How Capital Really Chooses Winners _ John Suh

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Capital Really Chooses Winners"

Podcast: Ideas That Matter by Vusi Thembekwayo
Guest: John Suh, Former CEO of LegalZoom
Date: September 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Vusi Thembekwayo sits down with John Suh—ex-CEO of LegalZoom, current family office investor, and technology thought leader—to dissect how capital truly selects winners in the business world. The conversation delves into the shifting landscape of venture capital and private equity, the impact of technology and AI on society and entrepreneurship, the rise of family offices as capital powerhouses, and the personal and generational dynamics that underpin entrepreneurial success. Tinged with humor, candor, and rich real-world examples, the exchange offers essential insights for entrepreneurs navigating growth and seeking to understand the deeper rules of the capital game.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Capital is Deployed at Different Stages

• Early-stage Funding:

  • “Early rounds … that's all personality, right? That's all people, people, people. … I'm betting you're going to adapt, deploy capital efficiently and have a decent chance of getting me to an exit. So I'm betting on the team.” – John Suh [04:40]
  • Investors focus mainly on the founding team, adaptability, and grit — not polished business plans.

• Late-stage & PE Funding:

  • “Late stage, it's all data. You can hide nowhere. … Human capital is more fungible to them at that late stage. They're not founder driven.” – John Suh [06:39]
  • Switch from founder-driven leadership to data-driven diligence. Founders are often swapped for seasoned operators.
  • Intensive diligence: “We're going to spend thousands of hours cumulatively on just diligence.” [08:04]

• Founder Replacement:

  • “They don't like founders. The first thing they see a founder is I want to switch that founder out.” – John Suh [07:17]
  • Even iconic founders like Bezos and Musk would risk being replaced under this model.

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2. Entrepreneurship, Family, and Cultural Identity

• Roots of Entrepreneurial Spirit:

  • Suh credits his Korean heritage and the immigrant experience for a heightened drive for independence and entrepreneurship.
  • “If you're an immigrant, you're 300% more likely to start a business than someone born inside of the United States.” – John Suh [18:01]

• Generational Shifts and Expectation:

  • Despite successful entrepreneurial parents, many second-generation immigrants seek to forge their own paths, often resisting family business succession.

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3. Dangers of the Abundance Narrative and the Impact of AI

• On Perceived Abundance:

  • “I don't see abundance everywhere.” – John Suh [21:57]
  • Suh warns against overestimating opportunity; technological change (especially AI) may eliminate whole job categories.

• Geometric Change and Societal Risk:

  • “The human brain is not very good with geometric … we can't comprehend geometric progression … when I say geometric computing power applied to AI … it starts to explode at a pace that you can no longer comprehend.” – John Suh [23:23]
  • Rapid technological advancement is outpacing society’s ability to adapt, risking mass displacement.

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4. Wealth Concentration and the Math of Capital Accumulation

• The Unforgiving Nature of Compound Growth:

  • “The richer will always get richer ... you can never catch up.” – John Suh [27:12]
  • Suh walks through how starting at a higher base (e.g., family-office wealth) makes it nearly impossible for average earners to "catch up," even with similar returns.

• Implications for Social Stability:

  • Failure to address exclusion from opportunity risks future civil unrest and radicalism.
  • “When 100 million Americans ... feel completely cheated and disenfranchised ... that's where you get civil unrest.” – John Suh [28:53]

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5. The Role and Future of Family Offices

• Rise of Private Wealth as Capital Movers:

  • “Family office size [is] going to grow geometrically ... the family offices are going to be more and more important.” – John Suh [26:54, 50:07]
  • Family offices, from small to “mega” (e.g., Bezos’), increasingly bypass traditional funds, writing massive direct checks and shaping markets.
  • “More and more people are coming together in a way that funds are kind of doing what funds have been doing ... but it’s kind of boring ... country funds and family offices I see are the things that are starting to move crazy.” [52:49]

• New Models and Generational Ambition:

  • Second-generation wealth holders want to be operators and direct investors, not just passive allocators.

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6. The Mindset of Entrepreneurial Success

• Pattern Recognition and Relentless Curiosity:

  • “I'm a pattern recognition guy. The patterns are getting more difficult ... the pace of change is getting ... the reality is getting faster.” – John Suh [31:03]
  • Suh likens entrepreneurship to “fishing a river”—jump in, experiment, move to better spots, and stay hungry. [36:01]

• Against Limiting Leadership Theories:

  • Rejects academic models that pigeonhole founders to only early-stage leadership:
    • “You're going to let me raise my baby and then you're going to take it away from me? I find that deeply offensive.” [39:25]
  • Some founders thrive across all phases; passion and adaptability matter more than theory.

• Mission, Values, and Personal Fulfillment:

  • “It needs to reflect my passion, my interest, my values. So I'm fully engaged and feel alive.” – John Suh [55:28]

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7. Technology, Disruption, and Winner-Take-All Markets

• On the Internet’s Global Leverage:

  • “The new titans of industry will all be in tech because they're going to go global ... and their competitive advantage transfers.” – John Suh [45:44]

• Winner-Take-All Dynamics:

  • “What I liked about the Internet is usually it's winner take all. Like after ebay, who's number two? They suck, huh? After Amazon … there's not a lot of room for number two.” [44:27]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "In business, you don't scale chaos. You scale systems." – Vusi Thembekwayo [14:41]
• "I don't see abundance everywhere." – John Suh [21:57]
• "The human brain is not very good with geometric ... we can't comprehend geometric progression in something like assets compounding." – John Suh [23:23]
• "The richer will always get richer ... the poor aren't necessarily getting poorer, but if they say comparatively, if I compare myself to Bezos, I get poorer every second." – John Suh [27:12]
• "It's in the nature of capital to accumulate. ... Anything that is capital will seek accumulation." – Vusi Thembekwayo [29:04]
• "You know, we're breeding a very, very dangerous job of selling this message of abundance into this generation ... they don't have a thick skin to weather through the difficult times when ... those difficult times do [arrive]." – Vusi Thembekwayo [21:16]
• "You're going to let me raise my baby and then you're going to take it away from me? I find that deeply offensive." – John Suh [39:35]
• "Live an interesting life and a fulfilling life ... when I want to spend my life working in something, it needs to reflect my passion, my interest, my values." – John Suh [55:28]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

| Time | Segment | |-------|----------------------------------------------| | 04:04 | Early vs. late stage capital – Key differences | | 06:39 | The shift from founder-driven to data-driven | | 10:41 | Suh's family background and entrepreneurial roots | | 18:01 | Immigrant drive for entrepreneurship | | 21:57 | Abundance narrative and its pitfalls | | 23:23 | Geometric change, AI, and societal risk | | 25:10 | Math of wealth accumulation and inequality | | 28:53 | Social consequences of growing capital divide | | 36:01 | “Fishing the river”—entrepreneurial approach | | 39:35 | Rejecting limiting leadership models | | 45:44 | Technology and winner-take-all markets | | 50:07 | Family offices as the new capital power | | 55:28 | Suh’s core values and closing reflections |

