← The Rest Is Money
The Rest Is Money
254. The outsider’s edge: How Sir Michael Moritz built a billion-dollar empire
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- [00:00]
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Sir Michael Moritz
L I N He knows how to incite a mob, and today he needs to be able to always have the attention focused on him. I have forgotten how exhausting and draining it was to have Trump as president because he cannot stand not being in the center of any news cycle. Put yourself in the position of, say, Tim Cook, who runs Apple, or Satya Nadella at Microsoft. They're in a terrible position. They're dealing with a mobster. They're dealing with a shakedown artist who, like Tony Soprano, is a bully and thug. If they cross this man, he will seek vengeance in one way or another. And he has all the tools of state and policies in to damage their enterprises. Make sure you're not surrounded by people from Britain.
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Steph McGovern
Right, so what does that mean?
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Sir Michael Moritz
That means
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Steph McGovern
we're delighted to say that this year the rest is money is being powered by Octopus Energy. And that means we get to welcome back the founder of Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson, now CEO of it. Time for a quick fire question. What's the one bit of advice you give a young entrepreneur? Maybe it's stuff that people don't normally talk about.
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Narrator/Advertiser
Don't be arrogant, but do be confident. Almost by definition, as an entrepreneur, you're doing stuff that other people didn't think is going to work or they've discounted or dismissed. So you have to be confident to believe in your own ideas and your ability to deliver them, but you should still listen to everyone else and learn from them and not be arrogant. I think that is the secret to being able to build something special but successful.
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Steph McGovern
Well, cheers Greg, and thank you for powering this episode of the Rest Is Money. Hello and welcome to the Rest is Money with me, Steph McGovern. Now today I am chatting to Sir Michael Moritz. He is a Cardiff born venture capitalist. He started life as a journalist and then went on to become one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world. And to put some numbers on that, he's got a personal fortune of about 4.4 billion pounds according to the Sunday Times Rich list. He spent nearly 40 years running Sequoia Capital, through which he was an early investor in companies like Google and PayPal, Yahoo, Airbnb, YouTube, and that's just a few of them. So there's lords to talk to him about in terms of investment growth, AI Trump and geopolitics. But I started the interview by asking about his new book, Ochlander, which is all about his family's escape from Nazi Germany. Here's my interview with Sir Michael Moritz. Thank you so much for joining us because I know you're on a busy schedule at the minute promoting your book.
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Sir Michael Moritz
I'm glad to be here.
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Steph McGovern
Thanks.
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Sir Michael Moritz
Thanks for having me.
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Steph McGovern
And obviously, I mean, you've spent decades building Silicon valleys biggest businesses and I imagine lots of people would have expected you to be coming out with a business book. So tell me what, why did you decide to write a book which is kind of your, you know, a deeply personal family history?
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Sir Michael Moritz
Well, I mean I, I'd been asked to write a book about Sequoia or about Silicon Valley, but I just didn't really have any interest in doing that. And there are a lot of books about Silicon Valley and I'm not sure that I had anything particular to add to it. And I actually, this book, Auslander, was accidental. I never set out to write it. And to some extent now that it's out, I'm surprised that it's out because I didn't have any grand plan to write a book about my family.
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Steph McGovern
But it came about, didn't it? Because after your mum died you found lots of documents and things.
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Sir Michael Moritz
First of all, my, my mum died at the age of 95 and just a few weeks before COVID And my mother, who was always predicting doom of some sort, she would have been really dismayed to have missed out on Covid because it was one of the disasters she'd been predicting for previous 50 years. Anyway, so she died at a grand old age. And then lockdown happened. My sister had cleared out family house, and she had found a bunch of papers and documents and old passports and visas and photograph albums and everything that every family has. And she shipped them off to me in California. And they were in four cardboard boxes. And I had time on my hands because everybody remembers when lockdown occurred. Suddenly you weren't rushing hither and yon. There was no commuting, and I wasn't traveling. And so suddenly I had all these hours in the day, and I began to rummage through these cartons. And I didn't think it was going to take me all that long to go through the cartons. But then I kept coming across one document or one object after another, and I began to get very curious. I knew, obviously, the outlines of my family history about Germany and the 30s and the 40s and the Nazis and World War II. I had no idea of the particular details. I had no sense of what it must have been like to go through that experience. And so I began delving and just sort of satisfying my curiosity more than anything else. And that, step by step, wound up with the book.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah. I mean. Cause that must have been really emotional
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Sir Michael Moritz
as well, doing that fair degree of detachment. There were certainly some emotional vignettes and some emotional moments associated with it, but. But I found the whole mystery tour of trying to figure out, you know, I began, like lots of people who are interested in their families. I began with ancestry.com and then it's astonishing how much information is digitized and stored in a digital archive somewhere.
