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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
And without further ado, we have Bill Gurley. He is the author of Running Down a Dream. Bill, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time on a busy launch day. Congratulations on the launch.
Speaker 2:We're doing great. Busy launch day. I yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. How many podcasts are you doing this week?
Speaker 2:I can't imagine. It's some number beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 1:Well, we appreciate you taking the time, to come chat with us. Why
Speaker 3:Walt, be before we jump into everything, I gotta say somebody, I think it was a week or so ago, made a fake TBPN graphic that was pretty silly, and I just wanted you I just wanted you to know it. We didn't make that. That was somebody Okay. Okay. I almost I almost emailed you about it.
Speaker 3:But
Speaker 2:No. I tried to jump in on the parody myself.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You you did, but then I was like, wait. Does he I I I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1:what we did we did early on when we were a little smaller and a little more free to lose with the jokes. We we posted a picture of Bill at, a basketball game as a spotted, and you replied and said, like, no. The person next to me is, like, the owner of the team. And the whole joke is like, we know you. Don't know basketball like that.
Speaker 1:But we're doing the paparazzi thing.
Speaker 3:Never heard of him.
Speaker 1:But we're very excited to have you. What what, why the book now? What was the what was the impetus, what was the impetus for actually writing the book?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Look. I I think, you know, especially for a show like your own, I you know, I'm known as someone who spent twenty five years in venture capital, and, the book's not really about that. You know? So I I developed a side passion project that started about eight years ago on this topic, and it was at a time where I was reading a ton of biographies.
Speaker 2:And I noticed the through line, between three different subjects of things they were doing that I kinda felt most people weren't doing but could do. And, I put it together. I I gave it as a presentation at my alma mater where I got my MBA, and they put it online. Few people noticed. James Clear noticed.
Speaker 2:That was one of the things that kinda woke me up to the possibility. And as I began to, hang up my boots in venture, which takes a while, I turned my attention to this, and it was something that, meant a lot to me. I could have written a book on VC. I I don't know how many humans that could have possibly helped, but a small fraction compared to what I hope this can do.
Speaker 1:I I mean, I think the projections are by 2030, there'll be more venture capitalists than people if the trend continues. So I I but but it is an interesting point.
Speaker 2:Maybe I made a mistake.
Speaker 1:I do feel like this is a book that you can read if you're a venture capitalist, insider, startup founder and be like, okay. I'm I'm I'm seeing the world from Bill's perspective. That's helpful. But I could also give this to someone who's never heard of you or venture capital or knows what a safe note is, and they could get value out of it. And I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the the translation that's happening right now around AI narratives as they break into the public consciousness.
Speaker 1:We saw this with that viral X article. Something big is happening. I had that forwarded to me by family friends. I overheard someone in a restaurant talking about it who clearly is not, you know, an investor in an AI lab. They're just some random person, and they realize that there's something happening.
Speaker 1:And I'm wondering about these transitions of communication that's what's happening in Silicon Valley is gonna have an impact and how what you've seen in the past translates to average Americans.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen you know, if you think of so first of all, the venture community appropriately gets excited about these big tech waves because they lead to disruption and they lead to kind of accelerated, new wealth creation around these companies that break out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's happened over and over and over in my career, and and I don't remember one. I mean, if you take the mobile wave or the PC wave or the client server or SaaS, I don't remember any of those kind of being thrown at the public consciousness this fast. And so I do think I do think it's different this time on from that front alone. That said, you know, we've had pretty high market caps for tech companies for a long time now starting with the Zurk period. And you're getting to a place where, you know, anytime the market switches from from half full to half empty in a skeptic's mindset, you you do we have had those moments.
Speaker 2:Like, so so maybe not driven by the wave, but we certainly have those moments. And it's all okay. It will always be okay. I think people freak out. Buffett says he's a net buyer of stocks.
