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Dialectic
39: Andrew Reed - Don't Flinch
02:00:00
Sequoia's Andrew Reed talks investing, great founders, and conviction when it counts
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- [00:00]
Andrew Reed
But it's February 2014 was when the WhatsApp Facebook deal was announced. And that was like a 4 billion ish dollar gain for Sequoia.
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Podcast Host
That's the bar. Welcome to the company.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah. And it was obviously, that was amazing. And then literally, you know, email goes out saying, you know, meet in the. We were in this dingy office. We were. It was like Sequoia's longtime office. Meet in the lobby at noon for like a champagne toast. It's like, oh, champagne toast. It was literally five minutes long. And then everyone goes back to their desk and this keeps working. And that was an interesting moment. Like, I don't know what to take from it besides, like, Jim Goetz is a legend. And also that, like, yeah, greatness is sort of expected. You know, opportunities that you're really excited about reveal themselves highly infrequently and never at opportune times. You know, I dreamed I grew up around New York City. I had dreams of, you know, facing. And I graduated high school in 2008. I remember I read the Big Short right when it came out, and I had to go, how am I going to react to like, a crisis in finance? I picture myself on Park Avenue wheeling and dealing, going to a boardro, making a deal happen when, you know, things were blowing up and then you, you know, that's how you envision it in your head. And like, I really wanted to be a great investor. I like imagining myself in the moment so many times. What it actually looked like was I just bought a house. It had a pool outside. There was no furniture in the house. We were locked down because of COVID I was doing circles around my pool, talking to Vlad and Baiju about his investment, when, you know, the market was gapping down five points every single day. But Robinhood was like, you know, this is back when you could double your money on Boeing in, you know, 16 minutes. We did a $200 million check right. That first week of COVID You know, the app was down for a whole day. It was chaos. And felt so proud that, you know, just not being scared of that moment, you know, in part because I prepared myself for it for so long. Like, what was. What would the guy you want to be do in this moment? I think you just, like, can't let yourself down, you know, Like, I think all of us like to imagine how we'll react in these, like, really high stress, high stakes moments. Yeah, don't flinch to me just means, like, just do the thing, you know, you should do.
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Podcast Host
Welcome to Dialectic Episode 39 with Andrew Reed. Andrew is a growth investor at Sequoia Capital where he has invested in a number of world changing companies, companies like Robinhood, Figma, Klarna Phantom and many others. And he's quietly one of the best growth investors out there. We talked extensively about how Andrew invests, the founders he works with, what makes them so special, how he thinks about the quantitative and the qualitative side of things, what it's like doing so at a place like Sequoia, and how Sequoia's culture of performance and teamwork influences so much of his work. And we also talked about how he brings humanity into a job that on the surface might seem quite quantitative. He is a deeply competitive dude and loves to win and is quite good at making money. But he also brings a element of craft and care and taste and attention that really stood out to me as I was preparing for this conversation and certainly as I had it. We also talked about Sequoia Capital and some of the legendary people who have come before him and how he has worked with them and learned from them as well as people he's working with now and who are apprenticing under him. This is certainly a unique and special institution and it was fun to hear Andrew's perspective on it. I think investing is such an interesting discipline because there are so many different ways to do it and to be good at it. But I think Andrew's in particular is quite resonant with me and so it was really fun to get him to pull apart the details and show me how some of the magic is made. I hope you were inspired by his level of deep attention and care and fierce competitiveness that he puts into doing this job so well and ultimately, as I think he would say, to serve great entrepreneurs trying to change the world. Before we get into the conversation, I'd like to thank Dialectic's presenting partner, Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for teams and ultimately a tool for people doing their life's work. One of the things I love about Notion's approach to AI and to agents is that they are quite attuned to allowing you to focus on the work that deeply matters, allowing you to collaborate with who you need to and then delegate the rest of the work to agents and to AI. I found even with Dialectic, whether it be preparing for interviews or on the other side of them being able to throw all of my ideas or the transcript or whatever else into Notion and have Notion AI pull out patterns, lessons, ideas, things I might have missed, help me even find Kind of weird corners of research I might not have uncovered. It's just a tremendous amount of leverage. And yet it isn't about automating the part of the work that I really care about, which I think is deeply important. Notion is a brand, as I've talked about in the past, that has imbued craft and care and soul into every piece of it. And I think you can see that whether you're using Notion solo or in a giant team, it's no coincidence that all kinds of startups and large teams choose to run their worlds and their businesses on Notion. If you don't use Notion, you can check it out@notion.com dialectic. And if you use it, I hope you use it to make something really wonderful and full of craft and care. If you do, let me know. Thanks again to Notion for presenting Dialectic, and thanks to you for listening. With that, here is my conversation with Andrew Reed. All right, Andrew Reed, we're here.
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Andrew Reed
Thank you for having me on your
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Podcast Host
podcast, the First Timer.
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Andrew Reed
It's truly an honor breaking my podcast, Celibacy.
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Podcast Host
Yes, we are going to jump right in. I want to talk a lot about investing, but before we do, there are a couple of themes or like, little kind of senses I had about you that I think are worth talking a little bit about before we go into all the work stuff. I think the first is you're someone who is like an elite performer. You are super competitive. You're a growth investor. You started at Goldman, you played high school football and college football. And so there's like a, maybe a tinge of, like, hard oness on one end. And yet I think both in your work and personally, there's also like a deep amount of humanity. I'd be curious for you to reflect on how you've leaned into humanity over time, both in your job at Sequoia and also more broadly.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah, I was, you know, growing up, I think that was a kind of dichotomy that existed at every point in my life. I played, played sports in high school. I also used to do like, the Musical. My best friend in high school was not on the football team, actually. Besides my twin brother, who is my best friend, he was on the football team. But I've always had this, like, two sides of the brain. Like, I love playing the piano. And when I started my career at Goldman, I was definitely the behind the spreadsheet with your headphones on late into the night analyst. Like, I was actually the semiconductor analyst on our team, the TMT team, back in the day. Which was very out of fashion for a long period of time. I wish I actually like studied harder back then because, you know, that would have been good to know the last few years when I got to Sequoia. Similarly, I was, you know, very quantitatively bent for probably the first like four or five years of my career. And I think one thing you learn with startups is your spreadsheet is always so wrong. You know, it's usually wrong in the bad direction and when you're lucky, it's wrong in the, you know, good direction. And the biggest difference between when it's wrong and the bad direction and the good direction is the person running the company and the team that they build. So I think naturally you learn that it really is all about the people. And obviously parallel to your work life is your personal life and changed a lot from high school to college to San Francisco to kind of being an adult and growing up around a lot of people here in San Francisco. So to introduce new interests and new concepts. And that's reflected both in terms of the things I've done in investing and also just how I spend my time.
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Podcast Host
Maybe a sort of orthogonal, but I think also kind of a double click on this, which is another element of that is that a lot of parts of you are like, kind of like in central casting for what you're like a good looking white dude who works in venture capital and worked at Goldman. Again, kind of same theme, football player. And I talked to multiple people who know you. One, one thing our mutual friend and former colleague Matt Huang said is like he's like the football player who's also like a hardcore Redditor. And there's like a, there's clearly a good amount of weird. And so I'm curious how that. And my sense is, is that's part of what makes you, you're not a pure finance guy and that's part of what makes you a great venture capitalist is like your nose for this slightly stranger, the contrarian. And so I'm curious too how, how you think you've maybe to the extent you've gotten weirder or how you've fed that.
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Andrew Reed
I think going back to my childhood, there's this like major like my main trauma in life was I grew up with a very bad stutter. And actually when I first interview with, with Doug Leone, I gave him my resume and he looked at it for, you know, 20 seconds and he goes, oh, you got, you went to Amherst, you got this gpa. He played sports, like work at Goldman Sachs. There are you know, 200 people just like you. I get hired. Why would we go hire you?
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Andrew Reed
And in a very kind of, like, antagonistic Doug Leon interview way. And I think, like, the two things that, like, really motivated me, like, first is, you know, obviously having a twin brother. And we've competed our whole lives, and there's definitely hardened some competitive drive in me, and I spent basically, like, my entire childhood just observing, you know, like, it's very hard to jump into conversations and do public speaking and raise your hand in class, even. Like, I just spent a really long period of my life just listening, and it's definitely gave me like, a lot of empathy with. For the outsiders.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah.
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Andrew Reed
And people who are in low moments and also people who just don't feel like they fit in totally. And then amazingly, like, in college, I did speech therapy from when I was in a kid up through when I graduated from high school in that same summer. And I went to college and I stopped doing speech therapy. And, you know, I got laid. And then all of a sudden, everything fixed itself, and, like, within six months, I didn't have a stutter anymore. And now, you know, I do hot LP meeting, and I go on TV and do these things. And, like, no one sees that side of me because it's literally, like, hard to, you know, it's, like, hard to find. But I think that that element of just, like, weird really does come from that, you know, like, the personal feeling of just sort of, I think, like, watching things. And I think when you talk with people who are building companies, a lot of the founders, like, who I work with are, like, you know, maybe now successful and famous and everything else, but, like, deep inside them is, like, the same thing that was deep inside me. And, you know, people who meet them for the first time today, like, don't see it, but I feel like I have a kind of a unique way of like, seeing the little kid inside people sometimes, and I think that helps with just, like, trust, you know?
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Podcast Host
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how. And I'm sure it's different for everybody, but, like, becoming the version of yourself you want to be. It doesn't sound like that happened through, like, a lot of striving, or at the very least the striving and the. The speech therapy or whatever, like, a ton of effort towards that doesn't necessarily.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah. Well, another thing, just in terms of the striving, like you mentioned, Matt Huang, I feel like at so many points of my career, I've just gotten extraordinarily lucky being surrounded by people who are so good. Like my. The person introduced me to Pat Grady was my first introduction into Sequoia was Sarah Guo who was in my class at Goldman. Sarah and Pat are now married and Sarah's obviously like an extraordinary talent who's has been and will continue to dominate her corner of Silicon Valley. And then I started as a class of two associates at Sequoia. It was me and Matt Huang. And could you imagine like a more talented counterpart to be pushing you every day?
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Podcast Host
Also like very much a startup guy at the time as far as like you were not a startup guy.
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Andrew Reed
No, no. And that's, that was the like I think the associate class of me and Matt Huang I hope is going to go down in history as the greatest bang for your buck associate class ever hired. But we started on the same day, February 18, 2014. And I remember meeting Matt for the first time and he was on the growth team at Sequoia and we do a lot of spreadsheet math and cohorts and things like that. And I had never done an in person meeting in my life with a founder or like had never didn't really have like a network in Silicon Valley and we like really leaned on each other for a period of years, you know, in a way that was extraordinarily collaborative. And to this day like there are a small number of people who I genuinely feel like are superior investors than me. And like Matt's one of them, I think Pat Grady's one of them. And like Pat was my direct manager, you know, for my all my one on ones. When I joined Sequoia, Matt was the person who sat next to me for five years, Kevin Kelly at Square Heritage who joined I think six months after that on the Heritage side, same age, like also just an exceptional investor and then obviously being surrounded by my, my initial desk at Sequoia was actually on the same open floor plan, like on the same desk as Dug Leone. It's almost like, you know, you could have put an idiot in that situation and they would have found a way to least make some good investments.
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Podcast Host
Well, you could take it the other way. You could say take it as like wildly they threw you to the shark. Yeah, like it was both.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah. No, I think there's a way in which. And I think this is kind of how we think about like developing younger investors at Sequoia too. I think what we lack in like structured feedback process etc, which we lack a lot, we more than make up for in the culture of like really investing in each other and Especially in the next generation. I think some people really like that environment. You know, just sort of having lots of freedom to, you know, it's like sink or swim. But even if you end up swimming, you're like feel like you're sinking for a long time. You know, you're like struggling to stay on top of the water.
- [14:33]
Podcast Host
Well, I think you said somewhere like your second day the WhatsApp was acquired or something.
- [14:38]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I was in a. And you should check the dates. I think it was February 19 then. Or maybe it was February 20, but it was February 2014 was when the WhatsApp Facebook deal was announced. And that was like a 4 billion ish dollar gain for Sequoia.
- [14:51]
Podcast Host
That's the bar.
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Andrew Reed
Welcome to the.