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Steph McGovern
Did it change your understanding of yourself then, do you think?
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Sir Michael Moritz
Very much so, yeah. I'm gonna be 72 years old this year, so some of it is just being at a different stage of my life and perhaps not being in a grand rush anymore. Some of it is regretting and reflecting on some of the things that I may have done as a teenager while I was growing up. But everybody has all that sort of stuff and, you know, things you're embarrassed or ashamed about. But it certainly made me understand how somehow in some aspects of my life, like all of us, I was echoing the behavior of one or other of my parents and had inherited, for good and for bad, what it was that they. That they brought. And I sort of began to mimic.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah, because you talked on you in the book about inherited despair. So what do you mean by that? Like, how did that manifest in you, do you think?
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Sir Michael Moritz
That particular generation, it's like all refugees. It doesn't matter where they came from. You know, maybe these days they might come from Senegal or Afghanistan or wherever. Or Sudan or wherever people. Somalia, wherever people are persecuted. The feelings of what it is like to be marked, to be unwanted, to be hunted, leaves a very deep imprint on people. And both my parents were fairly young. My father, they were both about 14 when they got out of Germany. Much of our family was murdered on both sides of our family. So they were always worried. They were always concerned about a repetition of those sorts of events, no matter what. The fact that we were living in Wales in the 50s and 60s, that sort of sense of impending doom hovered over everything. It was. And my parents, understandably, were part of, you know, their connections in Cardiff, even though they were very well assimilated. But their closest connections were in the Jewish refugee community. And they all shared this bond of having lived through these painful experiences.
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Steph McGovern
There's a really interesting thing you see with lots of business leaders where often the most successful ones have had kind of some trauma in their childhood or some, you know, like maybe they've experienced a death of a parent. And there's Robert, who I do this podcast with. Robert and I have talked in the past about whether that gives you some type of. I don't know, it makes you take more risks in life, whether it makes you have just a different way of viewing how you then take on your career in life. Would you say that's part of it, then? This inherited despair has made you. Maybe has made you as successful as you've become.
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Sir Michael Moritz
I think being an outsider perhaps helps, but there are a lot of people who've been through terrible times, either themselves or via their families, who have then not led extraordinary lives like, you know, the leaders say, of some of these companies that everybody knows the names of. If you're on the outside and you have to forge your own destiny and nothing is handed to you, you then have to work very hard to make the best of yourself, as opposed to living in a very comfortable setting where you know the greatest risk that you're ever gonna make or the greater. Sometimes I chuckle when I interview people and I ask them, so tell me, what's the greatest risk you ever took? Well, it was deciding whether to go to Harvard or Stanford. That doesn't qualify.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting. Cause, you know, as you say you're talking about and that. That's essentially the title of your book, isn't it? It's German for Foreigner, Outsider. So you've. That's how you felt then in your. Your life and very much so.
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Sir Michael Moritz
And you know, I grew up in Wales and I don't know when it was first. When it first dawned on me that I was different from all the other kids I. I knew. But you know, my parents used to insist that we went to synagogue on a Saturday morning, which was pretty irritating when you're growing up and you want to go out and play football with your. With your pals. But, you know, the thing that struck home most of all is in the days when people used to get telephone directories once a year a fresh telephone directory would arrive. And I remember this. So we get the directory for the yellow pages. Well, the yellow pages, but then also.
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Steph McGovern
Oh, yes, the book. The personal ones and yes, so the
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Sir Michael Moritz
book had arrived and I remember doing this for several years. I would flick through the directory to the ems and I'd look down hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping that there were other Moritzes in the telephone book. But we were the only Moritz in the telephone book. And of course there were pages and pages of Evanses and Davises and Hughes and Thomases and Williams. But to me, the telephone directory said, you're very different from everybody else.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah. Gosh, that's fascinating that it came from you looking. So how old were you when you were looking at the telephone book for?
