Guest: Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy

AI is poised to change nearly every business, but few are changing as quickly as education. And Sal Khan, who has spend more than a decade manually creating more than 7,000 educational videos, says that’s a good thing. He’s encouraged Khan Academy to focus on “disrupt[ing] ourselves ... more than almost any other organization that I know of.” 

The reason is backed up by the data: Personalized tutors — designed to help students achieve mastery in a subject, but previously thought to be unscalable — could shift the educational bell curve “significantly to the right,” Sal says.

Chapters:

• (00:52) - John and Ann Doerr
• (05:20) - Khan Academy’s origins
• (07:42) - What it is now
• (12:43) - Emotional fortitude
• (15:25) - Generating revenue
• (19:36) - The two-sigma “problem”
• (21:31) - OpenAI and Sam Altman
• (24:47) - What AI can do
• (27:56) - Cheating and other fears
• (30:06) - Video production
• (34:08) - Standardized tests
• (38:36) - AI tutors’ tone
• (40:22) - Not leaving the closet
• (43:20) - Who Khan Academy is hiring
• (45:58) - What “grit” means to Sal

Mentioned in this episode: Nasdaq, Dan Wohl, Vedic and Buddhist literature, Microsoft, Benjamin Bloom, ChatGPT, the Turing Test, Greg Brockman, Donald Trump, Bing Chat and Sydney, Khanmigo, the SAT and ACT, Schoolhouse.world, Craig Silverstein and Google, John Resig and jQuery, and Angela Duckworth.

Links:

Connect with Sal

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Matt MacInnis, COO of Rippling

One of the most important things a non-founder can do, says Rippling COO Matt MacInnis, is to learn how to operate in the context of the company they’re joining. His CEO, Parker Conrad, “spikes” in certain skill areas, and the rest of the executive team needs to maximize his ability to thrive while “taking care of the rest of it.” Matt likened the work to being a hobbyist airplane pilot, who can’t get a license without knowing all the minute details about their plane’s engine and aerodynamics. 

“You can’t be a good pilot if you don’t understand the engine, because if something goes wrong, you want to be able to troubleshoot it,” he says. “An executive coming in to fly your airplane better learn the engine.”

Chapters:

• (01:08) - Telling Rippling’s story
• (04:27) - Founding & failing at Inkling
• (09:30) - Different types of hard
• (13:55) - Discipline and stamina
• (15:22) - Meeting with Steve Jobs
• (19:20) - Definitely, give up!
• (22:29) - Product-market fit
• (27:15) - Founders and culture
• (33:24) - Executive instincts
• (36:06) - Talent Signal and AI
• (40:06) - 150 former founders
• (44:08) - Zero to one projects
• (48:06) - The failure of Silicon Valley Bank
• (55:25) - Routines and discipline
• (59:37) - Disagreeing with Parker
• (01:02:25) - Who Rippling is hiring
• (01:03:37) - What “grit” means to Matt

Mentioned in this episode: Parker Conrad, London Breed, Apple, Sequoia Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Tenaya Capital, digital textbooks on iPad, Oricom, Netscape, Peter Cho, Eddy Cue, John Couch, iBooks, Slack, Airbnb, Paul Graham, Brian Chesky, “founder mode,” Larry Ellison, Ivan Zhao and Notion, Intel and ARM, Salesforce, United Airlines, LLMs, GitHub, DocuCharm, Peter Thiel, Mamoon Hamid, Expensify, Navan, Costco, Comcast, HBO’s Silicon Valley, Jensen Huang and NVIDIA, and Taylor Swift.

Links:

Connect with Matt

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Jason Kilar, former CEO & co-founder of Hulu and former CEO of WarnerMedia

When Jason Kilar was a child, he was obsessed with Walt Disney — not just as a filmmaker or the creator of Disneyland, but as an entrepreneur. He started his career at the Walt Disney Company (where else?) but then got his first opportunity to help build something new when a young startup entrepreneur from Seattle visited his business school classroom. Most of Jason’s classmates predicted the failure of this startup, Amazon.com, which elicited “this awesome laugh, the Jeff Bezos trademark laugh.” How a leader reacts to criticism or doubts, Jason learned, says a lot about their conviction and intelligence.