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Podcast Host
Welcome to the company.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah, and it was, you know, obviously that was amazing. And then literally there was a, you know, email that goes out saying, you know, meet in the. We were in this dingy office. We were 3000 Sandhill Road, second floor building for suite 250. It was like Sequoia's longtime office. Be in the lobby at noon for like a champagne toast. It's like, oh, champagne toast. It was literally five minutes long. And then everyone goes back to their desk and this keeps working. And that was an interesting moment. Like, I don't know what to take from it besides, like, Jim Getz is a legend. And also that, like, yeah, greatness is sort of expected, you know, and that definitely still feels like this case maybe
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Podcast Host
a lead into the last thing I had pulled out before. We talk specifically about investing, which is competition, obviously. It sounds like it starts with Will, your twin brother. So a lot of competition growing up. I think what I'm interested in, and maybe it goes back to what you're saying about Matt and Pat. And maybe Sequoia's culture, broadly is like, there is this deep competitiveness that I sense you have. You clearly, I don't know how much you like to win, but you do
- [16:07]
Andrew Reed
a lot of winning.
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Podcast Host
And I think competitiveness can be channeled in really great ways or really unhealthy ways. And so I was curious for how you relate to that aspect of it. Like, what that source of energy, like, is it to what extent it can be good fuel or bad fuel, and then maybe beyond that, how competitiveness can still sit right next to, like, positive sum outcomes. Eg, you're sort of competitive with Matt and also collaborative or vice versa. Or with Will, who does a very similar job at a different firm.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah, yeah. I try my best to exude California. Cool. I Think for anybody who's ever been in a trivia competition with me or any sort of a board game or chess or anything else, like I hate losing. I think my brother actually hates losing worse than, than I do. Or maybe we, we hate losing the same. But I've somehow gotten to a point where I can least pretend like I can deal with it, you know, where he's still at a point where he definitely can't pretend. And I think it's interesting. Like I think there was a period of my life when I definitely felt maybe it was an insecurity or otherwise around like when people did well, when I wasn't doing so well, I felt jealous or you know, sort of like the anxiety that that brings. But I think, I think Matt's like a really good example of this where like he is or like Dylan Philip Figma. Similarly, some of these people I met like really early in my life who have gone on to just do incredible things. Number one, like you knew the entire time that they're incredible people, you know. And number two, they are the same level of like good and exceptional and kind and caring and looking after you now as they were when you were, you were nobodies, you know. And I think in the Valley obviously, number one, like great people can win and like watching great people win is actually rewarding in its own way, you know. Number two, it's decidedly not zero sum. Right. Like I think one of the, one of the funny moments is like when you make an amazing investment gain on a company, it's a growth investor. More often than not there's some series a investors making more. Right. So it's like you kind of have to accept that the, you know, like the, the job you've done well is worthy, you know, and it doesn't have to be the most money or even multiple too.
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Podcast Host
You might be making more money but their multiple is better or whatever.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah, but it's like, you know, like we have a job and our job is, you know, at some level it's like the fund management business and if our funds are doing well then we're, you know, we're doing well and, and similarly like we're not going to be perfect and we. Nobody is more into self flagellation than Sequoia Capital. Like our off sites are just like a death march through the sins of the past. And there's good learning in that, you know. But you, I think the right frame of mind is like you need to accept that you're going to make some mistakes and just Try to get better. If you end up dwelling on your mistakes as an investor, especially in venture, where the world's moving so quickly and it's always about the next rock you're turning over, you can end up totally stuck.
- [19:07]
Podcast Host
Let's talk a little bit about investing. I think I'm most interested to start with. There are lots of ways to be a good investor. I think that's probably what drives. Draws so many really smart people to it. Maybe there aren't lots of ways to be a truly great investor, but there are lots of ways to be a good investor. I'm curious how you would describe your style, like how you invest and why you think you're good at it.
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Andrew Reed
I think it starts from a place of, like, genuine curiosity and excitement about companies. I think I, at my heart, I'm a finance person. I love companies. Like, we used to do this thing where we would throw up the numbers of a company on the whiteboard on a Monday morning and you had to guess which company it was. And that was one of those trivia games that I love dominating. And the world is full of these wonderfully interesting businesses and uncovering some new theme or some new founder or some new business that you haven't heard of. And it completes some mosaic that's just some corner of the broader mosaic of how the world actually works. Like, that's such a compelling feeling. And I feel like I'm consistently still uncovering new things. And then obviously the world's changing so quickly. New things are constantly like cracks in that mosaic are opening and then being formed by, and being filled by something else. So it's definitely, for me, comes from initial place of this curiosity about business. And then I think just by nature of where I am in Silicon Valley, doing private company equity investing, you end up trying to find, like, what are the most interesting companies, and those are often led by the best founders. And then when you're actually doing your risk reward analysis, like, it comes down to the. The best people matter the most. And I think this one thing I've done really well is, I think, I think because I joined Sequoia so young, I was 23 when I started and I didn't like, you know, the first investment that I put my, you know, I was neck on the line for, like, the first investment I sponsored was in Robinhood. That was, I think, four years after I joined. So I did four years in the salt mines. You know, like just similar, you know, just observing, right? I was doing all the memos, you know, doing all the Models.
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Podcast Host
Crunching a lot of the numbers.
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Andrew Reed
Crunching a lot of numbers. And, you know, I would, like, have opinions, but, like, I wasn't ultimately the one who was responsible for that investment. You know, filling out the portfolio review software form and, you know, giving the update.
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Podcast Host
Yes.
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Andrew Reed
And then, you know, with, like, I think Robinhood was obviously instructive and amazing and crazy experience in a bunch of different ways. But I think it's really important and really lucky to get like a, you know, a banger out the gate as a investor because then all of a sudden your. Your model is trained on, like, what great looks like really positive feedback loop. Yeah. And it's, you know, both in terms of, like, your own learning and in terms of your reputation and otherwise. And I think with that experience with working with Vlad, and now I'm working with Vlad again on Harmonic, his second company.
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Podcast Host
It's like the AI Math company.
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Andrew Reed
Yeah, the AI Math company.
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Podcast Host
We.
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Andrew Reed
I just like, oh, my goodness. Like, I can, like, find these, like, you know, and identify these, like, really outlier people, and they're not all going to work, but, like, I think starting with Vlad and then, you know, going through to, like, Vlad and tutor round two, Like, I think I've just picked the best set of founders. Like, I would not, you know, trade my team competing against the Space Jam aliens, you know, for anybody, like, for literally anybody, I think I have the best set there is. And. And then once you, like, get used to that, you know, your bar just gets raised so high. Like, you're just. I don't know, it's just. I think it's just it, like, keeps you focused on the main thing, which is identifying amazing people. And then obviously having a team like that working on your behalf is really helpful, too.
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Podcast Host
Was there opposition to the Robinhood investment? Was it like a fairly consensus type thing amongst your partners, partners or peers? Or was it. Were you kind of pounding the table?
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Andrew Reed
It was ultimately consensus, obviously, like, contentious. It's a very, you know, divisive company and still is to this day. You know, like, Charlie Munger went to his grave, you know, railing against Robin Hood. He actually had this. And obviously, you know, bless his soul and rest in peace. And Charlie Munger, like, we love Charlie Munger. He did an interview where he said Sequoia is the best investment firm in the world, but I can't believe they invested in Robinhood. The company's evil. And imagine being an associate at Sequoia and Reed Screw. It's like your only company. And Charlie Munger is going on the record, just railing against it. That's not the most comfortable place to exist, but it's actually amazing if you look at just the. We can get tough with Robinhood for much, much, much longer. Obviously that was like the. Probably the. One of the few formative investment experiences in my life and just the roller coaster it continues to this day. But the. Yeah, the initial entry into the investment was not super comfortable and it didn't stay comfortable for very long.
- [24:13]
Podcast Host
Did you. You have this model of Vlad today and let's say that's like whatever 99 knowledge or conviction of his greatness or whatever. Like was that a critical part of your initial conviction or did that come later? Was it was your conviction in something else about the business?
- [24:33]
Andrew Reed
Well, first I would just like, I'll often just like mention Vlad as like shorthand for Vladimir whose co founder like I'll deal with Figma. Dylan is Dylan and Evan is co founder. Right. Like you sort of often shorthand to the, you know, guy who's running it now. But so much of the DNA of like these companies comes from like the full set of not just co founders but early employees, but like co founder. So central. I think that I was, I was actually thinking about this this morning. I think the degree to which like the best founders change and grow over the course of their company's life is extraordinary. Like Vlad today versus Vlad 10 years ago is borderline unrecognizable. And it was both the successes and failures of Robinhood that sort of like made him change so much. And it's not obvious to me whether it's, you know, the companies that grow so much like force change upon the person running them or if it's the fact that the founders change so much that creates the, you know, the success of the company. But I think there's this one common trait around like a genuine growth mindset. And I think like it's the I am capable of learning anything and when the job requires me to go learn that thing, I'll just go do it. I think, you know, Vlad back in 2016 was like, you know, they did such a good job hiring engineers out of Stanford and building incredibly compelling products across like onboarding into a fintech app across the infrastructure. You know, they built the first self clearing system built in America I think in 30 years. Took over a year to develop. Like it was, you know, one of these like really hardcore fine finance infrastructure projects. And like Vlad spearheaded a lot of that. And then Baiju is a lot of the creative energy, some of the Kind of countercultural elements that like, made Robinhood so unique and special. And they both did, you know, both of that. But the Vlad now of like, standing on stage and like being like a true spokesperson for an industry and a movement, that is not the person he was then. And I think now, like, he's so capable and mature and he still has, like, he can still recruit amazing engineers. Like, the people that Harmonic hires blow me away. But also he can, you know, stand at can in front of the ocean with his amazing outfit and, you know, like, yeah, like, speak to a whole. Speak to the whole world.
- [26:50]
Podcast Host
So I guess I have two questions off that, which is I still wonder, like, did you ultimately, was there a seed that you saw or were you like, excited about Robin Hood for some other reason and like, got to.
- [27:05]
Andrew Reed
Oh, yeah, I forgot to answer the question you asked. Like, one of the things that. One of my things I used to say, I feel like you kind of go through these things where you learn something and you say a zillion times to different people when you have some insight and then after six months you get tired of saying it, so you go on the next thing. Like, one of the things that I was saying a lot back then was like, you can't find the companies with the 90th percent metrics across every dimension because the 90th percent startup doesn't go anywhere. You know, you have to find companies where there are just some outlier dimension. And I think for Robinhood, the thing I saw back then, like, I wasn't the first to. It was, you know, they were just uncannily great at dominating the, the like, front end of that business, which was, you know, the. Their share of new account openings in the US Even when they were small and irrelevant, it was north of 60, 60%. Like, they were, wow, those are some crazy wait list. Yeah, out the gate, they jump with the big wait list. But also it's like reliably even when like the industry was slow and the equity markets were, know, boring for people, like, they were still just the vast majority of new account openings in the US and they were doing it without blasting the world with, you know, E trade advertisements and everything else, it was just like, it is such a superior product. Back then in 2014, the idea of, you know, this is back when you used to like, log into your desktop to do serious banking tasks. You know, like, even the fact that your people would be holding like big balances on their mobile phones was a little bit outlandish. And then they just like continuously like just kept people engaged. And that was the thing that like I really, really stuck with me was the first was this the. And it wasn't a lot of fintech apps aim for the underbanked and try to provide financial services that are available to one class of people to other people who are less well served. What Robinhood did was just like they found this like big profit area for incumbents which was commissions and they said this doesn't need to exist. Right. Like if you don't have branches and you have like a like genuinely low cost operations, you could just like remove commissions and you can make enough money through paying for order flow and stock lending, other mechanisms that you can just, you know, grow a business here by the way.
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Podcast Host
Then you throw everybody into a crazy innovator's dilemma.
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Andrew Reed
Exactly. And the things that you know, people Robin also. Oh yeah, but they're just like they were doing, you know, payment for order flow and not commissioned. And like people fail to realize that you know, what each a was doing both. You know, it's like you know, it was strictly better for people besides Fidelity, everybody else was doing both and they just wiped that category out. And yeah from you know, companies founded I think in 2013, September 2018. September 2019 was when Schwab E Trade and Fidelity all white proficiencies zero on the same day. And you know, I think the George Bush like mission accomplished banner. Right. Like literally the point of like the initial like one of the initial impetus of the company was just like democratize finance for all and the first mission was to you know, eliminate commissions and within five years literally that's no longer a thing that exists.
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Podcast Host
Crazy.
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Andrew Reed
You know and that was in some ways just the beginning.
- [30:25]
Podcast Host
You know, when it comes to seeing sort of like the Vlads of tomorrow. Like how has again maybe to go back to like if you, if you have him modeled at like 90 or 95 or 99 when you meet somebody today. And maybe there's also something that's pulling you in eg, the approach to the product or the technical competence or whatever. Like but you're modeling them at 10% or 20%. Like how have you thought about being able to see the. The seed that is going to grow into that kind of exceptionalism and clearly you've been able to do it across lots of people given your space Jam comment.
