20VC: Why Cursor is Dead | An AI Tsunami is Coming & You Need to Prepare | Systems of Record Become Valueless Databases with Agents | Is This The End of Tech Private Equity with Jerry Murdock, Co-Founder of Insight Partners

Summary

The Twenty Minute VC: Jerry Murdock, Co-Founder of Insight Partners

Episode Theme:
A Tsunami of Autonomous Agents: AI’s Impact on Startups, Venture, and the Workforce

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Overview

In this episode, Harry Stebbings sits down with legendary venture capitalist Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insight Partners, to dissect the converging waves of AI—particularly the rise of autonomous agents. Murdock, whose 30-year career includes seminal investments like Twitter, offers an unvarnished, provocative look at how AI is remaking software, startup investing, and the very fabric of white-collar work. They explore why major platforms like Cursor are declared "obsolete," why systems of record face existential risk, and how both VCs and founders can survive (and even thrive) as the tide of AI-native companies is poised to sweep the industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The AI Tsunami: Autonomous Agents, Not Just AI

• Tsunami Analogy:
  Murdock likens the coming wave of autonomous AI agents to a tsunami—harmless in deep water but disruptive upon arrival.

  “The first thing I think about a tsunami is that it’s harmless when it’s out at sea, it’s only dangerous when it hits the beach… In this case it’s autonomous agents. Autonomous agents is, in my opinion, what the tsunami is about, not just AI in general.” (05:01, Jerry)

• We Are in the “Anticipatory Period”:
  Companies recognize impending change, leading to what Murdock calls the “Sassaca” or “SaaS Pocalypse”.

  “Change is coming fast and you need to anticipate that. You need to be on top of that.” (05:47, Jerry)

2. Rise of AI-Native Startups & the Death of Cursor

• Obsolescence of Legacy Players:
  Emerging AI-native companies (e.g., E2B, Eventual, Lotus AI Get Dynasty, Oven) are already using open-source autonomous agents to write code, rendering giants like Cursor obsolete.

  “Most of the companies I just mentioned, their view, as they’ve told me, is cursor is obsolete.” (07:32, Jerry)

• AI Needs to Be Native, Not Bolted-On:
  Simply adding AI features to legacy products isn’t enough; being AI-native creates a competitive edge.

3. Open Source Communities & the Stack Revolution

• OpenClaw and the Coming Stack:
  Murdock points to massive growth in open-source development (OpenClaw, Nano Claw), reminiscent of the LAMP stack era.

  “I think in the same thing with autonomous agents that you’re going to find the open source community coming out with the stack.” (08:14, Jerry)

• Workflow Orchestration:
  Predicts the emergence of orchestration layers—agents will triage workflows across multiple LLMs, invoking premium or open source models as needed.

4. Hardware Shifts: From Nvidia to ASICs

• ASICs Over GPUs:
  Murdock foresees a migration from Nvidia GPUs (“Jensen’s chips”) to more efficient, workload-specific ASIC chips. Nvidia’s Groq acquisition is seen as a move to prepare for this transition.

  “They know what’s coming… the GROQ acquisition is going to help them make sure that CUDA is viable for the ASICS explosion that's coming.” (11:22, Jerry)

• Execution Is Everything:
  Nvidia’s fate depends not just on hardware but on execution in integrating with ASICs (12:15).

5. Agents Change the Rules for Developers, Investors, and Markets

• Probabilistic, Not Deterministic:
  Unlike human developers, agents will iteratively test and optimize over hardware and libraries—choices increasingly made by agent experimentation, not developer opinion (12:55).

• Model-Application “Race to the Bottom”:
  Agents will drive commoditization across both infrastructure and application layers.

• Investment Safety Net Is Gone:

  “There is nothing safe right now. You’re going to have to watch who’s going to execute the best.” (14:09, Jerry)

6. Markets & Macroeconomic Parallels

• Pause vs. Panic:
  Current market overreactions to AI-driven company news are more about investors sitting out rather than panic selling:

  “…less about panic selling…what you’re seeing is cautious on the sidelines, buyers that, hey, I don’t see a deal here.” (14:47, Jerry)

• Dotcom Meltdown Comparison:

  “The tsunami came in, took out the dot coms and then took out all software. We all went down. We were in misery for years.” (15:50, Jerry)

7. Will Systems of Record Become Valueless?

• Context-Through-Agents:
  Value of systems like Carta depends on whether they adapt and incorporate agents or are bypassed by new solutions (18:27).

• Salesforce as Everest:
  Legacy platforms won’t disappear overnight but risk devaluation if their ecosystem partners fall (19:16).

• Value Attribution Is Shifting:

  “…companies that have system of records that have great context, but actually increase value if they're able to put that context to work with agents…” (20:26, Jerry)

8. Software Growth & Consumption in the Agent Era

• Agents as Decision-Makers and "Employees":

  “Software is going to be purchased or used by agents. And what’s going to happen is an autonomous agent becomes an employee. You give it credentials, you give it identity and then it’s up to the agent to make the decision.” (22:08, Jerry)

• Shift to Consumption-Based Pricing:

  "If the agent has the access and has the authorization to use something, say a sandbox, you’re just going to pay based on consumption." (23:00, Jerry)

9. Labor, Social Impact, and Universal Basic Income

• White Collar Displacement Is Imminent:
  Bookkeeping, legal, coding, customer support, and executive assistance are among the earliest roles threatened by agents (25:42).

• Workforce Disruption & Politics:

  “...that [labor] is going to be a major issue on the next president could decide the election. It’ll be one of the most important things, because there’s no easy answer.” (25:42, Jerry)

• Universal Basic Income:

  “Money is just a sort of batting score for how much impact you had as an investor. That’s the way I see it.” (14:09, Jerry)
  “...administrations will give an option to put [displaced workers] into a program...maybe a minimum viable income.” (28:16, Jerry)

10. The End of Traditional Private Equity?

• PE Is at Risk, Not Dead:
  Some firms will survive by adapting bets and using autonomous agents for diligence; others will go the way of Forceman Little post-2001 (31:53).

11. VC & Founders: What Still Matters?

• Go Big or Go Home:
  “That’s the only way I played the game.” (47:54, Jerry)

• Timing Is Everything:

  “So timing is the most important thing. Whether you’re early stage or late stage, you can’t apply it to just an overall general strategy.” (45:04, Jerry)

• New Success Factors:
  Future VCs and startups will be judged not just on intuition, but on how well they use autonomous agents to analyze and act on opportunities (33:02).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Cursor is Dead:

  “Cursor is obsolete.” (07:32, Jerry)

• Advice for New Grads:

  “I would have him go buy a Mac Mini, have an open claw and go to the job interview with his open claw.” (50:25, Jerry)

• Money Wisdom:

  “Money does not come with instructions.” (53:51, Jerry)

• Culture, Labor, and Single-Person Billion-Dollar Companies:

  “You're going to have a hell of a lot more agents than people.” (30:15, Jerry)
  “Absolutely. I mean it’s all about how smart is your agent, how smart are you to deploy the agents…” (30:54, Jerry)

• On Failure and Staying in the Game:

  “If I have any wisdom at all, it's because I fucked up so much and I've learned from it.” (41:02, Jerry)
  “Here's the secret. I never left the game.” (46:52, Jerry)

• Best Time to Start a New Fund:

  “Absolutely the best time. You're in a sea change. Humans are no longer going to be the decision makers about software. It's going to be autonomous agents.” (46:08, Jerry)

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Timestamps by Segment

| Topic | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------|---------------| | Tsunami Analogy / Autonomous Agents | 05:01 - 05:34 | | AI-Native Companies & Cursor | 07:22 - 08:06 | | Open Source Stack & Orchestration | 08:14 - 10:58 | | Nvidia & the Shift to ASICs | 11:14 - 12:15 | | Agent-Driven Commoditization | 12:55 - 14:09 | | Market Rotations & Dotcom Parallels | 14:31 - 16:55 | | Systems of Record and Value | 18:10 - 20:26 | | Agent-Driven Software Buying | 22:08 - 23:44 | | Impact on Labor, UBI Discussion | 25:42 - 28:16 | | Traditional PE's Fate | 31:32 - 32:52 | | VCs' Use of Agents, Changing Game | 33:02 - 34:44 | | On Intuition, Regret, & Failure | 35:01 - 41:20 | | Quick Fire (Best Sourcer, Picker, etc) | 50:25 - 55:34 | | Closing Thoughts & Optimism | 56:42 - 57:34 |

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Concluding Thoughts

Jerry Murdock leaves the listener with a call to action:
Prepare for a future where autonomous agents are not just tools or features—they are the buyers, workers, and even cultural drivers of organizations. The success or failure of companies, investors, and even entire industries will come down to how fast and how well they embrace this AI-driven paradigm shift.

“What we have with the tsunami happening is a wake up call to move to higher ground. Don't get caught on the beach when the damn thing hits the beach. Move to higher ground.” (20:26, Jerry)

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Listen if you want:

• A rare, candid guide to where AI is really taking the tech industry.
• Blunt advice on what will kill legacy startups and private equity.
• Practical insights on surviving and investing in the age of AI-native agents.

Transcript

[Jerry Murdoch]

Most of the companies I just mentioned, their view, as they've told me, is cursor is obsolete. What we have with the tsunami happening is a wake up call to move to higher ground. Don't get caught on the beach. When the damn thing hits the beach, move to higher ground. You really don't know the edge unless you go over it. If I have any wisdom at all, it's because I fucked up so much and I've learned from it. Here's the secret. Here's the real secret. I never left the game. I was lucky because I was losing money. Every year I've been in this business, I failed. Money does not come with instructions.

[Harry Stebbings]

Jerry Murdoch is one of the most influential venture capitalists of the last three decades. He's a co founder of Insight, which now manages more than $90 billion. He led one of the most eminent rounds for Twitter. He's an OG of the venture space and today we sit down to discuss his biggest, biggest lessons from 30 years of investing.

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[Harry Stebbings]

Good luck. You have now arrived at your destination. Jerry, I've known you for years. I've wanted to make this happen literally since we first had that lunch. So thank you so much for joining me today.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Hey, happy to be here.

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

Now I think it's such an interesting

[Harry Stebbings]

time because bluntly, me and a generation of investors are going, hang on a minute.

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

Is everything that we've been taught for

[Harry Stebbings]

the last five to ten years completely irrelevant? And now I get to SAP on your wisdom for the next hour. When we chatted the other day, you

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

said about tsunamis as an analogy for

[Harry Stebbings]

where we are with the AI wave that we currently face. What did you mean by the tsunamis

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

and how do you well, the first

[Jerry Murdoch]

thing I think about a tsunami is that it's harmless when it's out at sea, it's only dangerous when it hits the beach. That's number one. Number two, it's messy. You're going to get maybe an earthquake or two notifying you there's something possibly coming. And it's not just one wave. There's these pre peak waves and post peak waves. But there's an event coming that is more than a single product. And in this case it's autonomous agents. Autonomous agents is, in my opinion, what the tsunami is about, not just AI in general.

[Harry Stebbings]

So autonomous agents is the big wave that comes.

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

And so where are we now?

[Harry Stebbings]

We're in the anticipatory period where we can see it coming. And that's why we're seeing the Sassaca or the SaaS Pocalypse. Is that the case?

[Jerry Murdoch]

I'm not a doomsayer, but I am one to say, look, change is coming fast and you need to anticipate that. You need to be on top of that. And you know, the idea of, oh, I can just bolt on AI to my company, it's possibly true, you can maybe get an exit. But being AI native and thinking that way is going to make you a better company. And thinking deeply about what is going on in the, in the communities that are driving the tsunami. Right, those open source communities that are popping up in massive amounts, they're the ones that are going to have the big impact.

[Harry Stebbings]

We're going to get to the bolt on AI kind of strategies. But you have an incredible portfolio of companies. You work with many incredible founders. What do you see in the portfolio that we touched on when we chatted before on the Call on Friday that maybe people aren't seeing today when they read the news or think about investing.

[Jerry Murdoch]

If I look at real true AI startups like E2B or Eventual or Lotus AI Get Dynasty, these are all native AI companies that are up and running. Oven's another great one. What's happening with them is they're all using openclaw, Nano Claw or one of their own homemade, you know, autonomous agents. And I think that's not obvious yet in the marketplace because it's only about two months old. These guys have been doing it for anywhere from two weeks to six weeks roughly, that have brought in autonomous agents to actually write code. That's the thing that I think is mind blowing.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so they have autonomous agents to actually write code. What does that mean for Cursor, a 27 to $30 billion company that's raised a lot of money.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah, I'll tell you. So most of the companies I Just mentioned their view, as they've told me, is cursor is obsolete. That's where the product is today. Now my view is yeah, but that team is really smart. They've got a lot of money and a lot of customers. They've got time to embrace autonomous agents, which is what I think they'll do. And they've got shots to pivot and figure out what the next direction is. But you know, in the AI business you've got to be going where things are going to. You can't be thinking about yesterday. So I think those guys are going to have to quickly embrace autonomous agents.

[Harry Stebbings]

You mentioned utilization of OpenClaw. What do you think is the impact of OpenClaw more broadly that we're maybe not considering enough?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Ah, great question. Look, first thing you gotta do is look at openclaw and look at the community, the commitment to open source and the number of people developing for it. I mean you can look at huge companies like OpenAI and you can look at anthropic putting massive resources and, and then you look at open source and you've got sheer numbers of people doing integrations, massive amounts. If that community keeps accelerating and growing, we're going to see agents do incredible things that they don't have today. When I think of an autonomous agent, first of all we're going to have to come up with what we call a claw stack or some form of stack for the autonomous agent. Back in, you may not Remember back in 2003, 2004, we were post 9, 11, the world was miserable. People couldn't afford to build websites with sun servers and Oracle databases which were expensive. But the LAMP stack came out which was Linux, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP front end development tool. And that led to the explosion in 2004, 2005 of websites and ultimately commerce. Google went public in 2004 and rode that wave brilliantly. And I think in the same thing with autonomous agents that you're going to find the open source community coming out with the stack. Right, right now you've got a reasoning layer that's dominated by Claude and Codex and Gemini. I think what's going to happen with the autonomous agents is ultimately they're going to have an orchestration layer where they can have multiple different LLMs that they can orchestrate on and triage workflows. They'll triage workflows and say, hey, for this part of the workflow let's use Claude. They're expensive tokens, but they're going to get the Job done better. And then for this other part of the, let's use an open source model like Deep Seq, Llama 3, whatever. And they're going to start from a big picture. Maybe this is going to happen. As soon as orchestration gets solid enough, they're going to determine where the workloads go for reasoning models, which is going to be super powerful. And my guess is this will lead to the rise of open source models more proficiently and that's going to lead to the rise of ASICS chips. Because what's going to happen with Asics is you're going to put the model on the chip. You know, Asics is going to be a lot cheaper, cheaper, a lot more tunable for a specific workload than an expensive chip from Jensen. So I think that we're going to see massive development of autonomous agents influencing open source models and Asics chips from the big picture. That's a revolution.

[Harry Stebbings]

One of my dear friends is Rory o' Driscoll from Scale and he always says the thing I love about Harry is the statement, that's great Jerry, but what about me, which I specialize in as a venture capitalist? I have a shitload of Nvidia and I'm thinking through as I listen to

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

you, can you just play out for

[Harry Stebbings]

me that migration from Jensen chips to Asics chips and just like how that actually plays out in reality?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, it's the thing that wasn't mentioned as to why he bought grok. He needs that capability so that he can handle ASICS chips eventually, right? I mean, because Grok, those guys know how to put memory right on the chip and so that's automatically an ASICS chip today. And so I think GROK is not just about handling different types of workloads and getting memory on the chip, it's about making sure that CUDA can also support ASICS chips. They know what's coming. They absolutely know what's coming. And so I think the GROQ acquisition is going to help them make sure that CUDA is viable for the ASICS explosion that's coming.

[Harry Stebbings]

If the ASICS explosion comes and CUDA does migrate with it, does Nvidia retain their value or does it still denigrate because they have a leakage of value with the ASICS chip expansion depends on execution.

[Jerry Murdoch]

This is the thing about the game, you know, who's going to out execute, who's going to get it more? A lot of people like to criticize Meta here and there about being behind the game, but they had the balls to say no to Jensen. Sorry Jensen, we don't need you. So why did he do that? Because he's betting on ASICS chips, no question about it.

[Harry Stebbings]

You also mentioned the routing and the triaging between different models. It makes me think a couple of different things. One is that not just like a commoditization of models where it's a race to the bottom on price and who can deliver the cheapest fastest. Two, aligned to that, what if then we just see models do what we are seeing, which is eat into the application stack. How do you think about those two elements?

[Jerry Murdoch]

The answer to that question is going to be decided by the autonomous agent, not developers. The agent is different than a developer. If you and I are developers, we're going to go and do something based on what our experience tells us, what we think. Okay, let's go build something here. And we're going to use an ASICS chip or whatever. The difference is an autonomous agent is probabilistic. So the probabilistic nature of an agent is going to say I don't know which is better, Asics or use one of Jensen's chips. Why don't I just go out and get 10 Python libraries, run them in 10 different sandboxes, work the workload and then to see which, which one performs better, that's what's going to happen. And so look for autonomous agents to have a more of a say in that.

[Harry Stebbings]

But when I think about it again, that's great. But what about me, Jerry? I'm investing in the agent layer today, like many other investors are. And I'm also seeing Anthropic release incredible application layer products very quickly. Whether it's legal, whether it's their coworker. How do we determine between safe for us to invest versus in the path of an anthropic product update?

[Jerry Murdoch]

That's why you get paid the big bucks, Harry, is that no one's going to tell you what's safe.

[Harry Stebbings]

You are. I thought that was the point of this.

[Jerry Murdoch]

I'll tell you about 80% of the investments I've made have returned less than 1.3x. So it's the 20% that made all the money in my life and made all the impact. Money is just a sort of batting score for how much impact you had as an investor. That's the way I see it. And so there is nothing safe right now. You're going to have to watch who's going to execute the best.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you think the public markets over rotate when it comes to price responsiveness on these Updates. You saw Cloudflare and CrowdStrike hit like 10% on the back of an anthropic security. Is that an overreaction?

[Jerry Murdoch]

To answer your question about the markets and they over rotate. If you go to Wall street, you'll see the giant bull that's there in the statue. It's because of a herd mentality. And yeah, I think investors are like, hey, I'm not a technologist. I'm just going to sit back and watch this. Someone panicked. Maybe the others are just sitting on the sidelines. What you're seeing is less about panic selling because it'd be down a hell of a lot more than it is. And what you're seeing is cautious on the sidelines, buyers that, hey, I don't see a deal here. I'm not sure I have enough information to jump back into CrowdStrike and bring the stock price up. So is it an over rotation or is it just a pause where a lot of investors are sitting back saying, hey, let's get more information about who's going to be the winners and who's going to be the losers? That's the way I see it.

