Talk with David Hornik

I was trying to make Peter and the Wolf. Do you know this music, Peter and the Wolf? It's this classical music piece where different instruments pretend to be different animals. I was trying to make the animals actually make this music, which turns out I was terrible at. But it was incredibly fun. And so I created my own college major, which was computer music. So I have the first ever degree in computer music from Stanford. Now you can get a degree in music technologies within the music department. But I had every expectation of going to law school. And then I was like, well, if I'm going to go to law school, I think I'm going to be a public defender because I was very focused on justice and fairness. And I had never spent any time overseas. And so I decided to go study overseas. So I went to a British college, Cambridge University, and I got a master's degree in criminology, which was like the study of crime and punishment. And that was sort of fun. And then I went to law school and I thought I was going to be a public defender. And then I did it for a little bit. I went to court and I was representing people and it turns out I didn't like it and that was a bummer because I was there to do it. So I had to figure out a new thing. And then I went to New York City and I started representing big companies in lawsuits. I was Ticketmaster's attorney, representing Ticketmaster when it was being sued for being an antitrust violator and for causing really high ticket prices. And we went to Washington DC and we helped prepare the CEO to make sure that Ticketmaster could continue to overcharge you. And unfortunately for you, I was very good at that job and so Ticketmaster has overcharged you for decades since.

And then one day I came home and my wife said to me, you know, your job in your day job involves fighting and then you bring it home and then you argue with me. I remember at one point we were having some argument and then she said, 'I'm not litigating with you. This isn't a courtroom. I just disagree with you about something stupid like when to take out the garbage.' It was nothing. And so I talked to a bunch of friends from college and said, 'What are you all up to?' And I had these three friends that I talked to who I met in various ways in college. Like the greatest thing about high school is that you meet extraordinary people who come on a Saturday to hang out with you and talk about entrepreneurship. Then the greatest thing that happens at college is you meet a bunch of amazing people who hang out and talk about whatever interesting stuff is happening. So, I called these three friends and said, 'Hey, my wife tells me I need a new job, so I should probably do that.'

The first one I called was my college roommate who, when we graduated from college, came to LA and he was a comedy writer. He wrote television shows and he and I had a humor magazine on campus called Actual Malice, which was funny. And he was the headwriter for a show called Frasier, which was, I don't know what the equivalent is now, but you know, like being the headwriter for one of the big shows at the time. And he said, 'Well, just write a script for me and my agent will get you a writing job.' And I was like, 'Wow, that's cool.' So, while I was a lawyer, I started writing this comedy script for the TV show Friends. Anyway, then I got distracted.

Then I talked to another friend and this other friend, when we were in college he was a drummer and I was a bass player and so all of the musicals that happened on campus he played drums and I played bass and then in between when they were working on things he and I would chat with each other. He was this incredibly great computer scientist and he went straight to Microsoft and at the time he was running the browser product for Microsoft and he said, 'Well, come work for me and be a product manager.' I said, 'Okay, product manager. What's a product manager?' 'Oh, product manager basically tells the engineers what to build.' I said, 'You do know I'm a lawyer, right?' And he said, 'Yeah, but it's not that hard. Like, I'll teach you how to be one.' And I said, 'Yeah. Well, I don't know. If I stopped being a lawyer, my mom would be sad,' so I didn't do that. By the way, that guy was at Microsoft for 35 years. He just retired. When he retired, he was one of the top three people at Microsoft. He ran like a third of Microsoft. So that would have been interesting, but I didn't do that.

And then I called my law school roommate who was a friend of mine who lived across the hall from me in my freshman dorm. And he and I were friends and then in my freshman dorm one of our friends started a company. He was like, 'Oh, it was the early days of the internet. If you go back in the wayback machine, there actually was no internet before and then someone invented the internet.' And then there were a bunch of companies that were created to try and figure out how to build things on the internet. And one of those, the most important first companies, was a company called Yahoo. And my friend Jerry from my freshman dorm was the founder of Yahoo. And he hired all our friends because he's like, 'Well, where do you find people to work with you? I'll hire my friends. Trust me, one of you is going to start a company and one of you is going to hire one of the other people sitting in this room.'