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode provides a masterclass in how capital and technology fundamentally reshape business and society. Through Suh’s candid reflections, listeners gain an unvarnished look at what truly drives investment decisions, how macro trends like AI will overturn entire sectors, and why capital’s compounding nature inevitably widens inequality unless new approaches are devised. For entrepreneurs, the message is clear: forget the comfort of “good enough,” cultivate relentless curiosity, build adaptive systems, and focus on purpose and personal values to survive and thrive in the rapid currents of the modern economy.

Transcript

[John Su]

Foreign. I am a Blessio friend, Anthony from Nigeria, and first of all, I want to give a really deep shout out to you for all the work you put into your podcast. And it really inspires me and I can really bet my bottom dollars that it inspires a lot of your listeners out there, a lot of people who just hit on it and listen to it. So thank you so much, Vousi, for being a blessing to the world in your own way. Fast forward. I have listened to your podcast and from my experience, I'm gonna say it should be a binging podcast. It should be an ever binging podcast. It should be literally everywhere. I mean, you all should listen to this podcast because it's so going to work. You're gonna learn a whole lot and you're gonna implement everything you've learned. I've listened to lots of your EP on imposter syndrome and how to tackle debt, you know, and all of those really, really amazing ones. And so far I have been implementing them mentally, psychologically, and then physically to seeing the best result of it. And yes, I can attest that it is working. It is real, it is valid. Hey, vt, this is Shaheen. I am from Durban in Kwazulu. Natalie, I just wanted to reach out and say, you know what, thank you so much for what you put into the world, the podcasts I recently started listening to. I have been following you on your socials for quite a long time. I have watched your videos. Your videos usually pop up on my feed. And I do pay attention to what it is that you are saying, the things that you do, you know, the type of person that you are. And recently, you know, there are always struggles that come up when it comes to business, when it comes to studying. You know, there's always trials and tribulations that come up. But recently I started listening to your podcasts and specifically the one with Lamar, Lamar Tyler that you had. I listened to it recently and it put me. It took me to where I wanted to be. I started thinking a bit more outside the box. I started doing things a little bit better, a little differently. And, you know, things seem to be working out. So I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for what you're putting into the world. And, you know, if you do get a chance to listen to this, I really hope that, you know, you keep doing what you're doing and more people get to hear what it is that you're saying.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's time to take your seat at the table, find out How? With vositembegwayo as vocal, we discuss Ideas.

[John Su]

That Matter, a catalyst for bold action.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Hello family. In today's episode of Ideas that Matter, I interview the indelible John sue as former CEO of LegalZoom, a platform which whilst he didn't found, he joined and scaled as CEO listed on the NASDAQ and exited in 2021 at a valuation of 7.5 billion. John is one of the few people I know who've gone from operator to scaler and today to investor at large ticket sizes into very, very disruptive tech across the world. Today John runs a family office and he has a very interesting view about the future of AI, the future of tech, the future of capital, and what you and I can learn as entrepreneurs about how to position ourselves for this very prescient moment. This is Ideas that Matter. Enjoy. So help me understand this. Right, so if I'm just an external person watching this conversation, the difference between kind of the banking world of providing capital versus the world you and I live in, admittedly you're in a very different space in the fo space but just like high level, like what are the main differences? And then we'll dig a bit deeper into it.

[John Su]

The main differences between how the capital.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Is deployed and what the founders and entrepreneurs receiving that capital would experience by.

[John Su]

Stage, by level of stage. Okay, so I'd say I spent a good part of my career in the early stage tech co founding, raising you know, 5, 10, $15 million in the, you know, to get stuff going. And then as some of the companies were getting larger and needing requiring more capital, then I started raising more 50, 100 million, 500 million dollar rounds of capital.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

The biggest difference is it's all data. You know, in the early rounds it's like the Angel A's. It's been a while since I did those, but yeah, yeah, you know that's all personality, right? That's all people, people, people. They don't care what the PowerPoint says, they don't care what the, the BS financials, hockey stickers like, let me see, it just goes up into the right and it's got how many digits at the end of it you think you're gonna do 2 billion dol. You know, it's like so you will be the third highest grossing revenue startup in history. Yeah, you know, and I got 12 of those just dispatched for this pitch contest. You know, they don't, they don't care but they say, but you. What I see is you're going to get up you're going to get thrown hooks to the head, body punches, solar plexus, kicked in the knees. You're going to get back up. That's what I see. And you're going to think your way through it. I don't care what your original business plan is. Three years from now, it'll be a different business plan. From what you learn, I'm betting you're going to adapt, deploy capital efficiently and have a decent chance of getting me to an exit. So I'm betting on the team.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Nice.

[John Su]

And I like your top three. People.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Nice.

[John Su]

Right, so that's the early stage. People, people, people. When you're getting a nine digit check.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes.

[John Su]

And I was helping out a P.E. p reached out to me and said, hey, we're looking for like a, an operator Vetter. I said, what does that mean?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

What is that?

[John Su]

I was like, well, I'm looking at making acquisitions and we're deploying, you know, 500 million to a billion dollars in an acquisition, you know, levered. And we want someone that can vet it as an operator that says, what do you see that we can't see? Because we didn't run this type of.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Business like an operational D. So we.

[John Su]

Want you to go deep on diligence.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Got you.

[John Su]

And late stage, it's all data. You can hide nowhere. So it's not as big a pitch in some ways. Late stage. Now, I think the really good ones care about the team quite a bit because they want to make sure you can execute. But they're also saying, well, if you're not, I'm just going to switch you out anyways. So they're looking at the data and the asset, the asset being the company. And they don't put a lot of. They. Some people say they do, but the reality is human capital is more fungible to them at that late stage. They're not founder driven. They don't like founders. The first thing they see a founder is I want to switch that founder out.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

To someone that can run it at scale.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

Like so you would have switched out Bezos, you would have switched out Elon Musk. Yeah, I would have missed him and switched them out. Occasionally we let him go through, but generally it's not a good bet for us.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Why is that?

