Grit Joubin Mirzadegan

Guest: Bill Magnuson, CEO and co-founder of Braze
The deployment of smartphones around the world was more impactful than any other technology to date, says Braze CEO Bill Magnuson — and that has big implications for emerging fields like generative AI. “If we get to the point where they [LLMs] really can be useful, human-like companions ... they will be usable by everyone that has smartphone technology.” In other words, the question is not business opportunity or scale: It’s capability.
In this episode, Bill and Joubin discuss earnings days, Aaron Levie, MIT, customer churn, shower thoughts, technical co-founders, lacking context, AGI, “hands on keyboard,” the T-Mobile G1, app marketing, the 2008 financial crisis, Bob Iger, World War II, Peter Reinhardt, Watershed, and international offices.
Chapters:

(00:51) - Morning people

(05:09) - What Braze does

(06:59) - From CTO to CEO

(08:17) - Waking up and commuting

(10:49) - Leading vs. engineering

(12:35) - Cognizant of believability

(19:52) - LLMs and the human brain

(25:46) - The AI ceiling

(28:43) - The historic deployment of smartphones

(37:58) - The benefits of youth

(40:18) - Taking the leap

(43:35) - Read more sci-fi

(46:38) - Survivor bias

(48:55) - Big risks at scale

(52:30) - Who Braze is hiring around the world

(55:32) - What “grit” means to Bill

Links:
Connect with Bill
TwitterLinkedInConnect with Joubin
TwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI
In 2020, Clara Shih quit Hearsay, the company she founded and ran for 11 years; in hindsight, she says “I probably should have quit a little bit sooner.” But at the time, she cared a lot — too much — about what everyone else thought. “There's a lot of guilt around leaving initially and feeling bad for feeling bad,” Clara says. But her worries subsided when her replacement and former COO, Mike Boese, guided the company with “class and grace” to an exit: A $125 million+ acquisition just this week by Yext.
In this episode, Clara meets Joubin on the top level of Salesforce Tower to discuss Sarah Friar, AI “frenemies,” practice and discipline, quantifying hard work, burnout, turning off, Intercom, elite operators, “Serviceforce,” ChatGPT, hiring for hunger, kids and achivement, Thomas “TK” Kurian, Slack, David Schmeier, Juan Perez, Nvidia GPUs, Silvio Savarese and Frontier AI, Starbucks, and Sheryl Sandberg.
Chapters:

(01:04) - Apple’s OpenAI partnership

(03:18) - Organizing your life

(04:45) - Working smarter

(07:49) - Hindsight

(08:58) - Hearsay’s acquisition by Yext

(11:23) - What everyone else thinks

(14:25) - Productive worry

(17:27) - Coming (back) to Salesforce

(20:47) - Paranoia and immigrant hustle

(25:42) - Quitting

(26:39) - Meetings and infusing AI

(29:38) - Internal time savings

(31:48) - The Matthew McConaughey ads

(33:48) - Different horizons

(37:35) - France and sovereign AI

(38:46) - How Clara uses AI to keep up

(40:33) - Dis-intermediating Netflix

(41:27) - Who Salesforce AI is hiring

(42:05) - Advice from Howard Schultz and Marc Benioff

Links:
Connect with ClaraTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Marissa Mayer, CEO and Founder of Sunshine and former CEO of Yahoo
When Marissa Mayer was first hired as the CEO of Yahoo, the company had lost nearly a quarter of its workforce in the preceding six months. Early on, she was chatting with employees in the cafeteria and one of them got her attention by smacking her tray. “Is it go time?” he asked. He was asking if the board and C-suite were ready to lead the company forward, but Marissa thought he had one foot out the door. “I had just come out of this meeting where they were like, ‘Everyone’s leaving!’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh no, please don’t go, I’ve only been here for four days!’”
In this episode, Marissa and Joubin discuss the number 12, contacts and photo sharing, fear of AI, soccer moms, maternity as a “disability,” mothers’ rooms, Jim Citrin, Project Cardinal, HTML5 vs. native apps, Ross Levinsohn, Lori Puccinelli Stern, Joe Montana, David Karp, Mark Zuckerberg, Taylor Swift, hiring at Google, Amit Patel, Hamilton, John Doerr, and the Google APM program.
Chapters:

(00:52) - Reading your own press

(04:55) - Marissa’s lucky number

(07:19) - Her latest startup, Sunshine

(15:03) - Burnout, resentment, and rhythm

(21:46) - The opportunity to become CEO of Yahoo

(27:00) - Inverting maternity leave

(31:14) - The big interview

(36:44) - An epic dinner party

(42:51) - The voicemail

(47:18) - Farzad “Zod” Nazem and David Philo

(50:25) - Last day at Google

(53:52) - “Is it go time?”

