Mario Gabriele - Founder, The Generalist

Auren Hoffman (00:01.004) Hello fellow data nerds, my guest today is Mario Gabriele. Mario is the founder of the Generalist, which is a tech analysis sub stack with over 132,000 subscribers. Mario also runs Generalist Capital, which invests in early stage companies. Mario, welcome to World of DaaS.

Mario Gabriele (00:20.097) Thanks so much for having me.

Auren Hoffman (00:21.548) Really excited. Now you wrote this great article I really liked about VC soft power. Like how does that work right now? And how has that evolved?

Mario Gabriele (00:30.155) Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you know this much better than I do. But sort of soft power term comes from Joseph Nye and is usually applied to sort of the political realm for, you know, discussions about power that is based on influence.

Auren Hoffman (00:44.654) They would say like Hollywood is America's soft power or something like that, right? Yeah. K-pop would be Korea's soft power.

Mario Gabriele (00:47.815) Yes, yes, exactly. A perfect example. And VC is such an interesting space in the sense that there was really no need for soft power when it started because there was plentiful entrepreneurs in theory and very few capitalists. But now that it's gotten so competitive, the need to have a story, a brand has become essential. And so I think

Some of the things you're seeing happen at the moment is, know, VC is taking storytelling media extremely seriously. And you can see that with, you know, the Andreessen's of the world, but also, you know, smaller firms too.

Auren Hoffman (01:31.818) Some have their own news outlet even.

Mario Gabriele (01:34.475) Yeah, exactly. Future, the A16Z outlet didn't ultimately last, but the lessons of that experiment feel like they very much were pushed into the firm in the sense that they have a bunch of different podcast shows, their partners are releasing books, the narratives that they put into the market around American dynamism or it's time to build are really shaping the way that

founders and other VCs spend their time and attention and capital.

Auren Hoffman (02:08.61) Yeah, I mean, even think of like Hacker News, which was kind of like the Y Combinator aggregator of news or something like that. And like and then because these VCs are essentially their money is not a great differentiator. Money is a commodity, so they have to differentiate in some other way. And what are what are the besides for just like doing some podcasts or something like what are the other ways you see these VCs differentiating themselves?

Mario Gabriele (02:14.229) Yes. Yes.

Mario Gabriele (02:35.179) Yeah, I think like, you know, just trying to do a podcast or, you know, the sort of worst possible version of it is the sort of medium blog post. I'm thrilled to announce our investment in XYZ. and that doesn't create any soft power. It, it almost like signals the opposite. It signals sort of a lack of creativity and thinking, but I do think the best version of it is, is, you know, probably what a 16 Z does, which is, you know, constant, solid media.

Auren Hoffman (02:46.122) Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Mario Gabriele (03:04.909) that is thoughtful and really aimed at the audience of entrepreneurs and other investors. And then these like massive sort of super stories that they're telling throughout these different ways, whether it's the little tech agenda.

Auren Hoffman (03:17.784) But I mean, just to push back a bit, I A16Z has like hundreds of people and it's like PR department essentially, or at least like they probably have at least 100 kind of both like internal and external people to help them do it. They have Mark, who's just like an extremely famous person who can put things and also brilliant person who can put things out in the ether.

Mario Gabriele (03:31.906) Totally.

Auren Hoffman (03:42.762) Most VC firms, even extremely successful VC firms don't have anything equivalent to that. what can they, it would be hard to copy that thing if you're not A16Z, I would presume, right?

Mario Gabriele (03:56.361) Yeah, I think, well, yes, there is like a genius of phrase that Mark Andreessen has that I think is like, you know, extremely hard to replicate. And, and, you know, that, that can't be done super easily. But I do think you see other firms like find ways of doing this. Interestingly, so, you know, I think what Logan Bartlett has done with Redpoint, like totally different.

Auren Hoffman (04:04.566) Yes. Yep.

Mario Gabriele (04:21.037) sort of sensibilities much more playful, but has built a really like thriving podcast that has built his brand and the firm's brand. And so I do think like, as long as you take a...

Auren Hoffman (04:32.322) By the way, like, this is so interesting. I've never even heard of him before. So until right now. Yeah. so that's like, great. I'm to go check them out. But I like, like, I actually never heard his name before until today. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (04:35.376) really? Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (04:42.699) Okay, so he had an interesting trajectory with sort of soft power in the sense that like, he was a very funny Twitter account for a while and sort of initially built a podcast sort of riffing on that more humor banter based podcast and has now more leaned into really great interviews, things like that. And so, yeah, I think it's an interesting one.

Auren Hoffman (05:01.603) cool, I'll check it out.

Auren Hoffman (05:06.606) I mean, you'd also wrote about this, like, potentially this VC mass extinction event. And you wrote this thing called Molot Capitalist. I'm like, what's going on there? And what you what firms you think are under the biggest threat?

Mario Gabriele (05:20.439) there was some interesting discussion in the summer, I think was on the back of some data that maybe Sapphire Ventures released or maybe it was from Carta, basically showing that, since the bubble burst in 2022 and late 2021, so much of the LP capital has basically concentrated in a very, very small number of names, basically meaning that unless you are Sequoia Founders Fund, Andreessen, whoever,

it's really hard to raise capital. so

Auren Hoffman (05:52.36) their funds are getting much bigger and other funds are suffering because of it.

Mario Gabriele (05:56.118) Right, exactly. so there was a lot of discussion around like, is this sort of the death or the the mass culling of these insurgent managers and sort of these mid sized managers? And that does seem to be happening. I think the folks that are most under pressure are the ones who have sort of delivered middling returns without a clear perspective. I think the need to be opinionated is probably stronger than ever.

Auren Hoffman (06:22.956) Yeah, either you have to have great returns or you have to have extremely strong opinions about the future, right? You can't have neither of those.

Mario Gabriele (06:28.805) Yes, yes. Yeah. And for a while that was not necessarily totally mandatory. You could sort of pick a rough space and, you know, put, put, a flag out, you know, put a flag in the sand and say, you know, this is what we're going to do. And that was promising enough, but yeah, now the dynamics are super different.

Auren Hoffman (06:36.674) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (06:52.462) And there are more or why are there not more traditional kind of other businesses that maybe have like access to proprietary data or access to startups, like getting into the investing world. Like I've always thought it'd be great to have like plaid capital or Stripe capital or, or ramp capital. And a lot of them have that for like lending or they lend to their, but they don't have it for doing equity investments.

Mario Gabriele (07:10.155) Hmm.

Mario Gabriele (07:15.34) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (07:20.586) in their their businesses.

Mario Gabriele (07:23.147) Yeah, so, you know, I'm realizing I didn't really answer some of the previous question, which was this idea of the mullet capitalist, which is, know, a traditional business in the front and venture in the back. And so, you know, Stripe capital or Plaid capital, those would be like the supercharged version of that. Yeah, with like the best possible businesses in the front and, and venture in the back. think, you know, functionally, a lot of them do it right? Like Stripe makes a ton of investments.

Auren Hoffman (07:32.952) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (07:39.042) The supercharged version, right, right.

Yep.

Mario Gabriele (07:52.347) And yeah, so.

Auren Hoffman (07:52.527) And certainly the founders do, right? And maybe they're using the data, I'm not sure, you know.

Mario Gabriele (07:57.525) Yeah, I'm not sure either. sort of suspect maybe not, but yeah, yeah, I don't know. I would guess that they feel like they have more than enough on their plate and that's, know, they can do enough of this personally or through sort of associated funds. I mean, I think Zach from Plaid has sort of a second fund to the side and maybe that's the way that they feel comfortable doing it.