And so my law school roommate, buddies with this guy Jerry, said, 'Well, I'm now a lawyer representing startups and I represent Yahoo and other startups and it's pretty fun. Startups are cool.' And I thought, 'I don't think so. Startups are companies and companies don't seem that interesting or cool to me.' He said, 'Oh shut up and come here.' And so I came out and interviewed and I talked with these people. I was like, 'Okay, well this is kind of interesting.' I started and they ended up hiring me. 'All right fine, we'll give you a job and you can come represent startups.' So we moved back to California and I still thought like, 'Ah, I'm not sure this is going to be the thing that I love doing.'

And then I had my very first meeting with an entrepreneur. I was working for a partner. This particular entrepreneur had started a company called When.com. It was the very first online calendar company. So think for a second. Imagine for a second that you have a calendar that was not connected to the internet and where people couldn't just put stuff on your calendar and you couldn't see stuff and add it to your calendar. That's what it was like back in the dark ages. And this guy said, 'Well, wouldn't it be cool if we had an online calendar?' And started a company. And I met with this guy, a guy named James Ween, and for two hours we talked about, well, how would you do that and where would you get the data and what would be the laws that would rule this, etc. And at the end of that two-hour meeting, I called my wife and said, 'Oh my god, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. Smart, engaging, lovely humans have an idea and then someone gives them millions of dollars and then they get to just create it and I get to help them.' And my wife's like, 'That's great. I'm happy for you.' And that was it. I became obsessed, completely obsessed with startups.

I stopped sleeping because startups always need more work done on their law. So, I would get contracts and they'd say, 'David, when can you get this done?' and I'd say, 'You'll have it in the morning.' And I'd stay up all night and write their contract. And they'd say, 'Oh, that's great. Here's a new one. Do another.' Anyway, so I'll finish the story. I would go to meetings for these companies where the investors in the company were in these meetings. They're called board meetings. The board is the senior executives who run the company and the investors in the company come together every month or so to talk about the company and say like, 'Oh, how should we think about, well, how can we help this company be successful or whatever.' And I would go to these board meetings and here's what the job is if you're the lawyer at a board meeting: your job is to take notes about what they said and if very rarely they say they might do something that you think is illegal you might say, 'Well, you might not want to do that. It's illegal.' That's your job as a lawyer in these meetings. Meanwhile, everybody else is talking about the business. But that seemed boring to me. I didn't want to just talk about the law part. I thought the business part was interesting. And so, I would say like, 'Oh, have you thought about this or have you met this person?' I just acted as if I should be speaking about everything.

I will admit that in one instance, I got fired for doing this. Like I had a client who was like, 'No one asked you what your opinion was on this.' I said, 'Oh that's a shame.' But in another case there were investors in the company who listened to the things I said and they ultimately said, 'You know David, the things you say about this business are more interesting than what the other investors in this company are saying. Have you ever thought about being an investor?' And at that point, I knew the investor job was the most fun job because you met with incredible people and then the ones you really were excited about, you gave them money and then you got to go to their board meetings and you got to say, 'Hey, why don't you try this or how can I help you here?' And so I said, 'Yes, I would. That sounds amazing to me.'

And then for four months they interviewed me and you know, they talked to everybody I knew and they made me pretend to be a venture capitalist and they took me to dinner, all these things. And after four months, they said, 'Look, lawyers are actually bad at this job. Lawyers are bad VCs, but we can't think of a reason not to hire you. So, if you're willing to give this a shot, then we're happy to have you join us. And if it turns out you're bad at it, well, that's okay. You're a good lawyer. You can go back to being a lawyer. But if you are good at it, then you can be our partner and you can invest in companies and that would be amazing.' And I said, 'Sounds great. I'm excited to do that.' And I stopped being a lawyer and started being an investor.