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Sir Michael Moritz
I was probably 12 or 13, I'd imagine.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah.
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Sir Michael Moritz
Impressionable young teenage years. But it really struck home.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah. And so. And do you think that's carried on for you then throughout your career?
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Sir Michael Moritz
Very much so, yeah.
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Steph McGovern
Obviously you became a journalist and worked for Time magazine and then joined Sequoia Capital. And that was unusual for you to be taken on at Sequoia, wasn't it? Because wasn't it the guy running out at the time wanted to try and be a bit more diverse and you were diverse and that morphs. You were history.
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Sir Michael Moritz
He wasn't thinking about being diverse. I was very lucky to get hired because I didn't have the background that you'd expect for somebody going into the venture business. And because I was a journalist, I had a humanities background and no science background, no work experience in a. In a technology. But no, it wasn't a question of diversity as much as he couldn't figure out what would make a successful venture capitalist because he felt that the people he thought would be successful venture capitalists, they hadn't succeeded. The few that had been very successful had unlikely backgrounds. So that was the reason. It wasn't because I came from Britain or represented anything else, it was just he wasn't quite sure.
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Steph McGovern
So he Took a flyer and it obviously worked.
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Sir Michael Moritz
Yes, I'm not complaining.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah. And that, do you think then that that's because you looked at it differently from other people? Because, you know, I've heard you talk about how being. It's a bit like being a journalist, being an investor in the sense of, you know, it's storytelling, it's decision making based on, you know, what you find out, the evidence you find out, and how you then present that and communicate it.
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Sir Michael Moritz
I didn't realize it at the time because I felt very much out of place in the venture business because I didn't have conventional stripes on my arm that you'd expect for someone in the venture business. And I think most of the peers of Don Valentine, who was the founder of Sequoia, who hired me, thought he had lost his marbles. But I had two big advantages which I only discovered in retrospect. The first was Oxford, and the second was journalism, and both taught me the same skills. And when I went to Oxford and, you know, I was brought up under the tutorial system and we were assigned a topic, I studied history, about which we knew nothing. At the beginning of every week, assigned a bunch of books, had to come back a week later with a 2,500 3,000 word essay where we had to pretend to a certain degree of mastery over the particular topic. Fast forward to journalism. You get assigned a story about a topic or a subject you know nothing about. And you've been through this. You had to, you had to read this book and you plunge into it and you've gotta figure out who's pulling the wool over your eyes, who the charlatans are, who the honest brokers are. You've gotta assimilate all the information very quickly. And then in the case of journalism, you have to write a story or host a, host a podcast with a point of view. That's the same as investing, very much the same as investing. You meet an entrepreneur and you listen to his or her description of, first of all, you don't know them, listen to the description of the business that they're trying to start. You're trying to figure out as much as possible about whether the individual and the business makes sense. And you never have all the information that you want. If you have all the information that you want, it's too late.
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Steph McGovern
And so, so then given the companies that through Sekor you invested in, you know, we're talking about all the biggest players, your Googles, you know, your YouTubes, your Airbnbs and everything else, was there some in those moments of meeting those, those founders, those entrepreneurs. I mean, because you talk, don't you, about how it's a long process, it's not overnight success and you know, it take a long, long time. So. And that's a big commitment, especially in a world where we're very much plugged into short termism, whether that's politics or shareholder pressure or whatever it is. So how do you know who to commit to?
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Sir Michael Moritz
You don't, right?
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Steph McGovern
I want the secrets to become a billionaire. Come on.