[Harry Stebbings]

Is there a parallel to a prior time where you can remember this, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Immense uncertainty. I do not know what happens. I'm better to sit out and watch because I don't want to see Monday drop another 40%.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah. So March of 2000, almost 26 years ago, tech stocks dropped between 30 and 40% across the board. And then if you missed a quarter, you were down over 50 or 60%. And we lived in that malaise March through the summer. And by the way, we were still able to get a couple IPOs out, but at lower multiples during that time. And we just sat in misery until 9 11, which what I call was the coup de grace to finish us off. And the market got destroyed. And we were thinking, hey, you know, we don't do dot com investments and insight. We're going to be fine. Because we knew that in 99 that there was a bubble and we knew that dot coms were going to blow up. We said, look, it just can't be sustainable. There's not enough commerce, there's not enough people on dial up. You can't do commerce on dial up and there's not enough fiber in the ground. So sure enough, there was a burst. However, the tsunami came in, took out the dot coms and then took out all software. We all went down. We were in misery for years.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you think we are in that same Pattern. Do you think there will be a depressed public markets atmosphere for years or will it be different now?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, it's always going to be a little bit different. What's happening now is the speed at which things are changing. Like we have this company, E2B, and you think, okay, they do sandboxes. Great. If you talk to most technology people, they don't particularly put much of a emphasis on differences between sandboxes. It's just a thing to keep your agent safe or keep whatever code you have safe. In reality, it's also a productivity tool. And for the agents, if you're making sandboxes for an agent, it's going to have a qualitatively different speed. For example, about 400 milliseconds is about a time period that humans can recognize a delay. So a lot of systems for mobile on that 400 millisecond time frame. And that's what most sandboxes are. Well, E2B has sandboxes that respond in 80 milliseconds. I'm like, wow, no one would ever notice it. He said the agents notice it and that's what matters. When an agent spins up literally a hundred thousand sandboxes in seconds, that response time is critical.

[Harry Stebbings]

We've spoken a lot about autonomous agents. When you have autonomous agents, do they make your systems of record valueless or do they make them much more valuable because they have existing distribution which they can incorporate those agents into and leverage? Which one?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, it depends. I'm an investor in Carta and have been for a long, long time. And that's a system of record of sorts for stocks. And it has a lot of potential and I believe they're doing the right thing on all fronts. But if tokenization of stocks come and they use Carta, then Carta is going to be infinitely more valuable. Right. Because they have the cap table, they can help manage the tokenization. However, if tokenization comes and they bypass Carta and a new system of records get built, then there's not much to say that that system of record is going to be worth much in the future. So it depends on execution of the Carta management team and their ability to go capture the trends that are coming forward.

[Harry Stebbings]

If you were to look at a Salesforce today, which camp would you put it in?

[Jerry Murdoch]

There's a lot of companies that sit on top of it, like Encino. There's dozens and dozens of companies that have built on top of the Salesforce system of record. So the real question is, let's look at their health. Let's see how they do. You know, if those guys start getting knocked off one by one and they enough of them get knocked off that they're. The underlying value of Salesforce becomes less, then you're going to say Salesforce is the going to be worth less. But in the history of companies, Salesforce is like a Mount Everest, right? It's an 8,000 meter peak sitting there. It's not going to melt overnight. That thing is going to be around for a long time. The question is how valuable is it? And the way to look at it, that question, the way to analyze it is how valuable are all those companies that build themselves on top of it. If those guys start going down well, then you're going to see some issues.

[Harry Stebbings]

Our job is to ascribe where we see value and where we think there will be more value. And the things where we used to ascribe value, revenue growth rate margin have become transient, questionable. So in that time how do you think about where you ascribe value?

[Jerry Murdoch]

It depends on what the timeframe is. If you look at most software companies that are out there, normally when a new technology comes it's sort of of expands the market before it contracts because people are already in their momentum, they're doing what they're doing. I wouldn't expect to see normal software companies to see software just fall off the radar. That's not going to happen. I think what happens is that people get fearful and prices change and then the underlying quality of the business changes based on how well the management team adapts to the situation. You can imagine some companies that have system of records that have great context but actually increase value if they're able to put that context to work with agents, with autonomous agents. And then you have other people that oh, they don't really adjust fast enough, they don't really understand what the new market's like and then their system of record or their software declines because they haven't really moved fast enough. What we have with the tsunami happening is a wake up call to move to higher ground. Don't get caught on the beach when the damn thing hits the beach. Move to higher ground. And that kind of adapting of your business, some people will do it, some people won't.

[Harry Stebbings]

You said that move fast. You've been doing this a long time. I've shockingly been doing this 10 years now, which shows on my wrinkled face. Really it does. But no, my question to you is we're seeing growth rates like we've never seen before. I mean 0 to 100 million in revenue quite frequently or semi frequently in some of these cases is triple, triple, double, double dead. Have we completely had growth expectations blown out of the water?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, think about this right now. All software is eventually purchased by human beings. Software is going to be purchased or used by agents. And what's going to happen is an autonomous agent becomes an employee. You give it credentials, you give it identity and then it's up to the agent to make the decision. You will review them like an employee and say, hey, what did you buy? What did you spend? What did you accomplish? And you will manage that autonomous agent just like an employee. You need to prepare for that. If whatever you got invested in, is that future going to be done and controlled by agents and am I in the right position for that or not?

[Harry Stebbings]

How does the world change when you are not selling to people but you're selling to agents? How does that interaction change the interface? What changes when there's that core change in buyer?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah, first of all, it's never happened before, so it's happening now. My guess is the way pricing models will work better and it's been in process for a few years. One of my companies, Docker, has been moving dramatically toward this as they move into AI, which is a consumption based model. So if the agent has the access and has the authorization to use something, say a sandbox, you're just going to pay based on consumption. Sandbox is nothing more than you're buying memory or buying compute. And so you just open it up, it's free, start using it, and then you ultimately have to pay and the agent will come and tell you, hey, we've reached our limit with the sandbox company here. What do we need to do? And that's how it's going to work.

[Harry Stebbings]

Going back to what we said earlier about Bolt on AI strategies, there's a lot of public SaaS, companies, I don't want to name any of them, who are trying to move and not public, actually even kind of late private, who are trying to bolt on, who are trying to pivot. Does that work? How do you think about the bolt on strategy as an effective strategy?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Look, I was just at the Olympics and there's a lot of people trying to win a gold medal and not many people do. And so you can try all you want, but you better be world class at what you're trying to do if you're going to get the medal.

[Harry Stebbings]

I have the CEO of Monday.com on the show tomorrow. Yeah, when you think about the question, I'm not picking on Monday, but I'm saying the question of will enterprise software and will software just be entirely vibe coded, personalized, customized, how do you think about that? Because that is the kind of eradication of a lot of their market caps.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, first of all, autonomous agents, and it may take a year or longer for most enterprises to actually enable and get committed to autonomous agents, but they're going to write software faster, cheaper than any human being on the planet. They already are. And so again, it's this thing of like, if you're making your software for autonomous agents and they have a reason to use it and it's valuable, great, you're going to do fine. But if you're not making your software for autonomous agents, you're going to be challenged in the Future. Maybe it's six months, maybe a year, maybe 18 months, but you're going to be severely challenged if you still think human beings are going to buy your software.