It took me a year before I invested in my first company. In the first 10 years of being a venture capitalist, I had three companies go out of business and I lost $30 million. And I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm very bad at this job.' I had three other companies that had gotten sold and we had made $70 million and so I was plus $40 million for 10 years which it turns out in the venture world is not very interesting. It's like, okay, you're not the worst but you're certainly not the best. And in year 11, 11 years in, like think back 11 years ago when you were four or what, you know, like it took me 11 years and 11 years in I had funded this great company when it was two people and an idea, like, 'Oh, wouldn't it be great if you built a search engine for data?' And that company went public, it became a public company, it traded on the stock market and it made hundreds of millions of dollars for my investors and suddenly I was a good investor. So in years 1 through 10, not so good. In year 11, I was good. You know, miraculous. And then I had to do that again. And it was like, okay, will you ever be able to do that again? Well, the good news is I'm now 26 years into being a venture capitalist and I've had the fortune of funding great companies for 26 years. And so I don't have to go back to being a lawyer.

I will tell you I've hedged my bets. If you're a lawyer, you have to pass the bar exam and you stay in the bar and you pay fees to be on the bar. When I became a VC, I withdrew from the bar. Said I'm not a lawyer anymore. But I paid $1,000 to be an inactive member of the bar so that if I had to be a lawyer again, I could do it. I have now spent $26,000 over 26 years to be an inactive member of the bar because you never know. Someone might tell me, 'No, you're a terrible VC. You need to go back to being a lawyer.' Although I think it's safe in year 26. I probably could withdraw from the bar, but hedging my bets. You got to be safe.

It was deeply nonlinear.

Yeah. I mean, raise your hand if before right now you had heard of a VC. I mean, that's actually astonishing. When I became a venture capitalist, I called my mom and I said to my mom, 'Hey, mom, I have a new job.' And she's like, 'Really? What law firm are you working for?' I said, 'No, I'm actually going to be a venture capitalist.' And she said, 'What is a venture capitalist?' And not only did she not know what a venture capitalist is, but we had come from a family of like social justice warriors. So having the word capitalist in your job was not a great thing. That was like she was very skeptical from the start. And so I said, 'Oh, well, it turns out that there are these people who raise a bunch of money from investors and they take that money, they meet with smart entrepreneurs, they spend their day meeting with entrepreneurs and if they think what one of those entrepreneurs is doing is really interesting, they convince them to sell them a piece of the company with which we buy with someone else's money.' Right? So, I get to take Alexa's money. She says, 'David, good news. I have a lot of money. You can have $10 million of it and you can give it to other people and I'll buy a piece of your company and then I'll help you build this company and then I go to these board meetings and I help you build the business.'

And mostly I try and cheer you on. I try and stay out of the way. And if your company is really successful, like this company that went public, and you can then sell the stock you have in that company, if you sell it for more money than you paid for it, then you're a good VC. And then you take that money that you've made in that investment, and you give most of it back to Alexa for her investment, and you get to keep some of it yourself, which is amazing. Like, 'Oh my goodness, you had the money. You gave me the money. You built the company. Did all the work. And I get to keep some of the money. That's crazy. What kind of a job is this?' So, I describe this to my mother. I say like, 'Oh, yeah.' And she's like, 'What do you do?' I say, 'Well, I meet people. I talk with them about their business. I convince them that they should let me invest in their companies. I go to their board meetings. I give them advice. And that's it. That's all I do.' And she said to me, and I quote, 'Let me get this straight. You have talked your way into a job that only involves talking.' And I said to my mother, 'That's exactly right.' She said, 'Well, that's perfect for you. That's the perfect job.'

Now, there are lots and lots of things that you do as a venture capitalist to try and meet amazing entrepreneurs. So, here's a great example. How did I meet Alexa? I met Alexa because I met her dad. How did I meet her dad? Here's how I met her dad. I had been going to this conference called the TED conference for a bunch of years. Have you all seen a TED talk at this point? When I first went to the TED conference was in 2000, 26 years ago. In 2000, it was 500 people in a little town in Monterey, California, where you hung out and talked about the future of TED, technology, entertainment, and design. It was kind of amazing. I was sitting with, you know, the greatest musicians and educators and etc. in the world. And so I had been going to this conference for a long time. I knew the founder of the conference very well. And one day he calls me up and he said, 'David, I think we're doing a bad job of picking which kind of technology companies to put on stage.'

And he said, 'It's because we don't have the expertise to do that, but you do. And so I want to make you the tech curator for TED. Your job will be to pick which technology companies get to present, give these TED talks on their big conference.' And I said, 'That's amazing, but you know, I have a job.' And he said, 'Yeah, do it at the same time. It's all good. You can do it at the same time. While you're looking for your companies, you can look for great presenters for the TED stage.' And I said, 'Awesome.' Like, who wouldn't do that? How great is that? By the way, when a VC reaches out to someone and says, 'Hey, I'd love to talk to you about your business.' Lots of people say, 'Nah, I don't want to tell you.' But if you reach out and say, 'Hey, by the way, I'm the tech curator for the TED conference and I could put you on the TED stage.' They all answer your emails. Like, this is amazing.

Okay, so now I'm the tech curator of the TED conference. I'm the benevolent dictator of who gets to go on the TED stage to talk about technology. And I'm driving down the highway in between meetings and I'm listening to NPR, which you all should do because it turns out it landed me here. I'm listening to National Public Radio and there is a gentleman on the radio who is talking about this technology he's built to help basketball coaches understand the best way to coach their teams. And it's basically taking cameras that gather data from these basketball games, turning it into information, and then telling the coaches, 'Oh, here's how you can do it. This is interesting. This is bad. This is good.' Whatever. And I think to myself, 'Oh my god, that's amazing. Like, I need to talk to these people. This would be an extraordinary opportunity for the TED stage.'

I track down that person who was on the radio. I email him and say, 'Hey, I'm the tech curator for the TED conference. Can I talk to you?' He says, 'Sure.' I chat with him. And I say, 'Oh, that was super interesting. I'm going to be in LA. Can I meet with you?' and he says like, 'All right, whatever.' So, I drive to this company to go meet with this guy. And he's apparently busy because he sends his co-founder, Alexa's dad. And Alexa's dad shows up in the conference room. We start chatting. I'm like, 'Oh my god, this guy's so smart. This is crazy.' And then his partner comes in and that guy was also very smart. And the only human on the planet who I know who's louder than I am. And that was exciting. Like Uluan's the loudest man I've ever met. And they were so lovely and excited about what they were building. And they were so, you know, it was just like I was completely sold immediately. By the way, I do not care about sports at all. I could not care less about basketball. And they were a basketball set. I don't know if you are. Do you like basketball? No. Like we ended up with the board of this company was one of the owners of the LA... not the Lakers, who was the... we had a Warriors owner. We had the former CEO of ESPN. We had Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, who owned whatever the Knicks or like... it was crazy. And then me who cared nothing at all about sports. But I loved Yuan and Rajie and I loved the technology they were building. So I say you should present at the TED conference. They present at the TED conference and then I say like, 'Oh, can I give you money?'

And I had to fight to give them money. There were all sorts of people who wanted to give them money. I had to convince them that I was a nice person and that I would be helpful and all these things. So, it turns out part of your job as a venture capitalist is to convince people that you will be helpful and nice and valuable. And then you have to actually be helpful and nice and valuable because when the next person who you want to convince that you're helpful and nice and valuable is looking at that, they call Yuan and go, 'Well, what do you think of Hornik?' And if Yuan's answer is like, 'Nah, he wasn't that good,' I don't get to do the deal. Right? So anyway, so it's like such a fun job because you meet amazing people through all sorts of different things. And then you get to help them build this business. That business ended up being used by every basketball team, every NBA team in the country. Like there was an NBA finals that was determined early on because one of the teams was using their technology and one wasn't. And the team that was using the software won and the team that wasn't didn't and it was very directly related. How cool is that? Like that's amazing. I have no idea what the question was, Alexis.

Yeah. Did you know I... you know...

Let me give you the specific number. I see about a thousand business plans a year. I meet with about a hundred of them. I get serious about 10 of them. I invest in one of them. So over 26 years, I've seen something like 26,000 companies. I've spent about 2,600 hours meeting with entrepreneurs. The 10 that I think are interesting, you know, so 260 that I thought were interesting, I probably spent a thousand hours with. Then I have funded about 50. So I guess two a year. I've funded about 50 and then those 50 you go to all these board meetings. I just recently calculated, I just became the chair of the Stanford Alumni Association board which is a role of basically running meetings. And so on my first day in the role I said, you know, I did the math. It turns out I'm a professional meeting attender and I did the math and in my 25 years that I've been a venture capitalist, I have spent just north of three months of my life, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for three months of my life in meetings seeing 26,000 companies. Anyway, so the question is...

All right, let me start with an admission which is that I've made some of the biggest mistakes in the history of the venture business. So like there are two ways to succeed in the venture capital. I just gave a talk, hopefully this talk will be up sometime, in which I talked only about my failure. And so there are two ways you can get it wrong in the venture business. There's a thing called a type one error. The type one error is I fund someone like Yuan and then he loses all my money and I go, 'He didn't make me money. Thank you Yuan. It was a great company.' But by the way, of the 50 companies I've funded, 25 of them have lost all the money. I've probably lost $300 million on those 25 companies. So that's a type one error. Like, whoops, sorry about your $300 million. Probably shouldn't have made those investments. That was bad. It turns out it's not the worst thing. The worst thing is a type two error. Does anyone know what a type two error is? Has anyone heard of a type two error in venture capital? It's the worst error. A type two error is you see something amazing and you don't fund it. So what amazing things did I not fund? You ask yourself, all of them.

I turned down. There were only two VCs who saw the Series A investment of Facebook. Me and the people who did it. That at the time was the best venture capital investment ever made. I turned it down. I thought the price was too high. It was a hundred million dollar valuation. Keep in mind the company went public at a hundred billion dollars. A thousand times what I would have funded it at. So that was a mistake. I turned down the Series A of Twitter. Why did I turn down the Series A? I was one of the first couple thousand Twitter users. I knew the CEO well. Why did I turn it down? And this gets to how do I fund people? I didn't like the founders. I thought they were jerks. One of them I still think is a jerk. You have to figure out which. I turned down the Series A, the first investment, like the first money you would put in. I turned down the first investment in Uber. Why did I turn down the first investment? By the way, the Uber founders I backed both of their previous companies. So I had funded both of them and I'd introduced them to each other and I was literally in the room when they came up with the idea for Uber.

I don't know if you've ever heard this story. Again, what is my job? My job is so tough. This is a great example of what a very hard job I have. The first part of this job was I had to fly to Paris because there was a technology conference in Paris. So, my wife and I flew to Paris. Now, it was December, so it was cold making Paris not as amazing, but still. And I would go and hang out with a bunch of entrepreneurs. There were a small group of entrepreneurs who would rent a big house every time this conference happened. They called it the Jam Pad and they would do exactly what you all do here. They would sit around in this house and come up with ideas for companies like all night, just would talk about crazy companies. What about this? What about that? And they were friends of mine. One of them was Gary Vaynerchuk. Do you guys know Gary Vee? Anyway, I'm glad you don't. But two of them were the founders of Uber and so they would have this Jam Pad and I would come over, I'd bring them wine and cheese and hang out with them because that's what you do. You hang out with smart entrepreneurs, you chat with them about ideas. And this one particular year these founders of Uber were in Paris and they were annoyed at the taxis in Paris. What is the unique problem of taxis in Paris? Does anyone have any idea why getting a taxi in New York is easier than getting a taxi in Paris? In order to get a taxi in Paris, you have to go to where the taxis pick you up. So, you have to know where the taxis...

How are you supposed to know that? That's ridiculous. So, if you're a Parisian, great. You go, 'Oh, it's on this corner.' You go and you get a taxi. But if you were dumb Americans who show up in Paris, you're like, 'I'd like to wave down a taxi,' and they'd like look at you and say, 'Stupid Americans,' and drive by. Like, what are you talking about? You're a taxi. Pick me up. But no, in Paris they don't do that. In Paris they like go to the spot. 'We'll pick you up at the spot.' Like, how do I know the spot? These were in the very earliest days of the iPhone. The iPhone had more or less just come out. And these guys were like, 'Well, don't you think this is stupid? Like, why wouldn't you just take out your phone and say, I'm here, come get me here?' And they're like, 'Totally, we should totally do that. Oh my god, we should make a thing where the taxi comes to you.' High five, whatever. I went home thinking that's stupid. Then they built it and they came in and they said, 'All right, we built it, it works, people love it.' But it wasn't Uber X, it was Uber Black, it was just these limousines, right? You just get your fancy car. So, they tell me about this business and I talk to my partners and I say, 'These guys are good entrepreneurs. They've got this idea, but how many people out there do we think are willing to spend the money to have a limousine on demand?' Like, that doesn't seem like a lot of people, right? You'd say like, 'Oh, how many, maybe in LA, maybe in New York, but is that...' And so ultimately we're like, 'Nah, it's not a very big business.' So, we didn't fund it. Like, yeah, it's not big enough. Wrong. That was wrong. Now, partly it was wrong because turns out there was this other thing called Uber X that was cheap. By the way, Uber didn't invent Uber X. Who invented Uber X? Any ideas? Lyft. Lyft invented Uber X and then Uber was like, 'Oh, we should do that.' And stole it and did it better and now they're bigger. I turned down Palantir. I turned down Airbnb. I turned down... Okay, so I'm a terrible venture capitalist.

Here's the good news. The good news is as long as you fund some great companies like Second Spectrum, like Alexa's dad's company, it doesn't matter that you didn't fund the best companies, although it would have been better. So, how do I figure it out? I just fund people. I spend every day of my life meeting people. One of these days one of you is going to email me and say, 'We met at South Pasadena High when you spoke about the thing and now I'm in college and I'm working on this thing and can I tell you about it?' And I'll say, 'Yeah, of course, you're my people now. We had this moment in South Pas. Tell me about what you're doing.' And then you're going to tell me this thing and I'm going to say, 'Oh my god, that's amazing, that's incredible.' But I'm going to do it because I think you're incredible. I think you're excited about what you're building. I have a very clear rule which is you have to be unwaveringly ethical and decent. You have to be a good human. I have to tell you I have gotten this wrong twice. In the 50 companies that I have funded, I have funded two bad humans mistakenly. One was an extraordinary liar and one was an extraordinary cheat. It will not surprise you to know I lost all my money in both of their companies because it turns out those are not good ways to be successful. So I want to back amazing people who are excited about what they're building, who have some idea where they're like, 'Every day I went to school and I had this particular experience. Wouldn't it be better if it was this way instead of that?' And so I built a company to make that better, right? And then every so often, about two times in a thousand, I say, 'Huh, that would be better,' and I'd give you 10 million bucks. That's kind of my process.

So, first of all, it is a little bit of a curse for people to tell you you're a giver because then I get all sorts of emails from people saying, 'Hey, you're a giver, so give me things.' Like, I don't think you understand the rules. So, this guy, Adam Grant, who's this great professor at University of Pennsylvania wrote this book called Give and Take. And the way he heard about me is that I was again, this world is very strange. And so you just do a bunch of interesting things. Because I had gone to school in England, my friend Reid Hoffman who started LinkedIn, which I also turned down, had this thing called Silicon Valley Comes to the UK where a group of us from Silicon Valley would go over to London and talk about entrepreneurship. And so I went with him to talk about entrepreneurship. And when I was there, I met the editor of Wired magazine. I don't know if you've looked at Wired magazine, great tech magazine. And he said to me at this thing, 'David, I'd love for you to write something for me if you ever feel like it.' I said, 'Great.' And then literally as I was driving to the airplane to fly home, he calls me and says, 'David, I just had someone back out of writing a thing for the magazine. I need something. Do you have anything you want to write about?' And I said, 'Oh, good news. I just read an article in the Stanford magazine that made me really angry and I want to write about why it's so wrong. Why these Harvard and Stanford Business School professors are idiots?' And he's like, 'Perfect.' I said, 'When do you need it?' And he said, 'How soon can you get it?' And I said, 'I'll write it on the plane home.' And so flying from London home to California, I wrote an article which was entitled 'Nice Guys Finish First Eventually.'

So the research that made me angry was these professors at Harvard and Stanford business school had taken business leaders and put them through this project which was like to be selfish or not. And they determined that the jerks were more successful in this exercise than the nice people. And the thing that made me mad about the study was that it misunderstood business. So look, if you and I, if Lex and I are engaged in one negotiation ever, then I can be as jerky as I want and get to some outcome and then I win. Alexa's mad at me, but I never get to encounter her again, so who cares? Just turns out that's not business. It turns out that business is that I'm going to see you again and your word is going to get out about what a jerk you are and people aren't going to trust you and you'll get worse outcomes over time by your reputation of being a jerk. And so even though this particular study was a single point in time, I said, look, business is not like that. Business is about long-term relationships and nice guys finish first eventually. That was the article. So, Adam Grant is working on this book and he gets this article and he emails me and says, 'I'm working on this book. Can I talk to you?' And I say, 'Yeah, sure.' And he and I talk for two hours about my life philosophy of like, 'Oh, you should just be a good human and it'll all work out fine.' And he's like, 'Well, I'm writing a book.' And my book says that there are three types of people out there doing business. There are givers, there are takers and there are matchers. So givers are people who say, 'How can I help you be successful?' Takers say, 'How can you help me be successful?' And matchers say, 'If I help you be successful, will you help me be successful?' And he did a bunch of studies. He's a social psychologist and he determined that the givers ultimately are the most successful people and the least successful people. If all you do is help people, if you're just like, 'How can I help you? How can I help you? How can I help you?' you get taken advantage of. But if you say, 'I think you're a great human. I want you to be successful. Let me help you.' And you do that over time and then someone says, 'Great. Give me all these other things.' And then you say, 'Well, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not stupid. I'm just nice.' So basically you can be nice and smart or nice and stupid. Nice and smart and you're wildly successful. Nice and stupid, you get taken advantage of. And so it's never been like I've never thought of this as a theory. I haven't said to myself like, 'Oh, I should do these things because in the long run people will come around and be nice to me.' But I do have the view that ultimately if people think good things about you, if they ultimately say good things about you, that is good for you in business. So literally yesterday I offered to invest in these two founders. It's the first time I've given an offer to invest in a year and a half. It's been a long time. These great young business students. And I said, they're going to have lots of choices of who to invest. And I said to them, 'Let me introduce you to people like Yuan and others who've worked with me so they can tell you about it.' And they said, 'We've already been asking around because the business school is a small place. We have already been asking around. We've heard lots of great things about how helpful you are and blah blah blah.' Right now, if they had asked around and what they heard was, 'Oh, David's a jerk,' they might be less inclined to take my money and let me invest. So, I just think, and by the way it's just a better way to live your life, to be helpful to people, to say like, 'Oh hey, I actually have this thing that would make your life easier. Why don't you borrow it? Hey, I know the person who can help you understand that homework. I'll introduce you to them. Oh, I happen to have, you know, two sandwiches. You can have one.' Like, you don't need two sandwiches. If you have two, give one away. How hard is that? It doesn't seem that confusing. So yeah, that's just who I am I guess.