Chapters:

• (01:08) - Bing Gordon and John Doerr
• (04:11) - Warner Bros.
• (06:12) - Walt Disney
• (11:10) - Working at Disney
• (14:32) - What makes it special
• (18:31) - Meeting your heroes
• (20:06) - “Walt’s folly,” Disneyland
• (22:45) - Harvard and Amazon
• (25:09) - Meeting Jeff Bezos
• (29:10) - “Help people understand Amazon exists”
• (33:25) - Amazon’s culture
• (38:07) - What Warner Bros. makes
• (40:55) - Obscurity and relevance
• (45:53) - Feeling the lows
• (50:09) - Launching Hulu
• (53:36) - NewCo or ClownCo?
• (59:13) - Over-communication
• (01:03:14) - The future of TV memo
• (01:06:46) - Innovator’s dilemma
• (01:08:57) - No labels
• (01:14:04) - Unfinished business
• (01:16:22) - Staying present
• (01:20:26) - The theatrical window
• (01:26:19) - What’s next?

Mentioned in this episode: Amazon, The Matrix, Star Wars: A New Hope, Disney World, Diane Disney Miller, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Michael Eisner, Universal Studios and Harry Potter, Disney University, Jeffrey Rayport, Barnes & Noble, Joel Spiegel, David Risher, Joy Covey, Garry Trudeau and Doonesbury, Andy Jassy, Brian Birtwistle, Jim Kingsbury, Vessel and Verizon, HBO, Friends, Hogwarts Legacy, Sony, Netflix, NBCUniversal, Paramount, AT&T, Discovery, Richard Tom, Kara Swisher, Fox, YouTube and Google, Saturday Night Live, Peter Chernin, Jeff Zucker, Bob Iger, Andy Rachleff and Benchmark, CBS, Miracle on 34th Street, Marissa Mayer and Yahoo, Rony Abovitz and Magic Leap, House of the Dragon and Industry, Dune, Christopher Nolan, and the TSA.

Links:

Connect with Jason

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guests: Joe Thomas, CEO and co-founder of Loom; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins

Loom CEO Joe Thomas had a lot of things to think about before he sold his company to Atlassian for $975 million: The impact an acquisition might have on the product, how to keep the Loom brand alive, the risk of remaining independent... but it wasn’t until after the deal was announced that he really understood what it meant for his team. 

“I didn't know how emotional it'd be for me,” Joe says. “All of the Loom employees, current and former, that reached out when this was announced, they did their calculation and they're like, ‘Oh my God.’ That, to me, was the most emotionally transformative part of the process. I didn't fully recognize what that would be like, on the individual front.”

Chapters:

• (01:34) - The Atlassian acquisition
• (05:25) - The bittersweet moment
• (08:15) - Transforming Loom
• (13:30) - Ilya’s perspective
• (18:04) - Life-changing
• (22:55) - Doing it again
• (25:00) - Loom’s early days
• (28:26) - The Series A
• (32:33) - Turning on monetization
• (35:37) - The Series B
• (37:05) - Loom AI
• (43:13) - Revenue orientation
• (48:18) - The acquisition landscape
• (52:27) - Working inside Atlassian
• (54:04) - Atlanta tech
• (55:00) - Who Atlassian is hiring
• (55:24) - What “grit” means to Joe

Mentioned in this episode: Wilson Sonsini, Vinay Hiremath, Andrew Reed and Sequoia Capital, Zoom, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Shahed Khan, COTU Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Scott Farquhar, the Lindy Effect, SVB, Google Chrome, Dropbox, Slack, Snapchat, HubSpot, the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter, Dylan Field and Figma, Atlassian Rovo, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, and Garrett Langley and Flock Safety.

Links:

Connect with Joe

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Connect with Ilya

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Rony Abovitz, founder & CEO of SynthBee

SynthBee CEO Rony Abovitz grew up “really believing” in Star Wars and the idea that there could be benevolent, artificially intelligent beings like R2-D2 and C-3PO.

“It wasn't a dystopian vision of the future,” he says. “It wasn't HAL from 2001.  It wasn't the Terminator. It wasn't Skynet.  It was this kind of friendly, empathetic, more utopian vision.” 

George Lucas himself told Rony to tone it down and not “take it so literally” — but he was undeterred. The way he describes today’s leading AI powers sounds like an idealistic Rebel conceptualizing the Evil Empire.

“You’ve got companies that receive massive funding that want to take all the data in the world ... I feel that's a massive mistake,” Rony says. “We become serfs. They become the Lords. They become the Kings. I'm completely opposed to that. So I started to imagine for SynthBee what is a different form of computing intelligence, one that could help us, but have much more safety [and] human centrism.”

