#648 A Conversation with Keith Rabois on Everything

One of my major hypotheses in life is that every customer support inquiry is a function of a product flaw. Someone doesn't know how to do something that you want them to be able to do. So, for example, when you use your microwave oven, you never contact customer support ... There's always a default way to make the microwave oven just work, and every product, whether it's an app or website, should have that default experience...

The only people I've ever seen succeed are so talented and so off-the-charts in at least one dimension that you walk away from the initial meeting and you say, 'You know what? There's a nonzero chance that this person could actually change the planet.' And if you don't feel that, in my view, the chance to actually change the planet basically rounds to 0, so I'll just pass as an investor.

I certainly still subscribe to the view that the team you build is the company you build ... I think a lot of people get distracted with technology, but it's fundamentally about the people. The right people solve the problems, and the wrong people get in their way and... retard the solutions.

The way you would typically build a company from scratch—and this is what Peter Thiel taught me in November of 2000—is you want to hire as many inexperienced people as possible that have high potential, huge upside, and that other larger companies don't know how to evaluate correctly. So, basically, you want to lean into youth and inexperience.

I think we have to realize that the future of the world is predicated on technology, and whichever countries produce the best technology are going to have the most power in the future. And so the best we can do is encourage technologies, and the best way to encourage technologies is to get the government out of the way, for the most part.

I also feel that many of the left-wing people in America are extremely inconsistent with the criticism of US policies and their willingness to tolerate significant abuses overseas.

The biggest stark contrast that people notice is absolutely the happiness. You can walk anywhere in Miami—restaurant, bar, coffee shop, office—and people are just happy, and happiness is contagious.

The reason why the media is hostile to technology is we've removed the gatekeepers, and their monopoly on information, power, and control is basically permanently destroyed.

We're clearly in a very confrontational state with China, and... the biggest risk is to be in denial about that and being unwilling to admit that China has an agenda that's very unfriendly to the future of democracy.

Most of the time, I'm trying to invest enough money in exchange for enough equity that, if we never led another round again, I'd be perfectly happy as an investor. That isn't always the case, but 80% of the time, that's what I'm trying to accomplish.

Fundamentally, Sand Hill Road is the most boring place on the planet.