[Harry Stebbings]

And so we have agents buying software and we review their decisions. I didn't have to deal with sick leave. I didn't have to deal with entitled millennials. I sound incredibly old school, but this is the truth, as you know. Are you worried about what happens to labor forces, given what you said, most importantly being the speed of change is so fast.

[Jerry Murdoch]

You know, I'm glad you brought that up. We're about two and a half years from the next presidential election. I am here to say that that is going to be a major issue on the next president could decide the election. It'll be one of the most important things, because there's no easy answer. There's no question that anyone that inputs data into a computer that does scheduling, that, you know, like an executive assistant or people doing marketing, those jobs are ultimately going to be better done by autonomous agents. White collar jobs. People have been saying that for years. I mean, this is nothing new. The question is, when was it going to happen? And now with the advent of openclaw and nanoclaw and all the other autonomous agents that are coming, they're the direct threats, first of all, not to the people at the job, first of all, to the next person in line, the next junior developer you want to hire the next executive assistant, the next marketing person. So the first thing you see is people stopping or slowing down hiring of white collar employees that input data and use a computer. That's the first thing. Second thing, depending on the speed at which these autonomous agents evolve, because there's a lot that they need to do, they've proven it exists, that they can write code and they can do anything you want from a scheduling perspective for your life. So they already can replace a human being. They will. I think that the job market's very uneven. I think the first companies that are going to go with this are going to be small, medium businesses because, because they're the ones that, wow, one secretary makes a huge difference in their, you know, two, three, four person company. You don't need humans doing it, you've got the autonomous agent doing it. So I think we have to look at what's the speed at which the autonomous agents grow in three sectors, consumer, small business and enterprise. My guess is enterprise is last. This whole AI revolution there have been last. They may catch up in a year or two. We'll see. That's going to be what I think ChatGPT and Google and Anthropic are absolutely going to be focused on, is getting their own version of autonomous agents adopted by enterprises rapidly. When this happens, we're going to see dramatic change. And I think politically the minimal viable income may become a reality or at least a ballot question in two and a half years.

[Harry Stebbings]

What does that mean, a minimum viable income? Ubi?

[Jerry Murdoch]

It means that you know what you're going to go and get effectively a certain amount of money guaranteed to you every month and so that you, if you're a white collar person, they'll, they'll change the unemployment program because no administration is going to want to sit there and say, yeah, I've presided over 10, 15% of the country unemployed. What they'll do is give an option to put them into a program and we're retrained people to do something different, maybe to have a better quality life. If you tape the optimistic view, you know, those jobs that are going to be going away are not going to be jobs that get you a vacation in Brazil anytime soon. They're the jobs that are, you're suffering at every day making a living and you're struggling as to whether you can pay your health care or not. And so maybe those people say, I'm going to move out of the city, move out of the suburb, and maybe I'm going to move back to the country and, and grow food. You know, I'm going to get this grant to do so. There's already innovative businesses in Wyoming where they're taking veterans and giving them branches to lease because now with technology, one or two people can run a massive branch instead of eight people. And so there's new things like that happening everywhere.

[Harry Stebbings]

Is this labor displacement? Does it help or hurt a Trump administration?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Depends when it happens in the next

[Harry Stebbings]

two years, I think we both agree that customer support, we're already seeing bookkeepers. Legal would be the three and coding would be the kind of four really vulnerable areas.

[Jerry Murdoch]

I think healthcare may hit that before the labor market hits it because it's going to happen. We'll find out this fall. What's the impact of health care on the election and if it's a big impact, then you can assume that labor will be a major impact on the, you know, on any administration.

[Harry Stebbings]

When we think about the impact of agents on companies. I had Seb from Klarna on the show and he said that at their peak they were 7,000. By 2030, they're going to be less than 2,000. Is headcount a bug, not a feature now in companies?

[Jerry Murdoch]

You know, look, people never really talk about it, but it's all about culture. What's your culture? If you're looking to have a culture of a players and Steve Jobs talked about this at Apple. You want, how do you just continue to grow with a players? You're going to have a hell of a lot more agents than people. So it depends on what those 2,000 people are doing at Klarna that are left. What's their culture like with those 2000? If they're all able to have a greater quality of life, have more time with the kids, maybe it's an awesome win, you know, but I'm not there, I'm not him, so I can't comment.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you think we will have billion dollar single person companies? It's often said. Do you think it's actually a realistic.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's all about how smart is your agent, how smart are you to deploy the agents and how old are you willing to listen. I think the thing that's shocking is that autonomous agents work, that OpenClaw worked. And that's why so many developers are so passionate about openclaw. Because it's something that's working on its own without having to be reviewed. It's an employee. You've gone from an assistant to actual employee. Think about that. That's major, major difference in life. And I think those kinds of changes are going to be really important to notice.

[Harry Stebbings]

I am Orlando Bravo and I'm sitting looking at my book and I've got Anaplan and I've got Cooper. And I'm not picking on him, but I'm picking on him.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Right.

[Harry Stebbings]

How does it impact me? I need these assets to go out. They're 15 to 20% typical enterprise SaaS companies. What happens to traditional PE tack in this environment?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, let's go back to 9 11. There was several of these traditional. Now they're called, you know, something more sophisticated, private equity. But they were kind of buyout shops. Teddy Forsman, who I knew, ran a great one, except in 2000 he went all in on telcos, virtual telcos. Then it was over for him after 911 done no more Forceman Little. And so there'll be stories like that. I don't know about Bravo or anybody else, but they'll definitely be PE firms that end up like Forceman Little. And then there'll be other ones that had the right bets and did the right creativity, and they'll be bigger and better and more important than they were before. Life is basically a set of experiences you have. And the total sum of the decisions you make, any of these firms is about the decisions you make. And now we're at a point in time when you need to view what your assumptions are and what decisions you're going to make going forward.

[Harry Stebbings]

If you were to make a decision about where you would place a firm today, seeing the atmosphere and the landscape that you have, where would you choose your investing shop to be?