Auren Hoffman (08:01.9) I suspect not too, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (08:22.52) There was, there was a rumor when this is prior to LinkedIn selling to Microsoft that Jeff Weiner would just go in and he would have like the God view of LinkedIn and he would know what was going on. And then he was, he would personally make use that to make his own angel investments. And I don't know if that rumor is true or not, but that was the, there was a rumor for awhile. And so you could imagine like these, like a lot of these companies have great data and they can use that to make really good investments.

Mario Gabriele (08:33.599) my gosh, that's amazing.

Mario Gabriele (08:50.433) Wow, so you could just see, know, Peter Thiel just connected with X or, you know, Mike Moritz just, that's amazing.

Auren Hoffman (08:54.67) Correct, correct. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You could also spy on competitors or something like that.

Mario Gabriele (09:02.259) Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have been pretty amazing.

Auren Hoffman (09:05.004) Yeah. And by the way, a lot of people do mine like that data is mineable. So people mine Twitter and LinkedIn and other types of things. Who's talking to who, who's, know, and based on that, I'll, I want to talk to these companies. So that is going on today. And, but, maybe not from like the inside of these companies.

Mario Gabriele (09:23.029) Yes, totally. had a friend, a venture capitalist friend who a few years ago as an experiment, set up a fake LinkedIn account, know, ex Google, Uber, Stripe, and just waited to see how long it would take until this person from the moment they put, you know, something new or stealth on their profile, like who sort of is automatically in the DMs. And they were like, you know, it's almost instant as soon as it becomes, as soon as you flip that switch.

Auren Hoffman (09:42.723) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (09:51.554) interesting. Interesting. So they basically create a honeypot for VCs. Cause I've heard companies doing that for like recruiters to see like what recruiters are trying to recruit into their engineers and stuff. with all, yeah, ex Google, you know, graduated from MIT type of person. but that this is, this is like a, a more advanced version to figure out like what of your VC competitors and how are they pitching these people?

Mario Gabriele (10:00.65) Hmm

that's clever.

Mario Gabriele (10:21.229) Yeah, totally. Honeypot's the exact right word for it. Yeah, it was a very compelling stock photo and CV that made you think, oh, know, this guy's going to build something fantastic.

Auren Hoffman (10:32.652) Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. that I love that. That's, no, you had one of your pieces, you quoted Vinod Khosla saying that 70, 80 % of VCs just add, add negative value. Don't add zero value, but actually add takeaway value. First of all, like, let's unpack that. Like, do you believe that you think that's true? And then we can talk about like, okay, how they could add more value.

Mario Gabriele (10:55.629) Honestly, the first time I heard that, was sort of like, that can't possibly be true. But I'm sort of embarrassed to say that the more time I spend with companies and see sort of the dynamics that they go through, the more I think that that really might be true. And it's maybe not that much of an exaggeration. And I don't think it's necessarily from like, know, ill intentions. I think it's just probably a mix of, yeah, people.

maybe overextending themselves, whether with time or their own opinions or whatever it is. But yeah, I think like it is really hard to actually add value and sometimes just, you know, doing nothing puts you ahead of a lot of folks.

Auren Hoffman (11:37.356) Yeah. I I do think it is, it is very hard as someone who served on boards before, and I don't like being on boards, mainly cause I don't feel like I can help. Cause the, just don't know that much about the company. Maybe you can help on the very big thing. I assume like if a company's going through a fundraising or S or an and A event or something like that, or the VC has seen this so many times, they could add a lot of value, but

Mario Gabriele (11:51.393) Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (12:04.93) your company strategy, your product strategy, it's so such such a snowflake. I do think it's almost unfair to expect your board to add a ton of value. And I guess the really what you want them to add no value rather than negative value, right?

Mario Gabriele (12:20.009) Yes. Where would you put your number? Like, do you think Vinod is roughly right?

Auren Hoffman (12:27.04) I don't know. I, maybe I don't, I don't, maybe I don't think it's a higher negative. I do think very few add real value. like don't see times I've been on the board. Like the main thing I've been first of all, often it's like, it's either going very well or going not well in both cases. I don't know how much you can have one. It's going very well. Like literally you just have these meetings. You're like, everything is great. You guys are awesome. Right? Yeah. And so, and if it's not going well, like, it's not like you can fix it.

Mario Gabriele (12:35.18) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (12:43.86) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (12:49.549) Thumbs up.

Auren Hoffman (12:55.848) And I'd say most in the, some of the cases I've been on the board, like the main thing I'm arguing for is to like give the CEO more comp. I'm like arguing with the other, sometimes these venture capitalists, I think they think very, it's like the CEO. Like, yeah, they may have a big slung of equity, but it's not, it's already vested. So their go forward equity is often, and their go forward comp is often significantly below what it would cost to bring in an outside CEO.

Mario Gabriele (13:04.119) Mm.

Mario Gabriele (13:16.951) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (13:21.272) Hmm.

Auren Hoffman (13:26.334) by below it might be even be like 10 % of what an outside CEO would be getting. And, and often I'd be arguing, okay, maybe it shouldn't be a hundred percent, but should it be 80 % should it be 70 %? And so that's often. So when the closed door session, after the CEO leaves, said the number one thing that I've done on boards is like, try to get more. Comp for my CEOs, which is a very odd thing. So.

Mario Gabriele (13:26.349) That's really interesting.

Mario Gabriele (13:35.542) Yeah, yeah.

Mario Gabriele (13:48.045) Wow.

Auren Hoffman (13:49.762) I don't know if I'm really adding that much. I'm adding value to the CEO clearly. I don't know how much value I'm adding to the company, right? In that case, but

Mario Gabriele (13:56.173) Well, mean, keeping them in place and motivated, I'm sure is important, right?

Auren Hoffman (13:59.596) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So exactly. And if they're, if they're just like, if they're that much more, yeah, the argument of course, against is, well, they're not going to leave. Even if we didn't pay them anything, they're not going to leave. And I think, yes, that's true. But now they're going to be like so much more motivated, so much more excited, so much. And just like, yeah, getting that person 10 % more excited. We could, that could, that could double our outcome. Right. And so, and it

Mario Gabriele (14:14.764) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (14:22.069) Yeah, totally. When you're so leveraged on that one person.

Auren Hoffman (14:25.27) Exactly. You're so leveraged on that one person and they, I would say that is the area where VCs will know that they'll know this person is so important, but then they won't try to incent that person more in any way. And so PoundFolish it's like giving this person, let's say 2 % more of the company is not, is, is you could like double your outcome.

Mario Gabriele (14:39.447) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (14:44.141) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:48.942) You know, it's so much better for all the shareholders yet the VCs are like, just, I'm not going to get diluted another 2 % by this person already owns a huge, they already own 30 % of the company, right?

Mario Gabriele (14:54.967) Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like you, you sort of just expect them to do it for pure love of the game. And you know, as little as you can give them as a result. Yeah. For sure. That's sort of, you know, stable, table stakes, right?

Auren Hoffman (15:04.044) Yeah. And brother, which so much do so many people do, but, but, but, yeah. And then, and then, and then they'll go off and like, you know, there'll be an advisor, some other company and then the VCs start coming up. Why is this person going to be advised? It's like, we just decided not to, we just told them they weren't valuable. right. Like let, and then, so that's been my main thing when I'm on the boards, which is, I don't, again, I don't know how much, maybe that is adding a lot of value. but the rest of it.

Mario Gabriele (15:16.429) Hmm. that's so interesting.

Yeah, totally.

Mario Gabriele (15:32.238) I would, yeah, that feels very concrete.

Auren Hoffman (15:33.154) You have to have humility to say like, can't really help the company do its job.

Mario Gabriele (15:38.165) Yeah, just like getting to a sense of deep reality with a company is, I mean, it takes years and years and years and anything you're going to say, presumably 99 % of the time the CEO has thought of it and, you know, ruled it out for X, Y, Z reasons, right?

Auren Hoffman (15:54.594) Yeah. A lot of these VCs, they're on 15 boards. I mean, how much can you really know about any given company? It's hard.

Mario Gabriele (16:03.405) Yeah, yeah, that seems like it would be a really terrible way to spend a year. I was doing 15 boards.

Auren Hoffman (16:10.807) yeah, totally. But being bored is like, being on a board is the most boring thing.

Mario Gabriele (16:18.73) I've only ever been told never do it. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (16:22.41) It's terrible. It's so boring. It's also boring for the CEO to be like, these like, they're just the, the, the, the process of creating on the board deck, I think is a very good thing to go do, but often the meetings themselves, and maybe I just haven't been in great ones, including the ones I've won myself or never been that good. they're just not, I don't, I don't know that that many people are getting much value out of them.

Mario Gabriele (16:28.769) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (16:33.538) Hmm.

Mario Gabriele (16:46.315) I suspect that is very universal based on what I've heard. I doubt it's there's some, you know, unbelievable board meetings happening that we're missing out on, but maybe very rarely.

Auren Hoffman (16:55.106) You know, at Metta, have, they obviously have the traditional board, which is the, you know, the, the governance board, which is obviously very important when your public company is even more important. But they also have a product board. Now, some of the board members are on both. So there are people who are on the product board and the product board is super deep on the product, doing like product reviews and

Mario Gabriele (17:00.159) Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (17:21.64) And so some of the people like Drew Houston and I think Charlie Song are some of these guys who are on the meta board or also on the product board. and, but that to me is a very interesting thing. And that is like quite strategic, but the people on that board are people who have like deep product experience and not like the necessarily the governance person who you also might need on like the main board.

Mario Gabriele (17:32.842) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (17:39.117) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (17:46.613) Yeah, it sounds like that would be a very, very different dynamic.

Auren Hoffman (17:49.838) Correct. Yeah. And maybe I, I, I, you know, it'd be interesting to talk to the sea of meta, but maybe Zuck gets more, that more value out of the product board than he does get out of the traditional board of directors, which you just need to run a company.

Mario Gabriele (17:59.725) Hmm.

Mario Gabriele (18:06.573) Yeah, presumably he gets something out of it, otherwise why bother, right?

Auren Hoffman (18:10.83) Yeah, I mean, it is you have to have one. No, no, sorry. Right. So the priority board is getting some for sure. The other board. I mean, yes, exactly. I would presume he wouldn't be doing it unless he's getting personal value out of it. Yeah, no, no. Is there anything if you were advising VCs to be a better, better at adding value, like what would you advise things to do or things to not do?

Mario Gabriele (18:12.929) You have to have a product board?

Yeah. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (18:23.891) Yeah, totally.

Mario Gabriele (18:38.049) The things that I hear most from founders and that's sort of, I think the best indication is really, they end up being like very simple things. And so I think, you know, the, number one sort of request or thing that I hear from founders is just like a level of responsivity and generosity with one's network, you know, sort of being really genuinely open to seeing a message responding quickly.

with a tangible thing that you might be able to do, and being willing to expend social capital in doing that.

Auren Hoffman (19:15.146) I would have thought that would be something that most VCs do very well.

Mario Gabriele (19:21.069) From what I would have assumed so too.

Auren Hoffman (19:22.54) Like it's going to react if so. So again, it's on the CEO to use them effectively. And I think most CEOs, including myself, are guilty of not using their investors in not, not, not asking them to do things. But I think once asked, I would imagine most of us will do it and do it quickly.

Mario Gabriele (19:27.501) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (19:40.141) I think there's a version of it where if you don't know how to make the ask and if it's a really vague ask, it's of incumbent on the investor to try and do a little bit of searching to say like, hey, we're trying to meet people who are in this sector in this role. Like if you say, hey, I see you're connected to this person on LinkedIn, do you know them yet? Yes or no. Like maybe that gets a fast reaction. But from a lot of founders, from what I hear, it's sort of like maybe that in between

Auren Hoffman (19:57.261) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (20:04.886) Yeah, yeah.

Mario Gabriele (20:09.997) style intro that doesn't get as much of a response or things like monthly updates that doesn't get often a response or much of a response. so I think it's just like a lot of those little things that can make a difference. also, I'm very early in charting this for myself. So I'm sure there are a bunch of missteps that I'm making and that in 10 years time, someone will say, I can't believe you didn't do this or that.

Auren Hoffman (20:20.632) Hmm.

Auren Hoffman (20:39.95) The negative things I've seen is just like asking the CEO or asking other people in company to do things that are have low value. And, let's put together this three year plan. Let's do these types of things. And then it's like they're spending all this energy. Like you have to realize there's this ripple effect every time you ask for something.

Mario Gabriele (20:53.207) Hmm.

Mario Gabriele (21:02.582) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (21:03.854) And then, um, and sometimes those things just like, they keep producing that thing for years, even though like maybe you just needed that one time to, right. So, but it's true when you're CEO, sometimes you have to be very careful what you ask for in an organization. Um, the board member would have a similar kind of responsibility to ask, be gentle about what they requesting.

Mario Gabriele (21:10.989) Hmm.

Mario Gabriele (21:14.785) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (21:26.285) The other thing I've heard and curious if it's the same for you as a founder is that the most annoying text you can get from an investor is saying, like, hey, did you see this thing that your competitor is doing? Or did you see this new competitor? And that's the one thing that is sure to piss everyone off and ruin their day.

Auren Hoffman (21:48.206) Interesting. I don't mind getting that. Yeah, I mean, often I will know 90 % of the time I get those things. I'm well aware of that thing. Sometimes they're not even a competitor. They're our customer or something and they're just kind of in a similar space or, whatever. But every once in a while it's like, oh, I haven't heard of this. This is interesting or this is adjacent or I so I guess if you got if you get something that's a you just you just disregard, you know, it's not I guess you have to reply.

Mario Gabriele (21:51.393) Yeah?

Mario Gabriele (22:02.189) Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (22:16.502) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (22:17.779) yeah, I know about this guy. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (22:19.147) Yeah, yeah, I know that, yeah. But it sounds like, yeah, you're happy for the, you know, crowdsourced competitive intelligence.

Auren Hoffman (22:25.004) Yeah, I do think that is at least shows that they're, you know, they're, they're, they, they are, they care. and I think that is important, that they, you know, that you want to know that your, your investors care about you when they're thinking about you. And, so I generally, that's a, that's a, not a bad, not terrible thing.

Mario Gabriele (22:42.061) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (22:49.313) What's the most useful thing an investor has done for you guys?

Auren Hoffman (22:54.402) It's a good question.

I mean, sometimes they can help you not do something stupid.

Mario Gabriele (23:06.017) Hmm. That's really valuable.

Auren Hoffman (23:07.726) yeah, or, or just the fact you're, or maybe not even help, but just like having another person to talk it through is helpful. So let's, we want to acquire this company. Okay. Let's talk it through. And then, you know, you start to realize through talking it through that, okay, it's gonna take us down this other path. And then it's going to, it's going to take all of your time and you're not, you then you're not to be able to spend time on your product and you have to integrate these two different cultures and

Mario Gabriele (23:20.395) Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (23:36.108) Maybe it's good decision, maybe it's not, but they can help you think through it in a way. If they come in just right off the bat saying that's a bad idea, then might not be the best way of doing it. if they're a thought partner, then I think it be helpful.

