All right, everybody. Hello and welcome to this episode of Human Side Up. I am your host Natasha Newton, CEO of Clara, and I'm really excited to share today's conversation with you. My guest today is David Hornik, who is, if you come from a venture world or startup world, you're familiar. If you're a fan of Adam Grant's work, you've heard him talk about David. This guy is sort of everywhere, but he's just a generous human being and I'm really excited for you to get to know him. A little bit about him: David grew up in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He was the son of a computer scientist and openly navigated dyslexia. He had a very supportive mom. You'll hear him talk a little bit about that. He talked about it later as he had found his way through it and to some success and realized that he really had some stuff to share and other people can benefit from learning. He talked about his journey in a TED talk. His formal education is delightfully eclectic. He has a BA in computer music from Stanford, a master's in philosophy and criminology from Cambridge, and a JD from Harvard Law. He started his career as a public defender and tech-focused attorney, and then he pivoted into venture capital by joining August Capital in 2000, eventually becoming a key force for them behind early bets on projects like Splunk and GitLab, Fastly, and many others. More recently, he has channeled his experience into founding Lobby Capital, maintaining a deep focus on building communities through his blog, his podcast, his TED affiliation, and sustainable in-person connection through the Lobby conferences. He is just a really thoughtful and intentional person, but also full of joy and spirit. He sees venture as not like a flashy deal-making thing. It's not transactional. It's very much about support and relationship, and he has really crafted that. He's definitely known as a giver in the community, but he also does that and it drives outcomes. I love that he's really deeply committed to intellectual and cultural enrichment. You'll hear us talk a lot about education and art and the impact of that on transformative leadership and how people bring together teams and build new things. He has a really rich personal life, and I am so excited to share insights from David Hornik with you today.
All right. Well, welcome to Human Side Up. I'm excited for this conversation as I've said, and thank you for making time. I'm excited to hear what you have to say in that very big brain of yours.
So first, we actually start our podcast with a question of everybody that kind of lays the groundwork for moving forward. And sometimes, to be honest, the conversation never goes to any of the other questions that I have thought to ask because of how we start out. But it is that I really genuinely believe that we are much more than our resume or LinkedIn profile or whomever's profile of us says. And I am very curious if there are, I don't know, two or three words about yourself that would describe you and how you've sort of landed where you are that maybe we don't see on a resume or a CV about David Hornik and when you begin to own them for yourself as true.
I'll tell you that one thing that does very quickly come to mind is dyslexic, which is not on a resume, right? It's not on a LinkedIn profile. I mean, you might end up sitting on the board of the American Dyslexia Society or whatever, but your follow-up question leads me to it because you said, 'Well, when did you embrace it?' And I will say there is this curious thing about dyslexia, certainly about me, certainly about my childhood. My childhood was a lot of me finding it hard to read. Not impossible, but just very taxing in a way that is not what you typically think of if you're supposed to be a smart kid. You're supposed to not only be good at reading, you're supposed to like reading. And I didn't like reading and I was not good at it. I couldn't spell and I was slow. My mother ultimately had to intervene a lot in ways that were pretty proactive and surprising, which turned out to be great, but it wasn't without its turmoil. Then I went off to college, got into a good college, did well, got into a good law school, did well. So then you spend a lot of time saying, 'How dyslexic are you really?' I had this mythology, this sense of, 'Oh, I was this dyslexic kid,' and suddenly, 'Can you really now? You're just making excuses.' But I was giving this interview many years ago for a set of executives at a bank and I was asked the question, 'Does it bother you in the venture business that you have to make decisions without having all the information available to you?' And I said, 'Well, I'm dyslexic. I don't have all the information in a sentence, so I really don't worry about that.' It was just an offhand comment. After the talk, one of these execs came up to me and said, 'David, my daughter is dyslexic and I'm looking forward to going home and telling her about this conversation, telling her about you, that you went to law school and managed to be a successful executive despite this challenge.' And it struck me that I was doing a disservice not talking about it, even though I had impostor syndrome in a lot of ways. So I started talking about it and got to know some folks in the dyslexia world. I went to speak at a dyslexia conference. The speakers before me were academicians describing the characteristics of dyslexia. I got up on stage and said, 'This has been extraordinary. This conference has been really affirming because I think I might be dyslexic.' They were like, 'Well, why are you on stage at a dyslexia conference?' But I genuinely was like, 'Okay, maybe I'm not full of it. Maybe I actually am.' Because everything they described, I had every problem, every challenge, everything I had lived through. So I said, 'Okay, I really should talk about this.' So even though it's not a part of my resume, I do think it's very much a part of who I am. It's a part of how I've developed and managed my life, and I talk about it more now than I used to.