[Jerry Murdoch]

The problem is you got an old man here who's going to want to have it up in the mountains, in Aspen or in the. Or in the Alps. That's my new thing. I'm not like Elon or Jensen that are be going to do this for the rest of their life. I'm just doing this for impact. I can't even imagine going out there and doing it for the same reasons I did it years ago. It's like Bob Dylan got interviewed and they asked him, what was it like for you back in 1964? Newport? He says, I don't even know who that guy was. And I feel the same way. I don't even know what that guy was like back in 1995. It's moved on. I was always into this business for this, the creative impact and to play a very small role on a team that was doing something meaningful. So I want to do that. That's going to be important. But it's just a matter of having the right amount of wisdom about how the change is going to impact people and how you're going to do it. I mean, VC firms should have their own autonomous agents. Everybody should. I mean, can you imagine the medical analytical work? Certainly the PE firms are all going to have autonomous agents analyzing markets, analyzing where the opportunity is. So if I was starting from scratch. The one thing I could imagine is having incredible data I could vet on a new opportunity for the white space for where these new AI companies are going to go and say, wow, the data says, this guy's on the right market. He just needs to execute. And then you evaluate not just the person, but the quality of how they use autonomous agents. That's going to be the deciding factor for venture capitalists and startups. We're going to be on the same level playing field. How well do we use autonomous agents in our job?

[Harry Stebbings]

Going back to, I don't remember that and Bob Dylan and that. I think actually money makes people better investors. I've spoken to some of my most successful friends and I say, has becoming rich made you a better investor? Investor? I'm intrigued to hear your answer. Have you become better the more money you've made?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, if we use money as a proxy for success, it's funny, you know, with some of our mediocre companies, we thought about swapping out the CEO and it's like, well, the problem is it's a mediocre company and anybody we would put in would have to already be worth, you know, a couple hundred million bucks. So why would they do it? And so you've been forced to sort of limp along with the existing team because you're just not going to recruit someone better. They wouldn't be successful. There's no validation unless they've made a lot of money. So, number one, it's a proxy for success. And success is the combination of experience and validation of when and how to make decisions. For me, there's two components to every decision. There's the logic, and the second is the intuition. And you need the intuition. And so the one thing that the autonomous agents aren't going to have is intuition. Not anytime soon. And so we need people, we need good intuition to make good decisions. And without that component, you're not going to succeed. So in my humble opinion, maybe I've got better intuition, and that's the reason I've been more successful.

[Harry Stebbings]

When's your intuition been most wrong and what did you learn from it?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Good question. The first thing is, how do you know it's really intuition and not wishful thinking? So that's the first thing I've learned over time, that intuition was almost never wrong. But what I was wrong was me thinking it was intuition. It was nothing but wishful thinking.

[Harry Stebbings]

When did you wishful think too much?

[Jerry Murdoch]

When I found an entrepreneur that I liked. It was smart, but maybe too comfortable. Maybe a person I liked as a human being more. And they weren't crazy enough, they weren't really driven enough. They didn't have that chip on their shoulder. They didn't have that obsession, you know, because, you know, you want to work with people you like. And so most of the people that I liked were the ones that let me down and let themselves down. It's the people that you struggle with that are a little sharp edged, that are a little aggressive and that you may not like as people that are like, wow, okay, well, but they might be the ones that succeed. And you have to find that core of humanity in them that you can like them and help them. But most of the most successful people are going to be challenged socially.

[Harry Stebbings]

Peter Fantom once told me, the best founders make you feel uncomfortable. And I think that's very true. Have you changed as an investor, Jerry?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yes, if you don't change, you die. Changing is what allows you to adapt to the world. I mean, the most interesting thing in AI we look at feature stuff is Fei Fei, Liquid Lee's new startup, about this visual representation of the world. I mean, what she's clearly articulated is that, you know, language is a very subpar descriptor of the world. It's just limited. So for autonomous agents, we need a new system where we can visually recognize the world to be able to have an objective view of reality for the autonomous agent, that's why we have poets, because we can't really describe the world in enough detail with language, but we can give you a feeling about it. I think that what we have to do in the world is to definitely be aware that we have limitations in understanding that with language.

[Harry Stebbings]

I think limitations is interesting. Dude. I often reflect on regret. I love being in Europe. I have family, I make a lot of money in Europe, which is great, but I never tried to go to Hollywood as the actor. And I'm just wondering if I'll regret that. What would you say to me as a wise og?

[Jerry Murdoch]

You know, there's a great British actor I had lunch with once named Kenneth Branagh, and he was reflecting on exactly that question. He said he's made Hollywood movies, but he's done a lot in theater, a lot with Shakespeare. And he said, you know, I could have been more like Olivier that went to Hollywood and did Hollywood films late in life, but I didn't. I chose a different path. And for Branagh, I think he was very happy he didn't move to Hollywood. He could have had that career. And he's 65, 66 now. Looking back and he's saying, yeah, I could have been that. But you know what? I'm really happy I didn't do that. So maybe you're like Kenneth Branagh. You're going to be happy. You didn't do to Hollywood. I didn't. We started in New York. I've never left Aspen. I lived in New York part time. I never moved away from Aspen. Jeff and I found an insight in New York City and I cover the west coast because it was a lot quicker for me. But Jeff and I just lived on airplanes for time. The first, first 10 years, you know, and that's how we handled it back in the day. That was pretty revolutionary. Remember, Silicon Valley was all about people walking down the street. There was VCs that said, I don't invest in anything more than five miles from my office.

[Harry Stebbings]

Dude, if you can't cycle there, it's not a deal. That was the thing, I think.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, you. You choose your life, you choose your path. You shouldn't regret it. If you're getting what you want and you're growing as a person, the most important thing, looking back, is what have you learned about your. When I would talk to our younger partners, like you had Jeff Lieberman on your show and some of our other partners, I'd say, hey, guys, you know, it doesn't help to get super rich early like you have, unless internally you have the sense of self and you're comfortable with the decisions you make, because that's the key thing. You know, you can become super successful early, but you've got to internalize that success, recognize where the failures are. If I have any wisdom at all, it's because I fucked up so much and I've learned from it.

[Harry Stebbings]

I made money very young, and I was also an alcoholic. And the combination of failing badly and passing out drunk many times and my mother being disappointed in the drunk son that she had actually showed me, like, what life's really about. I'm so grateful almost for failing and being like that.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Absolutely. You gotta go. Hunter Thompson was a writer that lived near the Aspen area who I used to love Hunter Thompson's works. He said, you really don't know the edge unless you go over it. And clearly you did.

[Harry Stebbings]

I've been over it so many fucking times.

[Jerry Murdoch]

So knowing the edge, Harry, that's what it's all about. We've got to all go over the edge and hope to live to tell about it. That's what gives you the sense of knowing, that gives you joy in life and gives you a sense of ease and comfort as you move through it.