- [30:59]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, there's like, I think there's sort of two. There's like two ways that I can, I can develop conviction on a person. I think sometimes you are lucky to have met somebody for months to years before there's an investment opportunity and you like watch them develop and execute and run their company. So, you know, I think with Dylan from Figma is a good example. Like I met Dylan, you know, riding shotgun to one of our early stage partners for one of the early stage rounds of Figma and like saw what the company was then and Solo Cuervo, who was one of the early Facebook product designers and like a highly relevant figure at Dropbox and otherwise was also in my ear about Dylan. I, you know, I followed the company and it was 500k of revenue and most of whom were on Windows machines and Sketch was only on Macs and it was hard to see. And that was the round that Mamoun from Kleiner did, which is a absolutely one of Mamoon's many iconic investments. And you know, kept following the space. And then when it came time for like the Series C, which is one that we did, the company had grown from 500k to 4 million in revenue, which, you know, on paper feels like it's still a very small company. But I could not have been more sure about Dylan.
- [32:15]
Podcast Host
You know, you also paid it, if I remember correctly, a pretty obscene price.
- [32:19]
Andrew Reed
We paid 400. Yeah. Which was, yeah, that was viewed as ludicrous, you know, unhinged and obviously, you know, like Dylan's only continued to develop. So that's one, you know, I ended up put. Similarly, the most recent board I've joined is eleven Labs, the AI audio company. And same sort of dynamic. Like we invested in 11 labs two years ago. I didn't join the board, but just like watch Mahdi, who's the founder there, as a like young Polish kid living in London, building a company at the absolute like most competitive bleeding edge foundation model, creative tools, AI agents. Like on paper, that guy is never going to win that race, you know.
- [33:00]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [33:01]
Andrew Reed
And then all of a sudden you just like watch him, you know, month to month and quarter to quarter, just like grow and develop and change. The company just becomes this like winning machine. And you know, so the question was like, you know, would you do the 11 Labs board? Like, would I want Mahdi on my, you know, Space Jam team? Like absolutely, like 100%, you know, and that's like a very comfortable way of, I think like developing conviction on somebody. When you get down to like the rubber, meet the road, should I pay this price? The answer is like an unequivocal yes in your gut. I think there's like a smaller category of investments that I've done where it's like you're just shotgun wedding. Like, is this person that good? You know, probably my favorite example is Christiana Casiopo, who runs Vanta. Okay. Which is now a very large and very dominant security company here in SF. And this was in 2021. Jan, 2021. And rounds happened in like 16 seconds. And I got introduced to Christina by Dylan, actually. And I checked our notes in SMS, which is SMS is our internal data science CRM type product. And you know, like Sean McGuire, I've been tracking the company for a long time. He was like, this is like the company I would invest in if I had the chance to. And then like, Dylan was like, you got to do this investment. And then like Patrick Carlson called me like, you should probably do this investment. I met Christina and within about 14 seconds I decided that I should do this investment, you know, and 14 seconds
- [34:32]
Podcast Host
on the phone with her.
- [34:33]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, it was like instant. And then actually we had Christina talk at our LP meeting two years ago. And her memory of our first meeting was that I was rushing her through her pitch deck. But the reason I was rushing her is like, I know, it's good. Let's get to the part where we try to figure out what the terms are.
- [34:50]
Podcast Host
That's funny.
- [34:52]
Andrew Reed
And she never told me that, but she told all of our LPs. And for that it's really in the sparks fly sort of moment where. And it helps when the company's growing really fast and profitable.
- [35:04]
Podcast Host
Right. Like, I, I guess that's my, my, my thing I'm wondering is like, well, one, one backdrop for all this that's interesting is typically early stage investors love to talk about people, and later stage or growth investors love to talk about other things, other types of momentum. And so I guess, like, how much of this is all this people stuff you're saying with the backdrop that also the thing is starting to rip.
- [35:26]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [35:26]
Podcast Host
Like, maybe that's the given.
- [35:29]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. I think if you divide the world into like founders who are obviously amazing to you, which is a taste thing, and then numbers that are obviously amazing to you, which is also a little bit of a taste thing. Right. Like, different investors certainly weight different metrics and, you know, different dimensions. And I'm probably more comfortable with like some metric screaming red if enough other ones are screaming bright green.
- [35:49]
Podcast Host
Okay.
- [35:50]
Andrew Reed
But if you divide the world into, you know, amazing founder to you and amazing numbers to you, and like, don't deviate from that, you'll maybe find three companies a year that, that meet your bar, you know, and then of Those like, one will be priced so ridiculously you're not going to do it, and the other two, you do. And that's basically like what I've done for the last 10 years.
- [36:08]
Podcast Host
If you could, to keep doing your job, you either had to. Well, actually, I'll split it up. If you, if you had to do your job without ever meeting a founder ever again, how would it affect your returns? And then if you had to do your job without, maybe this is stupid, but like, ever using Excel ever again, how do you think it would affect your returns?
- [36:30]
Andrew Reed
Well, there's a great. I will keep talking about Charlie Munger, despite his criticisms of me, because he's obviously, you know, the goat. There's a great back and forth between Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger where, you know, Warren Buffett's talking about how if you like, you know, are doing a DCF on a company and it says. And Munger interrupts him and it's like, you know, you've never done a dcf and he's like, no, if you have to actually do the math, it's too close. It's like you just do a quick DCF in your head and if the company's good enough, the math takes care of itself. And if you have to resort to doing data analysis, you're in trouble. And I think that's probably true. I think there's the occasional corner case where you have to do some sophisticated analysis around cohorts, around usage to get to like the ground truth of a company. But more often than not, like, the output metrics sort of take care of themselves, you know, and it's like, almost
- [37:27]
Podcast Host
like, don't get cute.
- [37:28]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, and. Yeah, exactly. And, and then even if there are situations where you have a company that's growing really fast and the issue is like, what's the churn? You know, like, you can get to that pretty quickly. Yeah, I think the no founder thing would be impossible. Like, I, like, wouldn't even know. I'll just buy an index, you know,
- [37:44]
Podcast Host
maybe that's the fundamental difference between the work you do and other parts of finance or private equity or whatever.
- [37:50]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [37:50]
Podcast Host
Or even public equities.
- [37:51]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [37:53]
Podcast Host
I found this. Actually, a friend sent me this hilarious thing. Green Oaks has quite literally trademarked jaw dropping customer experience.
- [38:03]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [38:03]
Podcast Host
And quote breaking trade offs. And so I'm curious if there's anything that you would trade off or trade off trademark in terms of like the style or the things you're looking for or the. Maybe a lighter version of it is just like what's on the Andrew Reed Sequoia Vision Board?
- [38:20]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, you know, I don't think I'm innovating on any dimension like the. And what's interesting about, you know, working with someone like Pat, and I'll talk about Pat for a minute because, you know, he is, like, definitely the most influential person on my career. And Pat and I, you know, co led the growth business at Sequoia together for a number of years. And, you know, I've been his. His associate, I've been his partner. You know, it's like he and I disagree about investments so often. And it's. The specific thing that often happens is Pat brings in a company and, you know, my humanity's taste element, you know, just isn't clicking for some reason. And the thing that Pat hates, Pat hates when he feels like people, because of his track record, aren't telling him the truth. So I always try to tell Pat my absolute truth on the companies he brings in, which sometimes is like, dog, what are you doing? You know, and the reason why Pat's like that is he's got this, you know, whereas I don't have anything I would trademark in terms of, you know, frameworks. Otherwise, I feel like you could, you know, freeze Pat's brain and, like, chip off a little corner. And it's got some framework that he hasn't even told you about that, you know, unless you ask him. You know, it's like the whole thing is this Rube Goldberg machine of, like, frameworks and processes. And I think if you are, you know, if you're 90th percentile frameworky, you're not going to be a great investor. If you are 100th percentile framework, you can actually be extraordinarily creative because a lot of people are just doing shorthand on things and just miss, like, incredibly obvious opportunities. Probably my two favorite examples. One is our investment in Open Evidence, which is the, you know, leading AI app for healthcare professionals.
- [40:09]
Podcast Host
Okay.
- [40:10]
Andrew Reed
And this was a. A company that had no revenue. It was, you know, selling a, like a free AI service only for licensed medical professionals that looked a lot like ChatGPT, but it was up to date with the most current medical literature. And, you know, it comes in. The founder had a really good reputation. He started a company called Kensho, which he had sold for, I think, $700 million, but he was living in Malibu and the team was working out of his house in Malibu. And it had like 10 people and no revenue. And, you know, a few of us have, like, doctors as relatives and none of them ever heard of this thing. And literally that was like, you know, I think we should do this investment. You know, it's like, why? You know, it's like, it was just. It seemed to so. And, you know, they had raised no venture capital, and they were going to raise a hundred million dollars. And. And it's just like, I don't even know where to begin on criticizing this idea, you know, like. Like, maybe I'll start with no revenue, just to get. Just to get. Get the conversation going. And just like, point by point by point, Pat just, like, explained exactly what he saw. And I think they just raised it like, 12 billion. And it's backed by just like, incredible.
- [41:29]
Podcast Host
Incredible in this sort of frameworky, systemy type.
- [41:31]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, it's like just systematically, like, piecing apart your argument, you know, and just like, you know, like. Oh, like, yeah, I guess, you know, they got to the point where at the end of the process, like, we were all really enthusiastic about investing. Pat's got a strange brain, so he really wanted to win this investment. And we issue the term sheet, and Pat's working late at night, and he's the kind of guy, he won't ask the finance team to do a term sheet late at night if he can just do it himself on his computer. But he really wanted to get it signed because he wanted to get it over with and move on. So Pat logs into the DocuSign portal and creates the DocuSign for this term sheet, which he had never done before and I also have never done before. And he sent it to the founder, and then, like, you know, they go back and forth, and the founder loops in the lawyers, and Pat's like, when's this guy going to sign a term sheet? You know, and then the founder invites them on this company off site in Bora Bora or something, you know, And Pat, he's like, okay, yeah, of course. Like, I'll be there, you know, I'll be there tomorrow. Right? Like, you know, he comes with, like, the, you know, the only goals I can't, like, leave the office to go to Bora Bora and come back without a term sheet signed. So he, you know, spends the whole two day off site, like, talking to 11 employees at this company, you know, like, really trying to find the right moment to, like, get this thing signed. And then he realized that when you are the one who puts in the docuSign, you don't actually get the email back that says, the guy signed it. The guy signed it immediately. And pat spent like 10 days of his life. So stressed out, literally flying to Bora Bora, stressed about getting his term sheet signed.
- [43:10]
Podcast Host
Like we're already working the guy.
- [43:11]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, Seth, Pat, you know,
- [43:17]
Podcast Host
maybe, maybe I guess to come back to you, like the, this business is one of sort of continually finding exceptions and yet Sequoia and seemingly you have done a quite a good job of doing it over and over and over again. And so like, if, if Pat is on this like highly 100% framework, like highly structured way of doing things, do you feel like you're pulling a. Continually rap, like pulling rabbits out of hats? Like there, there are some. And clearly you've, you've developed an instinct on the people side and you have maybe, maybe this gets into taste in even numbers, which I'd like to talk about. But I'm curious like, like what is this tension between consistency and exceptions?
- [44:05]
Andrew Reed
Well, I think like one of the ways, you know, I think one of the ways you learn how to do this job, maybe the only way is to watch the people, you know, work with do the job and figure out your own way from there. And I think one of the things that Jim Goetz used to always talk about is people who can repot themselves as investors. You know, Jim, you know, helped put together the seed of Palo Alto Networks with Ashim from Greylock, you know, and was one of like the leading cybersecurity investors, like early stage cyber security investors. And he turns around and does like this kind of growthy round and WhatsApp, you know, and, and I think that. Or like Mike Moritz, you know, who obviously did Yahoo and Google and then PayPal and then lost money on Webvan, then turned around into Instacart and did Stripe, you know, it's like. Or Douglione, who's like the most famous enterprise investor of his generation at the tail end of his career, just kicks in the new bake seed in series A and you know, biggest return of his career and one of the biggest ever in venture. Like there's this kind of this like this tracker, you know, the tracker of people who just don't get bogged down by like I am a SaaS investor, you know, or like I'm a series B investor, right? It's people who are like consistently willing to like reinvent themselves and take the risks on the reputation or their, you know, knowledge, understanding, et cetera. I think that's like one of the like key lessons from Sequoia is it's like you just can't keep doing things the same way. And that applies at the, you know, system level, right? Like, you know, what businesses are we in, how we set up our teams and everything. And at the individual level, like we don't have swim lanes in the same way some people do. You know, like imagine, let's just say like every investor does two or three deals a year. Imagine entering 2021 or entering 2022 and you have like, of your 10th person investment team, two people on AI, right? That means maximum you have six, six AI, you know, investments, right. And people aren't perfect, you know what I mean? Like, that would be crazy, right? So you kind of want to have like, you'd rather have like a team of curious people who.
