazing meeting this person, right? Especially in a professional career. Like, I had to put coffee extra. Then they never had a second meeting ever, right? And then two years later, you're like, oh, yeah, we met, right? Like, oh, yeah, how are things? You don't want to be that person. So I always try and find a way to follow up, right? It could be, like, know, their birthdays or they have a LinkedIn update or something, right? Or maybe just something in your life. You'd be amazed if you just send somebody, hey, this is what's happening in my life. You're ahead of 95% of the people who are trying to build relationships, right? And so just do that. You're really ahead of the curve. And I actually think one of the most powerful things you can do after just being genuine and trying to add value to people is trying to connect people. And I think there's often an idea, especially in Hollywood and entertainment, but something where, like, you want to be a gatekeeper. You're like, there's a powerful person and I'm going to kind of protect access to them. Or maybe I have, like, a thing like I have, like, a podcast, or I have, like, I'm going to protect access. I don't think it's the right way to do it right now. Look, you got to be reasonable. If you have a very smart, talented friend and you send every random person to meet them, you don't want to have that friend anymore. But the more you make interesting connections, especially over domains, those people will Be grateful to you and maybe something beautiful happens. If they have a beautiful friendship or relationship or business deal, whatever, you will always be held in good books for making that happen. And these things also start compounding. So, you know, even you just those two things, like, be authentic, right? Just try and seek out meetings, have a follow up, and then try and connect people. You do this for a couple of years, you will know everyone in your industry.

Yeah, that's very well said. I love that. And just that feeling where you connect people and they go off to do things like that always feels so great. You know, even my buddy downstairs, we were talking about, like my friend Jonathan who creates games and he met my friend Frankie, who's this big creator and influencer. Now they're working on a game together. And like, seeing that happen in compound over the years in different areas of life, it always feels so great.

So I have a question for you, which is because I've learned a lot from you on how to do this and just to connect. Casey was one of my founders, and you'll be one of the best people on being on top of mind, sending me updates, telling me what's going on, keeping in touch, right? Just the basics just puts you so far ahead. And my question for you is like, one, you do. Look, obviously your podcast is hugely successful. Now. You want to book a guest, you slide to the dm, send them a note, they're going to be like, all right, sign me up, right? Like, you know, I want to get on this before Spotify gives them a ton of money. But in the early days, right, like when you weren't popular, you did a great job of getting famous people to get on your podcast. How'd you do it? Because a lot of people are like, well, it's so easy. You have like, you know, a zillion followers and all that Spotify back. But how did you do in the early days?

I appreciate that and I appreciate you asking the question back. So I think one. One story that I always reference is Gary Vee. When I first met Gary, he was one of the first people that, like, the first interview we did was like 10 minutes. But how that happened was at the time when I first started my Show, I was 17, right? And I set out on a goal. I wanted to do 100 episodes, or, excuse me, like 100 episodes within three months. That was my goal, like back to back to back. And I just started initially, like reaching out through cold dms. And some of the times, for example, I knew Gary Vee had a Shoe coming out with K Swiss, right? So it's like I reached out to K Swiss. They're like, oh my God, like you're talking about business and entrepreneurship. This is like a business related shoe. Great, we'll send you a pair. Boom, get the shoes. Then, you know, you're posting them, I do a photo shoot with them. I'm tagging Gary, I'm tagging case with. They're reposting it. Gary ends up seeing that story of like representing a product that he has. And it was like the pre release of the shoe. And I'm talking about it, I'm promoting it, I'm driving people to K Swiss. And you know, this is when I had like a very small following, but I was just putting in the effort. And a he, he noticed that and saw that. But then I also think it was just the, you know, I'm not one that's like every person that comes on my show, I'm asking them for things. Like, I'm very particularly, I don't like to ask, but when I do, I try to be as genuine as possible because that's my true authentic way to going about it, right? So I remember when Gary saw the message, I was on top of it. I'm like, hey, Gary, you know, really appreciate K Swish and you guys sending out a pair of shoes. Like, what would it take to get a five minute meeting with you in New York? And a small comment like that led to, I'm in high school at the time for context, right? So like three weeks later, I'm skipping four days of school, going up to New York with a friend of mine, got to meet gary for like five to like 10 minutes, like very, very quick. But it was within that like three week buffer period where I took a step back. I'm like, all right, how can I go get like some bigger names so that when I meet Gary I can talk about this and ask him for advice. And that led to just having some like very, I guess, like a, again, like surface area of luck. Like people come and falling down and saying yes, like Andy Frisella and Ed Mylett and all these different characters that I was able to get on purely through DMs, but to kind of bring it to another.

Actually, can I say, I think I just want to point out, like you that story is so amazing because there's something you did multiple things in there which a lot of people don't. Right. And I want to kind of break down. The first one is you put in the work so how many people send you a DM or an email for mentorship? I'm sure you get a ton. I get a ton. And I like them, but I don't have the time, right? Like, because you know a lot of people, especially college students, like, I want to meet you for coffee. I'm like, I'm like, I'm sure you're an amazing person, but I just like, I like three coffee slots a week, right? Like, and they get filled up. So it just. Just the math of it is impossible. But you did a few things right. The first thing you did was you stood out. You put in the work, right? You're like, I'm not a random person. Like, I've added value to you and you added value without at least maybe, apparently any sort of hope of getting something in return. So you call it proof of work. You put in proof of work, right? It was very obviously, second, very important. You made the ask super easy to give, right? Like, it's 10 minutes, right? Like, and you're going to feel like a shitty human being if you're going to say near 10 minutes. A lot of people are like, hey, I want to have an hour long coffee with you. I'm like, well, I'm like, okay, well, I travel. It's our thing. It's going to eat up my calendar and whatever. As opposed to somebody like, hey, can you just answer this one question or read this thing? And so you made that ask so easy. So that combination is potent.

I appreciate that. And if one. And thank you so much for referencing and even like giving me the time to speak on that. But there's one core story that I'll make it quick is one of my favorite authors, Robert Greene, 48 Laws of Power. After I interviewed him the first time and now I've been so grace grateful to interview him two times now. But someone that loves Robert Greene is the rapper musician Rick Ross, right? Very big.

I thought you want to say 50 Cent.

50 Cent 2. They wrote a book together.

Yeah.

But Rick Ross, he's someone that I'm like, he was always on my list. I'm like, would love to interview him. That would just be a cool interview. But he has 20 million followers. I've tried DMing him and unsending the messages. Never saw it and I never expected him to. And I think there's one thing in terms of like this core framework of bringing value and asking what it makes sense is after I interviewed Robert Greene, I knew Rick Ross was a huge fan and I reached out to Rick Ross with a very simple, effective message that I think adds more context than the Gary story, which is I reached out to Rick Ross like, hey, Rick Ross, would be such a pleasure to have you on my show. I just had Robert Greene on as it'd be such a pleasure to have you on my show to promote your new book. I just had Robert Green on the show. All we need is 20 minutes. Like we'd love to make it happen. And there's three key things that I talked about there, which is like referencing someone they know and respect as someone that has been on my show asking for again like 20 minutes on the show. It ended up being like 25 minutes but like short and concise. I'm not asking for an hour and a half of his time. And three is like he's on this book tour and he's promoting his book and he's posting it every day. And I led with that. So like those three things, whether that's like meeting investors or just meeting someone that you want to connect with and be valuable to, like figure out the framework that is that makes them say yes and make it a no brainer.

Casey, by the way, is when you ask, you so rarely ask me, I'm like, I always be like, man, that is so smart how you asked it, right? Like, like, by the way, can I give you, can I give you a thought on the booking thing? I think when we started the show we were like, we need to get booked these famous guests. That's going to be the deal. And sometimes you want it because you're a fan or it's interesting. But the thing which is really propelled our show and I suspect it's going to propel all the propelling is going to propel what you do is like people are coming back for you. And we realize that people are coming back for my wife, for me and kind of chemistry because we are the trusted sort of gatekeeper. So one of the things we change is like these days we don't really worry about the guest booking. We are like, can we put out a show that we love and we like and that's what our audience, because they trust us. So that has changed. So another way of saying, you know, like 10 years ago maybe, you know, like you're kind of like the rogan from like 2014, 2015. But then these days people just showing up because it's Rogan, right? Like, and you're probably already there. If not, you're going to be there soon.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That's Always the goal. Absolutely. One more topic that I want to touch on before we start wrapping up here. Sure. Is recently, in the spirit of all things crypto, crypto in this market just hit an all time high. You spent a lot of time in the world of crypto and Jason Horowitz and I know we can't predict the future here, but where do you spend time in the world of crypto looking at companies? And what is your overall thesis right now, personally or even the firm, whatever you want to speak to in terms of the landscape of crypto within March 2024. Right.

Yeah. So for me, so, you know, my day job is I'm a general partner on the crypto fund at Andreessen Horowitz. It's kind of also core of why we are in London. And for me, crypto journey has been somewhat personal. And what I mean by that is I spent a lot of years in these big tech companies and I look, I love them in a Facebook and Twitter and all these companies have been so good for me. And personally, as a career, I built a lot of my career on DMs on Twitter. But I realized that I didn't want a world where all the Internet is run by a few big tech companies and it's not just social media. Right. I think we're having this conversation more and more with AI, where I love all the companies and the people building the AI, but I don't think I want it to be run by four human beings or four big tech companies. I think these are things that, you know, not to sound like a political statement, but should belong to the people and should belong to everyone and they should have a voice and a say in it. And it shouldn't be just like 100 people in the San Francisco Bay area. So I like to sometimes say crypto, you know, that people have come to crypto from different paths and this was my path. And look, you know, crypto's had a little bit of like a rough year. A lot of things that you reference where, you know, we're in a bear market, but and this is what, you know, Chris Dixon, who really runs a crypto fund will say, like we have seen this pattern before where the way crypto historically has worked is you get a bunch of infrastructure being built up that brings in developers who build amazing applications on top and that caused a price run up and that caused a bull market and something happens and then you get a bear market, you get to cycle again and again and there's been like what, three plus Cycles so far. And so we are obviously cycle. But the thing we do is, or I do is again, going back to connecting. Maybe one of our teams here is like, we can only control what we control. Right? Like, and I don't look at prices. You know, I'm not, you know, we don't have a single Bloomberg terminal in our offices. What we look at is technology and founders and developers, right? Because that's what we are. We are technologists, we are not traders. And I'm looking at, who are these smart people building things? What are they building? And I see a lot of people, smart people building amazing in crypto. Right? And that's what makes me bullish. Like, just to give you an example, just a couple of examples, rather like, you know, one is a company called Forcaster. Disclaimer. You know, we investor, I led the investment where they're building something very interesting in distributed social media. You should check out that client. And what it does is it lets you do things which was impossible without crypto. It lets you build alternative social media experiences where you can own everything you do without any involvement from the team itself. Like, the founders of Forcaster are amazing people. I just had breakfast with them. They could hate you, but they can't stop you from building a competitor, building a client, building using your content. And that is one of the problems of crypto. That is one example. Another example is a company called Story Protocol. Again, disclaimer, I would say this because we are regulated, we are investors. I have the investment where they're trying to say, can we harness the power of fans and IP and have them participate when you create, say, the next shared Marvel Cinematic Universe? And I think they're going to do some very interesting things this year. So these are applications now, look, I don't have a crystal ball. All I can predict is are these amazing founders? Yes. Are they, you know, are developers building on this stuff? Yes. And so that's what, you know, gets me going.

Very exciting to hear too. And you referenced AI as a fund and as someone that's just at the cutting edge at a lot of these things happening in the world of AI. What is your advice to founders building in AI? Because, you know, it's one of those things where you see so many companies launching right now with AI attached to it. Some of them have like a lot of underlining value. Some of them you're like, okay, like, what's going on here? There's, there's an abundance of companies leaning in the space, which is a great thing. But what Is your thoughts on AI, what it leads to long term and like where it is currently today?

Oh well, that's a deep question. I would say maybe just a few thoughts. First is like, yeah, this may be one of the most interesting technological shifts of our lifetime. I would put on par with the iPhone or the original Internet. And nobody can really predict how things are going to wind up with how large these models can get, whether the scaling loss will hold, how many GPUs you need. But it is clear that this is a profound technology shift. Right? And so that's number one. And so I don't spend a lot of time on personally, but a lot of other people at the firm and the firm itself. We're spending a lot of time on investing, researching, being involved in every part of the AI stack. The second thing I would say is that it is still probably there are so many amazing founders and entrepreneurs building on every part of the stack from hardware. Nvidia is probably going to become the most valuable company in the world to Grok, et cetera or the chip level to large LLMs. So you get the OpenAI's, the Mistrals, the anthropics, all these folks to then people building various applications either being these AI, the copilots which are trying to help you in all kinds of tasks which you can get into, or maybe they want to be your friends. You get the character AIs and other people like that. And there are a zillion different things now there are a lot of things I think are still unclear. For example, how large and good can these LLMs get? Are they going to hit a cliff where you need a computer science breakthrough or is it going to be like withdraw more hardware and are these good things going to get better? Are they going to hit limits in data? We don't know these things. We have a lot of people opinions, we don't know these things. That's number one. The second part is maybe more interesting, like where is the value going to accrue, right? Is it a world where it's going to be two or three companies, you're going to answer everything in LLM or is it going to be like 100, like zillions of different startups which are adding value? That's, you know, a lot of people have theories, but I would say that's still to be figured out now the kind of a bit of a preamble, right? But I think if I were somebody, you know, this is going to be some one of these things where like you're talking about sports and like, well, it's about fundamentals, right? I do think it's a lot about the fundamentals, which is if you look at things, you're actually showing some traction. For example, AI in support cases, it's because there is a use case, there is a clear pain point, which is people like, hey, I don't want to staff up a huge support team. And the technology really, even today is dramatically better than everything before and it solves a real customer need at a price point, which is better than what they could do before. So I would say if you are a founder, right, like, few things. One, you got to stay close to technology, right? This is a time of rapid advance. You got to figure out what the newest models are doing. You got to hang out in the right places. That is absolutely key because it's a very fast pace of change here. Second is I would absolutely focus on who the customers and the pain points and the value you are delivering because you don't want to be a company which is doing these amazing things. And then it turns out that OpenAI anthropic or mislead the model still can do it. And you're like, well, where am I adding a value? A lot of people doing it in different ways. We just, for example, we just had Arvind of Perplexity, which is a very interesting company, come on our podcast a few episodes ago, depending on when this broadcast. And one of the things they do is, hey, we can be a wrapper on top of all of these models and then give you an answer. And what they're really pushing on is like, we're going to do things. One, we're going to give you the fastest answer possible, regardless of the model I need. Second is we're going to build a great user experience and meet you where you are. Maybe it's a chrome extension, maybe it's a mobile app. I think, you know, obviously they're very young company, but I like, I think it's an interesting idea. And so I think if you're a founder, I would think about stakeholders, technology think about, is there a real user problem here? Is the technology today good enough to address that? And then, you know, and then go out and build amazing things and go, you know, talk to Anderson or if there's something interesting.

I love that. No, appreciate the perspective on that. For sure. It's, it's interesting how, you know, you see these shifts happening and right now, as you said, like, it's something where there's so much going on to really stay on the pulse. It kind of brings us back to like where I give a lot of my information is on X, right? Like there's so much happening and great thoughtful discussions happening about all this stuff. And I know we could go on for hours just on this one topic here. But I want to be respectful of your time today.

Can I just add one more thing on AI which is like, this thing is just so fun. So if you, if don't go play with yourself, right, Go download. Get on midjourney on discord. Download character AI, play with all the new models. This thing is so new, so rapidly changing that unless you are dabbling with it, you're saying you don't have to be technical. It is very hard to build a mental construct of how good it is. So I see a lot of people having these very abstract conversations, but just go play with anybody. Oh well, that sucks. Or you're like, oh, that is amazing. And you know, and it's going to give you ideas, so just go play with it yourself.

Yeah, it's so funny you say that because I, I, this has always been my thought, even with like my last one of media kits is like the personal problems I'm dealing with. So just for context for you and even the listeners, like my new company, listener.com, we built something where you today, right? We're sitting down on this podcast. We have the audio files, video files. As soon as this ends@listener.com I'll drop in the audio file. And we built, you know, an AI tool for podcasters which allows them to upload their audio and then get all these SEO optimized titles, descriptions, show notes, blog post, newsletter letters. Because for me, I've been doing this for six years. That middle ground has always been the most tedious, time consuming post production effort. The text component, but also the video element of as well. And that's what we were solving for initially when we launched is just like, hey, how can we make podcasters life easier? And staying on the pulse of what's happening in AI. And it's been great for me and the community that we've built and the users and the feedback that we've been getting so far has been great. But to your point is trying things, testing things, solving things for yourself in terms of where you see a need and a practical use case for it. It's been awesome so far.

I love it.

Yes. So before we wrap up here, Shree, you have so much going on in your world, the show, the fun investment, if you were to take a step back and just look into the future of like, you just moved to London. Like, what excites you the most in terms of what you're building, where you're spending time, like, how you're managing, you know, I got, I see you got the whoop on here, like, staying healthy and like staying just aligned in life. Like, what excites you moving forward into this year and the years to come.

Oh, boy, I should have prepared for this. I'll try and give, like, not a pithy answer. So I think I said this earlier. I turned 40 last year. And for those of you, you know, to turn 40 or near it, it's an interesting age, you know, knock on wood. We're healthy, we're in a good spot. And, you know, first thing is you're like, okay, how do I stay this way, right? Like, and it's not about like, looking good on a beach. You're like, I want to, you know, have great energy. I want to be, you know, there for my family, my kids. I want to be able to do my job. And you're kind of like, a lot of times in diet and workouts, I'm like, okay, can I do that? When you're 40 also, you know, you still feel like, you know, you're like, you have like a lot of life left, but you're like, okay, you can kind of like see, well, like 60 or 70 or 80. Like, well, I kind of see the path over there now. So you have a sense of like, I think a clock where you want to accomplish things. And you're like, okay, I need to really prioritize what's important to me. And for me, that's family. For me, that's the job I do. So it really kind of like, for me, maybe I'm a bit of a tangent here. It kind of like made me kind of think about my priorities. So that's number one second is it makes you say, okay, so I know, like, you know, I have X amount of time left or at least x amount like 5, 10 years and who knows, and maybe get run by bus or whatever. But like, let me be deliberate about these choices. And I've been very fortunate to kind of be in a spot in my life where I can be like, I'm going to. I've proven myself to a small extent and done a few things to kind of give me some resources. What's my next five year, ten year project? And what I've been trying to do is outside the base of getting myself healthy, which Is purely about, hey, I want to keep playing this game. To then what game do I want to play? And maybe if I can give you listeners a book recommendation. One of my favorite books is the book Infinite Games by. There's a two books version, but the one, the original one by James and basically what it tells you is it's kind of a little religious, but the way I interpret it is some of the smartest people in life are not playing a finite game. Finite game is like a basketball game. Like, you know, 40 minutes it ends or 40 minutes it ends. And who has top scorebits. But life is an infinite game where there's no real scorecard and you don't know the rules, but the goal is like, just keep playing it, right? And a lot of like, life is that way. Building relationships is an infinite game, right? It's not like you, like I'm going to get 100 meetings. It's like you keep compounding it. And the idea is you get to do more of it. And so what I've tried to, I think these days I think about, it's like, well, I think of like, well, I want to work out and diet, etc. So I can keep doing this and be mindful and thoughtful. That's number one. Second is I think about like, what are the things I want to do now which I continue, you know, which I want to continue 5 years, 10 years, 15 years from now. And they'll compound. And I have a couple of things. Like for example, the podcast is a part of it because you're like, hey, if we can reach people and we can touch them and connect with them and the podcast has started. We want to do other things where you want to connect with people, like five years, 10 years. What does it mean if you can reach every young entrepreneur in the world that could be very, very powerful. And if you can give them just a little bit of like, we do this our way, maybe you can do this this way or our guest this way. And that could be very powerful, right? Nothing else. If you're like, we're going to continue enjoying that. So that's one element of it. And then there's other family things. But I would say it's being, trying to be thoughtful and mindful and then be like, hey, what are things I really, really want to do? And also trying to set, like, what do I want to do with the next five, ten years? As opposed to just the next job or the next week? Which I kind of was. That's what I always think about things.

That's powerful. I appreciate that context, especially, like the age benchmark of, like, how you think about things. That's beautiful. So before we wrap up here, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on today. Sure. This has been an absolute pleasure, a long time coming. I really appreciate all the kind words and just for not only being there, but for being supportive over the years and just being someone in my life that I can always count on to get some good feedback from and just, you know, really lean into. So appreciate you so much.

Well, that means a lot. And look, I've been a fan of yours since you reached out to me in a fun story, like when you reached out, like, you are not the space I was investing in, but I was like, I want to be in, you know, in the Casey business, whatever that business was. And, you know, and your journey is just getting started. So I'm here before Spotify gives them the bag. But I'm a fan and, you know, I want to continue staying in the Casey business, wherever that may lead. So thank you for having me on.

Thank you. And last but not least, where's the best place for everyone to follow you to listen to the show and just stay in tune with everything you have going on? I'll be sure to link it down below.

Oh, my goodness, yes. Let me do the plug. All right, so we. Well, you know, regardless, first of all, if you validate, get your social media, my wife and I are on Instagram. So I'm Sriram K. On Instagram. She's RTR where we get your podcast. So we are the Aarti and Sriramp show on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube. Just go find us.

It'll be down below.

Yeah, you can find us.

Thank you again, Sri. I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you. Thanks so much.