Speaker 2:If if people are intellectual and curious and hungry, they should be sharpening their pencils right now trying to figure out where where they wanna find entry prices on some of these companies.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, I I feels like a lot of the book is about finding a career, and I feel like that will resonate specifically with people who
Speaker 3:are Well, yeah. It resonates with me because when I was thinking about when when John and I first met Yeah. We had both built some companies. We both invested in some companies. But we were trying to find our life's work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it was such a it's such a pain. Like that period where you're you're searching
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Is if you if you're a high agency person, you like doing a lot of things Mhmm. It can be deeply painful because you're like, wanna be productive. I wanna be I wanna be making the number go up, but I don't have a number right now. And if you had asked either of us when we first met, hey, would you ever think about broadcast media? Would you ever think about being in front of a camera?
Speaker 3:Both of us, John had made some YouTube videos but it was just for fun. And if and if a big, you know, if a network like CNBC had said, hey, would you guys consider, you know, hosting a show? We would have been like, yeah, like, thank like honored, but no way that I just never imagined. And then you sort of just ends and so as somebody who like wants a lot of control over their life and their destiny and and like feels like they have historically have had control, that period of just like searching is like is is painful. And I feel like a lot of the book is is helping people through that moment.
Speaker 3:So in some ways, when I got our copy, was like, wow. I really wish I had this, you know, two
Speaker 2:Well, I'd I'd I'd like to go back to the word you the phrase you used of high agency. I I I think that one of the problems that is that is kind of evolved is that our our college our common college pathway has actually become more restrictive, and I think there's less agency and kids are being encouraged. They have to sign up for a major before they ever go to the college. They they get stuck on these pathways, and there's not a lot of exploration. There's not a lot of of search for creativity or obsession or the kind of thing that that really gets you going.
Speaker 2:And I think the journey you went on is perfectly fine. I think that's another thing, which is, letting it be okay for people to bounce around and see what they can find because once they latch on and we have examples in the book where that doesn't happen till 40. Sometimes it's at 30. Sometimes it's I didn't become a venture capitalist until I was 30, and that was clearly my dream job. And the first two two stops were were fine and interesting and building blocks towards that.
Speaker 2:So so I think it I think I think that is part of the message is to get comfortable with that and give people permission to do that type of exploration.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Enzo Enzo Ferrari, Estee Lauder, I think the Red Bull founder too, all were I think in their forties when they started their companies. And so there's this intense pressure in our industry and everywhere to figure out a job and then attach your you know, make your entire identity that job, and it's so it's so constrictive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yes. Yeah. What are some And I I circle back to to the the first question just about this AI stuff that's out there. I think there's this massive paradox where if you are not engaged at work, if you don't love what you do, you know, you go home and you don't try and improve on your own time, AI feels very threatening.
Speaker 2:For high agency people who are kind of on their own custom career path, which I hope this book encourages more and more people to be on, AI is like a superpower. There's like you can learn constantly. Like, you can find people who you should be connecting with. You can you can have it do things for you so that you're operating with the power of more than one person as you move forward. And I I I just think that's quite a quite an ironic paradox that for certain people, this is the best of times, the best.
Speaker 2:Like, they there's never ever in the history of the world been a better time to self learn. Mhmm. Like, it is it is all out there at your fingertips. It's like magic. But you
Speaker 3:have ability to to, you can anyone can ask a dumb question at any point all day long and you don't have to be you don't have to be embarrassed about it. And I think that that is underrated today in terms of how many if like generally no you know there are no dumb questions and yet people still don't like asking dumb questions to their peers or or mentors or or whatever and I feel like that's an underrated
Speaker 2:No doubt. No doubt.