Mario Gabriele (23:50.38) Yeah.

Yeah, that is one that a bunch of folks, you know, through this, this process of writing these guides say a lot is just like, yeah, being, being a mirror to someone in those moments is really valuable.

Auren Hoffman (24:04.268) Yeah. the, it is, it's hard when someone, when you're on someone's board, you're also technically their boss. there are like, when I went, when I'm an investor right now, I tried never to be on the board because I don't want them to have that perception. want them to call for like advice or, or help, or they're having an issue that maybe they don't feel comfortable going to board members. And maybe it's a co-founder issue.

Mario Gabriele (24:30.637) Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (24:31.246) some other type of issue that they don't want to talk to their board members are, or comp talk to a lot of people about comp is very common by the way, CEO comp complaints are extremely common and very hard to have a conversation with really anyone. can't have a conversation with anyone in your company about, but often people feel like they're under comp and often after talking to them, I agree with them. Um, and, uh,

Mario Gabriele (24:36.501) Yeah. Really?

Mario Gabriele (24:50.005) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (24:56.139) Hmm. When does that start cropping up? Like series C? four years in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Makes sense.

Auren Hoffman (24:59.95) Usually like four years in. Yeah. Yeah. So usually right when you hit the four year mark, five year mark, depending on your investing schedule, you're all of a sudden like my go forward comp. And a lot of these CEOs are your second time CEOs are often paying them nothing. So they're getting zero salary. Second time CEOs are, you know, are they getting very reduced? Even the first time CEOs, they're, getting, they're, they're one of the lowest paid people in the whole company often in terms of salary. Um, so they're

Mario Gabriele (25:09.814) Mmm.

Mario Gabriele (25:16.288) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (25:25.088) Yes. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (25:28.162) Yeah, they're often can't even they're big. They have like room. They have like six roommates or so. Yeah, these guys are like five years into a company. The company is not on paper is nominally successful, yet they're they're so barely able to, you know, get things get things moving.

Mario Gabriele (25:33.122) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (25:44.481) Yes, yes, totally. That's really interesting. I hadn't considered how common that must be.

Auren Hoffman (25:50.67) Yes, it is much more common. And of course they don't, they just won't, they'll feel like, okay, I can't talk to my board about it or I can't. So let's just let there's a gripe session, but then there might even be some way. Okay. Let's, let's strategize about what we can do about it. Maybe there are ways we can do it, but maybe there's a way to get the board on. Maybe there are ways you can think about it. Um, I'm a big fan of like out of the money options as well. Um, so this is like the Elon Musk, what he did at a Tesla.

Mario Gabriele (26:04.746) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (26:16.461) Hmm.

Auren Hoffman (26:17.703) can you do like, that's another way of aligning people. So there are other ways of doing some things.

Mario Gabriele (26:21.033) Yeah, totally. Yeah, I feel like most VCs I would hope are super on board with the Elon Musk options, right? Really? Huh.

Auren Hoffman (26:29.876) You would, day, most of them are not, I would say. Yeah. And again, I think that's where they're adding negative value, but most of them are, at least in my experience, it is a lot of convincing a lot of, you know, cause it's, you know, it's dilutive even in the best case is dilutive. Of course, the best case is the one that they're hoping for. So it becomes this like harder thing to, and so you have to make the case that yes, it's dilutive, but it's actually like,

Mario Gabriele (26:50.271) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (26:58.198) It motivates CEO more and all these other things. And so it's more likelihood that will be more successful, which is a hard argument to me. I don't even know if it's true or not. So it's a hard argument to make. So you have to, but that's the argument that you have to kind of do.

Mario Gabriele (27:07.021) Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah, I would have thought that one would be an easier one to get across the line.

Auren Hoffman (27:18.446) Now you built the Generalist and it's kind of as a media company, but then you got the mullet in the back being an investment company as well. What have you learned about that kind of advantages and disadvantages of that kind of mullet capitalism?

Mario Gabriele (27:25.997) You

Mario Gabriele (27:34.283) Yeah, I really like this model that feels like it's happening in a few different shapes. The media one is definitely one you see with the acquired guys and Paki from Not Boring and Harry Stebbings. And then you have some other flavors that are emerging, which I think is really exciting. So there's the Canon project, which I think is a really interesting one. That's a sort of, yeah, I hadn't heard of it until relatively recently, but basically a

Auren Hoffman (27:51.832) What are some other good flavors that you admire?

Auren Hoffman (27:57.87) I've never heard of it.

Mario Gabriele (28:03.405) sort of recruiting business for tech companies that focuses, it seems, like, sort of the most promising elite college graduates or early, know, folks early in their career, getting them into tech companies. And then also there's a 20 million fund. And so, you know, having access to that pool of talent is obviously a really nice competitive advantage. And then there's another one that's sort of earlier in its life called Super Connector.

Auren Hoffman (28:13.815) That's cool.

Auren Hoffman (28:24.046) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (28:32.203) where they've built sort of an interesting outsourced sales network that the manager initially started using to help his portfolio companies, but is now spinning out into a standalone business. And so I think there's like an interesting synergy there where it's like, you can imagine this, the sales network being a really, really solid great business, but also being this sort of unique value add that, especially if you're not trying to be, you

play in the multi-billion dollar AUM club, like you can win really meaningful stakes there. so that's right. Yeah, just me. And it's a $15 million fund, like very concentrated approach. So roughly 15 companies. And the idea is to help the founders of those companies with storytelling and

Auren Hoffman (29:06.702) Because you're a solo capitalist, right?

Mario Gabriele (29:25.645) to sort of a secondary effect network just because the generalist does have a relatively broad reach.

Auren Hoffman (29:33.71) And there are quite a lot of these funds that are like, let's say, five to $20 million funds. Often it's like a side thing. It's like a side hustle. They might even be a current CEO of a tech company. They may have other like you, they may be running a media company, maybe other. How do you think we'll see more of those in the future? Fewer of those? Like, how do you think those will be evolving?

Mario Gabriele (29:45.314) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (29:59.981) I think we'll probably see fewer in the short term in the sense that, you I do think that sort of flight to brand names is real. And I could see that persisting. I think that like, you know, if there's a really differentiated perspective and you're someone who has a strong network, you know, raising a $5 million fund as a CEO of a successful company is like not so hard, right? It's more just a question of focus. And so I think, you know,

Auren Hoffman (30:24.8) Right, right. Not hard at all. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (30:30.069) There will be some of those folks, but on the margin, I'd say probably less. I do like the media flavor because I think there are some really sort of nice overlaps that work together quite nicely. There are definitely drawbacks also, but yeah, I can't imagine we'll see tons more given the current environment.

Auren Hoffman (30:51.958) Yeah, yeah, okay, interesting. I'm not sure where I would predict on that. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (30:58.541) And maybe my answer was a good, a good illustration that I'm not really sure either. I'm sort of like, probably less, but.

Auren Hoffman (31:03.158) Yeah. Yeah, I could see both. I could see both arguments for it. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how it plays out. cause it is easier to go do. And you could see even like these big men, mega funds almost funding all these little, you know, if you think of like millennium, which is a huge hedge fund millennium is often is really just, in some ways, just a collection of all these individual PMs. each one of which has, let's say somewhere between 50 to

Mario Gabriele (31:18.241) Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:32.686) 300 million, you know, in a pod and they're almost the back office, like reallocating risk, understanding some things, making sure sometimes they'll trade on, they'll double down on the trade that the person is making and stuff. so, you know, you could, you can imagine like a huge manager, like an Andreessen all of a sudden, just having like all these other like pods that are out there and somehow they interact and somehow, you know, somehow they don't.

Mario Gabriele (31:38.861) That is so interesting.

Mario Gabriele (31:46.189) you

Mario Gabriele (31:53.974) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (32:00.161) Yeah, totally. mean, they, Andreessen does seem to be sort of institutionally institutionalizing its fund to funds practice more from what I can tell. So maybe that's, you know, part of it. Obviously, you know, Mark and Chris Dixon are like very prolific LPs and a lot of, a lot of funds. so yeah, that.

Auren Hoffman (32:15.5) Yes. Yep. Yep. They're in flex. They're, they're all P's and flex capital. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. now how do think about exit? So Amazon went public when they went public, I think two years in today's companies are taking at least often 10 years before they go public. Some companies like Stripe, I don't even know if they'll ever go public. Like it's just, knows?

Mario Gabriele (32:21.826) And generalist capital. So there you go. We're two for two on this call.

Mario Gabriele (32:41.345) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (32:42.966) Like what, where do you see some of these kind of like second order effects of this timeline change?

Mario Gabriele (32:48.331) Yeah, I mean, I can't remember exactly what Palantir was. Was it 17, 20, something like that? Yeah, a long, time. I think the clearest sort of effect of it is just the, you know, what some folks will call the private equitization of venture where there is sort of more of this booming secondaries market. You can see sort of the rise of players like industry ventures, which started as this sort of secondary

Auren Hoffman (32:54.816) Yeah, was wow. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (33:17.175) focused fund and has become like, think a really important part of the ecosystem. and so, you know, think the interesting things that happen as a result of that is like, you know, maybe more of a bifurcation between like true seed early stage investors who are, you know, because they have enough certainty in being able to sell secondary sort of able to underwrite again towards like a 10 year timeline. And then, you know, the other side of that, that schism are the

really long-term growth folks who take it for the second decade. And so that I think is something that we'll only see more of over the coming 10 plus years.

Auren Hoffman (33:56.61) And you think some more seed companies will like, okay, I'm to take 50 % of my chips off the table or that type of thing.

Mario Gabriele (34:03.317) Yeah, I think, I think there are sort of two ways to play it right? Like either you stay pure early stage and you get comfortable and like build sort of muscle memory and institutional knowledge around how to do those secondary sales is just like part of the model. Or I think you, you know, go the route of a lot of these mega firms and sort of like vertically integrate as much as you possibly can and, know, prepare yourself to also hold maybe in the public markets and so on and so forth.

And so, you know, I think that's a different way to do it too. But if you're, you know, if you're not blessed with those kinds of resources, I think probably you'll have to find ways to build that liquidity in.

Auren Hoffman (34:45.1) Yeah, certainly when companies back in the day when a company, you're an, if you're a seed investor and, or a investor and the company went public at that point, you would usually distribute, maybe distribute the shares, but distributed to your LPs. And, and often there was still a huge ride up from there. now that companies are going public later, you could imagine like a big event, where it's like a PE style event when the company's worth

Mario Gabriele (34:58.06) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (35:12.802) five, $10 billion or something, and you may decide to distribute some of that to your LPs, give them some cash back or something.

Mario Gabriele (35:20.683) Yeah, totally. There's some like, you know, interesting, strip sales, you know, where folks will sort of sell a tranche of the entire portfolio to folks. And that's like a, an interesting way I've seen some managers sort of lock in a certain, floor for how well the fund does and give some money back to LPs while still,

Auren Hoffman (35:38.732) What? Sorry, I'm not familiar with this. So what is how does that work?

Mario Gabriele (35:41.693) It's called a strip sale. so there's a fund called Blackbird, which is an Australian fund, incredible performance. They share it all on their website. I think their first fund is a 30X plus. And a big part of that was finding Canva early and then aggressively doubling, tripling, quadrupling down. They really built a huge position.

Auren Hoffman (35:55.262) Holy mackerel. Wow.

Auren Hoffman (36:01.365) Okay.

Mario Gabriele (36:08.287) And so I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point in that funds lifetime, the manager, Nikki, was approached by step stone who said like, Hey, we want to basically buy a percent of the whole portfolio, which is, which is a strip sale. And it allowed him to essentially like, realize three X in returns and LPs had the chance to sort of take some of that off the table, but also keep some of it writing. And so.

Step Zone ended up having a chunk of a firm that ended up growing a great deal still because Canva has continued to appreciate and the other companies as part of it.

Auren Hoffman (36:49.016) So in some ways, it's just like a secondary where if you're an employee at a hot company or something like that, you could sell a portion of your shares or something like that to go lock in something or buy a house or whatever it might be.

Mario Gabriele (36:52.043) Yes, like a bundled secondary.

Mario Gabriele (37:03.243) Yeah, the nice part for the GP is that you're not only trimming your best position. Like instead of just selling Canva, you sell a little of everything.

Auren Hoffman (37:09.356) Yes, yeah, yeah.

You're selling a secondary in the whole fund. OK. OK. Interesting. Interesting. That's cool.

Mario Gabriele (37:20.801) Yeah, I think it's like a nice way to do it, honestly.

Auren Hoffman (37:24.108) Now you're also you write also a lot about politics and how do you see this like where by the time this comes out the we'll have a new president. There's all this talk about Doge and Department of Government Efficiency. How do you see that kind of evolving over time?

Mario Gabriele (37:44.013) Wow, I think it'll be absolute theater for the next four years. We were gonna see, think, some astonishing stories. And I'm kind of quietly optimistic about Doge and what might happen over the next four years. I think there's lots of ways it could go wrong and might end up.

Auren Hoffman (38:06.542) If nothing happens, what's the best explanation of what giga are?

Mario Gabriele (38:12.429) I think the best explanation, I sort of think more just like ego cataclysms. know, there's a lot of big personalities there. And I think there will be at some point differences of opinion and philosophies, maybe within Doge, but also between Doge and the administration and

Auren Hoffman (38:13.634) Just like entrenchment, like.

Auren Hoffman (38:23.08) Mmm, okay.

Mario Gabriele (38:39.341) I'm not sure how that resolves itself. And if they manage to avoid that, I could see some like incredible things happening and the amount of talent that they're pulling in seems to be no small feat. And I'm sure that there are tons of low hanging fruit that like really intelligent tech minded people can bring to the table. My big hope is that Doge invites an amazing writer in for the

Auren Hoffman (38:50.499) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (39:07.955) the full two year period and lets them chronicle this because either it's going to be honestly, there's probably like 1000 people that would do it better than me, but someone should do it. Because either it's going to work in which case it's a case study for like every nation on earth, know, every Western nation of how to do this, or it doesn't and we'll, you know, learn something really important from it. But I almost feel like there's a

Auren Hoffman (39:11.918) Rhymes with Mario.

Auren Hoffman (39:19.841) huh.

Auren Hoffman (39:27.299) Yep.

Mario Gabriele (39:34.997) a civic responsibility to have that story told because it's like the biggest case study of all time.

Auren Hoffman (39:42.99) Interesting. It's great. I a few. I don't know. I actually think it could happen. like that. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that could happen. What's a commonly held belief intact? Do you think it will look like somewhat absurd by 10 years from now?

Mario Gabriele (39:46.273) It'll never happen, but...

You think so? Yeah, I hope so.

Mario Gabriele (40:02.699) Hmm. I've come to believe that the sort of long-term optimism around VR slash the metaverse is like something that we may just more or less entirely navigate away from. like I, there are some people who, who sincerely sort of are excited about the idea of living in a ready player one simulation.

And I think that's probably quite misguided. and I'm sort of optimistic that we're going to navigate away from, from that threat of computing, except for, you know, use cases in which immersion is really magical. And, know, maybe that's some fraction of gaming or, something like that. But, yeah, that, that sort of idea in general, I'm, I'm, I'm not convinced about it all.

Auren Hoffman (40:57.92) It's literally like 10 years ago, like the two things people, most people were talking about were self-driving cars and VR. And I had thought at the time that if I had to make a bet, I would bet that VR is like 10 years later. VR would be ubiquitous and self-driving cars. just wouldn't be able to get there. And it seems almost opposite has happened. Like it does not, not that really that many people I know spent time in like real VR. but we're, we're, we're already getting

Mario Gabriele (41:05.323) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (41:15.949) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (41:23.585) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (41:27.074) we're already making like a significant progress on the self-driving car front.

Mario Gabriele (41:30.879) Yeah, it seems like in SF it's, I mean, pretty close to ubiquitous.

Auren Hoffman (41:35.49) Yeah, I mean, I was just in San Francisco a couple days ago and I made sure to only do the way most and it was absolutely lovely.

Mario Gabriele (41:44.909) that's awesome. I still haven't written in one. So my next drift, I'm really excited.

Auren Hoffman (41:47.742) really? we have to. Okay, we have to. It's, it's, it's incredible. It's an incredible experience, like just from the even just the UI of unlocking the door and getting in and then, you know, saying hello, Mario, welcome. And, and just like the whole, the whole thing is just so well done. Many of what you, know, you could even be doing it.

with a car, with a driver, but they've kind of figured out a really good UI around it. And it's experienced and the car itself is just absolutely beautiful. It's, one of the most beautiful cars I've ever been in just the car. And obviously you could just have that car and drive it, but it's a, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous car and just, feels luxurious as being in that car, um, way more so than, you know, uh, typical Uber black that you're in. And it just, it feels way better and in almost every dimension.

Mario Gabriele (42:11.809) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (42:17.933) Mm.

Mario Gabriele (42:22.187) Really?

Mario Gabriele (42:30.7) Wow.

Mario Gabriele (42:35.565) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (42:40.001) Wow, I hope to get to SF this quarter at some point. So I will have to try and get in one.

Auren Hoffman (42:45.622) Yeah, it's it's it's the future. Is there a contrarian view you hold about how to build great companies?

Mario Gabriele (42:53.719) You know, I've been as sort of a little mini project going back to, you know, lots of the books about the best known founders of our era. So, you know, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Steve jobs, and just trying to like actually figure out what did they tangibly do? Like, you know, we, hear so much,

You could read many a Harvard Business Review about what good management looks like. But when you actually study it, it strikes me that so much of it is basically the entire opposite of what is heralded to be good management. And the one that comes up so often is just the degree of micromanagement from these people. Yeah, it's so high. And it must be really difficult if you're someone who...

Auren Hoffman (43:33.431) Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:40.034) Yeah, so high.

Mario Gabriele (43:48.057) isn't, isn't willing to have that level of input all the time, but it feels like you just have to, yeah. So my, my contrarian opinion would be really just like to build an insane, insanely massive company, much of the time depends on just an atrocious, persistent level of micromanagement to which,

Auren Hoffman (44:07.982) But that doesn't that doesn't that seems almost that seems opposite of contrarian today. I feel like almost everyone's bought into that. I could be wrong. I don't don't know that that many people do it. But but nowadays it doesn't seem contrarian at all to believe that I could be wrong. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (44:15.414) You think so?

Mm.

Mario Gabriele (44:22.669) to believe, yeah, maybe that's right. To the extent that then it feels strange to me that if it's accepted that it's not practiced.

Auren Hoffman (44:25.794) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (44:33.038) I think it's very hard to do because I think it's interpersonally tough to do and also lot of people you hire won't like it, so they'll quit. then so you might not like that. You have to be OK with having some more interpersonal strife there. And then and then you have to be get involved in all the details. And a lot of people like to be, oh, I'm strategic.

Mario Gabriele (44:34.989) Just because it's from a personal perspective?

Mario Gabriele (45:02.079) Mmm.

Auren Hoffman (45:02.498) Right. It turns out that to be involved in these very, very, very little details out there. And it turns out like the strategic part comes from being involved in the details and not the other way around. But a lot of founders, they just want to be more strategic and they don't want to, they don't want to be involved in all this crap. right. They want to do the fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You have to be like reading deep in the specs and you have to be trying to, you have to be QA things and

Mario Gabriele (45:06.817) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (45:20.599) Hmm. Yeah. It's painful to be, doing that all the time.

Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (45:32.214) It's it's a, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a different type of thing. mean, I, I don't know how Jensen Wong has done it for so long. Guy's been CEO longer than anybody. usually there's a, there's a, there's a half life to being able to do it.

Mario Gabriele (45:39.297) Yeah. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (45:45.695) Yes, yes. Well, that's interesting that I'm going to have to update my priors on that and think of what's more off piste.

Auren Hoffman (45:53.422) Do you think there's a big technology or innovation that's just like significantly underrated right now that will really have an opportunity to really reshape society, but most people don't appreciate it?

Mario Gabriele (46:10.861) Well, this is being talked about a lot because of the bridge acquisition that that stripe made. But I continue to think stable coins are are extremely, extremely interesting. And even despite the current hype, probably underappreciated by just how how radical that is for the broader world.

Auren Hoffman (46:32.13) Why do you need a lot of stable? Like, is it okay if we just had like one stable coin or two stable coins? do you need more than that?

Mario Gabriele (46:42.963) I think there are probably interesting properties that'll look.

Auren Hoffman (46:44.408) Or might need stable coins for each. Okay, I need a stable coin for the euro and a stable coin for the dollar and a stable coin for the renminbi or whatever it might be.

Mario Gabriele (46:53.045) Yeah. And you'll probably have, you know, there are versions that have different sort of yield profiles and stuff like that. It wouldn't surprise me if like, I don't know, there's a proliferation and then some degree of, of culling towards a few, you know, major players. But, you know, I'm an investor in a company called Dollar App that I remain just obsessed with because, you know, it's just essentially a Neo bank built on stable coin rails that has, allowed so much of Latin America.

Auren Hoffman (46:57.742) Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (47:03.309) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (47:21.965) to escape the cycle of insane inflation, know, that Argentina in particular was in pre-Mille. And that sort of like dynamic, I think is just like really, really interesting. And then the other thing that feels, you know, so radical in sci-fi, and we are all aware of it, but I don't know if we totally understand where it's going yet, is BCI, like brain computer interfaces, both in the like extreme Neuralink version.

Auren Hoffman (47:51.021) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (47:52.061) and in sort of, you know, lighter weight versions that sit on your temple or behind your ear and that might sort of modulate your focus or, you know, direct your attention differently, things like that. So that's another thing that I think I'm excited to see what happens there.

Auren Hoffman (48:01.848) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (48:11.81) Yeah, that could be, or just things that help. There's gotta be these more, these somewhat interfaces in some ways, like this is a brain interface, right? You have a, you have a phone and you're, you're in your, it's almost like interacting, it's helping you recall things, right. That you wouldn't normally recall. and, but it's not the best form factor. Like if I forget, you know, your last name, okay, do I go and search for.

you know, Mario the writer or something and just kind of like I said, somehow it needs to have a better way of, of interacting with my brain to be able to do that.

Mario Gabriele (48:43.382) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (48:50.281) Yeah, it's like this idea that I've, I, you know, wrote about and it's sort of half an idea really is just like, what does the better body for AI look like? Because it doesn't feel like the perfect form factor for, for AI is the phone per se. I thought humane was an interesting attempt. you know, I liked the look of rabbit, a friend, all these different things, you know, I think are. Yeah. Interesting experiments in that space. And, and maybe the closer you actually get to the human brain, the sort of more interesting that that becomes.

Auren Hoffman (49:06.743) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (49:20.62) Yeah, there is this idea. mean, the idea of the Google Glass is so appealing and so exciting to imagine, you know, you would be able to have an instant recall on someone's face and you'd have some other instant directions and other types of things like and in some ways, like some people will say, this is terrible for social interaction. But today, when you're looking down at your device,

Mario Gabriele (49:25.931) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (49:46.229) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Auren Hoffman (49:49.366) It's very, you know, at least, at least you'll be present and you almost just have this heads up display while you're present about it. It doesn't, seems like, you know, I'm, I'm like you a little bit short on, on VR, but AR could be just like, could just be world changing.

Mario Gabriele (49:52.321) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (50:08.821) Yes, if you can figure that out, well, feels like, yeah, having a digital layer on top of everything, you can see so many use cases for that. sort of frankly, part of that bums me out a little bit. I think it will happen and I think it'll, you know, I'll probably end up loving it, but I do sort of, the piece of having your reality mediated by that is,

Auren Hoffman (50:29.485) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:36.984) That's right.

Mario Gabriele (50:39.071) is sort of bizarre, we'll cease to be bizarre in a long enough time.

Auren Hoffman (50:43.35) Yeah. Cause like all of a sudden, like we already could potentially look better on video right now. I might be looking better than I really am. And now imagine, thank you. Thank you. So like, you know, it's got, yeah, I got the filters and everything, right. Made me look 10 years younger. And now maybe, maybe, maybe they'll be the true in real life. Like all of sudden it's like, Whoa, or something. Do have, use these, you'd use like the meta ones.

Mario Gabriele (50:49.409) Yes. Well, you look great.

100%, yes.

Mario Gabriele (51:02.891) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (51:06.965) I tried them out, but I haven't used them properly. Do you use it like frequently?

Auren Hoffman (51:11.534) I like it. So I love playing like tennis and pickleball and stuff. And so then it's just like fun. You can start taking videos while you're playing and then like later on you're gonna be like, oh, that great shot. And you could like replay it and send it to your friends and stuff. It's definitely like those are just like if you're in the pool with your kids or so those types of things. It's just like, it's so convenient.

Mario Gabriele (51:17.037) Mmm.

Mario Gabriele (51:22.64) that's really fun.

Mario Gabriele (51:27.095) That is pretty awesome, yeah.

Mario Gabriele (51:34.157) Hmm.

Auren Hoffman (51:38.552) to take a video or take a photo or something. And then the, I do like listening. So if you're listening to a podcast or a music, you just kind of put these on and you don't have to put the earbuds in and they, you can, you can hear it. I think that these, these things have, these meta glasses, these, have like, more and more people will start to use them.

Mario Gabriele (51:38.561) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (51:45.388) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (51:50.413) That's pretty awesome.

Mario Gabriele (52:00.875) Yeah. Yeah. It feels like the only version of it that I've heard people like, maybe not totally rave, but like strongly recommend.

Auren Hoffman (52:11.214) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll just see more and more of those types of things. This is very it's a very V1 thing. We'll see more and more of them happen over time. Now, you how do you assemble your own news diet?

Mario Gabriele (52:17.58) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (52:26.605) I try and not read a ton of news to be honest.

Auren Hoffman (52:30.361) Okay. She really like more longer form pieces or, or, okay. Okay. If this piece has already been forwarded around a lot, it's two months later, then I'll read it or.

Mario Gabriele (52:38.379) Yeah, that feels like a great use of time. I feel like there's an amount of news that I'm happy with where I sort of like have a rough shape of what's happening maybe on a given day or a given week. Even a week is totally fine. But for...

Auren Hoffman (52:49.39) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (52:55.566) So like a summary of the week, like The Economist or something or whatever, yeah.

Mario Gabriele (52:57.833) Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like The Economist is a great way you can scan the headlines, maybe read one or two articles and

Auren Hoffman (53:02.444) Yeah. Yeah, if you just read that every week, you'll be you'll be up to speed on everything. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (53:08.585) Yeah. And also I think up to speed is, you know, often very overrated compared to the amazing long form things that, you know, could have been published 10 years ago, but like is, you know, or, or 50 years ago, that is actually much more interesting. So yeah, very, very little, probably daily news, a lot of fiction, some, some nonfiction, and then a good amount of long form.

Auren Hoffman (53:13.614) Correct. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:21.933) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (53:37.822) You also published this piece called Monk Mode about your 2025 habits. Can you impact those a bit for us?

Mario Gabriele (53:44.257) Yeah, you know, was spending some time thinking, what are some like little experiments I'd like to run on myself and my day to day life this year? And so I basically decided for the next month to try out a few of them. And so, you know, the 10 of them that I outlined are things like, you know, doing fasting during the day, you know, my phone on black and white mode, writing fiction every day.

Auren Hoffman (54:09.752) And you fast, is that your, are you fasting like the whole day or like, how are you thinking about that?

Mario Gabriele (54:16.223) No, it's pretty easy. It's like 16 hours minimum. Yeah. so often it'll end up being like more like 18. But it's not like you're really crabby or anything like that. but I've actually just found it like that one super easy and, and pleasant.

Auren Hoffman (54:18.722) Okay, this is breakfast, skipping breakfast. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (54:29.526) Yep. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (54:35.66) Yep. Yeah, there's something about, there was a point in my life where I never felt hungry. Ever. Because just never hungry. Because I was eating if you have breakfast, was just need to have breakfast, lunch and dinner. And just like I was just never

Mario Gabriele (54:49.793) you were working?

Mario Gabriele (54:54.855) I see. I thought it meant you were never hungry and you weren't eating.

Auren Hoffman (54:59.286) Yeah. Yeah. No, no. was just like, I was just always, I always was full. I always, you know, and then I would snack if I saw something or whatever. And like, literally, I never felt that thing. You feel that thing in your stomach where I am hungry and your stomach is telling you, I am hungry. There's probably, I probably went three years one time without ever feeling that one thing, which is so weird. It's so like almost every human in history until a hundred years ago had felt has felt that like for a very large portion of their life. And then you go like three years without feeling it at all.

Mario Gabriele (55:01.133) Yes. Yes.

Mario Gabriele (55:11.444) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (55:21.794) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (55:26.326) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (55:28.622) Cause we live in this world of abundant calories and abundant opportunity to grab food whenever we want. Uh, okay. There's something wrong here. Like humans should feel that occasionally. Right. And, we feel that once a day, that's probably good. You know, it's probably a good thing, or at least a couple of times a week or something.

Mario Gabriele (55:38.647) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (55:45.675) Yeah, it feels like it sort of like weirdly sharpens the mind and also simplifies my day. Like there's just some amount of faffing about with like, what am I going to have for breakfast or lunch? And if I worry about it until 3pm, then like I got a lot done for that point. Do you have any new year's resolutions?

Auren Hoffman (55:49.079) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (55:56.204) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (56:00.032) Totally.

Auren Hoffman (56:04.906) I make an anti resolution every year. So I've done, I've done things like eat more donuts, watch more TV. and I've done, I've done, I've definitely done things like read fewer books. So those types of things this year, my anti resolution is to curse more. and I've, I've just been very low cursor all my life.

Mario Gabriele (56:07.276) good for you.

Mario Gabriele (56:16.428) We're stuck.

Hmm

Mario Gabriele (56:24.46) Hmm

Auren Hoffman (56:29.806) And, uh, and so I, and I, and I say we're, we're keeping this for a few weeks into 2025 and I'm failing miserably at my F bombs have not been coming out at the rate that they're supposed to be. Um, and I'm trying to, it's just so anti my personality, but I'm trying to do it. And hopefully, hopefully if you catch up with me in the mid year, I'm just going to be like cursing like a sailor. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's.

Mario Gabriele (56:38.452) yeah?

Mario Gabriele (56:42.253) enough.

Mario Gabriele (56:50.173) You're gonna be... That would be a great one of your hand-drawn graphs. I'd like to see your cursing over time.

Auren Hoffman (56:58.7) Yeah, I'm just gonna like, I'm just gonna start I have to start doing it more often. I am doing now like playing sports. I like because then it's like it's more fun and people kind of expected and stuff. But in the business context, or like stuff around my kids, I have not yet been doing the cursing. But I plan to do it more. It just hasn't happened yet.

Mario Gabriele (57:03.213) Hmm.

Mario Gabriele (57:08.342) Yes.

Mario Gabriele (57:17.227) Okay, well, I look forward to checking in on that.

Auren Hoffman (57:18.926) A couple two more questions before you leave that we ask everybody one is what is the conspiracy theory that you believe?

Mario Gabriele (57:23.095) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (57:26.677) Okay, now I'm worried that it's gonna be, you're gonna say, everyone believes that. my conspiracy theory is probably that the magnitude and significance of spying in Silicon Valley and venture in particular is probably way higher than we anticipate.

Auren Hoffman (57:30.87) You

Auren Hoffman (57:44.014) So what do you mean by spying? Like foreign countries or? Okay.

Mario Gabriele (57:46.923) Yeah, yeah, think there's probably like, every once in a while, you'll see a news story pop up about it. Like I think, you know, was it Hone Capital had sort of an FBI probe happening recently. But it's so clearly like an essential strategic asset that in general, know, Silicon Valley in general, so much of it runs on like these personal relationships and stuff like that. I can't

I'd be shocked if there aren't significant escapades occurring from foreign governments. And if I was a foreign government minded to try and do this, I would be like, certainly trying to prop up managers and, you know, get young tech workers into all these companies. You hear about it more in the company context.

Auren Hoffman (58:36.408) Well, certainly, I mean, certainly like companies like, you know, big tech companies have actual spies of every nationality, including even friendly governments, know, the French Israel, right. They'll have friendly government, maybe even UK in there. And certainly they'll have Russia, Iranian, Chinese. you know, you'll have these other kinds of, so every company has those working, whether it's Google or.

Mario Gabriele (58:42.423) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (58:50.613) Yeah, totally.

Mario Gabriele (58:57.185) Mm-hmm.

Mario Gabriele (59:03.575) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (59:05.498) or, or Apple or whatever, but, you're saying venture capital firms will have actual spies or will they have more like pseudo? Okay. Hey, you know, like the spy meets that person. They kind of give information without even knowing that person's a spy or something like that.

Mario Gabriele (59:21.815) think there's probably flavors of both if I had to guess. I think there's been plenty of capital from foreign governments that has made its way into Silicon Valley funds over the years. It wouldn't surprise me.

Auren Hoffman (59:31.042) That's right. Yeah. And some of it could come through intermediaries. might not even know exactly where it's from. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (59:37.229) 100%. Yes. And it wouldn't surprise me if some of that is either like explicitly part of some some kind of operative or if it's sort of like, you know, these people are being maneuvered in ways that they don't fully appreciate and sharing information that that gets utilized. So yeah, that's something that I always feel a bit crazy for for believing but I but I do genuinely think so.

Auren Hoffman (59:51.544) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:01.326) Yeah, I don't I don't really I don't even think that's a conspiracy theory. I think that's almost certainly true. And I would say almost everyone I know believes it. Like it's yeah, I would think so. mean, it's just now again, the venture capital and I haven't heard of before. So that's interesting. I hadn't thought but certainly spies that are riddled in all these different tech companies. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (01:00:05.428) Aw man.

Mario Gabriele (01:00:12.234) Really?

Mario Gabriele (01:00:23.777) Yeah, I think totally you expected at a Google or any one of that magnitude.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:28.99) Yeah. Yeah. And even like a lot of them are even like customer support or you have like, cause a lot of them have a different, you have, if I want to look up, like a lot of them will have opportunities. say you're inside X and you could look up somebody's profile, you know, that, that person will have like privileges to go. So you don't even need a super high level person. Okay. Go look this up for me. And they'll go look it up on the side. And so that type of thing. And even I think at one point.

Mario Gabriele (01:00:33.259) Hmm. yeah, that makes sense.

100%.

Mario Gabriele (01:00:45.11) Mmm.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:55.758) The government in Saudi Arabia was, was accused of doing that in Twitter and there, there's been a bunch. I mean, if you were government, why would you not do that? Like it would just be crazy not to do that. Even if you're friendly to the U S it's just so you want to be able to get access to these things that you don't normally have access to. And you want to, there's a dissident in your country or something you want to go, go find out more about that particular person. Maybe want to see their IP address or some other type of thing.

Mario Gabriele (01:00:59.789) Yeah, yeah, of course.

100%.

Mario Gabriele (01:01:20.501) Yeah, or get some sort of compromise depending on the company or whatever it is. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:23.736) Correct. Yeah, or compliment. Yeah. Yeah. All right. It's super interesting. Okay. Last question. We asked all of our guests. What do you, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Mario Gabriele (01:01:33.293) I mean, I think a piece of conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that, think maybe it's a John Doar quote as like, aren't valuable, execution is sort of everything. And I definitely don't believe that. mean, I feel like ideas are wildly underrated a lot of the time by that quote. You know, obviously,

Auren Hoffman (01:01:46.542) Uh-huh.

OK, this is good. OK, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:56.984) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (01:01:59.423) you need application to build a great company, but a truly novel idea is like, you know, one of the rarest things in the world. and, and, is

Auren Hoffman (01:02:07.918) That's so true. It's every once in a you hear, you hear a company that's doing something and the, and the, they tell you about the idea and you're like, first of all, sometimes it sounds so simple. You're like, can't believe I didn't think about it. Like it's so obvious after they told it to you and you're like, my God, but it's so brilliant. And yeah, I feel like, everyone you hear that not pretty often actually be like, my God, that's so obvious, so smart. And then you kick yourself like

Mario Gabriele (01:02:25.759) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:34.414) Why didn't I think of that? Like I've been, you know, I've been in this industry for X three years. I've never even thought about this thing. So yeah, you're maybe you're right. am the, know, I, I think I would have disagreed with you if you just said that, but like that it was, but now, now I'm, I think you might be convincing me on this one. Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (01:02:40.17) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (01:02:50.785) good. You know, I there was some snippet that I saw the other day where it was like a screenshot someone shared of messages when Mark Zuckerberg was like 20 or something between him and a friend. And he says something like, you know, there really only about six people in the world who have good ideas. And, you know, I don't quite agree with that. But I do think that it is like extremely rare, and and very underappreciated and a good idea is not like

Auren Hoffman (01:03:15.736) Yeah.

Mario Gabriele (01:03:19.521) hey, let's do this exact company, but, you know, 1 % different. It's like, you know, when you feel it, as you say, you sort of like have that like, you know, that's an incredible thought.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:25.079) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:30.092) Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. This is awesome. Thank you, Mario Gabrielli for joining us on World of DaaS. I follow you at Mario Gabriele on X. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there. This has been a ton of fun. Super interesting.

Mario Gabriele (01:03:45.493) Yeah, I loved it. Thank you so much for having me.