#37: AI, Venture Capital, Faith & The Future of Work with Mamoon Hamid (Kleiner Perkins)

I also just believe that God is the best of planners, and I think that gives me a lot of comfort when I am facing challenges in life, difficult decisions, difficult events like death in the family. And you can only fall back on there's a greater plan that only God knows, and God is the best of planners.

This episode is brought to you by Delve and Poly. Today we're on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park at the famed offices of Kleiner Perkins, early backers of Google, Amazon, and Netscape. Mamoon Hamid, now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, has become one of this generation's greatest investors, backing category-defining companies like Slack, Figma, Front, Windsurf, Gleam, Yammer, Intercom, Box, and so many others. Before Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon co-founded Social Capital, helped build it to be one of the most influential next-generation venture firms. He's a former engineer. His story spans across the US to Germany to Pakistan to Purdue to Stanford to Harvard and now Silicon Valley. Hope you enjoy it. I know this room is sort of one of the most iconic places in probably the world, but certainly in the world of business, definitely in Silicon Valley. It holds a really special place for you because as I understand it, you came here in college. How did you end up in this room way before you ended up at Kleiner Perkins?

Yeah, so the story goes here, I came here into this room, actually sat right about exactly here in January of 2004 when I was actually at Harvard Business School. And I'd gone to business school actually because I wanted to get into venture capital. And I thought as a naive engineer that if you wanted to get into VC, you were an engineer, work at a tech company, went to business school, most likely like either Harvard Business School or Stanford, and then you get into VC. And so I ended up here in January of 2004. I used a bunch of my points on what was called the West Trek. It was the trek to the West Coast by 30 or so Harvard Business School students. And you could use your points to go to visit a bunch of different companies. And I ranked Kleiner Perkins at the very top. And after that was another venture firm and then actually Google. So on that trip, I got to go into, in 2004, pre-IPO Google, Kleiner Perkins. And I sat here and I looked outside exactly pretty much like this, Derek. And you saw the trees and you saw these beams on this amazing room and you just thought like, this is where I want to be. Yeah, this is where I want to come one day.

Deals like— Kleiner is famous for investing in companies like Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems. What happens in this room? What has happened in this room? Is this where the deals get done? Is this where you get pitched and then the partners decide later? For people that haven't been here, we actually use this room pretty sparingly.

This room is used for our conversation. It's used for all-hands meetings.

Can this room now be known as where we had this conversation? Absolutely. That would be big.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think it has actually a lot of energy, a lot of really good energy, but it's really powerful energy. And so when we're meeting founders who are pitching us, we're looking to partner with them, we feel like it has maybe too much energy and it has too much maybe intimidation. And so we actually don't like to use it for that reason for meetings. And actually, we have a room, we call this the Google room. Then there's the Amazon room, also another Series A investment that we did here at Kleiner Perkins. And that's Marketplace, which is next room over here. And that's where we actually meet as a team every Monday from 10:00 AM all the way to 4:00 PM. And that's where many times founders come in to make their partner pitch?

It is intimidating to walk into these rooms and to pitch. I've experienced that. And you, you've got a lot of people a lot of times in that room that you don't know. And it's kind of the biggest moment of your professional life. And to probably a lot of people around the table, it's, it's, it's a big moment for them too. But they're seeing it a lot. It's happening maybe dozens, hundreds of times. A year, the best pitches, the best people that come into that space, like, how are they sharing their ideas in a way that makes people around the table lean in?

Yeah, I think, you know, you bring up this point of this is— can be one of the most important meetings you have in your lifetime. If you're a founder of a company, as you are, and you're looking to raise your Series A, you're thinking about who is that? The firm, the partner at the firm who's going to sit on my board for the next decade. And it sort of starts from way before you enter this room in terms of how we develop, build a relationship and, or in this building really. And it starts when you walk through that front door for that pitch meeting of a lifetime and how you're greeted, how you're taken care of, the coffee, the experience that you have. As a founder so that we can calm your nerves for that most important, one of the most important meetings you may have at that time, at that point in your life. And so going back to, you know, this is not the room where you feel less intimidated. So you go to another room where we typically do these meetings. But, you know, because we want every founder to have the opportunity to show up with the best version of themselves and to hear really the substance and why they've gone on the journey of building what they think is going to be an incredible company. In our parlance, we call it a history-making company. And what do founders do in those meetings? I think it all varies because every founder is a unique snowflake. But I think what we're really looking to hear from founders is the why. Why are they going on this journey? Why are they dedicating their their life to this? Why are they calling this their life's work? Because startups aren't for the faint of heart. They are long, windy roads, ups, downs, many more downs at times, and then some ups. And so you really have to understand the true intentionality that they're bringing to solving whatever problem they're solving and why this is the they're dedicating their lives to this, this journey. And so that is what you're really trying to figure out. And sure, you can present some charts, you can give us some, some TAM numbers, you can tell us how your go-to-market team has been functioning, what differentiated technology you're building, but it has to really tie back to the why.

There are these moments along the road of building a company where you sort of stumble into something that is, is almost maybe it's maybe what you expected, but also it's, it's different in a way you didn't expect. And those sort of inflection points could, could lead to revenue. It could lead to some— usually it's some customer pain point that you discover, or, you know, some insight that you have that you sort of feel like, wow, I've sort of got something here that no one else has seen, or, or maybe hasn't— the world hasn't discovered yet. Do you, when you're talking to founders, do you hear, do you listen for certain things in those conversations where it's like, okay, that, that person has discovered something that is happening? Is it, is it them teaching you something that you don't know? Is it, are there certain phrases that you're looking for? How do you know if somebody's reached that point of like, okay, this is something new and could be the future versus this is maybe not that?

We're expected to have a bit of a prepared mind in the companies and areas that we invest in. So we've done a bit of homework on the categories and spaces. So if someone is walking into this building and into our conference room, we've most likely spent time investigating, understanding the area that these founders are building in. And if we think that it doesn't go beneath the surface layer of poking at your own company in terms of what the the pitfalls might be towards building a successful company. I think that's a flag is if, but if you find a founder going a couple layers deeper in explaining what truly makes them have thought so differently about the space and the category and the company and what they're building is truly differentiated, it is, it feels like they have really like intellectually honestly poked all the holes themselves. And you're like, they have really nailed how they thought about this company and category. And it is because they perseverate around the problem so much and they spend day and night thinking about it. And so who better than to poke holes at that problem than themselves or at their company than themselves? And I think that seems that comes through and that's, it may be a feeling that you get that they've really gone so deep that no one can beat 'em at whatever they're doing right now. And I think that's what you're seeking when you're meeting founders. And yeah, it has to go a couple layers deeper. And the questions that we ask hopefully are trying to sort of tease that out of you is how deep have you gone? In your own, in that space.

When I asked ChatGPT some questions about you as I prepare for this, one of the phrases it used said you were a rainmaker. And I thought, wow, what, what does the, the AI— if I was trying to decide like, what would I want if I was an investor that an AI to describe me as? I think, I think this is like one of the best descriptions. You've invested in some of the most iconic companies of the last 15 or 20 years— Box, Figma, Slack, Rippling, many, many others. The list is incredibly long, actually. Even Yammer 15 years ago. Like, what is it that sets apart these people that you're seeing hundreds, thousands of pitches, but your sort of filter is more tuned than almost anybody in your industry? What is it that gets you leaned in and to say, I'm going to invest in this next Figma, I'm going to invest in the next Slack versus somebody else that's not going to quite get there?

Rainmaker is not the term I think about when I think of myself, but we'll let ChatGPT continue to learn on the corpus of whatever is out there about me and call me a rainmaker. But in terms of your question of what gets me to get the conviction to invest in people like Aaron Levie or Stewart Butterfield from Slack or David Sachs from Yammer or Dylan Field from Figma. It goes back to the, the answer to the prior question, which is that I was thinking about the same problems that those founders were, and hopefully they were thinking about it a lot deeper than I was. So for example, Box, file sharing in the cloud in 2007. Seems like a great idea, but seems like the big companies should do it. Amazon, Google, et cetera. And why would you entrust a 21-year-old Aaron Levie to go build a file sharing for businesses in the cloud in 2007? Is that I think just felt compelled that he had a view of the world that was aligned with mine in terms of how to go build Box at the time called Box.net and build a team around it and go to market with a really nice wedge that businesses were willing to pay for. And I think the couple of years prior to that, I'd been investigating the space and probably met with a dozen companies doing something similar, but felt like Aaron was the founder to back to go take on this fairly challenging opportunity. And the same goes for Stewart Butterfield at Slack. He had a failed gaming startup that pivoted into being this messaging thing for enterprise. And I think from that failure came also the necessity to go build something. Well, they'd built something that they were using internally, which was this messaging thing called, that they called Slack. And a lot of folks dismissed it at why would you need a messaging service inside your company? Why would you have email? You have iMessage, you have AIM at the time, you had Skype. Skype. Exactly. Owned by Microsoft at the time. So why would you need a chat product for your company? And in many cases, some of the greats go create categories. Create— the TAM is actually zero. There was no TAM for an enterprise messaging service in 2013. And I think some of the best companies are built where a founder creates a market and creates the TAM for the opportunity. And then, you know, you're the anointed leader and you run away with the category.

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How do you as an investor decide that this could be one of those category-changing things and that a TAM is going to emerge when there's no past history of that ever existing?

It starts with us as technologists believing in the capabilities of what technology can do for the world. I think you have to be a technologist first when you're in the job that I'm in as an early-stage venture capitalist. You have to think of the possibilities just like a founder has to think of the possibilities with what's possible with the technology that's available to us today. And then from there you think about, okay, where are the biggest pools of both the blue oceans, you know, white spaces or the red oceans, like highly competitive spaces where there's a bunch of incumbents. But as an insurgent, you can make a move. So, but it's— I think it's a lot more fun to go after blue oceans where you're creating new categories. It feels a lot more bold even to go create a new category. And I think Box, Slack created categories. I think another great example of that is Glean, which was actually incubated here in this office. Which started out as just enterprise search, searching all the files that are in the cloud across Slack, your email, your Google Docs, your Microsoft SharePoint, your Salesforce. And the idea of Glean was something I'd been thinking about for the 5 years prior to backing Arvind at Glean when he came in with the idea of starting Glean. And Obviously that's evolved to being this AI chat assistant inside of the enterprise to now agents that run in the enterprise doing all this cool work for you based on the corpus of knowledge that Glean has access to, which is pretty much all of the— and you could ask why then, the why now? And the why now is that is so important in what we do. One of the one things I really test myself on as an investor is How do I make sure I'm not too early? Being too early and fortunately we were in Google, but we were also in prior search engine and fortunately that got acquired, Lycos, and that allowed us to invest in Google non-competitive at the time, no competitive issues because we typically don't invest in competitors. But it was, John Doerr says it was the 17th search engine. But it timed the market with the best index and search quality and PageRank and results. And it's so important to time these things. And with Glean, taking it back to Glean, the world in 2019 was one where now finally all of our important work knowledge stuff was in the cloud and you could build a product that indexed all that work product for us. And then build on top of it. And then you fast forward 6 years, it's now like an LLM for all your work stuff.

I mean, so much of probably what they are today, even the founders, I don't know if they're being totally honest about it. I don't know specifically about Glean, but it's this somewhat of an evolutionary process too. Yeah, sometimes there's this vision of I see this island way out there and I'm going to head towards that island. But also it's kind of like, I kind of generally know the island's that way and I'm gonna generally head that direction and I'm just gonna be smart along the way and find the best path. And it's like AI comes in in the last few years and completely accelerates Glean's business, changes the business in a way that probably in the first pitch that you heard, maybe some form of that, it all fits together really nicely with history, but it's like they've seen these opportunities along the way, made adjustments, and kind of steered their company there.

Yeah, I think without the foundation of what was built in 2019, 2020 of here's all this knowledge, you need to build integrations and connectors to the knowledge and be the index for that knowledge. And without that, Glean wouldn't be the company that it is today. Because it did all the sort of hard work that still, if you wanted to build Gleam again today, you'd have to do the same work all over again.

Right.

And so we were fortunate that we'd done all the hard work and then AI actually becomes an accelerant for the business because now that you have the knowledge and you want to access it at will with an assistant or an agent, you can do that.

How is AI different from these other cycles that we've seen over the last 10 or 15 years?

AI is the biggest cycle that I've seen in my now 28 years in Silicon Valley. I came here right during the middle of the dot-com boom, and I was 19 years old working at a semiconductor company backed by Kleiner Perkins, a company called Xilinx. And, you know, saw the rise of that and also saw the demise of a lot of companies at the time. but that was probably the biggest boom cycle, but it felt less real. And this has so much reality to it in terms of just the adoption and use of the products that are getting built both by the large companies, take OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the small companies that were startups, just Windsurf and Harvey and Ambience and Glean and Open Evidence. There's just such insane use of these products and then also the monetization. And that's an important point to make is that we all hear this is the fastest company to $100 million, fastest company to $500 million. You hear that all the time and you're sort of, I'm sure even your eyes start to glaze over. Who is the fastest to $100? Who is the fastest to $500? And it's because that there are obviously so many more people adopting these products. but also the monetization is slightly different. You're no longer just paying for a seat of software, like $10 a month, $20 a month. In many cases, you're buying the Pro version or the $200 a month thing because it's so incredibly useful. And it's not just software, it's actually like a copilot, a coworker, almost an agent. It is multiplying your productivity the way we all hoped it would. 20 years ago, we invested in SaaS and in software. Software was a tool. AI is like labor.

One of the key differentiators between now and the dot-com sort of boom and bust is that these companies are making money essentially, or is it their usefulness is so much higher than the companies pre-dot-com bubble?

Going back to this, those were workflow tools or tools that were things that we could used to get our job done. Now the job is getting done by, by AI. And just to give you a sort of sense of our thesis was 3 years ago, we should utilize the capabilities of these LLMs and go after the— it was like this job pyramid. What are the top 20 jobs in the US? There's some form of doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. How do we arm them to go do more with the time they have? By the way, these are highly skilled people and they are highly scarce, so they're constantly just strapped for time. And so how could you build copilots for them? And so we actually invest in Harvey and Ambience and Windsurf to go after that job type to be great copilots for them. And over the last 3 years now, we're kind of working our way down that pyramid of less skill still paid well, like nurses and finance people and mortgage analysts and loan brokers, et cetera. And sort of what are the workflow tools they need or AI that can do more of the work for them and they can focus on other parts of the job. And at some point at the bottom of the pyramid is physical labor and that's robots that do stuff in factories. And I think we're far removed from that reality and that's maybe 5, 10 years out. But really it is simply focused on jobs to be done. And maybe just to add to that is if you just like at a very high level, the world's GDP is $120 trillion today. 50% of that is labor. So that's like $60 trillion. And slowly some of those jobs that are done not like jobs to be done, parts of it. Either it's creating more productivity that drives GDP growth or some of those jobs that people just don't want to do actually even, or there's not enough people to do those jobs like doctors. AI is going to help do that.

How does it all play out? I know everyone's guessing, but if this sort of pattern continues to this hypothesis you had 3 years ago to where we are now, what will we see happen over the next 5 or 10 years with the— help or influence of AI?

I think we will all be more productive at work because we'll have tools that make us so much more productive, and we will focus on the high-level thinking required to do the, the probably the, the most challenging, maybe the most fun part of our work, uh, and it on in the full range of that pyramid that I described, uh, I think we will it won't be this dystopian future that we all envision if all jobs go away. I think I fundamentally believe that we will all be fine as human beings and as a race. We will adapt to these amazing tools that will come our way and be better at the work we do. I think there will be a huge byproduct of all this is that there will be some jobs that people just generally don't even like doing, like customer support. That AI agents will do really, really well. And those people will find other things they do in life for work that they enjoy a lot more. And I think if you sort of take it to the limit, we all live in a beautiful physical world, the Earth, and we need to build it. There'll be builder jobs, not just builders in technology, but building physical infrastructure, to support all the needs that AI has for power, for chips, et cetera, et cetera. And so there will be a great physical world and builders and creators will exist. I think we'll have all kinds of folks in the economy who are doing physical work that is to entertain the world. Like to, you know, I would be long like rock climbing gyms, you know, and bowling alleys and just fun things that we all could do to, All the time we don't spend working, we experience it through our world, national parks, all those things. I think we'll all have a higher quality of life. I fundamentally believe that.

Yeah, and some jobs are not getting disrupted. My friend that's a dentist is— I think we're going to need dentists. Maybe robots are going to do all of that work. I don't know. I don't think so. He's going to use AI to— improve the care that he provides his customers, probably, and maybe serve more customers. Or, uh, but there, yeah, there's— I don't know, I've seen it with my own work as a CEO and a product builder. It's— I do feel like some of my jobs are definitely going away over the next few years, that some of the work that I do. But there, there are other— there's other work that I do that is it's going to be impossible for AI to replace. So relationship building, some parts of the deal making or negotiating, or, you know, I mean, maybe AI is, you know, maybe AI starts to get involved in some of these things. But yeah, humans are at their core are some of the most, they're the most creative creatures on the planet. They're the most creative beings on the planet. So will we not, find new ways to be creative and to create. I mean, we always have. It seems pretty logical that that cycle is, is only going to repeat itself the way it has in the past.

I agree. I fully agree that the human race is creative. It's resilient. It figures it out. It figures things out. And so I'm long the human race.

One thing that's very interesting about you being here at Kleiner Perkins is that, well, one, you started your own firm, Social Capital. Yeah, very successful, very, very interesting firm. And but then, you know, you and Kleiner has had these amazing leaders over decades and decades being one of the first sort of key investor, like venture capital firms in the Valley, and then kind of had this point where there's sort of this, you know, what's the sort of— there's like the old generation and then the new and sort of trying to bridge that. We're seeing that. It's a very difficult challenge. And, and you started your own firm, which became successful, and then you join this sort of traditional, you know, historical firm and have managed that transition and the whole everybody that's here, I suppose, in an incredible way, actually, to where I think you know, it was as an entrepreneur, it was kind of like Kleiner's kind of in the back of my mind as an entrepreneur, like this historical place I want to go. And then there's this point where kind of was like, you know, figuring it out with the brand. And then now I think it's, you know, it's one of the places again that as an entrepreneur, I like, it's one of the top 5 places. Like I feel like I have to come pitch and if I get the chance, How, why did you do that? And then how have you and the team here managed to make that change successfully?

Just like you, to me, Kleiner was always the brand in venture capital. When I first moved out here in '97, I mentioned I worked for a company that was backed by Kleiner Perkins, Xilinx, for 6 years after college. And so, and I used the products that Kleiner Perkins Well, and you sat at this desk, so. Yeah, I sat at this table.

You sat at this table.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, that was 7 years after I first learned about Kleiner Perkins is when I actually, I wanted to come sit at this table many years prior and I finally got there by, you know, going back to business school and then using my points to come sit at this table. And then 13 years later, I'm finally in this building working here. But we feel really fortunate to be the stewards of this firm and this brand. Because it means so much to all of us who are here. And it especially meant a lot to me to leave, you know, the firm that I started behind to be here. It was a big decision because I believe that this firm had so much still goodwill built up with the amazing body of work that we produced over the 45 years prior to me joining. You know, so we started in 1972, I joined in 2017, and I thought that with a few great investments and a few great partners, uh, we could really potentially be back to where, you know, we'd been from decades before that. Um, and so it was really kind of a my life's work also, is that I'd learned so much from my time at USVP in terms of how to invest in companies and then building a new firm, Social Capital, for another 6 years. So 6 years of USVP learning the business. I view it as like phases of my, my career in venture and then 6 years of building a new firm. And then now it's 8 years here, but using the skills I'd acquired there to come to Kleiner Perkins and try to take it to new heights.

What has improved? What has changed with the time you've been here from before? What have you added to it, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

We actually went back to the future a bit when I came here, which was Kleiner for many decades had been a small partnership of 7, 5 to 7 partners who sat around a smaller room than this making really great decisions to invest in the best technology companies when they were just tiny little companies with a few people. And how could we have that same camaraderie and same decision-making process? And also, obviously, founders have to want to come here and see you before you even get to make a decision on it. So we actually went a lot smaller. We went back to, for a bit, we just had an early-stage team focused on early-stage Series A, Series B, sort of going back to the future, which is what really the heritage of Kleiner Perkins was for decades. And added partners like my partner Ilya Fushman, who I'd worked with before on the boards of Slack and Intercom. And we, together have built the firm, added more partners. And we also, just maybe a note to make is that we all kind of grew up in the venture business. I grew up really as a mid-20s person in venture. So did Ilya. He was at Khosla before he went to run product at Dropbox and then he was at Index. So a bunch of us, grown up in the venture business. And so we do believe in the apprenticeship model of venture capital, including if you look back at Brook Byers, he joined Kleiner Perkins as an associate in the '70s. John Doerr did too in the early, I think also in the late '70s. And so they were apprenticed by great folks like Tom Perkins and Eugene Kleiner. And then, you know, John had Brook to look at as a role model. And, you know, Techline had John and Brooke to look at as role models. And so we've always believed in this sort of generational passing on of knowledge. And we're doing the same thing here today. And because we want the people who are in this building today to be the stewards of this firm, you know, 10, 20 years out.

I think I saw that John still has an office. And, and so, I mean, that's, you know, you still have this kind of Incredible. I mean, these are some of the greatest investors of all time. And to have them, I'm sure, have, you know, as for advice and it's amazing. Authorship's pretty, pretty incredible. Yeah.

Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, I got to spend time with John on something this week on something important. And that's— it's amazing. We feel so grateful to have multiple generations of venture capitalists among the very best venture capitalists. I think John Doerr, who I can, you know, we can lean on for advice. And that's a beautiful thing about a firm like ours is that, you know, no one person ever owns it. It's like it's for us to protect and guard and steward and make sure we leave it in better hands than we found it in.

What's the leadership principle that you most take away from John Doerr?

I think of John as someone who really has this instinct to identify founders and markets that go make history. I mean, I think that was John's knack, was always knowing the why, the why now, and how to go make sure that you capture the hearts and minds of founders who will go build the Amazons, the Googles, the Netscapes of the world. And I mean, I think John's body of work is way beyond that, you know, DoorDash and Intuit. And I mean, the numbers are sort of ridiculous in terms of the amount of, number of companies that John's backed. But he had just had a really amazing instinct around being like the best venture capitalist that ever came.

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You, I know, moved around a lot growing up.

Yeah.

You kind of lived in Germany. You spent time in Pakistan, back in Germany, were in a lot of different schools. And this is kind of similar to how I lived. I lived— was in 10 schools in 10 years. I love your perspective on— I'm sure that was really hard, but also like I don't know, at least for me, the hard things of that created a lot of strength in me. What was your experience with that kind of shifting and moving? And was it a net positive? Was it really hard?

Yeah. So I grew up in Germany in the '70s, late '70s, '80s primarily. So an '80s kid in Germany, West Germany, in Frankfurt. And if you zoom out, you could see, hey, you're an outsider, you're of Pakistani family descent, and there's not a lot of you out there in Germany. But I think when you're a child, you don't see the world that way. You just see you belong and you're there and you make the most of every day. And you play soccer on the playground. And my parents actually switched me from the German school to the American schools because they had this future in their minds for me, which was maybe you'll go to America to study for college. And they manifested all that. But there was a time we moved back to Pakistan when I was 10 years old, 10 to 13, which—

Did they give up for a few years? Like, oh, we don't think he can do it. He's not on the track.

No, it was fortunately for my dad's work. He was a banker and he was transferred back to Pakistan. So it was really, and that was a bit of a culture shock.

I'm sure.

For me, because you went from the, I thought I was an, you know, I didn't, I actually felt like an outsider when I was this German kid who didn't really speak the language all that well. Cultural norms were different and I was just, people were just, I don't know how to describe, like I had cousins, I have uncles, aunts.

Kids can be cruel.

Kids are definitely cruel. I got beat up, all sort of stuff. But you adapted and you came to love the experience there as well. Learned a lot, like academics were excellent. So I think I accelerated in academics or got maybe like a grade or two ahead by the time we went back to Germany, which is why I finished high school by 16 is because I I caught up a bunch academically in Pakistan, and that allowed me to graduate early from high school. So I actually really appreciated this moving around and learning from different cultures, people, schools. There's a bit of a shock to the system, but you adapt and you become more resilient. And it's something that, you know, we live in this amazing place, Silicon Valley, and we've got 4 kids, and, We love it here so much that we're not going to move around. But we think about how can we have some of this sort of artificial creation of some shock to the system for kids so that they build resilience. I don't think we figured out an answer for that. But I try to look back at my own upbringing and how just the different cultures and the different schools I got to go to gave me just a really good lens to really get along with lots of people and understand founders and motivations that they have. And in many cases, founders are— I think that— I don't know the latest numbers, but we did the math a while ago on percent of founders who are immigrants, and it's like more than 50%. And there's a lot of relatability that happens when you have a similar life experience that is also what founders go through when they, you know, on their journey to starting a company.

How do you create resilience in children in this overabundant society that we live in?

I don't think I've cracked the code. A few years ago, my wife thought we should consider schooling our kids at home. Yeah, just to give them some, some focused time on the things that matter to us— math, science. In sort of elementary school grades. And they, you know, this is like 3 years later, they're still homeschooled, but they do it with now a few different kids here and there. And so, but they've also actually moved around to different schools. I think like my son who's a 5th grader, I think he's technically probably been in 5 schools and had to integrate with different kids of different backgrounds, etc. And I would say every year has to sort of figure out like, how do I get along with this person and that person? And the norms of the school are different. And I think, again, I actually don't mind it. And we live in the same place, so still gets to have long-term friendships with kids he plays soccer with or does other stuff with. So, but I think We find that maybe that's built a little bit of more grit than one usually would in an amazing environment like this. We think a lot about it. My wife and I think a lot about how do we build grit and resilience and how do we create intrinsic motivation really for our children is what is the motor inside that drives them to do things themselves, to learn, to adapt, to create, to do all the things that we'd want kids to do that we can be proud of. Obviously, we'll always be proud of our kids, but to really be great contributors to society. I mean, that's— I think that is the true goal.

We're all probably trying to avoid the hard things. Like, you— nobody wakes up in the morning like, I hope this is a really hard day. And, uh, but in some ways, like, this is totally what makes us— and with our kids, I found that Like, I have to, you know, I just remember in Germany, I lived in Frankfurt too. I just remember being in the cold, wet, you know, Frankfurt backyard all day Saturday, like, with working with my dad in the yard. And, you know, I remember these things too of moving around and getting beat up by, you know, a Moroccan kid when I was 10 years old in this international school that I went to. Like, I don't know how to recreate, you know, I don't know how to recreate that exact experience. I don't, I don't think I should. Yeah, but For me, with my boys, the thing I found is sports is this thing that's kind of also, I feel in some ways, it's kind of, it's this, the kids' sports system is crazy, and it's kind of been created to just extract as much as, a lot of times, as much as people, as much as resources people can outside of, out of parents for their kids. But some of sports and some of the different ways of sports is like this huge way to like push kids to, you know, to learn, to just show improvement, to work hard, you know, to get along with teammates and things like that. And I know for us with my kids play golf and, and I caddy with them on the weekends sometimes. And, you know, but it's like it's a very hard, difficult thing that they're— and it's also like Hey, like, you have to develop your mindset and you have to figure out how you're going to overcome this. You're there alone. You can— no one's going to bail you out. Like, you have to figure it out. Like a very difficult school in Pakistan or, you know, maybe, you know, me being in an inner city school in Bordeaux, France is not really equivalent to, you know, you know, a kid in Northern California, you know, struggling with his golf career in high school. But You know, like, we have to find hard things and like, people need to learn to be resilient. And I think with founders too, you see this a lot where it's— I don't know, some people like hit the lottery and they just discover this amazing business model early and they're just off to the moon and everything works. But for most normal people, that's not how it works. And it's sort of, I think, a game of survival. It's like how the— I've just found over and over again with entrepreneurship and maybe life, like, the winners are the survivors. If you can just hold on long enough, you will get there. And I've seen so many great companies and products that people had, and then they just— I'm just— that for whatever reason, I'm not judging that they had to quit. Like, sometimes it's like, hey, like, my wife like ran out of patience with me, and I ran out of money for our family. It's like, well, okay, well You know, that's— you can't do that. Or, you know, hey, I like— I really needed great insurance, so I had to go get a job because I have someone in my family's medical situation. But if you can learn to persevere and, and be a survivor— and I, I'm asking you, like, I don't know how to teach my kids that, but I'm trying to figure it out— like, to just push through the hard things when they come, because undoubtedly they're going to come. They come for everyone.

I don't think any one of us has the answers, but I think it's actually more in the moment, like the individual things that happen on a day-to-day basis that I think can create that, that I go back to this, the intrinsic motivation, the perpetual motor inside of you. How do you start that perpetual machine inside of your children and our children? That again goes back to the goal, which I think is to be great contributors to society. Which I think requires effort and real initiative.

The last time that I saw you was backstage at Startup Grind, and I actually met 2 of your 4 children. And I just have to say, these are incredible human beings. I only spent 5 minutes with them, and I knew immediately that these kids, these were really impressive. I know a lot of kids. I'm around a lot of kids. These are These are incredibly interesting and thoughtful. And I mean, they're looking me in the eyes. I was like, I was like listening and watching these children. I was like, I need, I need, I need to like get the masterclass of these kids to teach my kids some of these skills. And you had them. The other thing I thought was so interesting is I've only seen this a couple of times in the hundreds of interviews that I've been part of over the years. With Startup Grind or maybe this, but you brought them to hear you speak. The only other person I can remember that did that was, was the CEO of SurveyMonkey, Dave Goldberg. And Dave and I remember sitting there in this, their office in downtown Palo Alto, who he tragically passed away maybe, maybe about a decade ago. And we were sitting there and He's like, my kids are going to be here. And I was like, well, why are your kids coming? Because I'd never heard of anyone doing this. And he was like, well, they need to learn. They need to see this. And I want to be with them. And it says a lot about you and your wife and what you're— how you're raising your kids. But I thought that was an interesting, you know, to see. I think that's what we should do. I think Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, who I interviewed recently, he said when one of his kids turned 12, he would take them on an international business trip and they would go. And when he, decades later, as his kids were asked, what's the most memorable thing about, you know, growing up? And many of them would say it was this business trip that I went on with my dad. And we just have to kind of, I don't know, you're doing a great job.

Well, thank you. I think, you know, so much of the credit goes to my wife, who, you know, is a physician who's gave up her career as a physician to focus on homeschooling. She's not the primary instructor or teacher, but there's a lot of coordination that goes into thinking about curriculum and activities and to sort of round out the whole picture for our kids. Our kids actually love what I do for work, and they get to hear about it. Because they're homeschooled, I get to teach them about venture capital and startups. In fact, like, we've used this room to do a homeschool session. Like when we're not working here, I brought them here and I bring them here all the time actually on weekends where they'll just do their own homework. But we've used— there's a whiteboard behind that wall over there that we've used to talk about venture capital, the asset class, startups, done like many hours in this room teaching them about. And then just for folks, you know, it's like they're 12, 11, 8, and 5. And that was probably a couple of years ago now. But they've been really interested in technology, but also venture capital. And I've got two who have insisted that they work in venture capital. In fact, come work at Kleiner Perkins. And hopefully there won't be any nepotism and they'll figure out their own way.

They can earn it.

They can earn their way into this business. But I tell them, go build something first. Don't just get into venture capital because you see daddy doing it.

Would love to hear a little bit about what motivates you with your faith, how it helps you build as a person.

As a Muslim, one of the five pillars of Islam is to go do the Hajj, the pilgrimage in Mecca. And I was really fortunate just through a series of very interesting events in life, the door opened for me to go to Mecca sort of two weeks before the Hajj, which was back in June this year. and I've been thinking a lot about it for many years, actually, probably for 2 decades. When is it the time that I get to go? Because I really do need to go, want to go to fulfill my duties as a Muslim. And my wife had been when she was younger, so— Did you go alone? I went alone with a couple of, actually some of my closest friends who also had the very unique opportunity. So it all kind of, it's really hard to actually get a visa, there's only 2 million slots a year, there's 2 billion Muslims in the world. Like, so it is really hard actually. And through just a series of very fortunate events, the door opened up and it was actually an interesting time in our lives. My wife had just lost her father, actually the day I found out that I was invited to Hajj. Wow. And so, and even in that moment, it just felt like the right thing to do is to avail this opportunity. So, you know, God has ways, and they're not obvious to all of us who are mere mortals. But I did go, and the experience in itself— I was there for, it's about a week, and there's lots of different things one does during that course of that pilgrimage. There's a lot of beauty in them. It's 110-degree weather. It's really hot, and there are 2, 2.5 million people from all over the world. You will see the poorest of the poor. You will see the richest of the rich, but no one knows who is who because they're all wearing—

The same clothes.

White cloth wrapped around a white cloth for men, and women can wear whatever they like. And it is, you know, you see the whitest of the white with blue eyes and darkest of the dark from parts of Africa that I never knew existed. And so you have this, all of humanity there. And what you find is everyone's doing their best to be good because when you have 2 million people doing the same thing, there's a lot of hustle and bustle and you're performing rituals and they're trying to get it done with because you've got time constraints and it's hot outside and you're walking for miles in that hot weather. But what I saw was the best of humanity, which is to be good to each other, to take care of each other, to pick up someone who falls down or give someone water when they seem like they're in need of some help. So it is just a beautiful thing to go do beyond just prayer for your own self, for the world, for the people around you. It is observing what humanity can be like and how our differences can bring us together. So it is like what I hoped it would be, an experience of a lifetime. And I would say in that 7-day period, I think I slept for like 14 hours. Wow. But I felt as alive and fresh and rejuvenated in spite of the lack of sleep. And you know what? The best thing was I got to do it with 2 of my closest friends who, And so it was like instead of a boys' trip to Vegas, it was a boys' trip to Mecca.

It sounds much better.

Yeah, I've done the boys' trips to Vegas and they're fun too.

Did you learn anything about yourself that you didn't know before?

I just feel so fortunate and committed to this path that I'm on. And I think sort of like doubling down on yourself and your path is, it's sort of like a, recommitting to your path.

One of the phrases you start hearing when you start traveling in Muslim countries is this phrase, inshallah. And like, why I keep hearing the same thing over and over again. And then you talk to your friends and it's this beautiful, I think, phrase that if I understand it correctly is essentially like God willing, this can happen. I mean, I'm Christian, but I find myself thinking about that phrase a lot actually, because I, you know, sometimes there are things that I really want to happen and I'm just, and I'm determined and I'm ambitious. And I think my motives are generally in the right place. And then they don't happen. And I really struggle, I fight, with understanding, you know, what, what, where the wires got crossed and how my plan for this seems so good. And, and yet then it still doesn't work out. And, and then, you know, if I'm, if I'm being really introspective about it, then this is the kind of, you know, God willing, is, is like the phrase is the sort of, for me anyways, is the right way to think about whatever's happening in your life. And I think if I'm being deeply honest about it, then it's like, look, like your plan is, it's so mortal and it's so basic. It's so, my, like, I have such limited understanding. And AI is really, if you didn't understand that before, sort of open our minds to just how little we really know, you know, in the grand scheme of things, and we think we're so smart, and we're really just so small, and just our knowledge is so limited, but I love that, I love that phrase, and when things get hard or when things happen that I don't understand, I often think of that.

Yeah, it's a beautiful phrase, God willing, and, I also just believe that God is the best of planners, and I think that gives me a lot of comfort when I am facing challenges in life, difficult decisions, difficult events like death in the family. And you can only fall back on there's a greater plan that only God knows. And God is the best of planners, and you accept God's will. And inshallah is a— it's a fun term because actually, amongst a lot of us, like Muslims, actually it's kind of a funny term because people use inshallah as like, sure, sure, yeah, yeah, well, that'll happen, yeah. But, but the true sense of the word is like, you know, God willing, that will happen, you know. And it is a beautiful term. I only smile because it's, it's sometimes jokingly used by a lot of people. Yeah, but I really do appreciate this, like, you know, the notion of wires getting crossed and the why, why did this happen to me? And I think that's one of the things that given some of the life events that we've also seen is just not asking the why, but just acknowledging that God is the best of planners and accept that.

Outside of family, who's the human being you most admire?

I've always had this shopping cart mentality in life. It's like you go to the grocery store, you pick up the cereal you like, you pick up the soda you like, the fruits you like. And so there is no one person. And actually, maybe goes back to my faith, which is like you don't sort of worship any human being ever in a way that is so much admiration that they're the one, because that's God. God is the one. And for me, it is to learn from you, Derek. It's to learn from my partners here at Kleiner Perkins, from my founders who I get to interact with closely. And so I really I really try to study the people around me and learn from them. And I admire at least one thing about you, Derek, and the same way I admire at least one thing about each one of the founders that I work with. And so that is how sort of my corpus gets to expand is by taking away at least one thing from every person that I truly get to work with.

If you could implant one idea into everyone in the world, what would it be?

We're all trying to do our best. We're all trying to be good to each other. And if we continue to believe in that sort of positive intent of each other, you know, the world, we will be a better place, will continue to be a great place. And yeah, it's like starts with this small notion that just do your best and believe in the power of humans just being good.

What's the hardest thing you've ever accomplished?

Candidly, like, it was 8 years ago when I showed up over here. I didn't know if it could be done. And I knew— I told my wife, we were having our third child at the time, said, hey, I need 18 months of, like, just intense commitment to this moment. And It was intense. And I think if the work hadn't been done at the time, it could have ended in different paths. And so, but I feel really proud of what we've done here. But the work never ends in a place like here.

Best advice for overcoming hard things?

Take a moment to center yourself. I get to do that 5 times a day. And it is the only thing that sort of gets you back to like what's important, what matters, and then a slightly refreshed mindset to go take it on. And I think hard things are kind of an accumulation of things rather than one hard thing or 10 hard things and just centering yourself every day or multiple times a day. Can get— push you through those hard things.

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

I think my family. Uh, 4 children who I just adore, and I have the most fun in life I have is with them and my wife. Like, it truly just, you know, yes, the yelling, screaming— I have 3 girls, uh, and the fighting is annoying, but, but it is like, that is the most important work product that I will generate in my lifetime. And it's really important that I get it right.

What's the biggest impact you want to make on the world?

A more kind, more accepting, collegial— again, going back to like, we're all trying to make this lifetime better for each other. And how do we just make sure like You know, we understand each other and know that actually we're actually all trying to row in the same direction, but we may not know it. And making sure that we know that we have all the same— all of us have probably the same goals in life.

If you die and you meet God, what do you hope he says to you?

You tried your best, but you were sincere. I forgive you and I welcome you home.

And finally, how do you measure your life?

Really in terms of what I can do to make my children really good contributors to society. That is, I think, the biggest yardstick for me. It's a lot of pressure because you can't control the outcome. So can't also be too hard on yourself. But that is an important— The most important yardstick for me.

Mamoon Hamid, appreciate you.

So great.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.