[Harry Stebbings]

When did you go over the edge?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, I did a different kind. At 19, I got accepted to the United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya. So 1977, I get on a plane, go to Europe, hitchhike around for a couple of months, and then I go spend six months in Africa. I spent weekends documenting traditional dances with the director of Beaumont. I was out in the hinterland. And Kenya is the size of Texas with, you know, 13 major tribes, with 73, six individual clans and dialects. And we wanted to document it all. And going out and living with these people on the weekends was going over the edge. I mean, I ate things I'd never believe I'd eat again. I mean, I'd lived in little huts with goats, you know, it was not a pretty sight.

[Harry Stebbings]

Dude, you've built a firm that many, and including me, would aspire to. I just wanted to understand some wisdom. Knowing all you know now, what strategy did you do with Insight or product did you do with Insight? Insight that with the benefit of hindsight you maybe wish you hadn't done. What did you learn?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Oh, that we hadn't done in the early days of Insight, the big mistake, we hired some famous guy to start Insight Europe. And after six months, we shut it down. It was a mistake and a half. We were not mature enough to do that. And Europe was something. Well, you know, we. We loved Europe early on. Fund one had an investment called SLP in Paris. Fund two had a called Metaquatro in Spain. It went public. That was a big win. We did deals in Portugal, we did deals in the Czech Republic in the 90s. So we thought, oh, let's do a fund. Big mistake. Too much difference. Too much. We needed to stay in New York together. We needed to focus, we needed to learn from each other. Having people in Europe was too challenging. That was a mistake that we made.

[Harry Stebbings]

So I always say the product that we sell our LPs is the quality of our investment decisions. And that reduces with remote decision making. Do you agree or do you think that today remote decisions work just as well?

[Jerry Murdoch]

That's a function of the team, that's a function of who's involved, and that a function of experience. You know, overall, if I were to invest in a company, I would be very suspicious of remote management, because human beings today need it. As we move to autonomous agents in human human beings. That's a good question. You know, that's a very good question. I don't know how the feature is going to play out. But in the past remotely managed situation, I know for me, because I didn't live in New York as a co founder, it was really hard on my team for me to fly in, fly out, fly in, fly out. And because you have to make decisions remotely, you have to sit with an entrepreneur. You're in San Francisco and you have to commit now, and you've got a whole team in New York. It's really tough being that remote guy if you're all local and you're all sitting in the same office. You gotta make a decision tomorrow. It's a lot easier. So I would argue that remote decision making is very difficult.

[Harry Stebbings]

You mentioned momentum and the importance of momentum. In some ways, critics have suggested that momentum was a challenge for the $20 billion fund and the speed with which it was deployed and the high prices. Just with the wisdom and experience you have, Jerry, I'm fascinated. How do you reflect on that fund?

[Jerry Murdoch]

One correlation is you can look across all VC funds and look at their vintage, whether it's a 99 vintage or 2004, 2005 vintage. And the one correlation you can make to success was timing. If you did a fund in 2005, 2006, you were in great, great shape to take advantage of the mobile thing. That started happening in 2008 when Steve Jobs got 10 million subscribers from ATT. That's when mobile became real. So if you had an 0506 fund, you had a chance to get some of the best, most iconic companies. But if you start a fund in 2009, you're going to miss being early in Twitter, you're going to miss being early in Facebook, you're going to miss being in Uber, you're going to miss all that. So. So timing is the most important thing. Whether you're early stage or late stage, you can't apply it to just an overall general strategy. Depends on the timing of when you did the investment.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you think now is the best time ever to be starting a new fund?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Absolutely the best time. You're in a sea change. Humans are no longer going to be the decision makers about software. It's going to be autonomous agents. This sea change, this tsunami, is so different than anything that's come in the past that people that embrace this new model, can embrace it from scratch right now, can have a huge advantage over people that have been successful with older models that don't quite move fast enough because they're already rich, they already made a lot of money. Hard to get old dogs to move fast.

[Harry Stebbings]

How do you feel about getting back in the game then, Joe? You're doing this show with me. You're talking about autonomizations. Like, seems like you're an old dog moving quite fast.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Here's the secret. Here's the real secret. I never left the game. I retired from inside. I retired from negotiating term sheets. I retired from board seats. I retired from internal investment committee meetings. I retired from having dinners with LPs and answering LP phone calls. But I didn't retire. I haven't done a single investment on my own that someone didn't bring me that I love and I trust. Every investment that I've done, which is over a hundred, has come from someone close to me and said, jerry, I need your help to help me think about this thing. And through that process of trying to help someone else, I end up in it. And that's been fun because it's an experience that you're not doing on your own. Your experience, you're doing with people you care about.

[Harry Stebbings]

Final one, before we do a quick fire. Do you believe the future of Vantra is like the go big or go home. We see Andreessen Reyes, 15, we have insight, a mega platform. We have the mega platforms of GC and LightSpeed. Is it go big or go home now?

[Jerry Murdoch]

That's the only way I played the game. And I mean, I went big on my things. You know, when I invested In Twitter in 2009, there was 30 something people, no revenue. My fund for like, are you kidding me? It was a watershed moment that my partners allowed me to make that investment.

[Harry Stebbings]

What did you see?

[Jerry Murdoch]

What I saw, and this is really interesting, like our early investments, the idea of Twitter, which I called the status update for the world, was so brilliant, so over the top, it was far better than anybody on the team's ability to execute against it. So I think Twitter could have been infinitely a more interesting company. But VCs got involved and created politics and they fired Jack Dorsey early and they created issues. And the company was pretty messed up from that trauma of firing one of the founders. And at the same time they were very excited and the community was growing, the community was helping it. And for me, I saw an incredible idea that wasn't easily replicated and there was enough momentum to it that this was for me a no brainer. And it was the bet that I put my entire reputation on the line. I got Jeff Horn and Devon Parekh to jump in with me on this and I pushed really, really hard. We did that investment less than 30 days from the time I met the team and the time we closed and it turned out to be a watershed investment for the company and got us into lots of things like consumer and things, things we weren't doing at the time. That was just because the quality of that idea was insanely great.

[Harry Stebbings]

Did you ever have a trough in confidence?

[Jerry Murdoch]

I was lucky because I was losing money. Every year I've been in this business I failed. So I was always balanced in that. I knew I was going to fail, I knew it was going to be miserable, but I knew I was going to win some and, and we were fortunate to do what we did. You know, we were very, very fortunate. But failure to me was always part of my job and I had to just suck it up. And so there was nothing that came down the pipe that caused me to lose confidence because I'd been taking and dealing with it from day one.

