00:48:42 · Aydin Senkut
[00:48:42] S0: Yeah, to that I mean, look, we have I feel like both Notion and Canva like come at this from different angles like Canva in terms of like creativity and then Notion from just like, hey, like we want to be the underlying foundation of knowledge for every company or even like one of our great New York companies, Runway, like people said, hey, like the big models are going to do everything. You can't be an independent company or like a very strong company doing just AI for video models. And Runway is doing just fine. I mean, went against OpenAI, it went against Google and it's still doing really well. So I think I'm also like tracking platforms like Substack. What I love about it is whether it's like a platform we invested in or not, anything that's democratization of talent or democratization of access to information or using knowledge overall is net positive for humanity. So whether it was like Patreon, whatever, some of these we weren't in. But I love the fact that these platforms basically made people say, you know what, like instead of being an employee, I actually want to start something. I want to create value by myself. I want to bet on myself. And before maybe like without these platforms existing, there was a lot of friction. But now like between Shopify and commerce and Substack and Patreon and like some of our other companies like Canva and all of that, I just love the fact like for instance, like one of the like untold stories of Canva, I don't know if you know this but in the beginning they wanted to like include all the images in clipart and they were not available on the web. So the founders went around the world and came back with like literally hundreds if not thousands of disk drives full of images. And they went to the creators and said, Look, right now you're selling it and you have to charge a very high price because your distribution is tiny, micro. How about you give them to us? We're going to give you a lot smaller piece but we can give you access to everyone in the world that they will then use your art and the things that you created. What an incredible idea. Until then nobody has dared to do it. So even Canva in his own way has done such a great job of not just democratizing design but also give a way to creators, like to do a lot more than what they've been able to do before.
00:50:55 · Eric Newcomer
[00:50:55] S1: I know you've been gone for a long time, far longer than you were there. But I'm sure you've invested out of Google since and maintain some relationships and are a closer observer of it. There's been some crumbling of the DeepMind team. I'm curious what your read of their strengths and weaknesses are right now.
00:51:15 · Aydin Senkut
[00:51:15] S0: I mean, I'm extremely bullish on Google. Let me present the following framework. We talk a lot about AI but one thing people don't talk enough about is what is the raw material of AI? The raw material of AI is data. Well, who has the most unique and most scalable data in the world? Let's think about it. The whole map, the whole organization, like the whole information, YouTube, like all the videos, wow, like Google also runs one of the two most important mobile operating systems. They have Chrome, the browser, like anything that you touch. There is Google payments like email. Let's talk about Gmail. You know why it's fascinating? When I was at Google there was this crazy decision whether we're to do email or not. And the biggest thing was until we do email there was a reason for people to get out of the Google platform. Because even though we're great at search, the only thing people do more than search is email. So unless we figured out email in a way that nobody does, like we're always going to be exposed. And it wasn't like, Oh, we need to make money of email. I don't think people even correctly understood that. It was just that with email there was no reason for people to leave the Google umbrella. Same thing with YouTube. I remember people ask me when Facebook went public, what do you think Google is going to do? I'm like, are you kidding me? Have you looked at YouTube? This is going to be the largest platform in the world. Somebody was talking about how like Netflix growth is like stalling and YouTube is absolutely going off the charts after Google put like tens of billions of dollars into it and like a billion and 0.5 acquisition is probably going to be like hundreds of billions of dollars business within Google. So I'm super bullish on them and I didn't even get a chance to talk about Waymo. I mean, we talk about self driving cars and I know Elon and Tesla get the light but like guess who has the highest number of miles in self driving cars? It's Google.
00:53:02 · Eric Newcomer, Aydin Senkut
[00:53:02] S1: And safe. [00:53:03] S0: And safe, right? And the reason why it's safe is because their cars have 100 times or 1,000 times more miles in more places in the world than anybody else. And you know what made that possible is because they use the cars for the mapping business and as a result they have the most like unbelievable mapping business. Even Apple with all its resources can't come close. And my favorite story is Apple had to call its apps maps so that people confuse it. Do you know that? I asked my wife and I'm like, Do you realize, like you think you're using Google Maps but it's actually Apple Maps? Anyway, I probably shouldn't go there but I can't help myself. [00:53:38] S1: It's been a blast to talk to you. Everyone should go check out our merchant list. It'll be on newcomer You dot guys have a write up on Felicis website, which we'll also link to. And, yeah, super excited to highlight this group of founders, and I'm sure we'll both... I'm sure you'll try to invest in some of them. We'll both be watching where they'll go, and it got exciting to meet a cool crew of founders. [00:54:00] S0: Thanks, Eric. Thanks for making it possible. I'm so excited about those companies and I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you also like Brandon at Mercor, on at Tynes, Chris at Runway and then Navin at Unconventional and some of the other great founders that have picked those. I really appreciate what they do because they are going to inspire some amazing founders for the next generation to follow in their footsteps.
00:54:00 · Aydin Senkut, Eric Newcomer
[00:54:00] S0: Thanks, Eric. Thanks for making it possible. I'm so excited about those companies and I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you also like Brandon at Mercor, on at Tynes, Chris at Runway and then Navin at Unconventional and some of the other great founders that have picked those. I really appreciate what they do because they are going to inspire some amazing founders for the next generation to follow in their footsteps. [00:54:23] S1: A 100%. Thank you so much. Thanks, Eric. That's our episode. This is the Newcomer Podcast. Thanks for listening. Please like, comment, subscribe. Go find us on our Substack at newcomer.co. If you're hungry for more podcasting, I also have a talk show called the Cerebral Valley Show. We love your comments. Thanks for all your support, and see you next week.