[John Su]

Well, I think one example of this. Oh, and then I'll get back to that later. Let me finish this and then I'll. Then I'll go for questions. So when I was helping out this P.E. they're going, I said, well, walk me through it. I go, well, we're going to spend 5 or 6 million in diligence on this acquisition and the odds are 80%, 90%, we're going to walk away from it. I go, so you're going to, how many times do you spend five or six million dollars in diligence and walk away? Is this more often than we write the check?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's crazy.

[John Su]

So I go, so you have, they have a team of accounts, they have a team of engineers, they've got a team at hr, they got a legal team. And then each one is going through super detailed. They got a subscription, they got a pricing team. So all these teams are coming back with all of this data they're pouring through the data room, they're going through everything, they're doing crazy background checks, they're going super deep. I said, and now we need an operator to go in there and say, okay, as an operator, what perspective can you give to us as a third party and if we conclude the transaction, we'll put you on the board, you'll take an equity seat, that kind of thing. And so when I looked at that level of diligence, they don't care if you're a good pitch, we don't care about your pitch. We're going to spend thousands of hours cumulatively on just diligence. So yeah, the initial pitch, you know, it gives them, it puts you in the scope of something, but they're going to go super deep. So that's where it's all data, it's all intensity and human capital. You know, the whole part of a lot of the early stage, growth stage companies, the IVPs and the Kleiners, like I want founder driven companies.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's right.

[John Su]

I want to stay with this founder. I want to do a second company, a third company or a fourth company, whatever it may be. We're going to stay with you for life. And, and you know, and it's a badge of honor that you stayed with me instead of with them.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's right.

[John Su]

You know, my friends on.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, stuff, but.

[John Su]

You stayed with me.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

So it's a different world. Late stage are like, we like you. I know we went to college together and all that stuff, but I'll probably switch you out. You know, we do that.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

And completely non emotional, total.

[John Su]

You mean some of these like, you know, vistas, that's their playbook. If you sell to them, you understand the vast majority of time they're going to switch you with the team that understands their playbook.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Oh, I see.

[John Su]

Right. So they, they have a, they have a, a very specific playbook, unlike a lot of PEs. Yeah, they have a general playbook, though. They have a playbook of we bring in this team, then this team, then this team, and then you execute against this plan. And this is how we work and this is how. And so, you know, again, it's non founder driven typically, but I think generally speaking, not everyone, but generally speaking, much.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

More common, different animal crazy.

[John Su]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I mean, now that, now that you've said that, I suppose some of the dynamics one sees in the marketplace begin to make sense. I'm curious about, about you. When I was prepping for this conversation, one of the things that stuck out at me is that you're a son of, of two doctors.

[John Su]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

What was that like? And, and, and how did parents feel when you were like, well, you know, I'm actually going to get into like this world of tech and do my own thing.

[John Su]

So they knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I was 11.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

They thought I would outgrow it. They didn't know what I was going to do in a business, but they knew. So, I mean, anyone that's known me was not surprised that I was going to start a business.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

They really.

[John Su]

I was just surprised that I worked for one company before I started.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Who did you work for? Ali K. All right.

[John Su]

Yeah. Which was a great experience and actually it helped me tremendously as an entrepreneur. But I think the longer you stay in consulting, the less entrepreneurial you become.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

True story.

[John Su]

If you don't leave early, you'll get trapped in a weird PowerPoint world instead of reality and you'll, you'll forget how to manage people or whatever it is.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

So my parents had no idea what I was doing, so they said, what? Just go to graduate school? I said, that's kind of a waste of time. So I said, so maybe I'll get like a JD mba, but I'll never use the jd. So I said, okay, maybe I'll get a JDM because you want me to. They prefer that I did medical research and cured cancer. But I said, okay, what if I become a JD MBA and never practiced the law? They go, yeah, that'd be great. Just get an advanced degree. So I, I interviewed six JD MBAs at Harvard while I was there.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Wow.

[John Su]

In undergrad. And none of them were using the JD0. And they said, don't do it. It's like, what? Look at all the JDMs. No one's using the JD. You get the Training. But if you're really going to be an entrepreneur, which actually most people end up doing anyways, or, you know, they're using the MBA side of the world. The JD was intellectually interesting, but somewhat irrelevant to the career path.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Crazy. It's crazy.

[John Su]

I said, oh. So I said, hey, Mom, Dad, I'll get an mpa Public policy, because I did a group negotiation theory in my. In my undergrad. So I said, I'll do like a. I'll go to the Kennedy School and get a double degree there. And they're like, oh, that sucks. As a degree. We want you to get like a doctor or a lawyer degree because we're traditional Koreans.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes.

[John Su]

I go, well. So I applied and accepted. And then I said, nah. After the first year, I was like, I don't even know if I'm gonna finish the mba, but I'm definitely gonna. It's like this Internet thing is timing. You gotta move fast. So I almost dropped out, and I was talking to a professor of mine. He goes, why would you drop out your second year? You can fashion every single class around your business and work on it intensely and no one will care. The first year, you can't do that. The second year, it's all elected. You can do whatever you want.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

So you don't have to drop out. You're going to get your MBA anyways.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure, sure.

[John Su]

So. And I don't think you'll be further behind. So I said, okay. So that's what I did. You know, I, you know, got my MBA and then launched my company. And my parents thought, when are you going to be done with that video gaming thing? I was like, the Internet is not video games. You're playing with computers. I'm not coding. It's this low cost, ubiquitous infrastructure. And they're like, games, games. So that's so good. It wasn't until Lian Fung, we raised 250 million a secondary in March of 2000. And my parents read it in the Journal or something and they went, is that that game you're working on? And I'm like, it's a supply chain coordination company.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's so good.

[John Su]

And they're like, oh, they wrote about you in a newspaper? And I was like, yes. I was like, maybe it'll get respectable even if you ask them today, what did I do? They go, we have no idea.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Crazy. You know, in business, we often confuse hard work with progress. I meet entrepreneurs every single day who are grinding 18 hours, yet their systems are broken. They're invoicing A mess. The way they manage stock and inventory, A mess. Website missing or outdated. And here's the truth. In business, you don't scale chaos. You scale systems. So what I want to talk to you about today, I came across this really interesting software called Odoo, and I want you to check it out. It's not just another shiny app. It's not like a tech gimmick. But what it is, it's actually a way to build an operating system because it has a suite of tools designed for you to enable your business to grow. With Odoo, whether you're running accounting or inventory or sales or you're looking to build an online store, you can do all of those things in a single place. One source of truth, one platform, one entrepreneur. So imagine a world where you're talking and looking at your invoices. You can go from your invoices to your accounting, from your accounting to a point of sales. And all of these systems are talking to each other, including your inventory, all of it happening from your website with a single platform. It's an absolute game changer. And here's the kicker. The first app that you choose on Odoo is free. Free hosting, free support, even a free domain, if that's the one that you go for for a period of a year on which you can build your free website. I like this because there's just no more excuses. No more I don't have the money or I can't build a website. I hear these excuses in my comment section from you guys all the time. And I tell you, you get to keep the excuses that you're fighting for. Now, I bring to you here a platform that you can actually use. That's four builders for founders. That's. That can give you the confidence and the courage to scale your business. So what I've done is I've included a link in the description. Go, hit the link. Go and check out the platform. Tell them I sent you. Because if you're serious about business, I promise you now, Odoo is serious about you. See you soon. So you just, you were just like, fashioned straight off the bat, doing your thing very different. And you were quite clear you wanted to set your own pathway, like. So the John that I'm meeting now has kind of always been you. You're just the guy who's setting his own pathway.

[John Su]

A little more gray hair, a little more experience, a little more war scars. But pretty much, if you don't mind.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

My saying, I mean, it's difficult to do that when You're a child of immigrant parents, right. Because they tend to have very high standards because of their own experiences.

[John Su]

Oh, yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Setting your own pathways. Not like, hey, Mom, I'm just gonna do this. And they go, oh, yeah, sure. Do your thing. You've got to be very strong.

[John Su]

But it's. Well, a lot of it is being Korean. I was just having a conversation with a new friend that I met here, right. And he was saying, tell me about Korean. I was like, well, we have a chip on the shoulder. He goes, and he's French. He goes, I don't understand that colloquialism. I said, well, it means that we have a little chip that's here, and if you knock it down, that's a challenge. So if you say something, it's like you knock the chip out of the shoulder, it's like throwing the gauntlet down. So what does that mean? It's like if you say you can't do something. Yes, I can.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So does the reverse work? You can do something. No, I can't.

[John Su]

No, no. Everyone thinks they can do everything.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I get it. I get it.

[John Su]

And they get deeply. Their pride gets offended when they. Someone doubts them. Right, right. And so I think as Korean entrepreneurs, you know, I looked at. At LegalZoom, we're the largest incorporator of businesses. So I. I was doing some looking at some data of, you know, if you're an immigrant, you're 300% more likely to start a business than someone born inside of the United States.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Wow.

[John Su]

In gen from the vast majority of countries pooled, I think once you take out Mexico, which has great entrepreneurs, but there's so many people immigrating from Mexico that are in other jobs that it, it, it. But it's about 200% on average, about 300% through. You look through the top 80 countries, and we define that as most likely to own shares in a small business born outside of the country. The number one were Persians.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Oh, wow.

[John Su]

Number two were Koreans.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Oh, wow.

[John Su]

And it was a. There was a 0.1% difference. So I tell my Persian friends, you. You edged us out, point one, but we'll get you. But if you look at Even the top 10, it's fascinating because a little bit from everywhere around the world, right? So you have Persians in the Middle east, you've got. The Dominican Republic is up there, Canada is up there. Vietnam is up there. So it's like from every part of the world, there's a section. But you have to. It's a very interesting lens to view Entrepreneurship, because it's the people that left that country and that's different than the people that are in that.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah, it's very different.

[John Su]

Right, so. But when I looked at the commonality between Persians and Koreans is I don't want to work for anyone, including my family in particular, especially my family. So that kind of creates its own entrepreneurial gene.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

Right now, you know, so you see, like these Persian families were like, well, all of us do real estate, but we all have our own companies.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[John Su]

Right. And then we might collaborate on stuff and. But we own our own things.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah, that's very true. Yeah.

[John Su]

So, you know, and I see so many, like, even Korean entrepreneurs that are trying to pass on their business to their kids. The kids like, oh, no, I'll do my own thing. I was like, in your generation, what you did was cool and I, I appreciate what that's been able to give to us in our lives.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

But not for me.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Pithy. Watch what I'm gonna do, dad.

[John Su]

Yeah, I was like, you know, very few entrepreneurs clear $100 million self made like your dad. I wouldn't just poo poo his company like that. But they're like, they haven't seen me. I was like, yeah, you're 18.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

In their minds, they're gonna be clearing that at like 25 or something.

[John Su]

You know, it's like, they're like, you know, I'll be retired in 10 years. I was like, maybe, maybe not.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

As a father, do you, do you think we're, do you not think we're breeding a very, how do I place this? Do you not think we're doing a very, very dangerous job of selling this message of abundance into the, into this like, generation that we're raising as parents? Because if you look at just the, the headlines, right, there's so much to go around. There is the abundance in capital, abundance in emerging technologies and resources, abundance in consumerism. There's just abundance everywhere. And you know, don't you fear that sometimes we're just breeding a, a generation that doesn't have the, a thick skin to weather through the difficult times when those difficult times do.

[John Su]

I don't see abundance everywhere.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Explain that to me. In your world especially, there's abundance everywhere, John?

[John Su]

Well, in my world, yes, sure, in technology. But I also see things like AI radically reshaping the job markets, fundamentally reshaping in a negative way. Many professions taking out 80, 90% of the jobs of certain professions.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

And so, and even like AI is dangerous for coders. Because we need fewer of them because now you can code with natural language. And so that's gonna. The whole nature of coding, in five years, we complete. It's already completely different today than it was 10 years ago. But five years from now, it'll be something that we don't even recognize.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

So I'd say you, you live in incredibly fast changing times and you're going to have to make it on your own. So I don't give them a path towards my abundance. I give them training and preparation and mentorship to figure out their own path.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I'm with you.

[John Su]

But I warn them that it was easier in your dad's generation to be an entrepreneur and to go after it, because this world, you know your chart, you're saying, hey, all of a sudden everything's linear and then it turns geometric.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

The human brain is not very good with geometric.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Explain that.

[John Su]

We think in a linear fashion. So if someone says, well, if computing power doubles every year and you say, well, what will it be like in 20 years? People think, well, it'll just be steeper. No, no, it's not steeper. It's a different animal.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I'm with you.

[John Su]

And so we can't comprehend geometric progression in something like assets compounding. Difficult for people to. They can do the math, but it's difficult for people to grok. And when I say geometric computing power applied to AI with different kinds of functionality, it starts to explode at a pace that you can no longer comprehend. Get your arms around.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I'm with you.

[John Su]

And I think that's frightening because more and more changes are. Are geometric and, and we're radically underestimating the impact on the world. So I see a world where there's. It's dangerous. The wealth concentration is very dangerous. Civility, what we call society, between the haves and have nots, the growing disparity. Now, I think the far left in California got. Got. Were smoking too much of whatever they were smoking and went too far left.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

But this fundamental. Because there's no. I talked about my speech. It's not like the system is. Is rigged against them, et cetera. It's just people with assets that grow geometrically that are spending a tiny portion of their net worth are going to compound and you can never catch up.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

You've got to run me through that, because yesterday when you mentioned it, I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, then I started running the math in my head and I went, hold on. Holy shit. Right. And it's almost as if the Rate at which those assets compound, you can't catch up.

[John Su]

Yeah. And this is how. So I look at it this way. People think, okay, what's, being from the U.S. it'll be American centric. What's this American dream of retirement?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes.

[John Su]

The average American believes they need about a million and a half dollars to retire comfortably.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

The average American saves 8% in the long term. Lately they've been saving much less, but 8% in the long term. So let's say you make, make easy numbers, $100,000 per year, decent income. You're saving 8%, the long term average. And you work for 30 years, you make a 10% average annual return, 1.3 million in your retirement. That's about roughly 3% of Americans end up with that in retirement. And 97% don't.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Whoa. Today where the 97% below that, below.

[John Su]

That and the 3% that do usually are making a lot more in that 1.3 million. So but let's say 30 years, 1.3 million. Now in the other example you put, it's like, let's say someone has an exit their family office, they have a trust fund, whatever it may be. They have $20 million. It's a lot of money. And let's say they're not spending 92,000. Let's say they're spending a million dollars per year. Okay, 20 million, they make 10%. 2 million, they spend a million of it. 1 million goes back. Now they got 21 million.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

You expand that for 30 years. Yeah, aggregates about 100 and I think 184 million. 180. 384 million.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

Which is 140x sure. The person I was so I was like, you can't catch up to this person.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Catching up. Yeah, yeah.

[John Su]

And that's where I think family offices are going to be more and more important because the family office size are going to grow geometrically. And so when you look at what happens over 20 or 30 years, people say, well, why does the, the top 10% own so much more of the country? I was like, they can't help it.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

There is nothing else.

[John Su]

They're on a geometric and you're saving 8% to put into tiny portion feeding it. But they started so much further and they're compounding and they're also getting better returns than you are because they've got exposure to different asset classes with certain minimums. So I look at that and I go, well, you can't catch up. So what does that mean? The richer will always get richer the poor aren't necessarily getting poorer, but if they say compared to comparatively, if I compare myself to Bezos, I get poorer every second.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

His lead keeps growing on me.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's a depressing thought.

[John Su]

He's getting a multiple of my net worth every week, my lifetime earnings. So I said, that's what I mean by other than creating wealth through equity, through creating companies and doing things that are dramatic, you can never catch up.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Wow.

[John Su]

And if I take a look at that as classes of entrepreneurs and then the generation of folks that may or may not inherit that, depending on your estate planning, there's a world where, when hundreds, when 100 million Americans, let's say, feel completely cheated and disenfranchised by a system that's not taking care of them. And they see this, and yet, and they've been seeing this for 10, 20 years, but the level of excess is growing and the disparity is growing if we're not taking care of, of the opportunities to that generation. So they feel like, I had a chance. I had an education, I had assets, I had a chance to be a homeowner, I had a chance at a good life. But it feels like they're locked out. That's where you get civil unrest.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Absolutely.

[John Su]

That's where you get extreme radical behavior.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Absolutely.

[John Su]

And I think America's heading towards a path over the next 20 or 30 years that's front and center in that collide.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So there's a lot of macro themes there. Right. Because I love the way you said, well, the wealthy can't help it. It's in the nature of capital to accumulate. I have this conversation often with friends of mine who are sometimes socialist leaning, and I say to them, you do understand that the nature of capital is accumulation. In fact, it's embedded in the characteristic of capital. It doesn't have to be capitalism, but anything that is capital will seek accumulation. Right. On the one hand you say that and on the other you go, we also have to make sure that we're creating a society that creates opportunities for people so they feel like they have a shot at it. Right in the middle is this conversation about artificial intelligence, which we both agree on. A balance of probabilities is not likely to make the statement true that people feel like they have a shot. What it's actually going to do is it's going to take opportunities away from people rather than immediately bring opportunities to people's tables. So I just, I just, I just. How do you sleep at night knowing and understanding this? Because these are very serious macro Themes.

[John Su]

You know, I think I was fortunate to have been an entrepreneur in the time that I was.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Okay.

[John Su]

And. And it's still. I'm still an entrepreneur and it's still very exciting. But the Internet, you know, there's, you know, Web 1.0, then there was cloud computing, and then you get to crypto. Now you're going to AI. And there's ways of change that fundamentally reshape the world, but nowhere, never as quickly as you think, but then way quicker in hindsight than you would have expected.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure, sure, sure. Fair point.

[John Su]

But we're starting to get wave after wave that the time frame you have to adjust wave gets shorter and shorter. Yeah, right. So it's getting to the point where it's harder to extrapolate. I'm a pattern recognition guy. The patterns are getting more difficult.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Huh.

[John Su]

The pace of change is getting. And just the dramatic nature of change is it used to be stories and the reality was always slower, and now there's stories and the reality is getting faster.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Huh.

[John Su]

So I was like, oh, this is getting. This is getting a little sci fi fantasy. Right?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Holy. What did you just say? It used to be stories. And then the reality was people say.

[John Su]

Oh, the Internet's gonna change everything in five years. I was like, no, it'll change things in like 10 or 12 years.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I'm with you.

[John Su]

Right. And people, I mean, I mean, everyone's talking about autonomous driving. It'll be here in two years, three years. I was like, maybe 10 or 15 years.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

And it's still, it's right on the cusp. But it's still not close.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

Right. It's still. No, it's close. It's. You got Waymo, you got way more. Things are going. So you're a few years off. They just got to figure out the insurance thing. And, you know, but we're right there. But when you think of like, autonomous driving and delivery, the entire food industry is going to be upheaved. Yeah, Right. So if I can get like motorcycles, autonomous motorcycles for $6,000 that have a cold and a hot. And can deliver it, you know, somewhere in that.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

And that's downstream. Right. That's before you do industrial scale Amazon. Moving things from kind of one workshop to another. And all of a sudden that's.

[John Su]

This is just. Yeah. Just doing it. And then you're not using drones, you're just using motorcycles that can drive themselves. Right. With. With heating compartments and, you know, Korea does it. When the incremental cost of delivery is the same as being in the restaurant, whereas in the US it's 2x. So, you know, all of these changes are going to transform the industry. And like, you know, Travis or ghost kitchens got a thesis around that that is fascinating to me. And between autonomous driving and ghost kitchens and platforms and commissaries and concerts, there's going to be a lot of upheaval in an industry that's pretty crappy. Restaurants are very difficult industry.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah. Quickest way to lose money for sure.

[John Su]

Yeah. And you look at, you look at call centers, and I go, I don't understand in the next three years how there can be anything but a 70, 80% reduction in call center work. I mean, I work with the AI company Realbotics, and they're doing really sophisticated AI customer care that operates already as the top 1% of customer care agents at a fraction of the cost. And, you know, one of the companies we implemented, it just eliminated the entire division and now they're getting top 1 percentile performance at 30% of the cost structure. And I was like, you could do that to three, four thousand jobs just as easily as these two dozen jobs. And the function I was there. So I was like, wow, what are all these people going to do? What are you going to do when there's no Uber drivers, when there's no call centers? Right. And I take 12 million jobs out of the system. That's happening fast.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I mean, I hear you. So what do you do when 11 labs is at scale and suddenly you don't need, you know, the creative professionals to shoot ads and to do, you know, you can deploy to your point at scale with just a script and selecting a voice? That's huge. That's scary, John.

[John Su]

It. Well, yeah, what's scary is when you get all these jobs out, what are people going to do?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

But this was going to be my question to you because if I follow your life and your trajectory and we're jumping around a little bit. So I apologize for not following a chronology, but kind of when you started, right, you were at a time when it was pretty clear that there was an emergent technology, there was a sidle use case, and there was an opportunity to disrupt existing industries by creating value addition, and you could make that point. Now you've got an emerging technology, right? You've got a use case, you've got disrupted industries to be disrupted, but not necessarily the absorption from society anymore. That's a big game changer, right? And so a lot of the skill sets required when you guys were starting, it's like very different now, surely it is very different.

[John Su]

But I think being an entrepreneur is the same. I think the challenges, like, you're still surfing, but the waves are rougher, they're larger, they're coming faster, with less time to react between sets of waves. Right, right. And you better be on a different kind of surfboard, then.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So for the benefit of the viewers watching this, this. This podcast talks to entrepreneurs who are at that growth stage where they're trying to figure out how to do next. They've laid out the foundation. The foundation is solid, but it's like, how do I take my skill set to next? You're one of the very few people who's actually done that. If I look at the work that you did, that you and your team did with LegalZoom, look at the work you're doing now in the fo space, and I'm just like, you actually did that. So talk to us a little bit through that journey, like, early days. What were the challenges? And then how did you go? This is what the use case is going to be. And then scale that.

[John Su]

I think it's like fishing. Who finds the best fishing spots? Right. Because that's where the best opportunity, like, here's a river of opportunity. I got to find my place on that river. Opportunity to cast Nice. And take my piece out.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Nice, nice.

[John Su]

How do you find the best place? Well, first, you better start fishing. You better not read about it. You better not, you know, get a drone and look around. You know what you do? You start fishing and then you go. Seems the fish like the slower current off on the sides.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

Maybe that's where I should go. And so by getting in the mix, you're the best. You're best able to position yourself in the river by taking more. So you gotta get your hands dirty and jump in.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

And then you actually have to pull back and say, well, did I? I probably didn't jump in in opportunity spot number one. But if I keep moving, I'm probably going to come across. And also, I don't need to go into the number one place across this 120 miles. I just need to catch my fish. So you're like, I'll get to a place where it's good. And then I gotta say, the enemy of great is good enough. So do you keep moving? Are you still hungry? Do you try to go to that next thing? Right. And so I think some people stop early and they said, I need three fish for my family. I'm coming back, and I'll leave the fish for later because I'M willing to take as much as I need because society's better that way. Get it? Other people like, I'm gonna sell some fish in the market. I want as much as I could get. Right.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I need a fish truck.

[John Su]

So I, I think from my perspective, I was more interested in the process of catching fish. So I was like, how do I catch bigger fish? How do I catch them faster? How do I move along this river? Now what's this river like? I'm trying to understand the principles of this river. It's good, right?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's so good.

[John Su]

So is it, do they like light? The fish like light? Does it like dark? Like fast water, deep water, slow water?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's good.

[John Su]

And then let me see if I can predict where the next opportunity is going to be. Let me go there and test that. Didn't work. That was a nice theory. Didn't work. Let me try this one. So I'm always thinking about that process in more of a, kind of a little bit more meta river. And I think that's what keeps me intellectually interested. And I tend to keep seeing things, oh, there's a big opportunity there, There's a big opportunity there. And so I think it's just being curious and hungry and that keeps you going. And it's also to the, to this. Like we talked a little bit earlier, I'll skip back to when we talked about like founder, non founder friendly at early to late stage. A lot of that has to do with certain theories of leadership that are caught at business schools and in organizational behavior. And one model of leadership that really pissed me off when I was in school was I said, okay, there's a leader, there's a startup leader, there's a growth leader, there's a steward of the brand capital, there's a turnaround guy like chainsaw, and there's these four models. And typically you're good at one of these models and you're not good at any of the other.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah, that's what the theory says.

[John Su]

Right. And so one of the teachers said, so you got to figure out where you're going to play along this.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

I go, hold on, I'm going to start my company. You're saying if I take it to 100 million, I can't take it to a billion, I get to 10 million, can't take it. So I was like, you're going to let me raise my baby and then you're going to take it away from me?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Exactly.

[John Su]

I was like, I find that deeply offensive.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's the Korean chip again.

[John Su]

Yeah, my chip comes out. So I go, hey. I was like. But then we have examples of entrepreneurs that have kept it going all the way goes. No, no, this is the theory. That's the 80, 20% of people can move between them. It may not be best for them, but they have the capacity to move now and then what I found in reality, startup guys that love startups, that's. They don't like the steward. It's too slow. It's big and slow. So they like going back because they like the rush.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes.

[John Su]

They like the creation process. Right. They like. It's like an architect. I like to design the house. I don't want to build it.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes, yes.

[John Su]

I don't want to do the plumbing.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes, yes, yes, I understand.

[John Su]

I want to design it.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure, sure.

[John Su]

That to me is the creative exercise.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

So. And other people are like, well, I like to get my hands dirty.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

100%.

[John Su]

I want to build this.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes, yes. I'm a maintenance guy.

[John Su]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to. I want to construct it with my hands. I want, I want concept to be reality. Reality is more important to me than the concept. Yeah, right. You do your little AI picture. I had the real thing. This is what I appreciate. Right. So I found, you know, fascinating. Usually people love what they're good at. And so they say, okay, I'm passionate about this. I'm going to stay. I'm a steward. Fine. I'll take a public. And it's weird because people have egos about it. Like, I was talking to one public company CEO because, you know, I love what you guys do in building. I could never do that. And I'm like, the tone. And I didn't know this person that well, felt patronizing. I was like, no, because your job is to take over. Right. As a steward, you're hired in. Right. You're taking over an existing public company. You're popping in, you say, no, I respect the founding process, but I can never do it myself. And what you're also saying is they couldn't do what you do.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

100%.

[John Su]

Right. That's the subject.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's the. Yeah. I was about to say, and by.

[John Su]

The way, some, some people can't, nor do they want to, but other people can. So you're so with saying it as if I can't do what you do, but you can't do what I do.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes.

[John Su]

And mine is I like my risk reward profile better than yours.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes.

[John Su]

Type of thing. So I was like, hey, don't take it all personal. Get your egos out of this. What do you love to do? What makes you happy? Go do it. Go do it. If you're mission driven and you want to see that mission accomplished, you want to stay with that company and stay with the mission. Right. So there are things more important than I'm good at a certain skill set, so therefore I should transition. My skill sets no longer valuable. That's not the way entrepreneurs think. So I think that's just one of the things that it's important to be cognizant as you shift gears from startup to growth to maintaining a larger company. How do you as a leader need to change your behavior? You can't do it by doing the.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Same thing you did in the early days. Did you have a sense of how big the market was going to be, that the. How big the Internet was going to be?

[John Su]

Yes.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

What was it in your mind that you downloaded to help you understand that.

[John Su]

What you could do as a business, the way you could communicate instantly, the way you could break these predetermined channels of communication. Like someone said something a long time ago about like the Cosby show at one point would have like, you know, 40% of adult Americans tuned in on a, whatever night it was showing. Wow. Right. You know, and that's before content fragmentation from cable.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's crazy, right?

[John Su]

So. So the powers that be in media could force feed. Right. Society almost like propaganda.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Exactly.

[John Su]

Like boom. Here's the model American family. Here's our version of comedy. Here's our version.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yes. And then the same thing with music too. Right?

[John Su]

Right. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, with content proliferation and micro niches, now there's a creative explosion and now you can't control it. So when I looked at again where the Internet was going with, we're going to get faster. The infrastructure will take time to develop, but we'll have a low cost infrastructure that will be ubiquitous, that can move text, images and video instantaneously at high fidelity. What does that mean for commerce? What does that mean for content and consumption? And how will they interact? And I was like, wow, this will be pretty transformative. Because the world of not having it is boring, inefficient, and relies on imperfect information and asymmetry of information in order to make your mark.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's exactly what it is.

[John Su]

So you go, well, if I have perfect information, all this crappy business is to disappear.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's right. That's right.

[John Su]

And it's like. And what I liked about the Internet is usually it's winner take all.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's right.

[John Su]

Like after ebay, who's number two? They suck, huh? Right after Amazon.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I hear you, I hear you.

[John Su]

So there's not a lot of room for number two. The Internet doesn't like that. They like one, like five people try to be one. One is one and two is 10. Doesn't matter.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's like, we all know medallion and then nobody else. I got you.

[John Su]

The Korean competitive chip guy goes, good to be one there. Let me go to an industry where one's very valuable.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So good.

[John Su]

And so that, to me, is the fun part of it.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right?

[John Su]

And so that's why when I thought, wow, when winner takes all for a market as large as the U.S. and then the Internet is going to be global now, one US Becomes one global.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's right.

[John Su]

If you can manage all the politics and the regulation and privacy and all the other things that will come up. But I was like, wow. So what we think of as a global conglomerate today, which is based on amassing capital that can be deployed, those that can raise capital, the capital markets, then deploy them in other markets without such capital and have a competitive advantage, which is just brute force.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So good.

[John Su]

Now the Internet, I. I built a better mousetrap in a big market. I'll take your small market. I'll take your other big market. That's right. Right. And so you're like, ooh, this gets really interesting. I think the new titans of industry will all be in tech because they're going to go global in a way that other people can't, and their competitive advantage transfers. Wow. In a way that won't. So now the stakes are much bigger. You're not playing for the US you're playing for the world.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Huh.

[John Su]

So that I was like, oh, this is a fun. This is a much better place to be an entrepreneur because your success gets amplified. Not everyone goes global, but the fact that you can. The fact you can take it to a different level is far more interesting. And if you, you know, you like to travel and you like to speak different languages and you like communicating with different cultures, it's a pretty rewarding thing. When you start expanding internationally, it's fun. So that's. I think that's. What attracted me, is you could just kind of extrapolate, ooh, this world is going to be different. It's going to be a fun place to be. It'll be a pain in the ass, but, wow, you could spend 10, 20, 30 years and not get bored.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So you guys build a business, you exit of all of the Things you could have done. How do you find yourself now? Being on the other end, Deploying capital now in the FO space, managing a family office. Like, why? You know, I suppose the question I'm asking is, why didn't you go back for second dibs and go, we're gonna do this again?

[John Su]

My kids didn't want me to.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Oh, wow.

[John Su]

So I asked my kids.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

You asked your kids?

[John Su]

I spent a lot of time with my kids, right? I got three boys, right? And so I asked him, daddy's exiting legalzoom. He's got a few ideas to start up a new company. You want dad to take some time off? They said yes. And they were very strong about it. They said, we're only kids for so long. We like spending a lot of time. They don't remember that I used to spend one or two days a week in a different city or a different country every week. They don't remember that. All they remember now is since COVID they're like, dad's here all the time. My son's like, going out to dinner again. I was like, it's been three weeks since I've gone out to dinner. What do you mean again? You're getting way too used to dad being.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So.

[John Su]

I was like. And then covet hit shortly. And so I was spending a ton of time with children, and it was great. And I was like, okay, during this craziness, let's go to Korea. Let's escape this lockdown. Let's give you an international experience. Let's go. Had a great time with it, you know, started investing, but would be more of a board member, active, you know, executive director, so and so, like, that was a good place to be during this whole Covid craziness. And it was great for my kids. And so when we moved back to Los Angeles in June, after, you know, five years of bouncing around in different places, I asked my kids, dad's getting a little itchy. About ready. Then my 14 year old, my 12 year old said, now it's more important that you're home.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Oh, wow.

[John Su]

We got four years left, and then I'm off to college. Isn't this the time where you should be teaching us, spend time with us?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Wow, John.

[John Su]

And I'm like, you're gonna make me feel really guilty doing something new.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Did they win the debate?

[John Su]

For now. I said, there's a balance between me being a father and me being a human being.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Amen.

[John Su]

And so there's certain things that I do love what I'm doing now, but I do itch for more and I'll find the correct balance. It, it moves around. So I was like, listen, it's not as, it's not as crystal clear and black and white. I can be an investor, I can be in an operator. Right. And in, in some ways I could spend 20% or 30% of my time in one company and that's okay. And I could spend 0% of my time in another company and it's fine. But now I can choose what's interesting, what's the best use of time, who needs me to be more active?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

When we started chatting earlier, you made the point about how you think family offices is going to be perhaps the most influential force in private capital in the next couple of decades. Run me through your thesis on this.

[John Su]

So first I see the concentration of wealth in a wider and wider group.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

So when you look at folks that have exited now and they've got a 10 million or 20 million or 50 million dollar exit, and you know, of course there's people with, you know, up and down the spectrum, there's a lot of people that, there's been a lot of wealth creation and those family offices are nascent, they're new. They haven't dealt with generational planning, but they're going to learn fast. They're going to learn the lessons from, from folks beyond. And there's a lot of it. They're starting now and there's always been consortiums, but they're getting more formal, more powerful and competing in different ways. So it used to be those family offices would take a percent and say, oh, I'll put some in alternatives and I'll be an LP here, you know, so I'm a hedge fund and I go, okay, I got my endowments, I got my pension funds, I got my family offices and I'll take your piece and increasingly like. But that family office is in a deal with me and that family office.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Is going to deal with me. Sure, sure.

[John Su]

So it's starting to happen.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

They're writing larger and larger checks and then you get the mega family offices, of which I just met one earlier.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Today that kind of shocked me. What is a mega family office?

[John Su]

They're folks that can write $500 million.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Checks on a single ticket.

[John Su]

Well, do you think, think of Bezos family office when you've got $150 billion of assets, 500 million ain't all that much.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

That's a fair point.

[John Su]

Right?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's a fair point.

[John Su]

You know, if he's making 15 billion on his 10 return, you know, and Amazon's growing more than 10%. Right. You're getting these incredible assets and so now these. So when you look at again, there's the, the wealthiest tech entrepreneurs and they're largely tech entrepreneurs that have been doing this and Philip's been doing across many industries. But when I see about wild generational wealth, folks at Alibaba, whether it's Jack, Ma or Josiah or you look at what Jensen's going to eventually do at Nvidia, I'm not sure. I don't know him, so I don't know what he's up to or, you know, people are starting to write checks that are very large and competing with other types of private equity type investments.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's crazy.

[John Su]

And more and more people are doing that. More people are coming together in a way that funds are kind of doing what funds have been doing. So. Yeah, but that playbook is pretty straightforward and a lot of people are doing it and they, you know, one of the partner goes off and does it and then as good really, they schism. But it's kind of boring.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

Doing their thing.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[John Su]

But still relative to 15 years ago, there's same two dozen folks now two or three family offices have come into two or three country funds have come into it. So country funds and family offices I see are the things that are starting to move crazy. And now this incremental value, you have to take your 1% in management fees and your 20% in carry.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Carry.

[John Su]

More and more people, I could do that myself, 100%.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Now I don't have fees and I don't have the carry. So I'm getting into the same transaction.

[John Su]

With the same risk profile, I can give people that. But then increasingly if that becomes interesting, if I want to save on the fee structure, the carry, if I think I can add similar kinds of value. And by being an lp, I'm learning which a lot of family offices are doing and then they're going direct after that learning period. So I'm curious what that's going to do over time. But my exposure to some of the family offices, they're pretty bright folks. And the second generation coming in want to make their own mark. They don't want to be passive investors allocating capital. So I was like, if they want to make their own mark, they're going to go direct. And they may be going direct at larger check sizes than you think. Now they're doing the going direct might be a 10 million or $20 million check, which is still big for family office but that second generation wealth might want to start writing 50 or 100 million. Well, all of a sudden now they're going right up against the big guys. So it'll be interesting to see. But you know that that's what I see as the extrapolation of what's happening today.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Before I let you go, we call this podcast Ideas that Matter. You know, we're at over a couple of tens of millions of downloads, 1point something million subs on YouTube. I only mentioned the macro numbers so that you understand the weight of the question I'm going to ask you next, which is the last question, the reason we call it Ideas that matters, because my theory is that every single person has a single idea they hold to be so true that it drives them no matter what's happening in the world or what's happening in their lives. If I were to ask you what is that idea, apart from the Korean chip of the shoulder, what's the single idea you hold to be so true that you think you can bend the universe to believe it?

[John Su]

You know, someone asked me this in a previous interview. Like what's your one saying? I don't have one.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Really?

[John Su]

I am Christian.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right.

[John Su]

So there are many things that come to mind, but not one.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure.

[John Su]

I think for me, what drives me is to live an interesting life and a fulfilling life.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Amen.

[John Su]

Based on the values that I grew up with and the values that I hold dear. And they're different than other people's values. So I care about things that other people don't care about. And that's cool. You don't have to care about the thing. But when I want to spend my life working in something, it needs to reflect my passion, my interest, my values. So I'm fully engaged and feel alive. So for me it's more about keeping the curiosity alive and then executing against it and feeding it and growing it. But I don't really have an end game. I don't have an end goal other than on my bucket list. I want a piece of the Lakers. That's my thing. That's. That's.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Hey, as long as I get courtside.

[John Su]

That'S, that's, that's what motivates.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Ladies and gentlemen, that's my good friend John Sue, I'd like to call him. He's my good friend now, who soon is going to have a piece of the Lakers. Thank him so much for joining our Ideas that Matter podcast down below, we'll share all of John's details that you can go and follow him on all the different socials. John, I think you're capital raising at the moment, right?

[John Su]

Oh, for Some of the companies that I've invested in are capital raising, yes.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Right. So. So he's for those of you who watch this, who are institutional investors, he's in the capital markets as well. We'll make sure that we give you all of his details. John, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to let him go because he's got a startup competition for which I have have now made him 10 minutes late. And I profusely apologize and I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Share with us comments below about what you thought were the insights and nuggets that came out of it for you. Cheers.