[Harry Stebbings]

Listen, I'm going to do a quick fire round with you. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. What advice would you give to a graduate entering the workforce today day looking for a job for the first time?

[Jerry Murdoch]

I would have him go buy a Mac Mini, have an open claw and go to the job interview with his open claw.

[Harry Stebbings]

Who is the best sourcer? When they bring you a deal, you pay most attention to it.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Oh, that's easy. The partners at Insight. I mean what we've really built is one of the great sourcing engines of the world. I mean, Mike Triplet, Jeff Lieberman, Devin, these guys, all dolls, just were focused on sourcing and managing their teams and they, and to get through the gauntlet of Insight due diligence and get to something that could be funded was a pretty big accomplishment. I think that those guys were the absolute best sourcers in the world.

[Harry Stebbings]

Who is the single best picker that you know, like they see value where others don't.

[Jerry Murdoch]

I don't want to build egos up, but Peter Fenton, John Doerr, early on those guys were astounding at picking deals.

[Harry Stebbings]

What is the single most memorable first founder meeting you've had?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Oh wow. I had the founders of truecaller in Sweden come to Aspen. I, I said I'm not going to invest in them. But they took their last dollars to get a plane ticket to Aspen and they came to me and it was. This was written about in the information by Amira Frati, the story about it. But basically these guys were, were nice guys and I couldn't let them down. I didn't want, I told him I don't want to invest, but I'll help you. And I ended up helping him and giving him some money and making it a successful company. And it went public a few years ago and it was a great company for a number of years, but that's one I did not want to go into and I didn't want to go to Sweden, but I liked the guys so much and they came out asked, but I said, okay, I got to do it.

[Harry Stebbings]

What's the difference between a used car salesman and a software salesman?

[Jerry Murdoch]

The used car salesman knows that he's lying.

[Harry Stebbings]

I love it. You've got OpenAI, you've got anthropic and you've got Grok. Which would you most want to be in as an investor?

[Jerry Murdoch]

It depends what stage you get me a shot in.

[Harry Stebbings]

I'm getting you a shot in OpenAI at 500 and I'm giving you anthropic at 380.

[Jerry Murdoch]

I take them both. I take them both. But I think for me it's OpenAI because I got 800 million people using it. When you got 800 million people doing it, when you cross a billion, then you're there. I'm not that big a bitcoin fan. I'm big in a couple of crypto things. But until you get to a billion users, I'm suspicious of any consumer technology.

[Harry Stebbings]

I get you, but do you not think Gemini and Google can still wipe the floor with the distribution advantage that they have, have demis and the speed that they're moving?

[Jerry Murdoch]

They can and they are long term better assets they've got. If I have an autonomous agent business and I've got Gmail, you're going to have a phenomenal asset that OpenAI doesn't have. But the issue is who's got 800 million people getting to a billion first? I mean, look, you can say there's a billion users on their other properties like YouTube and things, but if you can convert OpenAI's chatbot to my own Jerry Murdoch, autonomous agent from ChatGPT, which I think what Peter Steinbringer is going to do, you're going to have an insanely great business.

[Harry Stebbings]

What do people not know about having money that they should know?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Very easy answer. Money does not come with instructions.

[Harry Stebbings]

What does that mean?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, everything else you buy, you get. You know, you got a Rivian, it comes with instructions. You get an iPhone, it comes with instructions. Money doesn't come with instructions. So you need to learn from to respect it. It's energy. Money is the equivalent of energy and you need to respect it. You know, you don't just leave the lights on at home and the air conditioner on your home all day long while you're gone. You respect energy, you treat it with respect and you use it for good and you use it to make things happen. And you don't waste it foolishly being an idiot. You don't want to go to Las Vegas and hand out a hundred dollar bills to just random people. Take that energy and do something great. I mean, I don't know. As Larry Page has said, if he had extra money, he'd just give it to Elon to let him build things to change the world. I think that if you've got money, you've got energy, you can give it to entrepreneurs. They'll do amazing things.

[Harry Stebbings]

You had kids quite later in life.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

You wish you'd had them earlier.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Well, you know, it's like you've had a fantastic life. You look back and you say, it's already great. Why would I change it? You know, number one. Number two, that guy when I was younger, he wasn't ready for kids. All he was doing was building a business. He was building a business. Would it have been possible to build

[Harry Stebbings]

insight if you'd had kids during.

[Jerry Murdoch]

I would have been divorced and a pretty sad character probably. Look, I mean when Jeff and I went out to raise money and we were getting sand kicked in our face, he was 30, I was 35 or 36. 6. We both had acne. I mean, nobody wanted to give us money. Me, that guy with kids, I, I can't imagine him, you know, imagine. He's a disaster.

[Harry Stebbings]

What was the breakout moment? You said that you know, exactly in face money. And then you raised 20 billion dollar funds. Now, in single moments, what was the breakout? Was it a Twitter? Was it a.

[Jerry Murdoch]

You know, it was the fact that we survived 9, 11, I mean, if you want to know insight had incredible funds, you know, fund one, these incredible successes, fund one and two are still some of our best funds ever. And then Fund 3 or 99 fund was like all challenged and it did pretty well, all things considered. But the fact that we survived that collapse, a lot of VC firms were zombies. Walking dead, partners splitting up, people going different directions. We hung in there, we hung in there and survived. That's the breakthrough moment.

[Harry Stebbings]

What's the biggest parenting advice you give me now? Knowing what you know?

[Jerry Murdoch]

As a papa, I would say your kids are always, always watching you. So use that as an opportunity to be your best self. Put your heart first and be your best self. Every moment of the day that you can with those kids.

[Harry Stebbings]

Final one. What are you most excited for in the next 10 years? Jerry?

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

I like optimist.

[Harry Stebbings]

We sit in this incredible moment in technology in terms of development, adoption. What are you most excited for?

[Jerry Murdoch]

There was a movie in the 1950s called the Long Hot Summer and the character Big Daddy was dying of cancer. And at the end of the movie, things were working out with the family and he says, I feel like I'm going to live forever. And I think about autonomous agents and AI and maybe it's going to help me live forever. That's what I think.

[Harry Stebbings]

I actually do think it will increase longevity significantly and the next 20 years. Do you agree?

[Jerry Murdoch]

Yeah. I mean, what I've heard is if you can live another five years, you're going to extend another five years. So if you're, whatever state of health you're in today, if you make it five, five years, you're going to at least get five years in the back end.

[Harry Stebbings]

Jerry, you're a star. Thank you so much for this.

[Jerry Murdoch]

Oh, it's great and great catching up with you again, Harry.

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

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[Harry Stebbings]

Good luck.