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Sir Michael Moritz
Particularly when somebody's 20 or 21 years old, 22 years old, you have no idea how they're going to develop as an individual. I didn't understand this at the beginning, but again, there's a bit of a pattern that run through it. So the first thing I think that becomes a distinguishing mark is the ability of somebody who on the whole is fairly young, not always, but on the whole is fairly young, who can educate you about something that you know very, very little about, or who sees something extremely differently, and who also has mastered the subject. And so you can go back to the beginning, say, I'll give you one example of this, of the personal computer business. Bill Gates got interested in personal computers when he was 12 or 13 years old. He knew more about personal computers than all the big muckety mucks running all the computer companies. And so I think first of all, it's the humility that you need to show as say a 40 year old or a 50 year old to somebody who's 22, but who knows a lot more about one particular topic than you. Second thing that you need from that individual is a sense that they can communicate very clearly. Because so much of the challenge, or so many of the challenges associated with a company are all associated with being able to describe what it is and how you see your company evolving over time. Because you've got to persuade somebody, some bright engineers to leave a job someplace. You've got to persuade perhaps more investors later on to invest in your company. You've got to persuade customers to buy a service or product that they didn't know that you need. So being able to lucidly describe the benefits of this product that you've concocted, the service you've concocted is very important. And then the third thing is this sort of unquenchable hunger and drive and tenacity and resilience and persistence. And often these people aren't the easiest sorts of people to deal with or communicate with because they're very strong will. But you need a strong willed person.
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Steph McGovern
It's so interesting that, because I guess getting all three of those things is quite rare because, for example, you know, with communication, it's not something you essentially get a qualification in. It's, you know, I think often, particularly in the uk, the education system falls down on, on any kind of training around communication. It feels like it's, it's classed as a soft skill, which does my head in as a phrase, because I think it's the most important skill, quite frankly. And so to get all of those three together feels like it's probably rarer.
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Sir Michael Moritz
It's very, very difficult. Now, it doesn't mean that they necessarily have to be evocative storytellers in the way that would hold the attention of a podcast audience for 30 minutes. But I'll give you one example. So, and Larry Page, who is one of the founders, this enormously talented man, one of the founders of Google. And you know, I asked and it took me, I didn't get it straight away, it took me some time to understand it. I said, you know, what is it that you see in the future of Google? And he said, I want to put the Internet on my hard drive today. Obviously, Google has put the Internet on a whole bunch of servers and data centers all over the world, but the Internet is there on Larry's hard drive, on running hundreds, maybe millions of computers
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Narrator/Advertiser
all over the world.
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Sir Michael Moritz
And just that was in 1998. Yeah, and it's, and it's true today. And then you have other people, the, the most well known example and the most mesmerizing storyteller. And this is a man who could hold an audience in the palm of his hand for 30 minutes. And Larry's a very, very shy, introverted fellow. Steve Jobs, mesmerizing storyteller, Absolutely mesmerizing. And he could persuade anyone to do anything. Steve was a bit of an outlier in many respects, but one of the ways in which he was an outlier was that he had the sensibility of a liberal arts graduate. Although he never graduated from college, but he was interested in writing, in poetry, in culture. It's no accident that Apple, many years later produced a documentary about Bob Dylan that Steve had come up with. And he had a poetic sensibility that most of the other founders in Silicon Valley that I've come across don't come close to possessing. Steve was without doubt the most mesmerizing storyteller that I've ever seen in Silicon Valley.
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Steph McGovern
But Michael, this is absolutely enthralling. There's loads more to ask you, but let's sit tight for a quick break.
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- [24:34]
Steph McGovern
This episode is brought to you by Vanguard. Now, when it comes to your finances, you want to work with companies you trust, don't you? It can be really complicated when you're investing, you know, trying to work out where your money's going. And it can be confusing, can't it? And that's where Vanguard comes in because they always put investors first and they're delivering on that promise for 50 million investors worldwide with a wide range of funds and a platform that keeps costs low and makes investing simple. You can also open an ISA or a self invested personal pension, choosing investments yourself or letting Vanguard choose them for you. Search Vanguard Investor to find out more. Now when investing your capital is at risk, tax rules apply. It feels like the common denominator is again linking back to the title of your book, it's the Outsider. And I often wonder this because, you know, not to compare myself to you, you know, incredibly successful entrepreneurs and things, but I, you know, I come from a working class background, joined because it was an engineer. When I started out, I was one of very few women, so I was the outsider from that perspective. Then when I joined the media, I was the only one with a regional accent in the BBC doing national news. And that was a big thing. And people were like, how can she possibly be intelligent with that voice and all that jazz? But it became my superpower because then you get underestimated, I think. And that is like your, you're like, come on then, underestimate me and let's see what I do next. And I wonder if that's the sense I got from what you're talking about in Terms of outsiders is, I mean, you can sink or swim, can't you, as an outsider? But it's how you choose to.
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Sir Michael Moritz
There's also benefit as you, as you were suggesting that, you know, the expectations that others have for you are so low.
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Steph McGovern
Yes.
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Sir Michael Moritz
That maybe for me, when I got into the venture business, for you, when you got into journalism originally, that there's really only one way to go.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah.
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Sir Michael Moritz
I think it's a bit different for the entrepreneurs because they're, they're doing something beyond just building their own life. I mean, they're building a company along with it and that's a much harder undertaking than what I've done as an individual.
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Steph McGovern
We often talk on the show about tech in the UK and investment in the UK and how we can encourage more of it. And why is it, if we do set up a great tech company here, it's often the Americans who come in and buy it. The example being obviously Google. DeepMind is one of the ones we talk about. If you were, you know, talking to a young tech entrepreneur now, would you still say to them, would you say to them to go to America? Is it still Silicon Valley where it's at? Because, you know, I know I've heard you talk about when you were starting out as a journalist and it was Evelyn Waugh, wasn't it, the foreign editor at the Times, who'd said to you, go to American. Yes, Bill Deeds. Sorry. And he told you to, you know, go to America. And so did you. I mean, would you say that to a young tech entrepreneur now?
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Sir Michael Moritz
Well, it's, it's a little nuanced, but what I would say, I think is, I think if you want to start your company, Look, Demis at DeepMind did this brilliantly up to a certain point, obviously when he sold his company to Google. I think if you intent on starting a company in Britain, what you need to do is ensure that the people around you. Please don't go on, just say it. With some exceptions. I hope people listening aren't too insulted. Make sure you're not surrounded by people from Britain.
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Steph McGovern
Right, so what does that mean? That means a mindset or a.
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Sir Michael Moritz
It means hiring people who've had, who come from companies that, where they've experienced great success or they know what great success tastes like. It means not having a British board of directors. It means having Americans largely and maybe you'll find, you know, people from elsewhere. But make sure you have a US dominated board of directors. If you're starting your business because they've
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Steph McGovern
had success more than we ever have. So therefore I've got the experience. Right.
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Sir Michael Moritz
And they can lift the aspirations, ambition.
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Steph McGovern
That's depressing, though, that hearing that, like, you've got to have Americans on board in order to do well. Like, do you see a point where we can change the balance? Or, you know, what, what do we need to do? We, I guess we just need to have some mega successful companies that we don't sell to the Americans. And then.
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Sir Michael Moritz
Yeah, and then that can. I mean, that's certainly what happened in Silicon Valley, which is. And it's like anything else. I mean, anytime you have a sort of great cultural flourishing, it doesn't matter whether it's in Florence or Amsterdam or perhaps today in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen, you have patterns of success and incredibly successful people all the way around you, and you're just surrounded by them and they're prepared to answer an email, have a breakfast with you, have a coffee with you, share advice, all of that sort of stuff which is invaluable if you're building a company and you can't, if you're building a young tech company, be surrounded, particularly on a board of directors, by people who may be very well meaning, they may be very smart, but their only experience in life is as having come from a career in a large multinational company. Yeah, it's a different milieu.
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Steph McGovern
But I guess the other argument to this is it could be British people, go to America, get the experience, come back.
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Sir Michael Moritz
For sure. For sure. Yeah, I think there's some examples of that.
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Steph McGovern
Can I ask you about Trump? Because obviously, you know, you, you've the, the context of your book and they, you know, you talk about this convolution context. Don't you have Trump's America, the hatred, the intolerance, and the kind of parallels you see in history with what your family went through. Can you just tell us a bit more about that? Because that is, you know, obviously something that's deeply concerning. The rise of antisemitism in the UK and in the US is, again, I mean, it's really depressing. It's kind of scary. And how does that feel for you?
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Sir Michael Moritz
It's very kind of you, I think, as a nonjew, to say that. So I'm very careful in the book not to fall into the trap of labeling Trump or his acolytes as fascists. I don't call them Nazis. I don't think Trump himself is an anti Semite. And even though he doesn't care or give a wit about what happens to these people who get detained in these terrible raids or get deported. He doesn't care about what happens to them or the circumstances into which they get shipped. I don't for a moment think he wants to set up slave camps or anything like that. The thing that frightens a minority, and it doesn't matter whether in America you come from Somalia or you come from China or Latin America or you're Muslim or you're Jewish, is that Trump has one of his gifts, is he is able to prey on the anxieties and the frustrations and the jealousies of people who feel that they've been ignored, that they've been dispossessed, that they've been left behind. And he knows how to incite a mob. A mob is the most terrifying prospect for any minority. And we all saw it on January 6 with the onslaught on the Capitol. Yeah, we've seen it recently, even though, shamefully, these people came dressed in uniforms of federal officers in Minneapolis. I see it occasionally on the streets of San Francisco, where you have ice, you know, clusters of ice on the street. But for me, it started with, like, a lot of other people in America. It started with this march. I think it was in 2017 in Charlottesville, where you had people brandishing torches, yelling, chanting, the Jews will not defeat us. And that had obviously echoes of what had come a long time before, and followed by the fact that Trump himself wouldn't condemn the behavior, which, again, if you're a minority, leaves you feeling very vulnerable.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah, yeah, because there's that. I mean, we're seeing it across the world, aren't we? This playing to, you know, popularism, coming from playing to people's and ease and then legitimizing it and popularizing it, and it's really dangerous.
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Sir Michael Moritz
I think it's the trait of authoritarian leaders through history.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah. And I know in the book you talk about, it's kind of a ratings thing. It's Trump.
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Sir Michael Moritz
He doesn't govern, he programs. He's a TV programmer. And 40 years ago, he couldn't bear the prospect of opening the New York Post and not finding his name somewhere in there, preferably on the front page. And today, he needs to be able to always have the attention focused on him. So it doesn't matter whether the topic is Venezuela or Greenland or today, I think the Chagos Islands or Ukraine or anything else, it's got to be newsworthy. I had forgotten how exhausting and draining it was to have Trump as president, because he cannot stand not being in the center of any news cycle.
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Steph McGovern
Yeah, but I mean, it's been. I mean, you know, the way you talk about Trump, there's not many business leaders that are doing that. You know, people are shying away from calling.
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Sir Michael Moritz
I'm in a much easier position. So put yourself in the position of, say, Tim Cook who runs Apple or Sundar Pichai who runs Alphabet or Satya Nadella at Microsoft. They're in a terrible position. They're dealing with a mobster. They're dealing with a shakedown artist who, like Tony Soprano, grew up in Queens and is a bully and thug. And they know full well that they, that if they cross this man, he will seek vengeance in one way or another. And he has all the tools of state and policies in which to damage their enterprises. Their responsibility is to look after the welfare of their business. They know who he is. They know that he is an absurd buffoon, and they're just wanting to protect their business as best as they can,
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Steph McGovern
but at what cost to humanity?
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Sir Michael Moritz
Because there must be a point where,
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Steph McGovern
as a business leader.
- [36:26]
Sir Michael Moritz
But you see, I think there's a big difference, say, between the business leaders in America today and the business leaders in Germany in the 1930s. It's not as if the business leaders are employing slave labor. It's not as if they're developing chemicals to gas people and all the other enabling things Siemens and Krupp and BMW and Bayer and all those other German, large German companies did. The US Business leaders are not doing that. They're trying to survive without bringing damage upon that character.
- [37:13]
Steph McGovern
So it doesn't, I don't know, disappoint or worry you that there aren't more people speaking out against him.
- [37:22]
Sir Michael Moritz
I think maybe I'm too optimistic here.
- [37:25]
Steph McGovern
I like an optimist, though, so go on.
- [37:28]
Sir Michael Moritz
Good. But I think his power is beginning to wane.
- [37:33]
Steph McGovern
Right.
- [37:34]
Sir Michael Moritz
You can already see the fractures in this MAGA Republican base. You have these nutcases like this Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was very convinced that, you know, the Jews operated lasers from space and controlled everything on Earth, and she has turned her back on Trump. I think after the elections in November, the midterm elections, when everybody, when all the candidates are vying for Trump's mantle. So this could be J.D. vance or Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz. They're going to turn on each other like a pack of hyenas. And I also don't think that they will be able to intimidate and bully and threaten and terrify so much of their constituency as Trump has been able to do. I just don't think they're going to have that power.
- [38:30]
Steph McGovern
So will common sense prevail, do you think?
- [38:32]
Sir Michael Moritz
Yeah, I'm pretty sure hope so. And I think I hope for common sense to prevail without some of the extremists from the left, because I think in their own way, even though they stand for different things, they're as bad for America as some of the rightists.
- [38:47]
Steph McGovern
Yeah. In discussing this, you've obviously mentioned some of the so called Magnificent Seven. So you know these top companies who are absolutely flying in terms of market valuations and everything else. Some people are talking about whether that's a bubble, whether we're too dependent on AI and we've got all this hope in AI and actually when it shakes down, it won't be the biggest thing to change the world as everyone thinks it's going to be. What's your thoughts on all of that?
- [39:14]
Sir Michael Moritz
I think this is the third and probably AI third and maybe the fourth most significant technology shift that I have lived through. Although, you know, I wasn't really around so much for the. To some extent I was for the birth of the microprocessor that just lit up everything. And then you had the big personal computing wave and then you had the Internet and all the connectivity associated with the Internet and mobile phones. AI builds on all of those as foundations. And as a result of the fact that you have so many devices connect to the Internet, AI has taken off faster than any of the other in the history of Silicon Valley and technology evolution. Every succeeding wave accelerates faster than the previous because the foundation on which they are layered is deeper and richer and bigger. So I think it's going to have profound consequences and it will wind up with probably the emergence of new breed of companies. There'll be one or two very, very significant companies that emerge. I think there are companies, particularly Alphabet, that will become even stronger as a result of the emergence of AI. And then you're going to have a lot of carnage, a lot of investors are going to lose money. A lot of these companies that are high flyers with preposterous valuations at the moment are gonna collapse by the wayside.
- [40:50]
Steph McGovern
Right. And what do you think is the kind of timeframe for all this then? When do you think it's.
- [40:53]
Sir Michael Moritz
I think it happens over the next five years.
- [40:55]
Steph McGovern
Right, okay.
- [40:56]
Sir Michael Moritz
That where the new, younger, bigger winners emerge and the rest begin to drown.
- [41:04]
Steph McGovern
Yeah.
- [41:06]
Sir Michael Moritz
Get your life belt out.
- [41:07]
Steph McGovern
I know, that's what I'm thinking. With everything going on, all the political turmoil you're predicting and The. And also everything going on with tech. But I mean, can I just ask before we wrap things up then? It's really interesting to. Given what you've done in your career and writing this book, which is such a powerful and moving, you know, history of your family, but also with so many parallels to today, what is it that kind of motivates you now and what is it that you, you know, you've done so much. What's next and what motivates you?
- [41:38]
Sir Michael Moritz
Oh, I'm a hopeless dilettante, so I have too many interests and, you know, investing is part of it, writing is part of it. I'm deeply involved in San Francisco, both politically and also. I started with another fellow media business in San Francisco. We operate a couple of luxury hotels and high end boutique hotels in Tuscany. I have my Manchester United fealty in the summer. I like to paint and cycle. So I'm involved in too many things, none of which I'm. And this isn't, you know, it sounds like false modesty, but it's not like I do any of these other things brilliantly. I'm. I'm just spread too thin. But there's no absence of amusements at the beginning of every day.
- [42:32]
Steph McGovern
And does it. And this is a bit of a weird question and you might be like,
- [42:36]
Sir Michael Moritz
where's she coming from?
- [42:37]
Steph McGovern
Yeah, yeah, but what does it feel like to be a billionaire? Because, like, I just think that's the most surreal. And you know, I know you've talked as well about. I've heard you talk about your mum not being bothered about your money and things like that.
- [42:48]
Sir Michael Moritz
Oh, well, no, she was convinced I was a crook. She was ready to turn me into any authority. I mean, if the policeman had knocked on the door, she would have said, yeah, he's guilty and here's his telephone number.
- [43:00]
Steph McGovern
Yeah, right. Is it weird because you're in this tiny minority of people and, you know, we. I just can't ever imagine what that's like. Does it? I mean, to constantly have people asking you for money for a start?
- [43:12]
Sir Michael Moritz
Well, Harry and I, Harriet, my wife and I have decided we're going to try and give away as much of our money while we're around.
- [43:21]
Steph McGovern
She'll never spend it all, for a start, around us.
- [43:24]
Sir Michael Moritz
No, to. To give it away. Yeah, you know, to charities, philanthropy. You do a lot of philanthropy organizations and you know, we've done a bunch of. Most of what we do is in the San Francisco Bay area, but we've done a few things here that, because we've Been so lucky. And we started a BIG scholarship program 16, 17 years ago at Oxford. 14% of the undergrads at Oxford are now on the scholarship program.
- [43:51]
Steph McGovern
Yeah. And the Booker Prizes are.
- [43:52]
Sir Michael Moritz
We sponsored the Booker Prize. We just gave the big first keystone gift to the National Gallery to expand its collection post 1900. So that's basically the big things that we've done in Britain. But then we're deeply invested in the community in San Francisco and. Yeah, I know everybody always asks this question, you know, the great relief and the great freedom associated with having money is you're alleviated from the worries.
- [44:23]
Steph McGovern
Yeah.
- [44:24]
Sir Michael Moritz
And it's so. It's liberating. You don't have to worry whether you're going to make your rent payment. You don't have to worry whether or not you can afford to buy two or three books or a fancy bottle of wine or something. It's. It's those things that, that make the difference. And. But, you know, both Harriet and I still, when we go grocery shopping or something, you know, and we're buying raspberries, we're still staggered at the bill of the raspberries.
- [44:54]
Steph McGovern
Really? So you're still.
- [44:56]
Sir Michael Moritz
Sure.
- [44:56]
Steph McGovern
I think, I think that's what makes people wealthy too, though, is you're not, you're not forgetting, you know, I bet you look at the receipt in a restaurant as well and check you haven't been overcharged for a glass of wine.
- [45:06]
Sir Michael Moritz
I also. And you know, that's one of the lucky things today you can afford to leave a generous tip.
- [45:13]
Steph McGovern
Yeah.
- [45:14]
Sir Michael Moritz
And no, it's very much. Look, I remember when I had no money and, and what it was like to, you know, have a couple of thousand dollars in the bank and nothing more. So. No, I remember that. It's not that long.
- [45:28]
Steph McGovern
That's journalism, isn't it? I've got great hope in the fact, though, that you said the traits of making a good journalist is what makes you a good investor. As someone who's small time investing, that
- [45:41]
Sir Michael Moritz
fills me with great joy. Yeah. Read the road signs carefully.
- [45:48]
Steph McGovern
Yeah. Amazing. Michael, thank you so much. It's been an absolute joy to chat with us.
- [45:52]
Sir Michael Moritz
It's been real fun. Thank you.
- [45:53]
Steph McGovern
Yeah. And your book is out now, isn't it? But thank you very much for coming in.
- [45:56]
Sir Michael Moritz
Loved it.
- [45:57]
Steph McGovern
Cheers. Bye Bye. And that's it from us on the rest is money. Bye. Bye.
- [46:06]
Anita Anand
To some, he is the revolutionary hero who restored China to its rightful place on the global stage.
- [46:12]
Narrator/Advertiser
To others, he's a brutal despot accused of presiding over more civilian deaths than either Stalin or his Hitler.
- [46:18]
Anita Anand
Mao Zedong has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Yet he started life in a muddy provincial village.
- [46:25]
Narrator/Advertiser
A rebel son who hated his father, survived a 6,000 mile walk across China and rose to become a figure of titanic proportions.
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Anita Anand
From Empire, the Goal Hangar World History Show. I'm Anita Anand.
- [46:39]
Narrator/Advertiser
And I'm William Duranpool.
- [46:40]
Anita Anand
In this six part series, we're joined by world renowned experts, expert Rana Mitter to explore the life of the father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.
- [46:50]
Narrator/Advertiser
We'll track his rise from a bookstore owner to a guerrilla commander. And we'll witness his ruthless elimination to secure total power. And we'll descend into the dark experiment of the Cultural Revolution, a time when ancient temples were burnt, children denounced their parents, and a nation worshipped a mango as a sacred relic.
- [47:11]
Anita Anand
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