(59:03) - Buying Tumblr

(01:04:46) - Alibaba and Verizon

(01:06:24) - Larry and Sergey bucks

(01:11:05) - Eric Schmidt’s advice

(01:12:59) - In the room at Google

(01:18:36) - Teaching and identifying talent

(01:24:32) - Who Sunshine is hiring

Links:
Connect with MarissaTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Sarah Friar, former CEO of Nextdoor
Sarah Friar has worked with some of the top leaders in Silicon Valley, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, Block CEO Jack Dorsey, and most recently Nextdoor founder Nirav Tolia, who just replaced her as CEO in May. And one of the things that sets top performers apart from the rest, she argues, is their compassion and their responsiveness. When her former EA’s husband was diagnosed with cancer, Sarah texted Benioff — who she had just left behind to work at Square — for help. Within seconds, she recalls, he arranged an appointment at UCSF. “That is an amazing moment of compassion,” she says, “where he did not need to take that time.” 
In this episode, Sarah and Joubin discuss public markets vs. VC, George Floyd, working with the board, singular focus, Goldman Sachs, being in “flow,” the freedom of not getting the thing you want, Walmart, Steph Curry, Graham Smith, Charlie Rose and Donald Trump, ugly babies, Elon Musk, Ladies Who Lunch, CNBC, commuting from home, white noise, “frequent Friars,” @TechEmails on Twitter, and the “zone of gratefulness.”
Chapters:

(02:04) - Why Sarah left Nextdoor

(08:18) - The stock market and success

(10:21) - Going through hell

(14:48) - Life is not an A/B test

(16:09) - Multiple tours of duty

(19:21) - Ikigai

(22:02) - Perfectionism and drive

(25:54) - Sarah’s next operating role

(28:35) - Big transitions

(30:35) - Personal burn rate

(35:34) - “Are people gonna take my call?”

(38:40) - Leaving Salesforce for Square

(41:27) - Loyalty

(45:33) - Leaving the right way

(47:44) - Square and Swiss cheese companies

(50:03) - Growth companies

(52:38) - Apolitical workplaces

(53:42) - Leaving Square

(55:38) - Loneliness

(57:18) - Daily routines

(01:05:03) - Working on weekends

(01:08:30) - Hyper-responsiveness

(01:11:47) - Resumé virtues and eulogy virtues

(01:15:33) - What “grit” means to Sarah

Links:
Connect with SarahTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Stanislav Vishnevskiy, CTO and co-founder of Discord
For many years, the conventional wisdom was the gaming was not social because it was something you usually did at home. “But people who play games are often the most social,” says Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy. “They’re spending 10, 20 hours with other people online, hanging out.” As a teenager, Stanislav logged more than 1,000 days playing his favorite video game and socializing with friends around the world, but with 200 million monthly active users, the social platform is appealing to a lot more than hardcore gamers. “People online who need to get together and collaborate ... [want] tp have control and create a place,” he says. “That’s not just a gaming need, right? That’s pretty much any community.”
In this episode, Stanislav and Joubin discuss “Discord moments,” hanging out online, IRC and AIM, Fates Forever, good and bad stress, leadership coaches, Claire Hughes Johnson, socializing online, heart surgery, Slack, Jason Citron, in-browser voice chat, Reddit, authentic CX, hiring slowly, Mitch Lasky, “playing moneyball,” React, content moderation, deprecation plans, and collaborative projects.
Chapters:

(02:09) - Discord’s scale and importance

(07:35) - What is Discord?

(09:43) - Hammer and Chisel

(13:18) - How Stanislav’s role has changed

(15:17) - Imposter syndrome

(17:47) - Doing stuff for the first time

(21:22) - Final Fantasy XI and Stanislav’s parents

(25:12) - YOLO

(27:02) - Games as social networks

(30:49) - The evolution of Discord

(35:58) - Inherent virality

(39:04) - Building the company

(41:39) - The COVID effect

(43:08) - Hiring for slope

(46:43) - Pivoting back to gaming

(51:27) - The Discord Store and Nitro

(54:30) - Emotional stakes

(56:09) - Midjourney and AI art

(59:58) - Virtual worlds

(01:01:30) - Who Discord is hiring and what “grit” means to Stanislav

Links:
Connect with StanislavLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Eoghan McCabe, CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Intercom
“We are not ready for the degree to which our world is going to change,” says Intercom CEO Eoghan McCabe, “in insane and incredible ways.” When he co-founded the company in 2011, the Irish-born entrepreneur was making it easier for companies to offer human customer service to their customers. But Eoghan believes “every single type of knowledge work” will soon be done by AI, and Intercom is well on its way to that destination: 45 percent of all tickets are being answered by bots now, and he expects that number to climb to 70 percent by 2026. “The agents no longer have to do the repetitive, painful, boring work,” Eoghan says. “They can focus on the more human, creative, interesting work that requires their empathy and creativity.”
In this episode, Eoghan and Joubin discuss fitting in, Archana Agrawal, authentic comms, taking risks, returning to the company you founded, politics at work, celebrating innovation, therapy for founders, and Ram Dass.
Chapters:

(01:04) - Insecurity and success

(06:16) - What Intercom does

(08:20) - Reinvention and “big company values”

(15:50) - Becoming an AI company

(16:53) - 2011 vs. 2024 in San Francisco

(21:03) - AI for customer service — and more

(25:07) - “The shitty gift that being attacked brings”

(30:25) - Expectations vs. reality, part one

(33:16) - What success means now

(36:08) - Running away

(39:56) - Coming back

(41:58) - Being busy is BS

(44:10) - Expectations vs. reality, part two

(45:44) - Self-mastery

(50:38) - Sanding off the rough edges

(55:08) - Who Intercom is hiring and what “grit” means to Eoghan

Links:
Connect with EoghanTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm