Raif Ali Dinçkök Student Forum at the Mehrotra Institute - Fireside Chat with Bill Gurley

Thank you. That was very kind. You guys hear me? Okay, how about that?

Perfect.

Yeah. And some of this is after the fact. In other words, I don't know that I felt it in the moment. But my father grew up in rural North Carolina and fell in love with gas airplanes. These Cox airplanes that were precursors to drones, I guess, and he went to NC State and got an aeronautical engineering degree because of the love for these things and was working in a wind tunnel at Langley Air Force Base and these people came through and said they offered 50 of them. And they said, 'We're going to start this thing called NASA in Houston. Would you like to be a part of it?' And he said, 'Yes.' Moved, you know, from Virginia to Houston. And the thing that I've thought about because, you know, in my career, I've jumped all over the nation. And I think I never once thought that was weird, but I do think a lot of people get geographically bound for good reasons, family and whatnot. And it feels maybe too risky or too scary to kind of jump across the world. And for me, it was never a big deal. And I thank my father for that because I think he kind of set an example of the kind of reward you might get by being willing to take a chance.

They did. Vernon Maxwell, Dwayne Schintzius. Yeah.

I've thought about this after the fact also. I do think, you know, being around people every kind of on an everyday basis and then seeing them go to this next level and being on TV and whatnot, it kind of demystified like how hard that might be or it kind of gave me a thought like, oh well, I could go do that in another field. And so I do think it had this weird impact of once again just letting me think more things were possible.

I don't know about that. He tried to make a big deal. I don't know that that's true or not. I've never led anything so I don't know how much of a leader I am. More of a teacher I would say is probably a better thing.

Yeah. And so this gets into some of the themes in the book. So I had this exercise that I developed that I did twice in my career where I said to myself after a couple years at Compaq, is this something I want to do for the rest of my life? And so I was in, you know, I love computer science and I think this is one of these things where like it's okay to wander around. I fear that today's young adults have gone through such a gauntlet to get into these colleges which are so hard to get into and then to get a degree that you almost feel like sunk cost against that and that you have to stay in that lane. Many of the people we profile in the book, it's divided in half between stories and tools, they pivoted, you know, some of them pivoted very last minute and into their hobby or into something else. And I just I would really encourage people not to feel stuck with whatever your degree is if it's something that feels grindy to you. So anyway, this idea that I came up with on the fly of is this something I want to do for the next 30 years? And in both organizations where I made that decision, there were people that were lifers. So I could look at some individual or go talk to them and ask myself, would I be fulfilled if that's what I did? And in both those cases I decided no, this isn't what I want to do for the next 30 years. And so I did something different. I went to business school was the first decision that I made. You know, at the time I fell in love with computer science. I would have thought I'd want to do it the rest of my life. What I found as a practicing engineer is we started a third project and it looked like the second project and looked like the first project. These were computer launches and that part kind of got me bored and I was starting to play around with understanding the rest of the ecosystem. I was reading the trade magazines. There were software companies. There's all this stuff. And I actually started trading stocks as a hobby which maybe was a clue, right? I was going home at night reading Peter Lynch and they had this thing called Value Line back then. This pre-internet so they send you a ring binder of one-pagers on every company that's out there and you get updates in the mail. That's a really long time ago. That's how you would evaluate companies. But anyway, it was exciting to me that kind of stuff. And so I got drawn into the business world.

I don't know if anyone goes to business school. I will tell you that I made a very deliberate decision to go to business school and therefore I expected a lot out of business school and I met other people that were just showing up and I kind of feel like a lot of undergrads showing up and trying to get the degree and not there to intentionally learn. And when I went back, I wanted to learn about business and I expected a lot out of it. And I think I got a lot more out of it because it was intentional, if that makes any sense. Like I wanted to learn the subject matter. I wasn't there just to get a degree. I was there to achieve something. And so part of that intentionality led me to start reading for whatever reason. You know, I was one of these kids that just did math all the time and never read. And somehow when I started going to business school, I'd read that one Peter Lynch book, but I just started reading. I made it part of my daily habit. Like I commuted in on a bus and I would read, you know, two chapters each way and I started moving through books really fast. And the rest of my life I've kept reading in that kind of high volume manner. But I don't know why I was able to. It's tied into this intentionality thing. I was trying to learn.

I'm reading up constantly all the time. Although AI, you know, you kind of just start talking to AI and it's a different journey.

By the way, not to dodge your question, 'Breakneck' by Dan Wang is a really cool book about China. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. I think he spent 20 years in a lot of ways writing the book. It's kind of a lifetime poured into this thing. A lot of heart and soul. It's well written. Anyway, what was the question? I felt like I had dodged your last question.

I did. I did. So yeah, when I learned about stock options at Compaq, John Doerr was on the board. And then I was really enamored with these software tools by this company Borland. All these names are really old, but they had some of these visual editors that no one else had. And that company went public and I bought the stock like on the IPO. So, I'm starting to like understand those types of things. My friends and I would go to Vegas and try and count single deck. And I only bring that up because I think there is a gambling kind of element to venture that was exciting to me. And so yeah, at that time I was like, man, that'd be a really cool thing to do. But I met with a few, I did kind of beg for an informational interview and people told me go work for 20 years and then come back. I was like, well, that's not a very good piece of advice. And so I did something else. I went and became a sell-side analyst. When I got to business school, all the MBA students, I don't know if this still happens today, but we'd sit in the atrium and read Fortune and Forbes and the Wall Street Journal to pretend like we were big shot executives. And when I read those things, there was a team at Goldman who were the key sell-side analysts at the time and they were always quoted and I thought, man, that's pretty cool. Like you get to be the voice of what the right strategy is in this industry. So that's what drew me to Wall Street in that job and this guy telling me there's no way to get into venture.

I got very fortunate.

Yeah. So it goes back to this. So three years in and I remember the night that it happened. First Boston's research department was on the 36th floor of Park Avenue Plaza at the time, 52nd and Park, and there's four corners to the 36th floor and they were given to the most senior analyst at the time and it was about 10 p.m. And I was just needing a break. So I got up and walked the floor, the circle, and I stopped in front of each of those four offices and had that same conversation like, is this who I want to be? Do I see myself here 30 years from now? And the answer was a quick no in this case. Now I will tell you being a sell-side analyst is wonderful because you get access to CEOs and CFOs. I was like 29 and these people were having to answer my questions which is crazy. Like this network thing you can do and you're in the paper, you're in the Wall Street Journal. Like that's pretty cool. The thing that really started to frustrate me was there's about seven or eight constituents. I used to be able to name them all and they all expected you to optimize for them and the only way you could really have a good reputation was to piss them all off a little bit and be yourself. But it created a lot of tension, you know. So anyway, that job used to be more idyllic than it is today. The Spitzer wall happened after I left and the whole thing got a little wonky, but it was great. And for people that are going to read the book, I want to make clear like the engineer job and that job, I actually loved them while I was doing them. I just reached this point where I said, I know this isn't what I want to do forever. And Jeff Bezos had this framework that you can go watch on YouTube. I'd encourage you to because it's better coming from him. But when he was at D.E. Shaw, he had this idea that he was going to go start this online bookstore. And he felt very strongly in that calling. But David Shaw was very hardly trying to talk him out of that decision. And he came up with what he calls a regret minimization framework where he said, 'What would my 80-year-old self tell me to do here?' And I think it's a similar exercise to the one I was using where you're saying, you know, your lifetime is actually shorter than you perceive it to be. And for people your age, you know, and I remember being your age, it feels like you're never going to die. Like, oh, this is all going to go, you know, and I got forever. But by the time you're 40, it doesn't feel that way. And there's the first word inside the cover here is or first phrase is 'life is a use it or lose it proposition.' And so this idea of just making sure, especially if you have the flexibility to do it, that you love showing up every day is extremely important. And we'll get into reasons why I think it's increasingly important in an AI world. That you have massive fascination about what you're doing.

There's two. So there was a period in my life where I was reading a bunch of biographies and I read these three biographies of people from pretty randomly different fields and this was very important to me. All fields your parents would tell you not to go into that were wildly successful and they all started on the bottom rung. So they had no advantage whatsoever and they were doing similar things. And I used to write a lot of blogs about how the high-tech world. And so when I saw this through line, I went into whatever notetaking app I was using at the time and wrote it down as if it were going to be a blog post. And I thought, man, if I ever get asked to speak at an MBA program, I'm going to use this. And so it was in the can, if you will, when they asked me to come speak. And I said, can I use this thing? And I dusted it off. So it was kind of just random and anecdotal. They posted that speech on YouTube, which you heard about. And in addition to great professors noticing it, James Clear noticed it, who wrote 'Atomic Habits,' and he posted it on his website. And that's when people started pushing me, oh, you should turn it into a book. But also I think I had already started the book or maybe gotten the first few steps in with the book when I read this other book called 'From Strength to Strength' from Arthur Brooks. And there's no reason for any of you to read that book. It's about when you get to the end of your career, what now? But he talks a lot about you should use that last stretch to have as much impact as possible. And so a lot of people are surprised I wrote this book. I could have wrote a book about finance or investing or VCs, but I don't think it would have the potential to impact as much as this one. And so I got very enamored with it. There's also some, this is just a complete aside, with all that reading that I've done, I've gotten really fascinated by great non-fiction writing. That's how I got to know Malcolm and Michael and those kind of things. And I hope that I had a co-writer, but I hope we used as many of those techniques as possible. Like I hope it feels very readable.

Yeah, it was the stories and the way we wrote them is all very intentional.

Well, you know, I don't know if I want to give away everything, but let me start with the first one, which is there's a chapter titled 'Chase Your Curiosity.' And I just think it's really important. Well, let me say it a different way. I don't know that everybody can get to that place. And I never intended this to be a book that solves all employment problems in the world or anything like that. What I would say is if you can find a place where continuous learning feels free, you are in a really special place. And the second principle is 'Hone Your Craft.' So the first one is kind of find what you're fascinated with. The second one is you need to be a continuous learner. And they're actually a reflection of one another. Almost all the stories in here are people that are obsessive learners their whole career. And I love to tell this anecdote that's in the book. Kobe Bryant in 2009 had won four NBA championships and an MVP. That off-season he calls Hakeem Olajuwon who's a center, not even his position, and says, 'Can I fly to Houston? I want to learn your post moves in the paint.' So this is, you know, he's already won all this stuff. He's already as good as you know and he's coming up with an idea to push it to a new level. And he went down there for two days. There's video online. You can see them working together. And he won his fifth championship the next year. These people that I studied have that like at the end of their career. They're still doing it. And I don't think Angela Duckworth wrote this book 'Grit' that says it's 50% passion, 50% perseverance. 10 years later in a podcast she said I should have maybe made it like 80/20 on passion because we've taught a generation of children how to grind through school but she said perseverance without passion is suffering which I thought was an interesting choice of word. And so I don't think you can force yourself to be a continuous learner if you have no curiosity or fascination in the subject matter. I think you'll burn out.

The thing I'm calling the conveyor belt is the unfortunate reality that these schools are so damn hard to get into that starting in sixth grade, you know, your parents start worrying about your resume. And Jonathan Haidt called it the resume arms race. And so you're taking Mandarin lessons and lacrosse lessons and cello lessons and you're volunteering at the SPCA, you know, and you're in the sixth grade. You're like, 'What the hell?' And you're overscheduled beyond belief. And I just, you know, and I'm not the only one. There's a chapter in Jonathan's book, 'The Decline of Play,' and Rick Rubin has talked about this as well. And there's just a belief from a lot of smart people that people don't have the time or the framework to discover what it is that might be something that you're particularly fascinated with. I'm working on a TED talk that I'm going to give next week. I probably should be further along than I am, but I think that people that find this fascination in a lot of ways have what I would call an artisan approach to what they do or artisan mindset. And like that thing I described about Kobe, that's an artisan approach to what you do. And Danny Meyer, who's the first profile in the book, great restaurateur in New York, he's an artisan. If he's opening a new restaurant, he's going to treat it the way an artist would go about doing it. And I think these people exist in every field. I mean, if you have ever worked in an organization with a sales team, there's one person that is the best sales exec in that company and they're an artisan and everyone knows it. Like they could tell you, anyone could tell you who they are and the way they can get into a room and do what they do, you know? And so I think it can exist in a lot of places, but you have to, if you don't have that fascination part, and here's a test I like to use. Would you study about it instead of watching 'Breaking Bad' or whatever your favorite streaming series is? Does it compete with your free time? You know, when Claude came out, there's a number of technical founders I know that went home and found a Mac Mini that weekend and got it up and running, you know, before Monday. Like they just felt they had to. And by the way, if you think you're a founder and you didn't do that, you really should check in with yourself. But that's the kind of thing. Do you feel like you have to know? Are you afraid of someone else knowing before you know the next incremental thing in your field?

Yeah, if it should feel free. There's this word that books have been written about called flow or flow state and I think when you are learning about something you're fascinated with that happens a lot like you don't remember the exercise, you kind of get lost in it. And that's a good test that you're home.

That's a tough question. I've had a lot of discussion with a lot of people. INTJs is a theory that like that's the Myers-Briggs answer to that question. There's a huge difference between a public investor and a venture capitalist because a public investor needs no social skills whatsoever. In fact, some of them might be very spectrum in a... we just had Alex Sacerdote. Was he spectruming? In venture, you have to go win deals like you have to show up and present yourself and convince someone. You have to sell, sell, sell, sell. There's zero selling in the public markets. You buy the stock, you get rid of the stock. And so anyway, there's multiple dimensions depending on the type of investing that's out there. I do think, I'll tell you this especially for the crowd of young people, I have found that certain people their brain is structured in such a way, maybe ADHD, which people have accused me of having, where you want to think about a broad set of things and where you're intrigued by a broad set of things and jobs that are service provider jobs which could include investing or consulting or investment banking, you get to play in a lot of different things. And I told that story about how the project cycle at a product company felt slow to me. And so getting in touch with, and by the way, I've met the opposite. I met people who say, 'How could you be a VC? You guys don't do anything. Why how could you even want to be that person? The founders do all the work.' Okay, I'm fine with that. Like, but I get joy out of showing up and doing it. So I'm not being critical of either of those things, but getting in touch with which one's the right fit for you, I think is valuable.

So, there's a couple things about Dylan that most people don't know and unfortunately the movie didn't touch on either of these things. Well, it touched on one of them. I think Scorsese in the documentary called him a musical expeditionary. He's so studious about music initially in the folk sector. Like when he left Minneapolis, he knew he had listened to more folk records than anyone else in the state. I'm convinced of it. And he used to go into the record store back then. They had booths and would just cycle through every single thing. But he oddly did a podcast series a few years ago where you can go check it out. But like his knowledge of songs well outside of any genre or anything he did, it's clear that he's a student, a lifetime student, which gets back to this sense. And then he hitchhiked with $10 to New York to meet Woody Guthrie, which is probably the most ballsy mentor pursuit story that I know of. Bobby Knight comes close just in terms of the gumption to try and meet but he literally hitchhiked to New York to meet Woody Guthrie.

Yeah.

So I probably wouldn't recommend doing what Bob Dylan did. Here's where I've come down on mentors and I borrowed this from Danny Meyer. I think you should set aspirational mentors. And by the way, it's never been easier in the history of the world to learn than right now. And it's kind of on an exponential curve. So if you want to go know about something with AI, this is crazy. You are so fortunate to be able to learn at this speed. But what I would, Danny created a list of 10 people that were impressive to him in the restaurant industry when he set out on his journey and like create a little notebook for each one of them. Like, you know, imagine you're a fanboy of a particular basketball player or something. Think about it that way and keep notes on them. There's videos of interviews on YouTube. There's podcasts that they've been on and just study them. If there's a book that they've written and study them and don't try and cold call them when you're at the very bottom rung because they're going to think you're weird and it's not going to work.

Yeah. And whatever you do in the first meeting, don't say, 'Will you be my lifetime mentor?' That'll get you to know fast. But I think if you just look a couple rungs above you on the ladder instead of all the way to the top, you might find people that have never been asked to be a mentor before that know a lot more than you do, that are flattered that you found them, flattered that you acknowledge that they're worthy of such a thing, and they're going to take it way more seriously. And of course, you want to build mentors in different areas and different fields. So, you're going to get a few of these, but just, you know, be super ambitious for these aspirational mentors. You might meet them one day. Danny ended up meeting all 10 of them, which I thought was really cool. And by the way, if you do meet them, if you've been studying them for five years, you're going to do so much better in that meeting because you're going to know so much about them. And then don't reach as high for the others.

I don't know why this wasn't in do not disturb. There we go. It's my wife. Don't tell her I... It just signals.