Jason M. Lemkin calls "hyper-aggressive mode" the rare execution state companies need to win the AI race. He sees it in Google's push under Sergey Brin to remove roadblocks and ship faster, contrasting it with OpenAI's aggressive rollouts. Founder-led companies enter this state far more easily than later-stage firms.
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When they're not in hyper-aggressive mode, I don't wanna say I lose confidence in case anyone's watching, but I lose confidence, 'cause you're just not gonna get anywhere. I need to see, especially today when folks are falling behind in AI, right? When you have companies at scale falling behind, I don't care about your talk, I don't wanna hear about your pilot, I wanna smell that your team is in hyper-aggressive mode. If it is, I think you can come back. If I don't smell it, you have no chance, right?
What are signs or smells that suggest hyper-aggressive to you? Founders will be listening to this going—
The management team. There's a tension in the management team to move faster. Every single person in the management team says, we are shipping product faster. I am selling harder. I am getting on the road more. I am generating more leads. Every single person on your management team is sweating it and they're executing faster. You can just see they come to your board meeting, they come to whatever, and there is velocity in every area. We just don't see— how many times do you truly see velocity increase in a board meeting? Not that common, right? That's hyper-aggressive mode. Everyone is aligned on this somehow. This makes a great CEO. This is very hard for a CEO to do. Everything is anti-inertia. Everything slows down, even in an early-stage startup, right? And then when you come in and everyone's sweating and they're like, you know, we shipped twice the story points, twice the software as last quarter, and we're still falling behind and I'm pissed. But these days, in the area of great job, I just don't see it enough. And that's what you need. You need to make your team hyper-aggressive. It's an unnatural state. It's unnatural.
If I push you both, who will win the consumer? Is it OpenAI and the app rollout that they are clearly going to do over the next few years? Or will Google retain the consumer, the search layer, and the app layer that they have today?
I'm going to maybe be trite, but I think Sergey brought back hyper-aggressiveness to Google. He's clear in the interviews. He, you know, he just, he said, I came in, we weren't even allowed to use our own tools. We weren't allowed to use our own coding tools. We weren't allowed to use our own chips. He's like, I got rid of that in a week. I heard arguments. I got rid of it in a week. That's what you need. Sergey had to come— as great as the leadership is, I think Sergey had to come back and make it hyper-aggressive. I don't think it was the only point, but you need that. You need that. And I just— most of the startups that I see that aren't founder-run are unable to get back to hyper-aggressive mode. They're just— it is impossible for them. I'm not saying it hasn't happened with Satya, but look at our portfolio. How many folks in your portfolio without a founder can switch into hyper-aggressive mode?
So you're saying Google over—
I have to— this is a 20/80. Yeah, this is it.
Will Google retain the consumer? Yes. The app suite that they have, or will OpenAI continue to eat more and more and more of Google's core business? And we will see a much more shared landscape.
Listen, I think the same thing most people on X do. I think the Google products are great. I use it every day. I use AI. In fact, I don't even care whether I use AI Overviews or ChatGPT or Anthropic, but I'm— I I actually prefer AI Overviews 'cause I don't have to leave Google.