Speaker 1:What do you think about hyper financialization, young people day trading, meme coins, all of that? It feels like a trap for young people where it can feel like you're learning about AI or learning about technology, but then instead of actually building a product, creating value, you're sort of just trying to shuffle chips around the poker table and ultimately just take risk.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, based on my understanding of day trading in a in a Wall Street context, you know, prior to maybe the crypto world, I don't I'm I'm not aware of any signal that suggests that's a durable skill. And I I think the data points the other way. But but but but one of my messages is, like, do what you love, do what you're passionate about. So
Speaker 1:I if
Speaker 2:that's if that's the thing that you're gonna wake up every day, you know, I I I I'm I don't wanna I don't wanna be discouraging.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just maybe you'll land or start a fund that it takes it really seriously and creates some some captured value or
Speaker 2:I was, you know, I was probably overly skeptical of of at least many of the crypto messages that were out there, but the the stablecoin rails seem like a real, real innovation and and something that has scale. And and I think maybe we're still yet to see some disruption coming down the path.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe we just talked to the Collisons about that. Ken Griffin started as a day trader. He was in college. He was he was buying convertible debt, and he was, you know, looking at, like, where the convertible debt was mispriced and and made a bunch of money and then grew it into a massive team with a fund and high frequency trading arm and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:What
Speaker 2:what are you making? Oh, yeah. So I was just gonna say the thing that will differentiate you more in your career than anything else is to be the most hyper curious person that that's trying to do this thing. And and once again, that's that's put on steroids with these AI tools. But if you are the most curious person that's constantly learning in your field, you will do extremely well.
Speaker 2:And I I said in the book, but I'll say it here, I can't make you the most talented person in your in your, you know, company or your group or your field, but you have no excuse not to be the most knowledgeable person because the information's all out there.
Speaker 3:What kind of what kind of things were you doing to learn about industries and and companies, you know, at in the beginning of your venture career that maybe you'd be using a deep research query to do today, but
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing I mean, the first thing is you develop and I think this is all the great VCs in the valley. You you develop this hyper FOMO, of anything and everything. And, one of the way one of the reasons I know that that it's time for me to move on is I I haven't I haven't put together a clawback yet, but I know my older self would have done it immediately. And and it's just that kind of thing. You can't sleep on not knowing something, you know, or hearing that there's a company you don't know about.
Speaker 2:And, you develop that as an instinct, like, a positive tool, to just be hyperparanoid about new companies, new things, new information, new technologies.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Is venture capital eating the world? Or is venture capital scaling so much that it's eating into other asset classes? We're seeing mega funds. I'm interested to think about what's durable about your approach to investing, what's additional, what's substitutive, how is venture changing?
Speaker 2:I think from the minute I entered venture to to today, venture has gotten nothing but more competitive. It's a it it it as an asset class, it's gotten more and more competitive, and people get more and more aggressive. We're in a very interesting time where people have grown funds to the size of of equivalent to the largest PE funds. Yeah. And they're moving money, especially, you know, you just had to call us on.
Speaker 2:You know, you look at the Stripe or the Databricks case, they're using those large funds to convince the companies to stay private longer, maybe forever. That's just a very different world than the one that I grew up in. I think they turn around and the people that do those rounds turn around and tell the LPs, their their investors, investors, look, look, if if you you want exposure to these growth years in these companies, you need to come through us. And so you they've if I were using cynical words, I'd say they've hijacked the the the the growth years of these early IPO companies. You know, Amazon went public below 1,000,000,000 in market cap.
Speaker 2:It's hard to fathom that, you know, today with with what we have going on here. Yeah. That's
Speaker 3:different the what's solution though? Because there's different there's different you know, AngelList has been you know, available and scaling for a long time now. Robinhood has their new
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. The problem the problem with getting the retail investor into this crazy world of venture capital is most venture capitalists are well aware that in a fund of 10 investments, seven are going broke and bankrupt.
Speaker 2:And I don't know that the retail investors got the right frame of mind for that type of activity. I also, there's a reason that public companies have public audits and file these these financials in the way that they do. And I tell you when a company gets ready to go public, everyone sharpens their pencils, the auditor, the lawyers, everyone really tightens up. And I think every venture capitalist knows that that numbers that are in a PowerPoint may or may not be correct, but I don't know that retail investors know that. So I think it could I think it could be a dangerous world to go down that path you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But the ideally, the thing to do is just to make it a lot easier to be public, lower the cost of being public, really scrutinize the cost of of D and O insurance and the lawsuits that come to the table because that makes people not wanna be out there on the field. It it it would require the SEC to steer themselves in the face and say, look. The number of public companies in The US is half of what it used to be. And what is that a problem?
Speaker 2:I think it is. But is that a problem, and what are we gonna do to fix it? But it there's not an overnight fix. It's gonna take a it it would take it would take someone being very determined to to make it happen.
Speaker 1:Do you think that there's a world where the AI backlash is less if the big labs got out earlier? I'm just thinking about the average American can't get allocation in SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, and they're seeing bills go up, they're worried about AI, but they don't have exposure. And and if they could at least see that they're somewhat allocated to
Speaker 3:that In the same in the same way housing prices going up sucks until you buy a house. And I
Speaker 1:mean Yeah.
Speaker 2:The way you describe it sounds more like how politician would describe it than how I actually think it would might play. Don't know that there are that many retail investors out there going, oh, my job's under threat from AI. I wish I could own Anthropic. Like, I I mean
Speaker 3:Well, isn't that part of isn't that part of why I mean, this sort of fear based fundraising approach that that the lab, you know, some of the labs have taken where if if somebody's telling you your job's gonna go away, of course, you wanna give them as much money as you can as a as a hedge. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You know, I I don't look. I there there's an interesting irony that if you wanted AI exposure, you're pretty good just owning the index. NVIDIA is such a large
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Part of the index. You have exposure to Microsoft and Google and Facebook. Like, I I don't know that you need to be in that place. And we are now already at a place, I would say, you know, every time there's a new technology wave, people get rich quick. When people get rich quick, speculators come in, Charlottans, you know, those kind of things.
Speaker 2:And eventually, that leads to a bubble. People are confused when they think you know, they say, oh, you you say it's a bubble. You're anti IA. No. The fact that it's real causes the bubble, and that's why pools rush in.
Speaker 2:I mean, the beginning of the gold rush, there was really gold there. They were finding it at the end. Point. You know, it it got speculative. And so That's funny.
Speaker 2:It will get speculative. I think it would be really ironic if we, you know, invite retail investors into a Goldman led SPV of open air and tropic right before the recent, which I think would be the most likely thing that would happen.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 3:How how are you what are you thinking about around China as of today, February 2026? We have Distillgate this week. Yeah. A lot of people are talking about it. But what's on your mind?
Speaker 2:Can I ask you a question about that? This is this is remarkably naive on my part. So these model companies are saying that their their API was hit 16,000,000 times. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Something like that. I don't even know if there's any API, but
Speaker 1:a bunch of yeah.
Speaker 2:How how did that happen? Are you not tracking who
Speaker 1:connects Yeah. To You set up a whole bunch of different, like, front companies or you're reselling access. So if you go to the, you go to the iTunes app store right now, there will be a
Speaker 3:called to set up 16,000,000 accounts.
Speaker 1:That or yeah. Or or if you just you can go to the app store right now and look for, like, chat AI, and it will hit the other APIs, But you're going through an American company. Maybe they don't have security. So there's a lot of different ways to to exfiltrate data. And then also a lot of data just hits the open web Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you go to ChatGPT, you run a deep research report, and then you just publish it on your blog or on the Internet.
Speaker 2:But now they 've been able to to Just drill them on. Those things down and everything. I I, you know, I share the skepticism Elon does, and it it this goes way back to my speech at all in on regulatory capture. I said then, and I still believe now, the biggest threat to The US, let's call it AI hedging me Mhmm. Is is the Chinese open source models.
Speaker 2:And the developers, even in The US that are working on their own are using those, and you can see that on all the on all the the, the tables that are out there. And so, it is a highly competitive, like, just globally competitive reality that that in a ecosystem where there's six to 10 open source models that can all learn off of each other, that's gonna be high like, that's gonna be a really incredible primordial soup, if you will, for innovation to evolve. And I fear mainly because I'm well aware that, like, OpenAI's I mean, Anthropic is the biggest spender on lobbying whatsoever. I always fear when these things come out that they're, just trying to encourage more of that regulation. And if that happens, I think it could be like, if they try and make it illegal to use a model that has any Chinese, like, ancestry, I think that could end up in a really weird place.
Speaker 2:And and and the place to really pay attention to and look out for is, who's gonna serve the rest of the world. In the Internet era, there was a fence around China, and The US companies served the rest of the world. If we if we get super heavy on US regulation, you may find there's a fence around The US, and China serves rest of the world. That's what I'd be worried about.
Speaker 1:How are you thinking about great power competition more broadly? Like, I'm an American bald eagle. I'm as American as they come. At the same time, I feel like, I've been worried about a confrontation over Taiwan for years. Things there's been trade wars, yes, and things are tense, but nothing's really happened.
Speaker 1:Is China somehow, like, underrated in your mind? Is the geopolitical risk overstated in some way? Like, what are you seeing that's not consensus?
Speaker 2:If you've seen some of the stuff I've posted and and and and I think this stuff I'm posting is highly consistent with Ethan's point of view. Sure. It it it comes from a place of if you're going to declare that that there's this this relationship that we need to optimize, I think and and if your goal is to lower the risk of any any major blow up blow up between the two, I think it's imperative to have as much knowledge as possible. Mhmm. And so one of the things that I don't like is when you see people out there spreading rhetoric that's just not consistent with the reality.
Speaker 2:And so I'm I'm just like, look. Let's get eyes wide open first. I also think that there are things we could learn from China about how to run infrastructure in The US. They're clearly better at it than we are. And if you just, you know, close your ears and say, oh my god.
Speaker 2:They're the evil competitor, and they cheat all the time. You don't ever get yourself in a position where you're gonna learn, you know, from them maybe what they're doing well and what we're not. And so I'm I'm you know, Elon, we're I guess he was on cheeky pint with the Jordan.
Speaker 1:You're just talking to. John Colson.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He he talks about, how competitive they are. Like and I'm just like, let's be realistic. Let's not I also worry a little bit that the venture community has gotten into all these military companies because venture capitalists start to look like warmongers. And, it's ironic.
Speaker 2:Way back when when the All In pod just got started, they were giving, oh, what's her name that was on the Boeing board? Nick Nikki Haley? Nikki Haley? Yeah. And they were like, oh, she's a warmonger.
Speaker 2:She's, you know Sure. Looking after this defense company. Now every VC is in Andrew. They're doing the same thing. Let's be consistent.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I are there any other industries that you do think are interesting that sort of butt outside of the the typical mandate of venture capital? You know, like, AI fits very neatly into the software continuum, Internet, cloud, mobile.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I thought crypto was a little bit outside of the wheelhouse, but a lot of VCs made it work. Industrial, energy, defense, are sort of things that are a little bit outside of the typical software VC mindset. I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 2:I'm gonna have to run, but I would tell you one thing. Every time venture cap every time venture capital gets easy, people take or take risk with companies that are less of a great fit for the venture capital model. And when I say a great fit, like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're they're either heavy CapEx Yep. Or they have they have low gross margins. They require tons of capital to keep surviving. And and history is pretty good at at, like, bringing people back around to how hard those are to do with venture capital. So it's interesting for me to see those experiments being run.
Speaker 2:You know, there there was near death with Tesla many times, and it's a lot easier to get in those difficult situations when you're using debt and leverage, which we're seeing all over these data centers. And so I just a word of warning, be careful. It ain't easy. You know?
Speaker 1:Okay. Jordy, last question?
Speaker 3:No. We gotta let, we gotta let our guests jump. But
Speaker 2:Okay. Thank you. Congratulations. We're talking
Speaker 1:to lunch.
Speaker 2:I hope everybody can get out and buy
Speaker 1:the down a dream. It's available everywhere books are sold. Go check it out, and thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Good luck. Goodbye.