Chapters:

• (01:12) - Fundraising
• (02:27) - Meeting John Doerr
• (07:05) - The Beast
• (10:06) - Unfinished business
• (11:47) - Apple and Meta
• (15:20) - The COVID-19 pandemic
• (21:12) - “Investors panicked”
• (25:28) - Shaquille O’Neal vs. digital Shaq
• (29:43) - Magic Leap alumni
• (32:45) - Financial outcomes
• (38:27) - Peggy Johnson
• (40:27) - “A weird version of hell”
• (44:08) - A strange intro to Google
• (50:42) - Larry Page and Sergey Brin
• (54:27) - Founder voting power
• (01:00:40) - Mako Surgical
• (01:03:04) - The 9/11 term sheet
• (01:06:40) - The worst pitch ever
• (01:09:55) - The 2008 IPO
• (01:16:15) - Selling to Stryker
• (01:18:30) - What is SynthBee?
• (01:26:44) - Humility in tech
• (01:31:44) - Who SynthBee is hiring

Mentioned in this episode: Scott Hassan, Bing Gordon, Chewy, Mary Meeker, Suitable Technologies and Beam, NASA, Mark Zuckerberg, Matthew Ball, NTT Docomo, Blade Runner, Wired Magazine, CES, Dow Jones, Tesla, Zoom, OpenAI and Anthropic, Adam Silver and the NBA, John Monos, the Apple Vision Pro, Madden NFL, McLaren, Satya Nadella and Microsoft, the HoloLens, Godzilla and King Kong, Willow Garage and ROS, Trading Places, Z-KAT, Frederic Moll, John Freund, Christopher Dewey, John and Christine Whitman, Sycamore Ventures, Andy Bechtelstein, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, Kevin Lobo, Muhammad Ali, Star Wars and George Lucas, Yuval Noah Harari, and Infosys.

Links:

Connect with Rony

• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Klarna

Living and working in Stockholm, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski thinks a lot about how he’s perceived in Silicon Valley: “I feel like here I am, I am the small, country cousin from Sweden.” And on top of that, he knew that someone like Sam Altman wouldn’t initially think of a European banking startup as an ideal partner for OpenAI — so, he made up an excuse to fly to San Francisco and meet with Altman. 

“I felt like, OK, this is going to be the busiest man in the world very soon,” Sebastian recalls. “When I first booked it with Sam, I think I got three hours in his calendar. By the time I arrived in San Francisco, it was down to 30 minutes.”

Chapters:

• (01:02) - Workday and Salesforce
• (06:01) - Rolling your own
• (08:45) - AI-driven customer service
• (15:33) - Automation at scale for business
• (19:28) - The Toyota way
• (23:40) - Sam Altman
• (25:36) - Playing offense
• (28:25) - Reinventing Klarna
• (31:44) - The startup journey
• (35:37) - Common equity
• (39:28) - Champions League
• (42:24) - Hype cycles
• (47:35) - Sebastian’s father
• (52:28) - Control and stability
• (57:23) - Comfort zone vs. stretch zone
• (01:02:27) - Creating resilience
• (01:06:23) - Why Klarna isn’t hiring

Mentioned in this episode: OpenAI, Seeking Alpha, Slack, Workday, ChatGPT, Stripe, CRMs, Mark Benioff, Twitter, Anthropic, Waymo, Devin AI, the Collison brothers and Stripe, Pieter van der Does and Adyen, Daniel Ek and Spotify, General Atlantic, DST Global, Anton Levy, Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital, Niklas Adalberth, PayPal, CNBC, “Under Pressure” by Queen, Boris Johnson, Elon Musk, Google, Sam Walton, Made in America, Nina Siemiatkowski, and Snoop Dogg.

Links:

Connect with Sebastian

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Kyle Hanslovan, CEO & co-founder of Huntress; and Ev Randle, partner at Kleiner Perkins

Talk is cheap, says Huntress CEO Kyle Hanslovan: “I learned real early on that integrity is like one of the very few things, if not the only thing, you can't buy.” En route to Huntress’ current status as a $1.5 billion firm with $100 million in ARR, he took a long time to hire new execs, or partner with VC firms.

Indeed, Kleiner Perkins partner Ev Randle recalls the deliberation Hanslovan underwent before signing KP’s term sheet. “It's pretty rare for a founder's diligence process on you to increase your conviction on them and the business that they're building,” he says. “You just saw that the effort extended across to so many different places and so many details that it's typically not.”