- [45:58]
Podcast Host
It's a little bit, I mean, I'm sure you'll back down from the comparison, but it's kind of how you were describing Vlad, which is this just like default. I can, I can figure it out. I can figure it out.
- [46:08]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. I've always, I mean, to me it's like, if hedge funds can have TMT analysts, why can't we have TMT analysts? I can be a TMT analyst, right? Like it's. And obviously you have some people who bring like really specific domain expertise. Like I was lucky enough to wingman Sean McGuire on our SpaceX investment. Sean's got big ideas and he's very vocal about sharing them. And when we went to SpaceX, Sean was like a quantum physicist and worked with rocket companies in his past life. We're walking through this factory floor where they're making spaceships and he just like notices that, you know, one of the, I even know how to describe this thing. Like one of the things that moves the satellite in space, they're using some gas that you wouldn't have assumed that they were going to use because of like the label on this tank. And then he asked the question to the guy and the guys, explains why they, oh yeah, you know, why we use this gas and not that gas. And I was like, I don't even, I didn't even realize that was a satellite yet. You know, it's like I'm not even zip code, right? You know, so there is this dimension of like, you do want people who have like, you know, if you like complement that with people who have real domain expertise and can like really up level your thinking. That's how I think you get like really exceptional investments. But all of us are like always trying to learn, you know, and trying to just try new things.
- [47:31]
Podcast Host
I think there is a underrated lesson amongst great investors which is that they are. Maybe this is much more obvious in your. In the growth side of things, but, like, they are not only right, they're right with. With size and with extreme conviction, maybe to start. Like, what is different for you between investing at least maybe not for Sequoia's first investment, for your first involvement in a company versus doubling down,
- [47:58]
Andrew Reed
I think in general, like, Sequoia has invested over a billion dollars at cost into I think, three companies now. And in general, the way we've gotten there is starting very, very small, you know, and doubling down and tripling down. And like, Stripe's a great example. You know, we first invested in 2010 and our first investment was like a million bucks or something like that. You know, I like. The biggest source of unfair advantage in evaluating investment opportunity is being on the inside, both in terms of, like, obviously being in the board and seeing the pipeline and seeing how things are developing and watching the founder execute.
- [48:36]
Podcast Host
All the people stuff you were talking about, Vlad, you're not going to get that lens from.
- [48:39]
Andrew Reed
And it's not. It's funny, it's actually not universally. I think the hardest round is the next round after you invest. I think it's. It's actually quite straightforward to do, you know, make the investment and then seven years later when you have, like, extraordinary conviction and the company's, you know, marked up eight times from when you invested, but they've grown the business, you know, 30 fold or something, like, make that investment. You know, the hardest one is you. You invest six months later, there's a term sheet in at five times the price you just invested in.
- [49:11]
Podcast Host
Very little. Much like, not more data.
- [49:13]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, like, the data is. In fact, you just joined your first two board meetings and like, the things you didn't realize wrong, this person's leaving the company, you know, like, and other people are really excited to invest, you know, in part because Sequoia invested and in part because, like, company is obviously, like, interesting. Like, that's the investment that probably, like, time and time again, like, I. And we have screwed up, you know, it's just. It's just really, really hard.
- [49:36]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [49:37]
Andrew Reed
And it's like, you know, you're. The first explanation is, oh, you're price anchoring. Right. It's like, you know, how do you reevaluate? But it's not just that. It's like across all these different dimensions, you know, you know, it's the validation of getting somebody else who's going to pay a big price for this company. Yeah.
- [49:51]
Podcast Host
Now you're getting a markup versus yeah.
- [49:53]
Andrew Reed
And it's like. But that's the one. That's the one. If I could just like, you know, if I could just solve that problem on my investments, you know, like, that would be the. Snap my fingers. And I try so hard, you know, like, change your process, change your, you know, change how you think about things. Ignore the board deck. Study the board.
- [50:10]
Podcast Host
You know, you're like, manipulating your own psychology, trying to.
- [50:13]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. And to so far, to a little effect. But I'm only 35, so I can figure it out.
- [50:18]
Podcast Host
You wrote some lessons from your first 10 years at Sequoia, and one of them was don't flinch. Can you talk more about what you mean by that?
- [50:27]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I think, like, opportunities that you're really excited about reveal themselves highly infrequently and never at opportune times. And I think, you know, for me, my. My proudest moment as an investor was. Yeah, seeing Dylan at the New York Stock Exchange, that was the coolest thing ever. And just, I was just so happy for that hope for everyone at figma, given, you know, the acquisition and the antitrust and the whole thing. And just, like, seeing them there and just like, that was my proudest moment to investor. Second proudest was this investment we did in Robin Hood In 2020, the first week of COVID which was, you know, I dreamed I grew up around New York City. I had dreams of, you know, facing, I think, and I graduated high school in 2008. So, like, you know, this is like the. Like when I was, you know, entering the adult world, like, the financial crisis in New York City was the main event, you know, and I had always kind of. I mean, I remember I read the Big Short right when it came out, and I had to go, how am I going to react to, like, a crisis in finance? I picture myself on Park Avenue, you know, like. Like wheeling and dealing, going to a boardroom, making a deal happen when, you know, things were blowing up. And then you, you know, that's how you envision it in your head. And like, I really wanted, you know, she pointed strathing. I really want to be a great investor. I really wanted to be a great investor. I, like, imagined myself in that moment so many times. What it actually looked like was I just bought a house. It had a pool outside. There was no furniture in the house. We were locked down because of COVID And I had, you know, an eighth of my wardrobe there, and I was doing circles around my pool. I was very happy to have a pool, but it was doing circles around my pool, talking to Vlad and Besu about his investment when the market was gapping down five points every single day. But Robinhood was like, this is back when you could double your money on Boeing in 16 minutes and we did a $200 million check right. That first week of COVID the app was down for a whole day. It was chaos. And to me, like, when I say don't flinch, like I was so. I felt so proud that, you know, just not being scared of that moment, you know, in part because I prepare myself for it for so long. Like, what was. What would the guy you want to be do in this moment, you know, and similarly, like dealing with, you know, legal battles that you end up entrenched in and otherwise, like, I think you just like, can't let yourself down, you know, Like, I think all of us like to imagine how we'll react in these like really high stress, high stakes moments. And yeah, don't flinch. To me it just means like, just do the thing, you know, you should do.
- [53:13]
Podcast Host
Seemingly your conviction and, and I think the results would say success rise to the occasion with stakes like you, you. The relationship between conviction and stakes for you increases. I don't think maybe that's in the answer you just gave, but I don't think that's necessarily obvious be true for everyone. Maybe it is true for all good investors. But is there a. Either a psychological or even like an internal mechanical way you relate to. Yeah, meeting, meeting meeting the stakes with a supreme amount of conviction in. In getting to the point where you're not going to flinch in those types of moments.
- [53:49]
Andrew Reed
You know, I think I mentioned earlier in the conversation, like having your first investment be Robin Hood has paid huge dividends for me in that. What could possibly be more stressful than the GameStop week, you know, and then the, you know, that was one of seven really challenging weeks at that company. I think once you, when that's the norm, you know, everything kind of just like, like your heart rate doesn't move that much through the fire. Yeah, a little bit. Right. It's like, I think that the people who came up through crypto, for instance, have like a very unique psychology for the markets because, you know, you faced 17 drawdowns in the same mass.
- [54:30]
Podcast Host
I was born in the darkness or.
- [54:32]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, no, I think it's a real thing, you know, in terms of like thinking about, you know, like the figma M and A, you know, unwinding and then subsequent success on ipo.
- [54:41]
Podcast Host
What was that period of.
- [54:42]
Andrew Reed
What was the gap between when the deal was signed.
- [54:44]
Podcast Host
$20 billion visa offer and then IPO from Adobe.
- [54:48]
Andrew Reed
Adobe. Yeah, it was September. September to December. So 14 months. Yeah, September to December.
- [54:57]
Podcast Host
Some of those 14 months were.
- [55:00]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. You know, and then, you know, I took over the board of Klarna in a very like, widely publicized, you know, like, challenging situation. And I think I was like the perfect person to step into that and just like, you know, help, sort. Help, you know, people sort through their things and get the company to the ipo. And you know, again, like, if I could be known for that, you know, the. The person who's like, very uncomfortable in like deeply uncomfortable situations, that would be a dream. You know, I think, I guess I've keep proving myself right. And you certainly can't like the way you. You do that is obviously you find yourself in them, you know, which is, you know, sometimes you wouldn't wish upon anybody. But second, like, you have to just like, I think it is helpful to imagine yourself like, how. How would I want to react to these sorts of things? You know, and I can think of plenty of situations where, you know, I wish I were more aggressive. I think like one example where I certainly flinched was like, you know, I brought in Vlad and the Robinhood stock was trading at $7 a share and I, like, haven't given up into the partnership. And I was like, this seems like a good company, maybe we should invest. And I just kind of got busy and it didn't follow through with it, you know, so I've definitely far from perfect. But you brought up boards.
- [56:11]
Podcast Host
This is you. I think you were talking about how obviously, like, at least the common kind of trope is a board's job is to fire or hire the CEO. You, and you alluded to it just now. You talked about also a role of a board member being a shock absorber, particularly in these moments of like chaos. And I think this is you. You said startups are emotional. And I think one of the benefits of having a good advisor or board member is that we generally care about you, but we can also be objective when it's required. It's like asking your brother for relationship advice.
- [56:43]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [56:45]
Podcast Host
How do you bring humanity, empathy, vulnerability to that role beyond like, like, in a way that is actually not like this BS cute thing in like a way that actually helps Sequoia make money. Like, how do those two things fit together?
- [57:01]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. I think companies are like, life is hard, right. And I think for, I think for founders, it would be better for their psyche if, you know, their ego wasn't wrapped up in their business so much. But I think that's, like, a lot to ask for somebody who is in the, you know, eye of the storm building a company, you know, and with, like, so much weight and responsibility and so many people counting on you. Like, I just. People can kind of experience their ego death later in life. And while they're running, the companies have to recognize that, like, every up and down that the company goes through, they're going to wear, you know, way harder than you possibly imagine.
- [57:46]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [57:47]
Andrew Reed
I was talking to Ravi Gupta, who is somebody I really admire and I've worked with now for a long time. And Ravi describes. He said instacart. Just like whenever an investor, you know, would tell him, like, have you thought about this? This some idea? And he's like, you MF I think about this company 20 hours ago. You know what I mean? Like, there's nothing you've thought about, I haven't thought about. Right.
- [58:09]
Podcast Host
Oh, you got a suggestion?
- [58:10]
Andrew Reed
Thanks. Yeah. Which. Which. Which, you know, which doesn't mean don't make suggestions. It kind of just means, like, that's not. You know, it's not. Have you thought about this thing? It's like, surely you've thought about this way better than I have here. Like, here's what I see, you know, is one dimension. The other dimension is, like, sometimes people just don't want to talk about it. You know, it's like the fact that you have a meeting schedule with somebody and you haven't talked about this really important topic.
- [58:35]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [58:35]
Andrew Reed
Somehow means now is the right time to talk about it. Right. Like, sometimes it's okay to go to a meeting and just, like, not talk about that thing because it's not the right time to do it, you know? And when I say meet founders as people, this is a deeply personal relationship I have with the people I get to work with. And that applies to my partners and applies to the founders I work with. And when I'm feeling like I'm having a hard time or struggling, they hear about it, too. So often I'm looping in founders to help me win investments, help me think through investments, and I think, revealing that, you know, I don't have all the answers. I really want your perspective. I think it's helpful for them because they can kind of come back and feel the same way. So you.
- [59:21]
Podcast Host
When you're talking to the tbn, TBPN guys, you said the first thing you do when you join a board is learn what business you're actually in.
- [59:28]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [59:29]
Podcast Host
Can you talk a Little bit about that.
- [59:30]
Andrew Reed
I think that's like a, that's a dug line. I think part of it is like you are being sold when you're, you know, investing into a company. Yeah. And even when, you know, companies are revealing the metrics they don't like, they're often doing it in the same way you will formatively open up to a new friend. You know what I mean? Allow me to tell you about my insecurities. If you're telling me so quickly, that's not the issue. And when I say know what business you're in, it's like the bottlenecks kind of like reveal themselves in business. You know, you're trying to, you're just like systematically trying to remove the next set of bottlenecks to enable the next set of growth. And you do that time and time and time again until you're wildly successful. And if you go to the Microsoft board, I'm guessing they're thinking about the bottlenecks to their growth. And you know, and you know, you think you have a sense of the bottlenecks, but like, if company's growing fast enough, it'll be a different set of things in two months anyway. And like the interpersonal side, like, how does this person recruit? Right. Like, how does, you've never been on search calls with them or seen them try to close a candidate. Right. Like, how does this person manage a team? You know, like you, you just like learn so much about this business that you now own a stake in that you can't possibly learn when you're kind of on the outside.
- [60:46]
Podcast Host
Yes. And you also have the psychology of being an owner, part owner of the business, evaluating all this versus a evaluator.
- [60:54]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. And again, this is why like that first investment thereafter is often so hard.
- [60:57]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [60:57]
Andrew Reed
Because. And I, I, you know, psa, I, I, I love all of you, but like that first board meeting is very rarely like, holy, we're gonna make so much money. You know, like more often than not, you know, it's like for the best, best companies, you're just getting like the, you know, low lights, Right?
- [61:11]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [61:12]
Andrew Reed
You know, like there's a not uncommon thing where you'll like my company will have gone from, you know, real example, I went for the name, you know, it went from, I think we're going to be a great investment. But we went from, it went from 4 to 20 million of revenue and we invested first board meeting, get the thing went from 4 into 20 on a plane from 33 or something like that, you know, so it's like why we missed our plane so badly. And you on the outside all, all you see is the 4 to 20, right? Yes. Yes. You know, and that's like the perfect example. Right. 420 is pretty damn good. Who cares what the, you know, 26 year old finance lead suggested they might do, you know?
- [61:46]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [61:46]
Andrew Reed
But when you're like listening to the 26 year old finance lead explain the
- [61:49]
Podcast Host
point and they're not narrativizing it in a positive way.
- [61:51]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, exactly.
- [61:52]
Podcast Host
So is there ever a time when price doesn't really matter?
- [61:57]
Andrew Reed
Well, price always matters.
- [61:59]
Podcast Host
Maybe to go back to Figma.
- [62:01]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [62:01]
Podcast Host
As an example, you paid an obscene price.
- [62:04]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [62:05]
Podcast Host
Maybe that's just all like that's the nature of this business. And there's always gonna be people who think the price is obscene. Like what happens. You're, you are certainly in the growth stage too. And someone with your kind of orientation, love of kind of like the art of business building. There are early stage people are just like, it's all vibes, man. Like, yeah, smash like founder bet doesn't matter, 100 million pre, let's rock. Yeah, you clearly have less of that. But like still you're, there are, there's a time where you're gonna say like I would pay an infinite price, but I'm going to pay a price an order of magnitude beyond what makes sense. Like what, what's happening there.
- [62:40]
Andrew Reed
All right, allow me to leak some alpha. And it's like this is on the, the flip side, you know, I have a theory that no one actually listens to podcasts, you know.
- [62:49]
Podcast Host
Yes. Yeah.
- [62:50]
Andrew Reed
So, you know, no one will ever hear this. But you know, like one of my, like I did really well in that like Cloud SaaS business product like growth wave of companies. And I think one of the reasons why is just like I just never thought about companies on an ARR multiple basis because for companies that are growing really fast, you obviously grow out of that like very quickly, you know, and if a company is, let's just take 4 million of revenue, right. If you got there going, you know, quarterly 1, 2, 3, 4. Right. That's very different than like 1 1.5, 2.74. Right. Like it's the net new ARR. Like, you know, like what are you actually doing in the market this quarter that like is the true size of your business. So I always thought like a, a winning SATS company should trade between 100 times to 200 times quarterly net new ARR. Which says if you went from pure Figma and you're at 4 million of ARR. But the last quarter was 2 to 4. You added 2 times 200. That's 400. That's my line. Right. If you're doing $100 million net new AR quarter, guess what? I'll pay 20. Right. Like it's. And that's like a heuristic that I think actually works at basically like every part of the chain. It's not perfect, but it's a much better way of doing multiples than looking at an ARR multiple because like yeah, thing was a hundred times ARR, but it also is, you know, four times two year out, like ARR. Right. So like what's the right multiple? It's obviously the latter one, you know, but often I'll be like, I'll be with friends from other investment firms and I'll start quoting my like net quarterly net or multiple math and they're like, what are you talking about?
- [64:33]
Podcast Host
You can't do that.
- [64:33]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. You know, it's like, no, trust me, like just if you look at your investments and go back and look at what price you actually paid, like this is what actually this is the market, you know, like the market doesn't do AR multiples anymore. You're just not, you're just not thinking about it like anyway.
- [64:47]
Podcast Host
So I suspect there's a lot of that going on of just like there is a set of rules, rules that I kind of have to follow and that there's like. You're not seeing the water.
- [64:59]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I mean it's just like the, I feel like, you know, again, like I don't think this is novel or insightful or differentiated anymore but you know, like with, with the Vanta investment, we paid 480 for a Series A. Right? Like Series A at 480, you know, but you know, it was, I got from 2 to 10 profitable and the last quarter was I think over 3 and a half million dollar quarter net. New 480 is a good price, you know.
- [65:27]
Podcast Host
Anyway, I don't think a thing people love to talk about, but on the note of conviction, how do you know when to sell?
- [65:37]
Andrew Reed
You know, like mathematically if you look at like the performance of founder led companies and you own the whole basket, the answer is you don't sell anything. Right. Like obviously we don't benefit from indexing and the biggest companies kind of run away.
- [65:55]
Podcast Host
Y.
- [65:56]
Andrew Reed
But you know, Sequoia, we've like set up our entire business around this idea that like we want to be able to hold shares in the best companies forever. Because, like, the best companies, especially when they're run by the best founders, actually get better over time. And Sequoia has learned some extraordinarily painful lessons on distributing stock in companies or selling stocking companies prematurely, even if it's an amazing gain. I think we own 10 points at Google at the IPO.
- [66:26]
Podcast Host
I mean, the Apple one's insane.
- [66:28]
Andrew Reed
Apple, yeah, Selling apple for a 40x on 150k. You know what I mean? Like, don't do that math. Yeah, so it's like, that's the, that's, that's the, you know, we're set up to never have to. Never have to sell or distribute. Obviously. You're constantly trying to rerun the math. And, you know, if you get a 20, 21 moment where stuff's just, you know, unhinged, you need to be, you know, we are stewards of capital and we wanted, like, our business, like I said, where the. In the fund management business, you know, and we, like, really think about that, but our default is like, at an ipo, like, you, like, aren't even thinking about the lockup. You know what I mean? It's like what I think is, like, very healthy. Oftentimes founders are thinking about the lockup and you're not, you know, and they call you, what's going on? It's like, oh, damn. You know, so, yeah, you have a.
- [67:19]
Podcast Host
You have a line where you said. And you. I think you briefly alluded to this earlier. You said, learning how to be neutral to happy when other people get ridiculously rich is an important trade in investing. I'm curious how you've managed your psychology, maybe on the inverse of your own success and like how, again, maybe you were quite successful with the first Robinhood investment, but at this stage in your career, you've had a tremendous amount of success. And so hopefully a lot of that is feeding the right inputs for continuing to make good decisions. But some of it, I suspect, could. You don't want to get high on your own supply, I suppose.
- [67:55]
Andrew Reed
For sure not. You know, it's interesting, I think, like, this job is expressly humbling because companies so often undershoot their targets, right? And even the best companies are often, you know, like, if you're, if you're setting a good plan, you're making it most of the time, but missing it some. You know, if you're on 15 boards, like, companies are always, you know, missing numbers and shit's hitting the fan constantly, you know, and you're just making mistakes Left and right, right. Like, you didn't see this as investment. It turned out to be great. You're, like, late to the AI thing and your partners are doing better than you are. Like, you're just constantly, like, getting harsh feedback, you know. And I said, this is like, you know, it was, you know, 2025 was no cope 2025. 2026 is no cope 2026. Like, this is, I think, for the rest of my career, like, you know, you just have to just. Just face the, you know, face the criticism head on and, like, really try to understand. Understand it. And I think you can do that without taking it personally. Like, one of the things I find so interesting is when people take Pachas at Sequoia all the time, you know, it's like, because of our history and the legacy and people trying to position us, like, you just, like, you just constantly hearing things, you know, and there's a point in my career when, like, when someone would, you know, me on Twitter, like, you know, making fun of us or whatever, it would just rile me up, you know, it's like. But then I realized, like, you know, if, like, someone's, like, criticizing me personally about my work, like, I can live with that, you know, like, why would I care if someone is, like, my employer? You know what I mean? Like, that's crazy, you know, but in the same way that, you know, a founder's egos get so tied up in their businesses. Like, same with anybody who's, like, really cares about what they're doing, you know. Yeah. And I think, like, you do need this, like, healthy dose of self confidence in investing because you need to be doing investing, you know.
- [69:49]
Podcast Host
Right. Well, also, the downside's capped and the upside is not.
- [69:53]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I think the biggest. The biggest issue people get into is, like, I think you look at, like, a lot of the best venture investments ever. It's often people earlier in their investing careers, but it's very rarely they're like, first deal, you know, And I think the reason is because people get frozen on their first investment, you know, because if you're like, accumulating a portfolio of one.
- [70:18]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [70:19]
Andrew Reed
You know, like, the bar is just so high, you can get stuck. You know, if you have a portfolio of 20, it's often hard to, you know, like, be the first to something or, like, really deeply understand something nobody else can. Well, you got four or five companies, and, like, one of them's pretty good. You're playing free. You see things really clearly. You know, if this thing blows up spectacularly, it's not going to like kill your career. You know, like that's, that's like a really beautiful phase in people's careers. Which is why I think if you look at like any partnership, you don't want everybody having been there forever. You don't want all novices that was like, you know, or like not novices, but you don't want people who are like all building a portfolio at the same time. You want people at like different staggered development gaps. You know, I think about that sometimes.
- [71:04]
Podcast Host
Yeah. You said nothing you do before joining a VC firm prepares you for how multifaceted long term success is. Are there any facets that are particularly top of mind for improvement as you maybe not enter but are kind of in the early phase of decade two?
- [71:27]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I just by my nature, like, I think very and part of this because Pat, like, Pat cares so much about like how the venture business is run. Like, you know, how should we think about our structure and our team strategy and our, you know, processes and our pipeline and all that. Like my brain just naturally gravitates like outside the building, you know, like companies. And for me like if your brain's out there, the world's just changing faster and faster and faster. And so like I feel like for me the main thing is like how do I just like stay freaking relevant, you know, in every facet of, you know, the job, be it like how can I identify the right founders? How can I like understand what a great company looks like today? How do you evaluate the market position, long term moats metrics of AI companies which actually look quite different than the last generation of software companies in the data center world. Like I was googling what a megawatt was like a year and a half ago. You know what I mean? Like.
- [72:31]
Podcast Host
Right, right.
- [72:32]
Andrew Reed
You kind of have to just like up level yourself so tremendously. You know. I'm at a different stage of my life than I was when I was 25 and I, I like I had this amazing conversation with a woman named, named Kristen Faulkner. She was the 2024 Paris Olympic gold medalist and she was actually a two time gold medalist but she won the cycling road race in the 2024 Olympics.
- [72:52]
Podcast Host
I think I heard about this person
- [72:53]
Andrew Reed
and she was, yeah, she's incredible. And we had this like really wonderful long conversation in August. She had just crashed out of I think, I think the Tour de France. And she was just describing, you know, like what brings her joy at this stage of her life. And you know, she had ascended to the mountaintop and she was like, I know what it feels like. And getting to watch, like, my younger teammates feel that feeling for the first time is way better than feeling that feeling again. And that one comment, like, is going to stick with me for, like, the rest of my career because I know what it feels like to, you know, make a really cool investment, you know, and like, start to feel like this winning feeling and do an IPO and sell a company, you know, like all that. Right. Like, but, like, getting to watch somebody else, like, feel that for the first time and, like, put themselves out there is like, there's just so much joy in that. And I'm not, like, by my nature, like, the world's greatest. I'm not a process. I'm not going to grind people and, like, you know, make them do great work, you know, but I do want to get better at that, at just like, helping people find that moment, you know?
- [74:02]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [74:04]
Andrew Reed
Because when you see it, it just. It's just like the coolest freaking thing, you know.
- [74:07]
Podcast Host
It's a great answer. I think we talked briefly about it, but there is obviously like a. A gut taste instinct kind of part of this. Even in the way you evaluate the quantitative side of things, there's also a thing I found where you were talking about kind of like your focus on quality and craftsmanship in companies. When I evaluate a company, I talk to users, try the product, look at job postings, API docs, support forms, not just the slide deck and financials. Great companies have a consistency of design and experience that permeates the entire organization and every interaction with their customers. Users prospect, developers. Attention to detail is important to me. Why is. How. How does. And maybe it's super easy to point out with a company like figma, but how does that kind of craft and attention to detail become a commercial input?
- [74:59]
Andrew Reed
You know, Like, I saw you last night at the Stripe Press event that Tammy Winter put on around the Stuart brand book. And to me, like, Tammy's work on Stripe Press is the perfect example of how, like, an amazing cultural culture around quality, around winning, you know, like, just it ends up seeping it, like, so deep into the organization, you know, at all of its edges. And I think if you examine amazing companies, like, at every angle you can, you can see that same applies with the big FIGMA conference, like Config, which they do. It's like Woodstock for designers, you know, it's like every little piece of it is just so freaking good. And like, good companies just do things so well. And then I think as it relates to, like, Products themselves. We're in this like cloud code moment where interfaces don't matter. And it's just like, you know, everyone's going to be a creator. And I think that's a lot of that's true. As if, like, in a world of infinite software, like, design and craftsmanship isn't going to be the ultimate arbitrary of success. Like, it has never been more important to have, like, tastes and an eye on when to stop and the ability to cull things. And, you know, I think craft in software is not just, you know, ui, it's like how fast the thing runs. Right. Like, is it a detail? Yeah, it's like just the, I think like design, you know, design in the full sense, not just like product design, but, you know, the design of an organization and everything it does has like never been more important. And that's probably shockingly somehow iconoclastic in, you know, early 2026. I suspect this time next year it'll feel very different.
- [76:44]
Podcast Host
We are probably soon going to have computers that can do the quantitative stuff better than you can, if not already. And so I'm curious how much of your conviction, and I don't think this is a perfect embarrassment, but like, how much of your conviction is about knowing versus feeling? This kind of gets into the taste thing too.
- [77:08]
Andrew Reed
But like, yeah, it's like the gut instinct, I think, that you lean on. I have not and I will not use an LLM to write. I've historically also not, quote unquote, used our younger teammates to write that was the first LLM. Yeah, we have one of our best young guys, his name Isaiah, and he just cranks work like you've never seen. And he often works with Ravi. And Avatars will say that Ravi uses AI in his work and AI stands for actually Isaiah. So ro's been using AI for a long time, longer than anybody else. But part of it's like this gut check where if I'm working on an investment and we do long form memos, there's no sections. You start from a blank sheet of paper and it's write out your thesis and fill in the supporting evidence. When I really want to do an investment, I will sit down and no matter what's going on, I will say up through the night and at 6am in the morning, it's PDF and sent. When I'm like, so it happens a few times a year, I'm like really excited, sit down, start writing. And I just like lose this. But I lose the buzz and I don't even try to fight it, you know, if I hit that, hit that feeling, it's like, you know what, like this might be a good investment, but like this isn't what my best investments have felt like.
- [78:34]
Podcast Host
Yes. So my friend Chris Pack says the same. He's like, I just have to, I have to be willing to do the work. Yeah, yeah, you alluded to, or maybe you talked about it some, somewhere when you first came into the firm, like, and you were starting to get your, your feet under you. It's like people come in and they can pick somebody to work with and it's like all of these legends and like 27 year old Andrew.
- [78:55]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [78:56]
Podcast Host
And then you talked about how you started tweeting and a handful of little things. Like, I'm curious to what extent you're sending a bat signal now, how much you care about that. You don't do a lot of podcasts. Like, how do you think about the legibility part of it?
- [79:09]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I think when I started tweeting, first off, it felt the, it felt more countercultural at Sequoia Capital than you could possibly imagine. Like I was like, you know, ducking for cover when you know, you know, roll out of the office. Like one of my tweets had gotten some people talking about it or whatever. And back then, I swear I was like the, maybe like the first actually good poster amongst the venture capitalists, you know, like, and that was the like 20, 2017 era where like who you followed mattered a ton. You could have like real alpha and just like your feed, if you follow the right 400 people, you could like know everything that's actually going on, none of the noise. I think almost all content produced by investors is marketing, you know, like whether they know it or not or you know, it or not. Like call it legibility or whatever. It's, it's, you know, it's a marketing document. You know, I think in the current, I think one of the things of LLMs is that you can produce like extremely in depth content in mass about anything you set your mind to. And like, I think these like market maps and things are like, you know, it's useful and it's good. But I think the thing you're trying to make legible is like I actually get, you know, you actually get, get it somehow. And I think like for better, for worse, like connecting dots that people are connecting and specifically doing that through humor is like, I think one of the easiest ways is to like make the, your understanding of a subject area.
- [80:34]
Podcast Host
There's also like a person on the other side of the screen.
- [80:36]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the things that. That Ava always says is that my tweets are like, clearly funny to me, you know, And I think the. The subtweet is like, there's. They're not. Definitely not always funny to everybody, but, you know, it's like the.
- [80:52]
Podcast Host
He's having fun.
- [80:53]
Andrew Reed
I'm always chuckling at my own. At my own stuff, and it's great, you know, it's a. Yes. It's like if you're not. If, you know, if you don't think your posts are good, I can guarantee you nobody else does, you know, so that's an.
- [81:06]
Podcast Host
Honestly, more of us would probably do well to remember that. You have a thing about big days. This is you. There's an old quote called Stonecrutters credo that describes hammering at a rock 100 times without making a crack at the 101st blow, it will split in two. And I know it was not that blow that did it, but the 100 that had gone before. I try to remember that in our work, you never know which days will be the biggest of your career, but if you stay focused and keep hammering, those days will happen. I think this ties a little into when you were talking about not flinching. But what either. Can you give an example of a day like that or just like, do? Does that, does that hold up? Is it kind of a string of years and a handful of big days?
- [81:47]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. I was just thinking about this. This morning we have a young guy on our team named James Flynn who is, you know, similar to Mike Martin. I think James Flynn is going to be well known in the Valley in 10 years. Still very young and still developing, and his tweets kind of suck. But besides that, James is amazing. And yeah, James. I remember James brought me to a company meeting, sort of been 16 months ago, and it like showed up as like one of five back to backs starting at 8 in the morning. And maybe it was. I think he was the. He put it before my 8 o' clock meeting on Zoom. It was like a Zoom at 7:15 or something.
- [82:24]
Podcast Host
Nice.
- [82:24]
Andrew Reed
And James had been at Sequoia for less than a year. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was do this meeting. And I remember like, I remember the feeling of seeing it hit my calendar when I was like night before and I realized I had to get up, you know, earlier and miss my workout. And I was like, man, if this, I'm like ready just to be annoyed, you know?
- [82:41]
Podcast Host
Yes, yes.
- [82:43]
Andrew Reed
Um, and then this is A. It's a crypto company that we invest in. Haven't announced yet. Um, it's probably one of the investments I'm most excited about. And you know, two minutes into the meeting I was like, james, I love you so much, man. Like, this is like, this is so good. Um, and to me, that's a good. It's a perfect example of like, you know, like some days just like show up and if you're not ready for it, like, that's a problem because it can be a 7:15 meeting that your six month into his career young guy just brought you to that you easily could have said no to or anything else, you know. And then similarly, like, I think there's There was a day, I wish I remember the names like Doug brought in. I think it was Aruba Networks and something else. Two of Doug's like big billion dollar gain IPOs, like happened on the same Monday partner meeting. And he had both. He did memos for both of them and had them present back to back. And it's like to me, like, that's like the guts of a great investor. Right? Like, you would love if once a quarter you had some amazing investment opportunity present itself. But it's more likely like you're deep in the weeds on one, next one's
- [83:53]
Podcast Host
there and you got to be before Christmas, whatever, right?
- [83:55]
Andrew Reed
Yeah. And it's like what I think, like, you know, would I be capable of having like the work ethic to like really evaluate two things in parallel and win those investments in parallel?
- [84:05]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [84:06]
Andrew Reed
Knowing how single threaded I get, like, I don't know, you know, that's. But that's, you know, that's why it's like Leone, you know, so there's a
- [84:12]
Podcast Host
view that says, you know, there's the parts of investing, there's sourcing and there's picking and winning and, and building companies and so on. There's a view and I'm, I think clearly some of your investments have shown this is not always the case. But there's some view that says a lot of time in growth and maybe especially at a firm like Sequoia, like, it's actually about winning. When rubber meets the road, sometimes it's like everybody kind of knows the companies. And again, I, I don't, I don't think that's totally true. But to the extent that is sometimes true, what makes you a great closer?
- [84:46]
Andrew Reed
You know, I think I used, I used to have on my Twitter bio, like, references available upon request. You know, I think founders listen to other founders, which is why? Winning your first one is really hard, but once you got it, like, yeah, it's like talk to other people, you know, see what they say. And obviously you have to meet people where they are. Like, I think you really have to show them that you believe in them and believe in the company and like, enthusiasm and understanding and like a deep belief is like, really important in the moment. I think in particular, like, founders. I heard this amazing talk from this guy, Winston Weinberg, who runs Harvey. I was just one of Pat's investments. And, you know, Winston was talking about how, you know, like, it's like really important to founders that, you know, like, they know that you will like, just like go to war for them. Right. There's like nothing like, you know, like, whatever the fight that gets brought to them, like, you're there for it, you know, and to me, that was like the best piece of feedback I could have heard. I think I needed to hear that. You know, he was just giving a talk and I was just like in the audience listening.
- [85:54]
Podcast Host
Yep.
- [85:54]
Andrew Reed
And one of the. I think I've always, like, communicated to founders, like, I really believe, you know, but I think I'd be even better if I communicate. And by the way, like, no matter what happens, like, I'm here for it, you know, like, and maybe that comes, maybe that probably comes out in references, talk, Vlad or Dylan, you know, low moments and everything else. But like, that's the thing. Like, that is who I. You know, again, who do you want to be? Right? Like you, you know, I wanted to be the person who, like, you know,
- [86:20]
Podcast Host
side by side, shoulder, shoulder, rise to the occasion. What do you think the most common thing that maybe, maybe the most common praise and the most common criticism that founders who are referenced on you would say.
- [86:37]
Andrew Reed
You know, one time I heard that Mi from 11 Labs told another founder that I was quote, unquote, low EQ, like, what the hell, man? It's like, like, what do I. Marty, I love you. I think I immediately, like, responded back to him like, dude, what? You know, it's like, it's like, I think I have this like, cabal of the best founders, you know, like minded people, like really great people, you know, and it's not just, you know, people like Kevin Kelly and Matt Huang. Right. And Ravi and Pat, you know, like, I'm just, I feel like I'm just surrounded myself with these just like exceptional people. And I think, like, that's probably the thing that people like, are most excited about working with me. It's like, I don't Think it's like a personality thing, per se. How do you think I'm like, I show up. I've read the board deck. I'm excited to engage. I love business and debating things and pick up the phone on Friday nights. But I think, like, more of it's like just the association with these other people, which is amazing, you know, and then criticism. I think there are ways in which I'm a subpar venture capitalist. Like, I don't think I'm. I feel like if I'm interviewing a VP product for your company, I am a. You might as well have, I don't know, anybody else interview that person. Like, I'm just like. I've proved myself to be a very, like, subpar interviewer of specific roles, you know, that oftentimes you're asked to go help with on the metrics thing. Like, I've definitely gotten into ruts where I've, like, just been wrong on stuff. There's a period of my career I was convinced, like, gross dollar retention didn't matter. It was only net dollar retention because the courts, you know, and it turns out 2022 just, like, blew that up. And I was like, wow, you know, it's like this. So I. I get. I get stuck on some things like that. But I do think people would say I'm loyal. Yeah.
- [88:32]
Podcast Host
Every low eq every once in a while.
- [88:33]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, everyone. Everyone's. Yeah, I've been once in a while. I just do very. Say. Say things in a dumb way.
- [88:38]
Podcast Host
Probably some questions about Sequoia Extreme performance culture. There's this, like, Doug thing about the 10 rule 10 tenets. And it's like, number one is performance, though, like, all the other stuff is cool, too. I'm curious how, like, an extremely meritocratic environment is both freeing and to what extent you kind of had to be forged through that.
- [89:03]
Andrew Reed
I think it is, if you buy in, it's the best possible cultural attribute you could want in an employer. Right. Like, where it's, you know, like, performance. You know, it's obviously like in the investment business where, like, your returns are lagging and. And it's like, there is an element of subjectivity to it. But, like, I think it's like, if, you know, you know, like right now with our team, I'm like. I'm like, I'll hear about a company. I'm excited about it. And David Kahn or Sonia Huang, Antonio Huang had emailed them yesterday. You know, it's like, I feel like it's happened to me 14 times in the last like, year, you know, where it's like, I'm, like, finding myself a step behind my partners on the companies I'm really excited about. And that is so good. You know, it's like, that's like. That is exactly how you want it to feel, you know?
- [89:54]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [89:55]
Andrew Reed
Same with Pat, like, when he's. Or Alfred, like, he'll see something. I don't see it at all. You know, it's like, my Ur instinct isn't like, let me argue you. It's like, explain, like, just tell me, you know, and I think what it means for people like Isaiah or people like James or people like Anas, who's one of our young guys in London. It's like, if you can just put your neck out there, like, you can just. And like, people really want you to win, you know, People want you to succeed. And then the downsides would just be like, my golf game's probably never going to get any good.
- [90:31]
Podcast Host
You talked about a criticism a little bit earlier. I'm curious to the extent you're willing to share the harshest or most effective criticism you've gotten.
- [90:46]
Andrew Reed
I had a breakfast meeting with Mike Moritz downstairs in this office, where. And Mike's somebody who I think is the best venture capitalist of all time and also has the best way with words of maybe anybody in business. And he's somebody who's like, looked after me my whole career and has done right by me time and time again. And really low moments for me. I won't, like, share the details of the conversation, but it happened at a very important time in my career where I think I was just headed down the wrong track. He managed to give me this, like, feedback in a way that was, like, deeply cutting and, like, you know, and also in a way that expressed, like, extreme belief in what I could go do. And my guess is at this point, he doesn't remember this moment at all. You know, it was just, like, giving feedback. Yeah, but I remember that sort of, like, I was heading down. I was heading down a path where I was, like, gonna be the grumpy, disagreeable, icy. You know, I was kind of in a rut, and I was like, didn't want to do. Deal with stuff, and I was just, like, packing, deal, pack and do everything. I'm gonna do my investments and, you know, keep my ball to myself, you know. And he totally took me on the other side and, yeah. Changed my life. Yeah.
- [92:11]
Podcast Host
This is you from some old job posting. Sequoia trees can live thousands of years. Not only that, their wood production, their Growth increases as they age. They resist the deceleration in eventual stagnation that befalls most living things. I think there's a broad sense amongst many people, many investors I've talked to, which is like, how much does what I do even matter? Like, there's like a lot of determinism. The companies are funded anyway, whatever. And my sense is that you and Sequoia in this place have a deep seated view that this institution is quite important. Why does Sequoia matter?
- [92:47]
Andrew Reed
Well, first I would say that that job posting proves that even pre LLMs. I could write like a LLM that's uncomfortable hearing that sentence said out loud. Sequoia does matter. You know, it's like an iconic institution in the Valley that has such an amazing history. And I think Silicon Valley is a place where the history really matters. It's like this is Shockley Semiconductor all the way through. It's like we're in this era. This will probably be in history books in one way, shape or form. And we are standing on the shoulders of Don Valentine and Mike Moritz and Daglioni and Jim Getz and Roloff, these exceptional investors who've given so much of their lives to this place. And if we're the ones who kind of just let it just fall back into just yet another vc. And the history books are littered with that, like Hummer Winblad. Hummer Winblad was the hottest VC in the world in the 90s. No one's even heard of Hummer Winblad anymore. So it's like we're not in some ways immune from that, you know? Yeah, it's like we, you carry on like a deep amount of pride in that fact. But it also like, invites lots of criticism. And if you don't do well enough in terms of making investments for the future and talking about the future, it's like you run the risk of being a fading star, right? Like, which is like the last thing any entrepreneur wants to hitch their wagon to. So it's like we are not going to do that, you know, and like, we also know that the only way to like, make sure that exists is like, take risks and like, break stuff and, you know, face the embarrassment caused by mistakes, but like, also capture a lot of the opportunities that present themselves to us. And I'm really proud of the way that our teams operate. Like, really proud.
- [94:47]
Podcast Host
We've. We talked about it with you. We. You already mentioned some people. Square brings in a lot of young people and kind of trains them in your way. A lot of Apprenticeship, et cetera. One of the things that comes up is a. Some form of deep rooted need to prove something. And so I think there are a lot of, like, oh, like, classic trope, like, the dad died when they were 14 or, like, went through something crazy hard or whatever. Maybe this even ties into your own experience kind of growing up. But I'm curious, like, the different ways that that's something to prove can show up. Like, the different flavors of that.
- [95:25]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, there was this Sequoia heritage event in Montana. It was actually. I was there with Dylan. We actually were there when the Adobe deal was going down and Doug was on a panel with Roloff and maybe Roloff and Michael and Neil Shen. And someone asked, like, how do you guys hire young people? And Doug was like, oh, you know, he did the thing he always says, you know, people who are like, you know, on the surface, like, really high achieving, but, like, deep down, this, like, real fucked up thing, you know, it's like, we've got this, like, one guy, you know, he's got this. He's like a twin brother. And you think he's so normal, but actually, like, deep down he is more screwed up and competitive and can't lose. And at the time, I was, you know, now we have a second twin on the team. But it was like, I'm, like, right here.
- [96:09]
Podcast Host
Everyone knows.
- [96:10]
Andrew Reed
Everyone knows you're talking about me. It's like, just. And yeah, I think that, like, Doug is an amazing evaluator of talent. And yeah, we say people who are hyper competitive with a heart of gold, like, that is the entire rubric for our growth team. And, you know, like, hyper competitiveness comes from somewhere, right? Like, and it doesn't. It doesn't always reveal itself instantly, you know, you have to, like, really find it in people because there are plenty of 4o students at Harvard who do not have that dog in them, you know, and there are plenty of people who've, like, done so much and achieved so much in the past, you know, come such a long way in their lives. But, like, that doesn't mean they're gonna succeed into the future. And there's some people who, you know, I grew up in a perfectly normal family, you know, in a really nice house, in a really nice neighborhood. I played sports. You know, I went to a good school. I got a great gpa. I won academic awards, I won athletic awards. Like, none of that, you know. Again, I see Doug's question for me is, like, why would I hire you? Right? And, like, it wasn't about any of that. And yeah, so it's fine. Like, sometimes people like, oh, I'm not gonna hire this guy. He went to Philips Exeter. I'm like, you know how many great investors went to Philip Exeter? Like, that ain't the problem, you know.
- [97:30]
Podcast Host
So anyway, you mentioned you joined at 23. I think you were one of, if not the youngest Sequoia partner ever. How. And again, I think it obviously relates to part of what you just said, but, like, how have you managed the sort of, like being an early star?
- [97:52]
Andrew Reed
I think the four years in the salt mines, you know, that helped. Did not feel like I always shot out of a cannon, you know.
- [98:00]
Podcast Host
But you do Robin Hood. You get that promotion.
- [98:03]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, do Robin Hood, which, like, felt like a good investment, then I felt like a bad investment, then a good investment, you know, and then you do a few others. I did Loom. I did Figma. I think the idea of, like, being like a star. Right. Like, again, that's a quiet. It's like you never feel like a star, you know, Like, Doug did the Wiz investment when he was 64 years old in an Israeli company a zillion miles away from home when, like, he should have been on the beach or playing golf or whatever else. And just like, for lack of a better term, like, mogs us with this, like, you know, multi billion dollar gain right before he retires. Right, right. You know, like, that's outrageous.
- [98:42]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [98:43]
Andrew Reed
You know.
- [98:43]
Podcast Host
Yeah, the bar can go higher.
- [98:45]
Andrew Reed
Like, like, you know, like, not even. Not even like, eclipsing the bar. Like, I'm hoping to even see the bar, you know, and. Yeah, that's like a. I think it's probably a helpful thing.
- [98:54]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [98:54]
Andrew Reed
From an ego check perspective.
- [98:58]
Podcast Host
A few Sequoia people. I wanted to talk about the first. A few questions about Don Valentine. Interestingly, especially in the backdrop of how we started this conversation about founders is Don's like this, like, market maxi. Like, you. Even the, like, whatever that Stanford talk he gave in around 2010, he's basically like, we don't choose people, we choose markets. Obviously, maybe the market has shifted broadly. Certainly Sequoia has changed its tone on this. And so, like, is it a much. Is it a more balanced view? Is it just that the market piece doesn't need to be said? Has something changed about the world.
- [99:36]
Andrew Reed
In answering this question? Have you read the DTV book?
- [99:39]
Podcast Host
I've read part of it.
- [99:40]
Andrew Reed
Okay. The Sequoia that Don ran was nothing like the world today. You know, like, I think that's one of the takeaways from the book. Like, he did an amazing job building set of culture attributes and hiring people and making amazing investments, obviously, like Apple and Oracle and Cisco and Atari and like, Cisco is really his crown jewel. You know, my favorite facts is you look at. Do you know Cisco's fiscal year end, I think it was July 26th last year. You know, it's like, you know, like, because Don hated the having the, you know, like, rigid fiscal year ending at the end of the year, he wanted to do something different. And so like, his, like his legacy lives on in the July 26 fiscal year end. I think it moves around a little bit every year for Cisco. But Don, like. And I was lucky enough, like for my first few years at Sequoia, Don was around a lot and I talked to him a bunch and he probably, you know, he. He knew who I was. If, you know, whether he thought about me as like somebody who would be a long term member of the team, I, I doubt it. You know, and the thing that Don did, obviously, so amazingly was like, hire Michael and Doug and then hand it off and that like, generational transition, just getting out of the way and letting those two work together and build like the modern Sequoia, you know, all the different businesses, geography, stages, so many amazing things that like, I think that one thing, you know, getting the big decisions right, like the way that Don handed over this partnership, so many other guys
- [101:09]
Podcast Host
who had a pretty successful or even amazingly successful career in venture capital, and then the story ends.
- [101:15]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, yeah. Don, like that I think is like, probably like if we do a good job with Sequoia into the future, the idea of being able to like, hand it off someday to somebody else and just like, know that like my, my time here worked, you know, and like I made it better is like, that's like the thing I think drives a lot of us.
- [101:37]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [101:37]
Andrew Reed
Which is different than like maximizing my net worth and everything else, you know? Yeah.
- [101:41]
Podcast Host
Maybe. On that note, this might be from the book. Unknown to me at the time was Don's habit of counting the number of times a candidate used I. As opposed to we candidates who favored the first person were dead on departure.
- [101:54]
Andrew Reed
It's from the book. Yeah. Yeah.
- [101:56]
Podcast Host
How does that. It's semantic. But how does that change your psychology?
- [102:01]
Andrew Reed
You know, it's funny, like, the. That's so ingrained in like the Sequoia ethos that like, even when you write a memo about investment, like, you just use the royal we. You know, writing the word. I just doesn't. The only time I ever Used it was. We were. When I was working on the memo for Phantom, you know, the Nika Studio crypto wallet. Amazing company. It's just like, you know, on the back of some of the meme coin mania. And I just like, had to, like, excuse James Flynn, who worked on it with me from, like, sharing his opinion on, you know, some of these meme coins, you know, and even then, like, Pat just like prints it out and circles the big I paragraph and is like, I would change this, you know, And I was like, yeah, I know, but I just didn't want to have
- [102:41]
Podcast Host
to, like, I'm taking the arrows.
- [102:42]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I'm just like, trying to, you know, excuse James from having to opine on this topic. It, like, really is an important thing, you know. And like, even in this conversation, I think one time I described Open Evidence or Harvey as Pat's investment. And like, I know Pat's going to listen to this. Assuming people actually listen to podcasts and be like, why'd you say that? You know what I mean? So, yeah.
- [103:02]
Podcast Host
Anyway, on Mike Moritz, the two best question askers ever, according to Don Valentine, are Mike and Steve Jobs. What makes a great question asker? To extent. You learned anything from Mike about that?
- [103:18]
Andrew Reed
I think from a legibility standpoint, like, in some ways I feel like I learned nothing from Mike because he's so. He's so taste driven, intuitive. Like, there's no, like, how can one possibly do that? You know, like, obviously you try so hard to learn. I've, you know, picked up a zillion lessons and I'm constantly trying to, like, you know, bring them to in the practice. But he'll ask questions that you just cannot possibly understand how they're relevant to that conversation, you know, and pops out the other side and has this, like, crystallized view of the future. My favorite Mike story is actually wasn't even an investment that he did. But, like, I guess this predates me. But when he was we brought in Yelp for the series A when it was like, you know, a desktop restaurant rating service. And Mike apparently is the part of me he's like, someday I won't do my Welsh accent. Like, someday, you know, every restaurant's going to have a Yelp sticker in their window next to the Zigat sticker. And like, yeah, literally it's in every restaurant. You know, it's like, how does one possibly see that? You know, it's like, so random, but so right, you know, so yes, but down the questions, like, he uses a method to get the ground Truth on a person that has enabled him to pick.