Thank you for sharing that. I think that I worked with young people for the first 15 years of my career, and there is something very organic in your experience that I see with a lot of young people and adults who have struggled with some sort of learning disability. I'm almost 50, so when I was in school, there was a lot of stuff we weren't talking about. Because of that, what I saw in so many of my friends who had these challenges, they didn't want to go to the special reading room or the special after school program. They just knew that if they could mask, if they could figure out some coping mechanisms and a way to get through this, maybe it's using study groups or finding a friend who's smarter who can help them study. They just found these ways. So what I found was that there's such resourcefulness in having to find your way through a thing without having a path laid out for you. I think that's so underrated, because that resourcefulness matters.
It's interesting you describe that, and you describe the very generous version of these things. But when my oldest child was in elementary school, it was very clear that he was dyslexic to me. He was tested and they came back and said, 'Yeah, pretty dyslexic and probably has ADHD, but we're kind of not going to do anything about it because he's doing well in class.' I said, 'That can't be the measure.' I discussed exactly what you said, except I said it in a somewhat less generous form. I said, 'You know, my wife and I are both dyslexic. Right now, my son is doing fine. But you know what smart dyslexics do ultimately when they can no longer perform by working hard? They cheat, because that's what you have left. You describe it as getting study pals, but I picture myself in class sitting next to my friend Jason and saying, 'I will never remember this piece of information, but he can.' I'm not proud that that was how I got through some of my school, but I wanted the principal to understand that if you don't give resources to help kids come up with better coping mechanisms, then they will make it hard. So he ultimately relented and gave my son extra time. My son had to go to the resource room, which for many kids is daunting. For him, he just sort of didn't notice. Through elementary school he went, and then when he got to middle school, he declared himself fine and moved on with his life. He did well. I still don't quite understand what happened there. My daughter is clearly dyslexic, and she and I talk about this a lot because she has a very smart fiancé. They went to grad school together. He would work so hard reading everything, and then they'd get to class and she would engage and comment. He'd say, 'I know what I did and I know what you did. How are you doing this?' She said, 'Because I have to. That's part of the thing.' We can relate on this: you find the things that allow you to do the right stuff to be successful with the skills and resources you have. When I told my mother I was going to be a venture capitalist, she asked, 'What's a venture capitalist?' I described the job, and she said, 'So you have managed to talk your way into a job that only involves talking.' I said, 'Yes.' She said, 'Perfect.' Now, it turns out that's not entirely true, but this job is such a great job for a dyslexic. Every day I get people to tell me what they know. I get to consume it, process it, and use them as my adjunct readers, my adjunct brain. I feel so grateful that I landed in a job that is what I do every day.
I love how you've described that because it is a superpower. When you don't have dyslexia and you're told that reading is the way to learn, you push yourself to learn it that way, whereas maybe you're better at listening, drawing things out, or doing the physical thing. I think that what I love about the brains of dyslexics is that because they're constantly looking for another way to do a thing, they're not thinking inside the box that the rest of us are operating in. So it is a bit of a superpower to be able to say, 'I can solve this differently.' To your mom's point about learning from others verbally in the role that you have, you also get to think about problem solving and resources differently than other people in your space because you have had to figure out another way to do a thing for a very long time. So that creativity has to be incredibly valuable in the work that you're doing.
I hope so. There's a great book called The Dyslexic Advantage that talks about this. I do think that there are all sorts of things that are valuable about it. I've given a number of talks about how there are a disproportionate number of dyslexics in entrepreneurship. The tricky part is that there are successful entrepreneurs and unsuccessful entrepreneurs, successful dyslexics and unsuccessful dyslexics. Unfortunately, there are a wildly disproportionate number of dyslexics in prison as well. I remember giving a talk in San Quentin about my life and my career. I said to them, 'I just want you to know that many of you in this room share something important with me. You also are dyslexic and had real challenges in reading. This world penalizes those of us who can't do that. I had the good fortune of finding enough resources to thrive in that environment, and many of you were left without those resources and ended up where you are today.' It was a very interesting conversation I had with those folks after the talk.
I love that. I serve on the board of a nonprofit organization here in Nebraska called RISE, which focuses on re-entry for people who have been justice-impacted and their families. I feel very privileged. It's pretty great. What's interesting to me is that there are a lot of folks who have this hustle, and they ended up where they ended up because they had fewer resources than someone with more privilege or access. But they got where they got because they were trying to figure out the thing and how to get through it. As part of this program, they teach entrepreneurial education, like how to channel that into a thing and create something. I've been a part of a number of these programs and graduations, and I am always so impressed when I ask a question about a business plan that doesn't totally make sense, and I see those wheels start to think about how they can solve that problem they hadn't thought about before. It wasn't ignorance, just lack of awareness. It's magical.
I used to work with this group called Defy that would go in and teach entrepreneurship in prison. For my 50th birthday, I took 100 entrepreneurs and venture capitalists into a high-security prison in California to teach entrepreneurship. It was astonishing. At the end of the day was their graduation from the program, and we brought in a band and had birthday cake. It was amazing. One of the things I talk about a lot is that everybody has a different perspective, and entrepreneurship is about seeing problems and figuring out solutions. We would talk with these system-involved folks about their ideas. They had worked hard to learn how to pitch, and they were not as polished as folks coming out of Harvard Business School. But I will tell you, there was a class of businesses that I heard about in prison before I heard about them from entrepreneurs coming out of Stanford Business School. There were inmates dealing with the fact that their parents were aging and they didn't have resources to care for them. They were building ideas for businesses that were a bit like Uber for elder care, well before I was hearing about this from entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs were younger and not encountering this problem. They had the resources to hire help instead of figuring it out. Those were all really smart ideas because these were very thoughtful people trying to come up with problem solving, and they had a different perspective about a real problem. It was eye-opening: don't discount anyone. Listen to what problem they're trying to solve, see if it's a real problem, and then see if the solution is a smart answer to the problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So, thinking about this, I would really love to know that education and the arts play a big role in your world and that you are very engaged in those things. I shared with you that as a kid I found my voice through arts and education. I was really fortunate in that regard. Those things matter to me. Another thing we have in common is you're a ziggger and a zagger. You've done a lot of different things. There was no straight path. I respect and appreciate that given my own experience. I would love to understand from you, given your position having worked in law, technology, investment, and being a part of organizations like GLAAD or the Smithsonian, bringing those two things together, what in your experience is the impact of education and art in leadership and how people lead teams and build organizations?
Ultimately, the thing that is compelling to me about the art world, whether it is the music world, the fine arts world, or the theater world, is the empathy it builds. I have an art collection. Those are terrible words no one should speak, but I happen to have art from amazing artists. It's all figurative art, the vast majority. People often ask why I collect figurative art. It's because I love the empathy of the artist and the individual they capture. I like the idea that I get a view into the world of the artist or the person being depicted. My art is extraordinarily diverse, painted by people of great different backgrounds, economic backgrounds, race, gender, and all of these things. The people depicted in the art are a profoundly broad swath of the world. They are painted in a way that says these people matter. You should want to experience their world. In one of our bedrooms is a painting by an artist named Rebecca Ness. She's a young painter out of Brooklyn. The painting is called The Booby Trap, which is a lesbian bar in Brooklyn. It's a scene of women hanging out, drinking, convening, and having a safe and loving space that's theirs. Rebecca is a lesbian who lives in Brooklyn, and it's her community. You cannot look at that painting if you're a decent human and not think, 'God, that's so loving. I'm so grateful that people have a space where they can be themselves.' I see it all the time and am constantly moved by what a great, important image it is. Same thing with music. I'm involved in musical theater and theater. I want these things to exist because they represent a world that should exist, one that cares about humans in their fullest ways. So, how do we as leaders who are not so inclined to have an existing appreciation for that empathy that art can create, how does a leader start to cultivate that through art or education in a way that is meaningful for the people they touch every day?
That's a great conundrum. I have two examples. One is coming up, but the first is improv. If anyone has never tried improv, they are really missing out. Improv is the most fun, a great, astonishing experience. Improv is about generosity. People think it's about creativity and being funny, but no. When I took improv in college with my two roommates, who were some of the funniest people in the world, we got yelled at by the professor who said, 'Please stop trying to be funny. You are killing us. All you're trying to do is make yourselves laugh and make each other laugh, and you're ruining everything because you're not listening to anyone.' It was such a great lesson. We toned it down, and it got better and funnier because then you give someone space to be funny and engaging. I have brought improv to my executives. I run a conference in Hawaii called The Lobby that brings together 250 tech execs to talk about technology and the future. I also bring improv to them. We have a jam session where people play music together. You can't do either of those things without giving someone else space to shine, without listening, without appreciating what others bring. At my last conference, two of the people were professional musicians. One had played the main stage of Coachella, the other had many gold albums. They played in the jam session, and one of them just played rhythm guitar in the back. He was the best musician among us by orders of magnitude, and he just hung back and let us enjoy nerding out. That was an extraordinary gift. Being good at improv is what it takes to be good in a board meeting, to encourage your team to speak up, to say 'yes, and.' In the physical art space, my wife is a dog fanatic and an art fanatic. She has a lot of art of dogs. We're renting a space in San Francisco starting September 29th for a couple of weeks for an exhibition called Some More Dogs, just a bunch of art of dogs by amazing artists. It's the same diversity because it's not just dogs, it's people and dogs. We did one before called Some Dogs. People would come in and ask, 'What's the point? Are you selling this art?' We'd say no. They'd ask, 'Why are you doing this?' We'd say, 'Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy the dog art?' They'd say, 'Yeah, it was amazing.' That's the point. I have this community of people from my conference, so I decided to host a reception for all these tech execs to come hang out among this dog art so they can experience why I am so obsessed with the idea of expression. I don't think you can leave that experience without thinking, 'Oh, that really expanded how I think about the world, about why people care about dogs and humanity and each other.' At least that's my hope.
I love it. You're tapping into so many of the things that drive me personally: this empathy, connection, community, and being present in the moment to experience and respond versus react. I am in the tech world, and I think it's so interesting because when you're trying to start a business, change the way people think about something, and bring other people along, there is something critically important, foundational, to have a space where that connective tissue exists. Given where we are in the stage of our company, so many people ask why I spend so much time with my team talking about these things, or why I have a vision, mission, values, or mindsets and ways of being. Why do I spend money twice a year to bring my team together? I think there's an experience of being in the same space that is special. When I think about that and the world you inhabit professionally, it doesn't seem like they're separate worlds for you. It seems like it's one life, all coming together. I'm curious when you're talking with tech founders or founders who are different than the average bear or haven't had an example in their life, this is their first time out of the gate. What are two or three things related to the humanity of starting a company or thinking about being a founder or CEO that you would encourage them to think about or embrace as they build their new thing?