Chapters:

• (01:03) - Learning how things work
• (03:31) - Default trusting
• (05:07) - Over-sharing
• (10:50) - Kyle’s leadership style
• (15:44) - Hiring for conflict
• (19:24) - Scaling execs
• (22:52) - Evaluating VCs
• (28:55) - Pattern-matching
• (32:13) - Why Huntress is worth $1.5 billion
• (38:34) - Kyle’s childhood and early career
• (42:00) - The 99 percent
• (47:49) - Bootstrapping
• (51:14) - Deep roots
• (57:47) - Customer love
• (01:01:14) - “Nothing will stop us”
• (01:05:50) - Who Huntress is hiring
• (01:07:22) - What “grit” means to Kyle

Mentioned in this episode: Sony, Sam Altman, Nike, Elad Gil and High Growth Handbook, Kim Scott and Radical Candor, JMI Equity, Vinod Khosla, Todd Park, Capterra, Reddit, FUBU, Rippling, the NSA, QuickBooks, Amazon AWS, and South Park.

Links:

Connect with Kyle

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Ev

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Mark Fields, former president & CEO of Ford Motor Company and chairperson at Planview

In 2005, Mark Fields was asked to run the Americas for the Ford Motor Company, a role he would serve in for 7 years, later becoming COO and then CEO. His wife and kids were used to relocating for Mark’s job, but had just put down roots in Florida. He told them that this time, they should stay put — he would commute between Florida and Detroit every week, and call home for an hour every night. 

“I probably communicated more with [my wife] because we were apart, than if I was there,” Mark says. “Because if I was there, I'd come home for dinner, we'd spend a little bit of time together, I'd grunt at her, and then I'd go back to my emails, and ignore the kids. Whereas, by being away, I actually had really focused time every day to talk.”

Chapters:

• (01:01) - The auto business in ‘89
• (05:27) - The business now
• (08:47) - Ford vs. Trump
• (11:44) - Becoming a leader
• (17:35) - The next chapter
• (20:01) - Relocating the family
• (24:45) - Bring the kids to work
• (29:19) - “You have one life”
• (33:52) - Ego and purpose
• (42:06) - Retirement adrenaline
• (45:10) - Leading with passion
• (48:06) - Avoiding bankruptcy
• (52:55) - Grading Mark’s CEO years
• (55:12) - The board
• (58:32) - Electric vehicles
• (01:04:50) - 24 Hours of Le Mans
• (01:11:36) - Selling a $580,000 car

Mentioned in this episode: Harvard Business School, Ronald Reagan, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, CNBC, Volkswagen, American Icon, Donald Trump, Rutgers University, Mazda, Hertz, the Range Rover, Michigan University and Michigan Stadium, Mamoon Hamid, work/life balance, Mark McLaughlin and Palo Alto Networks, the Great Recession, GM, Chrysler, the North American International Auto Show, Bill Ford, Argo AI, Chariot, autonomous vehicles, Ford v Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari, the Ford GT, Jaguar Racing, and De Beers.

Links:

Connect with Mark

• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Jack Conte, CEO & co-founder of Patreon

For many YouTube video creators, getting millions of views on your videos may seem like the goal. But when Jack Conte and his wife Nataly Dawn became YouTube stars through their band Pomplamoose, they didn’t automatically find gold at the end of the rainbow.

“You check your ad revenue and you make 48 bucks in ad revenue and you're like, ‘Oh my God, I'm worthless,’” Jack recalls. “And you check that dashboard every day ... and eventually you start to believe that you're worth $48 a month. That's a bad f**king feeling.”

That’s why in 2013, he co-founded the artist-funding platform Patreon, and discovered that there were a lot more creators like him out there. As of 2022, those creators have earned more than $3.5 billion from Patreon.

Chapters:

• (01:06) - Barriers to entry
• (03:04) - The creator economy
• (08:36) - Patreon’s mission
• (11:22) - Its name
• (13:12) - Talking to artists
• (17:26) - Detail obsession
• (24:07) - “Nobody has an answer”
• (27:17) - Playing empty rooms
• (31:09) - Success feels like failure
• (33:37) - “I’ll be happy when...”
• (39:26) - Type one vs type two joy
• (45:32) - Self-confidence
• (48:30) - Obsession, humility, and kindness
• (53:51) - Figuring out your sound
• (56:18) - “I’m f**king terrified”
• (01:00:33) - Pedals
• (01:04:04) - Starting Patreon
• (01:07:04) - Who Patreon is hiring

Mentioned in this episode: Jason Kilar, Spotify, YouTube, Pomplamoose, Google Docs, GoDaddy, LaCroix, James Freeman and Blue Bottle Coffee, Woody Allen, Medium, YCombinator, Apple and the App Store, MySpace, Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman, AdSense, Home Depot, Skrillex and Fred Again, Matt Bunting, and Sam Yam.