- [104:36]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [104:36]
Andrew Reed
Time and time again through the generation on like the best sets of founders, like younger and younger and younger. How he does it beats me.
- [104:44]
Podcast Host
Also from the book, this is Mike. When I interviewed with Don, I asked three questions and I have subsequently been asked them by countless candidates. What does it take to succeed in the venture business? What does it take to succeed here and when will I know that I have succeeded? How would you answer those questions?
- [105:05]
Andrew Reed
I think number one is performance. Right. So the, you know, our scores. Ten, tennis. The first one is performance. Second one is teamwork. In Doug's words. If you don't have the first one, that and nine don't matter. I think ultimately it's like this is a numbers game and the numbers catch up to you in both ways. Right. If you're doing a great job and like delivering investment returns, eventually, like you get this compounding, you know, benefit that reels itself in a bunch of different ways. And if not like, you know, when the tide goes out and you aren't doing a good job, like, you exit the business. Yeah, I think that's true at every venture firm. So I'll say that's also how to succeed at Sequoia. But I think the second tenant really matters too. The we pronoun teaming on investments. Like we have a two person deal, teams max. And it's like not uncommon for Pat to wingman somebody else. Like Pat will be doing custom references and like writing sections of the memo for a unproven younger guy to go lead an investment. That's so cool, you know. And what was the third one?
- [106:05]
Podcast Host
When will you. When will I know I have succeeded?
- [106:08]
Andrew Reed
Still working on it.
- [106:13]
Podcast Host
What do you hope or think people ought to know or not? Forget about Mike Moritz.
- [106:24]
Andrew Reed
I think to the previous question, you know, the ultimately it's about performance and he put up the numbers. I mean, he put up the numbers more than you could possibly imagine. And. Now he's, you know, hard at work trying to fix San Francisco and pursuing numerous other for profit and nonprofit endeavors. He can make it happen. Like that's one thing he can do. He can definitely make it happen.
- [106:53]
Podcast Host
A few on Doug. Doug, on an interview with, I think with Patrick o', Shaughnessy, he said he's like quoting somebody. It's like, it's so wonderful. I can't explain it means run away. Like cool is the enemy of reality. I'm curious how you relate to that risk, if at all.
- [107:14]
Andrew Reed
I think like the way that Doug, you know, pursues the business is far more, like, legible than the mic. Like just somehow coming to some conclusion that you can't, you know, the interpretability of, you know, Mike's decisions is impossible. Whereas with Doug, it's just like doggedness, you know, like, I mean, I wish people could see Doug winning investments. Like, you should talk to founders who have, like, been on the other side of this. Like, I mean, it is like, like Mozart, you know, it's unbelievable. You know, even better, like, when Doug is, he would give these presentations of like a standard Sequoia deck, you know, like where a company would come and, you know, explain their business. And when we were visiting them and for the last 10 minutes, he's like, like, before I leave, let me just like, tell you a little bit about us. And he would just basically shine the perfect mirror back on the company. Like giving them, you know, showing them like, in such extreme detail, like, how well he understands exactly, like, their bottlenecks. Doing it in a way where, like, he was not talking about them like, you know, giving them feedback. Right. He's talking about Sequoia, but, like, just nailing every single thing and then just the hustle, like, you know, flying around the world, never on a, like, never ending basis. Just like winning and winning and winning and just, you know, amazing leader. Yeah.
- [108:45]
Podcast Host
Maybe a little bit related to the comparison. Doug described Mike as very intuitive, as you said, and he talked about needing to shift a little bit more that way when Mike stepped down where he had been kind of the process guy. And I'm curious how, to the extent you felt the need to. How have you had any of that, have you felt any need to become more intuitive?
- [109:07]
Andrew Reed
I think I've always skewed probably more towards the intuitive side just by my nature. I think it was either Roloff or Jim. Rof is like 200 IQ, like, you know, just. And understands everything, like, extraordinarily deeply to like the nth degree. And then Jim Getz is like a networking guy from his previous company and Doug was like working on some networking thing. And then at some point Jim just gets fed up and he's just like, Doug, do you know what the company does? And Doug's just like, yeah, top of the rack. That was like the. Of course we made like a zillion dollars. You know what I mean?
- [109:42]
Podcast Host
But like, it's a wild, wild oversimplification and very unfair. But there is a little bit of the bell curve me here with Mike and Doug.
- [109:50]
Andrew Reed
O. But the thing with Doug is that like, Doug is on the right side of the bell curve. I'm trying to think of. There's some of these brain teasery puzzles. We had to unwrap metal things from each other or like sure. You know, we wanted these in our office that someone brought in. And of course everyone's spending the full day trying to do this thing and Doug just rolls in, looks at it for like 3 seconds and is like. And pulls it apart, you know.
- [110:16]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [110:17]
Andrew Reed
So to me it's actually like they're both maxed out but like Mike's the maxed out word cell and like Doug's the maxed out shape rotator, you know. And that's. I think that's like that's the best way to describe them.
- [110:28]
Podcast Host
I guess the same question I asked with Mike which is what do you hope people know or don't forget about Doug.
- [110:35]
Andrew Reed
I think like the, the new bank investment. He's probably was in his late 50s when we did that investment and it was like a seed in a Brazilian credit card company. Having built his whole career like doing enterprise investing, you know, I'm sure at various points he felt like what am I doing? People are going to judge me like how. You know. But just yeah, he repotted, you know when the last thing he needed to do was go do that. You know, keep like Brazilian credit card company like in David Internet Sequoia. He's a guy who runs new bank and like we told you it was. It wasn't just like a random Brazilian credit card company, you know, but nonetheless like sticking your neck out and being willing to look extraordinarily stupid at that age of your life and then just like dominating is. That's. That's like the stuff that I think like ought to be in the like this is how you should do this job books.
- [111:29]
Podcast Host
I just have a few more things more generalized. What's artistic about business.
- [111:36]
Andrew Reed
I think there's like a extreme non linearity across every dimension that is like really beautiful. Like there's just this way in which you know, like it's just not paint by numbers. Right. It's like it is nothing about business is paint by numbers. And it's so multifaceted and it's changing so quickly and you know, you can't possibly see the matrix. So you're just like constantly just like seeing something a little bit different every single day and try to find patterns, you know. And especially in like tech, the half life on some insight is a year or two tops. Right. Because like trades get crowded. Right. And I think that's true in our business too. You know, I think that's just so cool. It's also stressful, right? Because, like, you know, to the question of, like, how do you know you're successful? It's like, if the metric that matters is like, net new ARR for a software company, like, you know, we're only as good as our next investment. That's a line that we end all of our presentation on Sequoia. If that's the. If that's the market that I'm in, like, the next company, like, am I that good? You know? Like, how could I possibly know, right? Like, in fact, I'm late to all these companies and David and Sonia are kicking my ass and pet's doing better. And, you know, Josh Kushner is doing amazing and Neil Meadow is doing amazing. And it's like. Oh, you know, it's so. It's like so intense. Right?
- [112:57]
Podcast Host
So anyway, you have a tweet. Always suspicious of young people who are points guys. Same with tax Obsessive lack of appreciation of opportunity cost of your attention, which is hilarious, but also, I think, pretty profound. How do you remember the opportunity cost of your attention?
- [113:14]
Andrew Reed
It's a little bit of the don't, you know, don't outsource. You know, it's like the. I'm also suspicious of, like, productivity obsessives in the investing business. Just because, like, you know, I think, like, you have to, like, follow the spark of your creativity and you need to have, like, you know, maybe some people can pull it off. But I feel like the, you know, every meeting has to end on the exact moment of time. Like, your day's not going to be like that. You know, if you find something you love, you got to stay in the meeting and, like, deal with the consequences, you know?
- [113:47]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [113:48]
Andrew Reed
I think, Yeah, I think, like, dealing and like, making yourself in this future of, like, the. The AI future. Like, I think forcing yourself to put pen to paper, I think is going to be really valuable.
- [114:00]
Podcast Host
Mm. What did you learn? Studying the classics. You were. I think you were a classics and economics major.
- [114:09]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [114:11]
Podcast Host
Unexpected.
- [114:12]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, you know, it's a left. Left brain, right brain thing. Yeah. I was actually looking at this. I won the Latin prize at Amherst by senior year. There's two of us who won it. So me and I got him. Kevin G, I think his name was. Looked him up, like, two weeks ago, see what up to. He said, SEC enforcement attorney. I was like, I'm looking at this LinkedIn profile. It's like, oh, crap. You know, it's like. But shout out, Kevin. You know, it's like. I think I learned a lot of the same thing I learned at Goldman. It's how to work. Right? Just, like, classics was a grind. You know, you're just translating every night pre LLMs and, like, pre. You know, you're just sitting there, just. Just grinding with a dictionary and, you know, the Old Testament or the New Testament or the Indian or the Iliad, like, you're just, like, sitting there and just, like, you left, like, a mountain of, you know, pages in front of you, and you're like, just chipping away at it. Same with, like, working at Goldman. Like, do I do DCS now? Like, no, it's like, no, but the. Like, how would I just, like, get up in the morning and, like, prioritize your time and get through it and, like, when you're exhausted but you need to do something, like, how do you. Of course you do it? You know, it's. I think that's, like, that how to work and how to, like, really work hard. I didn't learn that till college. You know, I skated my way through high school. Right. You know, and I just, like, got put in. I decided to take Greek one my freshman fall at Amherst, and. Oh, you know.
- [115:45]
Podcast Host
Anyway, I think you said somewhere that your favorite book was Dune.
- [115:49]
Andrew Reed
Yeah, I love Dune. Why you're not feeling. Getting lost in a story, you know? Yeah, the best. Like,
- [115:58]
Podcast Host
no messianic aspirations, just being lost in the story.
- [116:01]
Andrew Reed
Oh, no. I actually didn't read Dune until I was a young adult, you know, and it was, like, way past. I read about other sci fi and I just, like, had never gotten around to it.
- [116:08]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I read it a couple years ago.
- [116:09]
Andrew Reed
I just, like, I was probably 24, 23, and it was just so sick, you know? Yeah, no, there's no, like, no reason for it other than just that feeling of, like, when it was over, I was like, damn it, you know?
- [116:22]
Podcast Host
Yeah. There's some mediocre books to go read afterward.
- [116:25]
Andrew Reed
Yeah.
- [116:25]
Podcast Host
Our mutual friend Tina told me to ask you, what is a film that has moved you to the verge of tears but didn't make you cry?
- [116:41]
Andrew Reed
Is there a film called After Sun?
- [116:42]
Podcast Host
I still haven't seen it, but I know it's coming for me.
- [116:46]
Andrew Reed
Anyway, I don't want to talk about it, but
- [116:51]
Podcast Host
what's your favorite thing about Will that's different than you?
- [116:56]
Andrew Reed
You know, like, you know, the thing that I would love people to say about me is I'm like, ride or die, you know, Will is the Most ride or die person I have met in my entire life, and I spent my entire childhood as a stutterer being protected by my little brother and. Like, having seen his like, career success take off and you know, getting recognition for like the person that he is is like one of the most amazing things. Yeah. He is the most loyal human being I've ever met in my entire life. And he's tough as nails. Yeah.
- [117:48]
Podcast Host
One more thing I'd like to read. You probably know it given that it's in your bio, but I'd like to read this excerpt from island by Huxley. It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly. Let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days. Such a humorous little prig. Lightly, lightly. It's the best advice ever given me when it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous or pretentious or emphatic. No rhetoric, no no tremulos, no self conscious Persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or little Nell. And of course no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying, the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward There are quicksands all about you sucking at your feet Trying to suck you down to fear and self pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly, Lightly, my darling on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag completely unencumbered. How are you becoming lighter?
- [119:00]
Andrew Reed
I don't have to comment on that at all. That's perfect. You know, that's like. That's it, that's it.
- [119:06]
Podcast Host
Thank you.
- [119:06]
Andrew Reed
This is wonderful.
- [119:09]
Podcast Host
Thank you for listening. Before I leave you, I'd once again like to thank Notion for being such an instrumental part of making Dialectic possible. I partnered with them at the end of last year and it's just been amazing to have more resources and leverage, but also get to bounce ideas off them and more than anything use Notion to make the show better. Whether that be research before the episodes or going in afterwards, pulling out ideas, lessons, patterns that stand out to me. And again, you can check out notion@dialectic.com notion if you missed it. I also did a little fun Q and A with them on Instagram, talking about how I'm thinking about the year to come and what I'm hoping to build with Dialectic. I'll link to that in the description. Thank you again. If you enjoyed the show, please give it 5 stars on Spotify or Apple or like and subscribe on YouTube all the places. Thank you for listening and watching.