00:49:14 · Scott Kupor
It was since turned into basically a storage facility, but you can't get in there without going through massive security. You can go down in the mine, and there are literally people driving golf carts around in... With limestone poles. And so it shows up here, and then literally we have individuals, 800 people in my retirement service organization, who take that paper, they read the paper, they make a bunch of manual calculations, and then they give you a retirement check. That process historically takes anywhere from three months at the low end to twelve plus months to do, partly because we go back and forth, and if you forgot to sign your paper, I literally will snail mail it back to you, ask you to sign it, and that will introduce another one month delay in the process because, like, literally, like, it's sitting there waiting for you. So Ivan identified this, and rightly so, he's like, this is insane. He teamed up with a guy named Joe Gebbia. Gebbia is a co founder of Airbnb who's now running the National Design Studio. And they started this project at OPM before I got there, then I picked it up, which is, How do we automate this process? Today, we've fully automated the process. So now you never actually send a piece of paper. In fact, we declared last day of paper in the on June 30. So we will never receive another piece of incoming paper into the mine. Everything's online, which it should be in the year 2026, which is... This is not rocket science. Right? You should be able to fill out an online application for your retirement, and as a result, we can reduce the processing time today, just with the first iteration of this, by more than 50%. My goal is, we're gonna be able to reduce this, like, by 90%. Our commitment is if you give us an application that's electronic, that's healthy, within fifteen days, like, you should literally have, like, a full retirement check. Like, it should not be any harder than that. So we're doing that. Now, we have 400 existing million existing pieces of paper from all the people who retired prior to last year, basically, who call us up sometimes and they say, Hey, my spouse died, or, My child needs to be added to my insurance, whatever that stuff. So literally, if you call our call center today, we send what we call a runner.
00:51:03 · Scott Kupor
This is actually a job classification of the mine who goes into the mine, pulls a file out of a electronic file cabinet. Sorry. Not electronic file. I'm gonna actual virtual physical file cabinet, some of which date to, like, the nineteen fifties. It's a great... I'll show you some pictures after that. And they bring it to the person who adjudicates it, and then when they're done, they literally return the thing back to its thing. Like, we are now... We've just purchased two massive, like, digitization machines. I don't know what you call them. Like, literally, like, scanners that, like, take up an entire room. It's like a mainframe computer. Mhmm. And, from this day forward now, every single one of those 400,000,000 pieces of paper is going to be digitized, which will allow us, number one, to at some point in time actually literally shut down the storage component of the mine, but also just dramatically change the nature of what we're doing in terms of servicing people. Like, our service is not good for people, in part because, like, we haven't given the people there... They don't have the stuff at their fingertips to resolve problems. They literally have to wait for somebody to deliver a piece of... A file for them from a file cabinet. Like, it's insane. There are problems like this all over the government. They're so obvious we should fix them, but, like, this comes back to what we talked about about risk. I didn't, like, discover this, and and Elon, to his credit, didn't discover this. You can go back literally to the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. You will see articles written about how fucking ridiculous this mine is. Nobody has ever tried to solve this because, god forbid, some congressional person is gonna say, Oh, you screwed it up, or you didn't do this and that. And I was like, Look, this is ridiculous. We have to fix this. But the incentive structure is so aligned against fixing these things, it's way better to have a shitty service for people and not like risk rocking the boat than it is to actually try to convert these things into like a modern day experience. Like, this is the fundamental, like, incentive problem that we have to solve.
00:52:48 · David Senra
[00:52:48] S1: Which ties to your main mission, which is like, if you don't change this incentive structure, you're not going to be able to recruit high quality, talented people. If we keep, let's play this out ten years from now, okay, might not matter to you that what, 44% of the workforce, whatever the number is, is 50 or over. Well, it's gonna matter when they're all gone, and we have nobody to replace them.
00:53:07 · Scott Kupor
[00:53:07] S2: Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, so look, everything ties together. Right? If I'm gonna... I gotta go tell people a good story to get them here. When they get here, I actually have to have an environment they're excited to do. And if they're excited to do it, then we will actually get modernization because they won't be trapped in the system of not actually trying new things. Like... And look, We have to accept the fact that we're gonna screw some stuff up. Like, again... And and, you know, Marc always always, you know, gets excited about some of these. Like, you know, there's a whole meme in Silicon Valley, right, that Silicon Valley, like, loves failure. Right? And, like, nothing can be farther than true. Nobody fucking likes failure. But what Silicon Valley does recognize is, look. If we're gonna innovate, we're not gonna get it right all the time. And, again, like, okay, if we're talking about life and death for people, we should be pretty careful we get it right all the time. But if I can, like, make the retirement experience 10 times better and there's some risk that's reasonable that I fuck it up, quite frankly, and it doesn't work, like, we gotta incent people to take that risk. Like, it's crazy that we're not doing that, but, like, historically, nobody has been willing to do that because, you know, whatever, the person who was in my seat wanted some other political job coming out of this, and therefore, if they got a bad, you know, congressional hearing that would stop it. Like, I told the president this when he interviewed me in December, after he, like, asked me why he thought I was qualified for the job. And I was like, look. I'll tell you the other reason why I think I'm qualified is there's not some other job I'm trying to get out of this. Like, I've been incredibly blessed, incredibly lucky in my private life. I didn't come to this job because, like, I'm I'm competing for some other either private sector job or public sector job. So it's like, look. I don't really care. Like, I'm gonna do what I think is the right thing, and then if I get in trouble, I'm either going to fight if I screwed up, or if it turns out I did something stupid, that's fine. Fire me. I'm okay with that.
00:54:45 · Scott Kupor, David Senra
But there are so many people who are in these jobs because it is a stepping stone to something else that it prevents them from being willing to take that appropriate level of risk to try to get stuff done. To me, this just makes no sense, and this is why we have kind of stasis for so long. [00:54:57] S1: All right, so let's say somebody's listening to this right now, They wanna help. They're young. They wanna do a few year stint. Where do they go? How do they get in touch with you? [00:55:06] S2: We have a whole website, believe it or not, earlycareers.gov. That's one place they can go. We're about to be on, like, 40 different college campuses. If they're there, they can show up, and see us. They can, follow me on x. I'm just at s cooper. OPM is at u s opm. Like, any of those places, but literally, like, send me a DM if you're interested. Like, I guarantee you, like, we will figure out a way to make someone walk. [00:55:31] S1: I love how much you're on this. Thanks for taking the time to [00:55:34] S2: talk to us, guys. Thanks, David. Appreciate it. Yeah.
00:55:34 · Scott Kupor, Erik Torenberg
[00:55:34] S2: talk to us, guys. Thanks, David. Appreciate it. Yeah. [00:55:38] S0: Thanks for listening to this episode of the a 16 z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or a review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at a sixteen z, and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include paid promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with a16z. Such advertisements, companies, and individuals are not endorsed by AH Capital Management LLC, a16z, or any of its affiliates. Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but a16z does not guarantee its accuracy.