Links:

Connect with Jack

• LinkedIn
• Read "I'm f**king terrified"
• Watch the "Pedals" music video

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Mark Pincus, founder & chairman of Zynga, and managing member & co-founder of Reinvent Capital

Before Zynga and Facebook made social gaming mainstream, the video game industry was “extreme on this being about art and crafting,” recalls Zynga founder Mark Pincus. He believes his winning instinct was the realization that games were “at least 50 percent science” — but it’s not enough to just have the instinct. 

Mark says entrepreneurs like him have to quickly take multiple shots on the goal and “look for feedback loops that tell you your instinct is right ... you need to get to a minimum viable idea state and you need to find true signal around that idea state, that it’s right or wrong, and move on.”

Chapters:

• (01:40) - Rubbing sticks together
• (07:01) - Virtual businesses
• (12:10) - Pre-Zynga companies
• (13:51) - Setting the real intention
• (17:44) - Internet treasures
• (23:21) - Disrupting gaming
• (30:14) - The chip on Mark’s shoulder
• (33:19) - The end of Tribe
• (37:24) - Zynga Poker
• (42:59) - Explosive growth
• (46:57) - Making the virtual real
• (52:02) - The downturn
• (58:12) - Stepping aside (sort of)
• (01:01:50) - Back into the fire
• (01:08:45) - In the abyss
• (01:11:46) - What “grit” means to Mark

Mentioned in this episode: Dot Earth, Elon Musk and the Boring Company, Uber Eats and Dara Khosrowshahi, ChatGPT, Roblox, Madhappy, Reid Hoffman, Craigslist, Google, Napster and Sean Parker, the California Culinary Academy, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, Yahoo, John Doerr, Words with Friends, LinkedIn, Tribe.net, Supercell and Ilkka Paananen, FarmVille and Hay Day, Parker Conrad and Rippling, Bing Gordon, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, the Game Developer’s Conference, CNET, Matt Cohler, Don Mattrick, Microsoft and the Xbox, Joe Biden, Jason Citron and Discord, Steve Jobs, Super Labs, Marcus Segal, Frank Gibeau, The Courage to Be Disliked, and Stewart Butterfield.

Links:

Connect with Mark

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: RJ Scaringe, CEO and Founder of Rivian

“I’m very comfortable with things not being in their end state,” says Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringe. The company’s challenging mission — to help make 100% of the world’s cars electric — will take a long time, and a lot of willingness to build the metaphorical plane in midair. 

As Rivian has grown from one person to seven to 17,000, though, RJ admits that there’s a lot more pressure to not screw up. “There’s all these conflicting emotions I had ... is this the right product?” he recalls. “Is it the right strategy? Am I capable of doing this? But at the end of the day, I try really hard not to let that be overly distracting.”

Chapters:

• (01:58) - Starting from scratch
• (05:35) - Auto tech innovation
• (08:03) - The supply chain
• (09:52) - Rivian’s deal with Volkswagen
• (14:28) - Outsourcing
• (16:10) - Capable EVs
• (19:06) - Brand and customer satisfaction
• (21:05) - That nagging feeling
• (27:26) - Raising capital
• (31:31) - RJ’s father
• (32:35) - The dark side of cars
• (34:43) - Tesla’s influence
• (37:13) - Financial challenges
• (42:38) - Entrepreneurial mindset
• (44:59) - Hard decisions
• (46:46) - Don’t screw this up
• (49:56) - 25,000 decisions a day
• (52:16) - Daily routines
• (54:57) - Who Rivian is hiring
• (55:34) - What “grit” means to RJ

Mentioned in this episode: Porsche, Alex Honnold, Amazon AWS, Mercedes, Elon Musk, Lotus, U.S. News and World Report, MotorTrend, J.D. Power, Ford, Blue Origin, SpaceX, MIT, Jeff Bezos, and the Tesla Roadster.

Links:

Connect with RJ

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm