In this week’s episode of the Mr. Beacon Podcast, we sit down with Mark Jacobstein, Co-Founder and General Partner at Near Horizon—a unique venture builder operating at the intersection of entrepreneurship and venture capital. With a career spanning from early startups in Silicon Alley to executive roles at companies backed by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, Mark brings a seasoned, candid perspective on innovation, investment, and the accelerating impact of AI.
We discuss how Near Horizon helps early-stage founders go from idea to product-market fit, offering hands-on support in code, hiring, GTM, and more. Mark also reflects on what AI means for startup speed, investment criteria, and even traditional industries like clothing and manufacturing.
This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators navigating the evolving terrain of technology and venture capital. Mark’s honesty and experience deliver not just insight—but real, actionable advice.
Bonus: Stay tuned for his top three songs—including one you've definitely never heard on the podcast before.
🎧 Tune in, learn, and get inspired to build what’s next.
Mark’s Top 3 Favorite Songs:
- “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z_41J-uKPI
- “The Wheels On The Bus”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_04ZrNroTo
- “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2X0Gf9jfz8
Mister Beacon is hosted by Steve Statler, CEO of AmbAI Inc. — creators of AmbAI, the AI agent that connects people to products and the brands behind them. AmbAI also advises leading brands on Ambient Intelligence strategy.
Transcript
{ 0:00 }
Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. This week I am talking to Marc Jacobsteen who's the Co founder general partner at Near Horizon. They are a venture builder, a VC that actually helps companies with early stage activities proving that the business concept and he is an ex colleague of mine. Our paths crossed to Qualcomm. More notably, I guess he's an ex colleague of Sam Altman's. I asked him about that. He generously gives us his view of the state of the market at the moment. If you are looking to raise money or you're just interested in where the the venture market is going, this is a good episode for you.
{ 0:50 }
As always, what we try and do is equip the the people that are building interesting solutions in this digital to physical convergence space with the knowledge they need to be successful. And that's mainly driven by what I think I need to learn more about South Mark is our second VC on the podcast. First time round it was Dov Moran, who is a pillar of the Tel Aviv, Israel venture community. Mark actually lives on the Stanford campus in or in on the on the land they own, which is pretty extensive, beautiful location and he he's really at the centre of where things are, yet he has a unique perspective. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, which was a lot. The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Wiliot, bringing intelligence to every single thing.
{ 1:58 }
So, Mark, thanks very much for coming onto the podcast.
Speaker 2: { 2:02 }
I'm happy to be here. It's great to see you, Steve.
Speaker 1: { 2:04 }
Well, I have this thing where every time I feel like I need to learn more about something, I invite experts onto the podcast and, and it worked when I was writing my book on Bluetooth speaking technology. And I, I've just like never given up on it. And at the moment I'm speaking to venture capitalists raising funds for, for my new company. And I'm like, I, I really need to understand this world better and, and talk to someone. And we actually have had one other VC on the show, Dove Moran, who's the general partner of Grove over in Israel. But we've never had anyone from the Bay Area. And I think you're in the Bay Area, right?
Speaker 2: { 2:44 }
I am. I actually am lucky enough to live on the Stanford campus.
Speaker 1: { 2:47 }
Oh, Oh my God, you're just living the dream. That's really cool. So appreciate your coming to talk to us. There's several things I want to talk to you about.
{ 2:57 }
I want to kind of go back in the past, you've had an incredible journey to where you are at the moment and you work with Sam Altman and all that sort of thing. I'm sure you probably, it's like Alan Parsons always gets asked about when he was the tape engineer for, for at Abbey Road for The Beatles. So you probably get bored with that, but I do want to find out how you got to the point where you, you're actually, you've gone from entrepreneur to to, to, to VC. And I do want to hear about near horizon. And you've got a, an unusual approach. You're not a venture studio, you're a venture.
Speaker 2: { 3:35 }
We call ourselves venture builders and, and it's interesting because I, I don't think of myself as having gone all the way over to being a venture capitalist, but we're somewhere in between being venture capitalists and operator builders. And, and I it's a longer story, but for me, it was the combination of I love to build new companies.
{ 3:52 }
I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years and but I also had enjoyed this sort of portfolio approach to the venture capital has capitalist has where they get to see lots of interesting things. And I'm innately curious, love to have multiple projects in my life at any given time. And so the approach we took when your horizon where we helped to essentially Co create and Co build four or five, maybe at the most six companies per year with venture backable CEOs was a great combination for me. It's sort of somewhere in between being AVC, where the goal is to pick the best companies and allocate capital and being a an operator building a single company. I get to be multi threaded which is how I like to run my life.
Speaker 1: { 4:35 }
So let's let's go into where are we today because.
Speaker 2: { 4:39 }
Happy to.
Speaker 1: { 4:40 }
You know, we've got the the tariffs, whether you think they're great or whether you think they're absolutely appalling, we won't go into, but you know what I'm seeing is interest rates are kind of seem like they're not going to come down even with the president wanting them to come down. What's that doing to the venture market? Where are we in venture capital land today?
Speaker 2: { 5:00 }
Yeah. I mean, I guess the way I think I've been at this a long time and there are always ebbs and flows. I mean, right, I lived throughthe.com crash, I lived through 2008, the craziness of sort of pre pandemic and then pandemic hype with lots of spiking. And obviously we're we're in something of a troth right now in terms of number of exits, M&A markups, etcetera. And, and actually what we are in is this sort of strange?
Speaker 1: { 5:25 }
By can you explain that?
Speaker 2: { 5:27 }
So Mark, so markup is basically when a, when a company goes and raises more money, right? So if you did your pre seed round, now you are able to go raise your seed round, now you're able to go raise your Series A, now you're able to raise your Series B. And you can think of those as demarcations of a certain kind of success for the company. At least somebody whose job it is to allocate capital has decided that you are far enough along that you deserve more money to go do this thing you're trying to do. That's very hard.
{ 5:55 }
And the way the dynamic is in part that if there are very few exits, right and the IPO markets have been closed now for quite some time and there hasn't been all that much M&A activity, so not many companies being bought. What happens is it means the later stage rounds, this series ES and DS stop happening because the investors don't see the immediate ability to say have an IPO. And when the series D and ES stop happening and then the As and BS stop happening because the investors who invest in those rounds don't see the ability anyway. So, so there are these sort of lagging indicators. Eventually, you know, you get back to the early stage stuff, which is what I do, is now in a place where it has become much harder for companies to raise. So we're definitely in a period where it, it, it has been challenging for people to raise money.
{ 6:45 }
But there's some countervailing trends too, which is that of course people are incredibly excited about AI, but they're also not necessarily sure where to invest other than like, yes, I would have loved to have been an early investor in open AI or perplexity or like if you pick a winner now Expo facto, like of course, it would have been great, but it sort of feels too late for most of the foundation models, etcetera. And and then within vertical AI, things are moving so fast, it feels very hard to pick the winners. So anyways, it does feel, I would say more than anything else, venture feels unsettled to me right now. But you know, Full disclosure, I'm not a traditional venture investor and there are people who who write series A&B checks who probably have a better global perspective on this than I do. I would say for early stage companies, if it's a really promising idea and a very promising CEO, there's still plenty of dry powder around for people to to raise.
Speaker 1: { 7:44 }
Interesting. Well, that's good because I feel like are we not competing with Treasury bonds and that sort of thing?
{ 7:52 }
And when the the the rates go up, then people are like why the heck should I be going to the casino when I can just put my my money in the bank?
Speaker 2: { 8:00 }
I mean, eventually, yes, because the money comes from somewhere and that the LP's, the limited partners who write the checks to the GPS, the general partners at venture firms are choosing which asset classes to put money into, right. Do I put my money into real estate? Do I put it into bonds? Do I put it into public market equities? How much of this do I put into this crazy, you know, early stage venture work? And typically they have a percentage of their of their overall portfolio that they allocate to early stage venture. And one of the things that happens and has happened is let you're running a big family office and that family office has decided that 20% of their total assets should be in early stage venture. First of all, that number may shift. If they can do pretty well with bonds, then they may make that percentage lower. But the other thing that happens is let's say they took 20% and they put it into early stage venture.
{ 8:52 }
Normally what happens is over time that 20%, the percentage is going down as those companies either die or graduate and become a Series C or Series D company or go public. They are no longer early stage venture, they're later stage venture or they're public or what have you. And so there's more space for that family office to put more money to work in early stage venture. And as we discussed earlier, because there are fewer markups, companies aren't moving from Series A to Series B to Series C as quickly and they aren't exiting etcetera. Some of the investments, some of the allocations in the early stage venture that happened 234 years ago is still sitting in early stage venture. And so the LP's don't move as much money into early stage venture. Those, those venture capitalists as a result aren't raising new funds. And so there's it's again, it's a lagging indicator, but ultimately the macro economy and things that are happening with everything from tariffs to, you know, high interest rates do impact the overall amount of capital going into VC.
Speaker 1: { 9:53 }
So how is AI impacting?
{ 9:57 }
Other than wanting to invest in AI winners, how is AI impacting the criteria that VCs use in placing their bets?
Speaker 2: { 10:08 }
Yeah. So I think a number of different ways. So first of all, there are of course, a lot of good venture firms are starting to use AI to analyze which investments they ought to make and whether it's just a part of it is like eating their own dog food, right. We want to invest in vertical AI companies. We ought to be using AI tools in our own work, whether that is analysis of an opportunity, somebody comes to you, pitches you an idea. They sound like a very credible investor. You're not entirely familiar with the space. You should be using AI to help do the research work, right? So you end up with a much more thorough analysis and managing your deal flow and your content engine to generate deal flow and all the rest of it. So there is, there's that. I think, you know, the other thing is that the expectation is that the cost of developing software should be going down.
{ 10:58 }
I mean, this has been going on for quite some time, right? This happened when we moved everything from on Prem to the cloud. I mean, I built my first start up in 1994 and we had to build the entire stack right ourselves to make a single application. We had to invent many things along the way, which they were themselves probably entire companies because they simply didn't exist. And and of course, over the last 35 years, as the software stacks have gotten more and more mature, the ability to build an application and test it has gotten easier and easier. Well, AI has only accelerated that, right? I can now you're not going to vibe code your way to greatness and and a non-technical founder isn't probably going to write a full blown application without anybody technical involved yet, although I think that will happen soon. But the ability, if there is somebody technical on the team and or with just a little bit of help to get to something that is pretty good and figure out whether there's a there there is much less expensive than it used to be.
{ 11:56 }
And so part of what this means, I mean, I'm excited about that. I work in this sort of precede and seed like Near Horizon helps to build companies from zero to 1. So it's like you've got an idea and an unfair advantage and you're a great entrepreneur and that's it, right? That's where we we would like to start. And by the time we're done with you, hopefully you've got product market fit and you've raised some money and you've got a team and you're sort of ready to, to leave the nest. That part from zero to 1 from a business perspective, maybe isn't any easier, but certainly from a technical implementation perspective is AI has made it a lot easier. I mean, the coding tools are astonishing, right? You talk to world class developers working side by side with, you know, whichever copilot they choose, they are much faster and much more efficient. The of course everything already has already moved to the cloud. The so you, you can find out what's not working faster. That is immensely valuable.
{ 12:56 }
Now, the flip side of that, of course, is it means all your competition is moving just as fast. And so in some ways it feels even more frantic. I mean, working in Silicon Valley and high tech startups, high growth startups my entire career, the one downside I think is that sometimes you feel like you can't ever get off the treadmill because whatever idea you are running at really hard right now that you're super excited about somebody else's too. And they're not doing it in a relaxed way, right? That's just not how this stuff works. And so I think if anything, AI has made that feel even more frenetic. So there's that's a little bit of a downside. But from an innovation standpoint, I think we are, we're continuing to see astonishing innovation and an acceleration of it only continuing here because the tools are just getting better.
Speaker 1: { 13:52 }
I remember my first trip to Sandhill Rd., this road where seems to be kind of this congregating area for, for, for VCs. And this was, I don't know, probably about the turn of the Millennium. And, you know, we were, I can't remember whether we were using MapQuest, but I remember there were large maps kind of fluttering around the car and we were just getting really worked up. But you know, as someone who grew up in the UKI felt like I'd arrived in Hollywood for for entrepreneurs that you you in the same way as you go into a Starbucks in LA and everyone's talking about their script for their movie or fundraising. It was the same thing for, for, for.
Speaker 2: { 14:37 }
In Washington, DC, and everyone's talking about politics, yeah.
Speaker 1: { 14:41 }
Is it still that way or is everyone now doing it online?
Speaker 2: { 14:44 }
Yeah, OK, yeah, it, it is an obviously for someone who lives out here, that's good and bad, right? So for my career, it's fantastic. You it is it, it's in the water, It's everywhere.
{ 14:54 }
I mean, literally because I live on the Stanford campus, like the people I play tennis with in the morning happen to be like world famous AI Stanford professor researchers and right. And it's just, it's very useful from a career perspective. Occasionally I do miss living in, say, New York, which I used to, where you might have friends who worked in different fields, But for what I do for a living, it is, it's, it is, it's here, it's everywhere. So my, my Sandhill Rd. sort of welcome to the big leagues moment was in 2003 when so I, I built my first two startups in New York City, because that's happened to be where I lived. And so in 1994, I built my first startup and I had a spin out from there. And I was lucky enough to sell both of those companies in the in the late 90s and in what was called Silicon Alley. But Silicon Alley, I love New York, but Silicon Alley is no Silicon Valley. And I came out here to Co found a company with Tripp Hawkins. And Tripp was Tripp was the founding CEO of Electronic Arts and of 3D O and was a legend. He was Steve Jobs first protege at Apple and truly brilliant guy.
{ 15:59 }
He had built 2 multi billion dollar businesses before he was 35 years old. And he recruited me to come be his Co founding president of digital chocolate. And I wasn't going to do it because I didn't want to move to to I didn't want to leave New York. And he said, listen, I've got Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins both in Michael Moritz is going to be on the board. You would be crazy not to do this. So for for your listeners, you don't know, Mike Moritz is the most successful venture capitalist in history. He was the first money in at Google, at PayPal, at Yahoo. Like it's an incredibly like, and that's I'm just off the top of my head. There's probably 25 other businesses that you've heard of where he was the first investor. And so of course I said yes. And you know, you, we showed up and, and we were incubating inside the Sequoia space. So that means you walk into the Sequoia offices, which are on Sand Hill Rd. and there's posters and they're like, it's like, you know, cool kid with like rock posters up on the wall.
{ 16:58 }
Only these are like companies and it's every, it's Apple, it's Google, it's Yahoo, it's PayPal, it's Electronic Arts, it's Cisco, it's, and what you realize is like these are all companies that they were the first investors in like literally they discovered Steve Jobs, they discovered, right, they first money into Google, first money in at Yahoo. And what's extraordinary, of course, is this has continued for about a 40 or 50 year. With Sequoia and it changes many things for you as an entrepreneur, it immediately changes the the Overton window like your expectation, like, oh, if I'm succeeding, I have to be building something that completely changes the world. Not like is a little success, but it's like Google. And that is a it's very useful. But the other thing that was so funny about that experience. So then they, they stick to companies that are incubating with them upstairs. This was, you know, in 2003 and you're surrounded by more posters. And those posters were companies that you've never heard of, and they were all Sequoia backed companies that had failed and gone bankrupt.
{ 17:59 }
And that was Don Valentine's way. And Don Don was this sort of legendary founder of Sequoia. It was Don Valentine's way of reminding all of us. You think you're hot stuff because you raised some money from Sequoia and you get to be here. And yeah, some of these companies have done well. All of these companies died, so don't forget that. And but it was a, it was a really amazing experience for sure for a young entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: { 18:24 }
And is that where you bumped into? Where are your paths crossed with Sam Altman?
Speaker 2: { 18:29 }
So I met Sam sort of. So I, so I worked at, I helped trip build digital chocolate. And then a few years later, Sam had raised money from Sequoia. So Sam was at the time was a 19 year old wunderkind who had won a pitch competition on the Stanford campus. And Patrick Chong, who was at the time a young partner at NEA, which is another big Sand Hill firm on Sand Hill Rd. had I think was the one like discovered Sam, right.
{ 18:59 }
And and NEA and Sequoia had LED this Series A into looped, which was Sam's first start up and very, very interesting idea in retrospect, easily understood. Terrible idea, yet also great idea. Anyways, I can get into that a little bit more. But so Sam was building applications on mobile phones that were more interesting than just games. And this is what I wanted to be doing. A digital chocolate. Digital chocolate was a mobile game business. It was very successful mobile game business. Trip was a legendary game person. I I was 2 in my own way. I had invented online fantasy sports. So between Trip and I we had the right DNA to be building in mobile in 2003, but I wanted to be doing things that were more interesting what ultimately the things like Uber etcetera that sort of came out of mobile ecosystem and that was what Sam was working on.
{ 19:49 }
Sam Looped was an application to help you find your friends using your phone as it was one of the first, if not the first location based service driven applications on mobile devices in the world and I. I had been talking about this for some time with some of the people at Sequoia. Anyways, when I left Digital Chocolate and was thinking about what was next. I don't remember exactly who set this up, but David Wyden, who then became the young part star partner at Coastal Ventures, but at the time was trying to figure out what he was doing next. Introduced me to Sam in Sequoia's offices as basically so I could be sort of the Gray hair for Looped. So the way I've always described it was like I was supposed to be Sheryl Sandberg to his Zuck, if that makes sense. And the problem was that Loop never succeeded like Facebook did, right? I mean it. And so he didn't really need a Sheryl Sandberg. I was, there were five people at Looped, 4 of them were 19 and one of them was 21.
{ 20:49 }
And then I came in and I was already in my mid 30s, which, you know, now seems very young, but at the time meant I'd already run 3 venture backed businesses and but wasn't so old that there would be Oregon rejection. And so I worked pretty closely with Sam for a while as as we were building looped. But sadly, as I mentioned earlier, it wasn't such a it, it, it appeared on its face to be an incredibly good idea. Like, oh, we're going to use location based services. Everybody's got a mobile phone. We know where those mobile phones are. We're going to tell you where your friends are and enhance serendipity. You're going to find your friends. It will, it will make your it's, it's funny, when I, I pitched my mother on the idea, she said, oh, this is amazing. This is the cure for loneliness. I was like, that is that is a great pitch, mom. But that was the idea. Like, you know, you're, you're out somewhere. Probably you have somebody you know or care about who's somewhere nearby you. It's too bad you're not meeting them for a coffee when you're only two blocks away from each other and you you don't know it. There are two fundamental problems. And, and at the time, by the way, the most common text message in the world was, you know, where you at.
{ 21:56 }
Like, so it seemed like there was consumer pull, but this was 2005 and there were no smartphones and there's no Agps on devices. So in order to make the service work, we had to do complicated API integrations with every single wireless operator in the country and build for every single mobile phone. And every one of them was different and get a critical mass of all these people using this thing. And by the way, we've never actually validated that people wanted the service. I mean, the irony is, despite all of the implementation challenges, even post smartphones, I mean, Apple has a service like this, right? You can see where your kids are, where their phones are, right?
Speaker 1: { 22:40 }
Yeah, used it yesterday.
Speaker 2: { 22:42 }
But people don't really use it except to see where their kids are. Like, it's not actually. Nobody uses it to, like, find their friends. It turns out, And this was before the book The Lean Startup had been written. We didn't do enough customer discovery work.
{ 22:57 }
We didn't validate that this was an important enough problem given all the extraordinarily hard technical work that we were going to have to do to implement it. So I mean, it's it's ironic because it was an amazing group of people. I mean, not just Sam Altman. We had Sam Yam who went on to Co found Patreon, was on the team Avantana who started his own Grey lock back business and is now a partner at South Park Common. Then you go through the list, there's like 10 people you've heard of in the Silicon Valley ecosystem who were part of the 1st 20 people at that company and all the right money and all the rest of it and it still didn't work. I mean that is the and that was sort of the lesson of those posters at Sequoia was like none of this matters if you don't have product market fit.
Speaker 1: { 23:42 }
Yeah.
Speaker 2: { 23:42 }
And and anyways, that was it was a really interesting experience.
Speaker 1: { 23:47 }
That is fascinating and maybe one of these failures that that informed all the the successful things that came.
Speaker 2: { 23:54 }
I hope so. I do. Certainly a lot of important lessons I took away from it.
Speaker 1: { 23:58 }
So, well, so many questions. So one of them is how do you organize your day given that I noticed that you're also president of AI healthcare company?
Speaker 2: { 24:11 }
It's a great question. So maybe I'll start by saying the reason near Horizon. Well, I'll start with saying what Near Horizon does and why it came together the way it did and it will bleed into sort of how I organize my day. So 2 plus years ago, sort of between gigs, thinking about what I wanted to do next, I got together for coffee with my old friend Sean Burns. And Sean had been the founding CEO of a company called Flurry, which was the biggest mobile data analytics business in the world. And then later the founding CEO of a company called Outlier dot AI, which was similar to Palantir. Give me all your data. We will find answers to questions you didn't even know you want to ask. And two very successful businesses.
{ 24:52 }
And Sean's a wonderful guy and we're we're talking about, we were lamenting the fact that we wanted to continue to build businesses, but we also liked having a portfolio of companies that we looked at. So we were advising or sitting on boards or investing in a lot of companies and that felt sort of like baby venture capitalist work. And we also had been building businesses. And what we concluded is that we wanted to do something somewhere in between. And that's basically what we created with Near Horizon, where we get to create four or five companies per year, but where we don't have the pressure of being the founding CEO because I have AI, have a good idea once a week. People don't understand this. Good ideas are easy. I've got a good idea for a business all the time. I have an unfair competitive advantage with an idea maybe once a decade, right? It just it's very rare to be so deep on something or so insightful or have access to some data or distribution that no one else has.
Speaker 1: { 25:50 }
So you were saying that you have an unfair advantage You you have like the stream of great ideas.
Speaker 2: { 25:56 }
What so? So I have lots of ideas, but those aren't an unfair advantage.
{ 25:59 }
I think that the point is that like having an unfair advantage to build a business, if you're lucky, happens once a decade, maybe for most people, happens maybe once a career. And So what we decided in Your Horizon was that we want to work with entrepreneurs who were bringing us their great ideas like they they have the unfair advantage, some data, some distribution, some product insight. We are very good company builders. Mike, Sean and I have been doing this for a long time. We've got very complimentary skill sets and we will help you unlock that. And in a way, it's much, you know, heavier engagement model than something like AY combinator. We're not just giving advice. We're we're writing code, we're helping to sell, we're helping you craft your pitch, we're helping you hire your team truly sort of like a Co founder, but for a year or so. And then and then you sort of move out of the nest. And what what this did for us was allowed us to have our cake and eat it too. We got to work on 456 projects per year, which was really, really interesting. But we also got to build.
{ 26:55 }
We weren't just writing checks and just sort of making capital allocations decisions. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And for a lot of people, it's very fulfilling, but we wanted to actually still be in it. So we created a new horizon really to solve for what we wanted to do. And it turns out that I think we scratched an important itch. There's a lot of people who are really excited about the model and the deal flow has been great, and we're very pleased with what's happened with the portfolio. And so to go back to your question about how I sort of divide up my day, you mentioned that I'm also the founding President of a company called Jiminy Health, which is, you know, doing very well LLM enhanced psychotherapy. So think of an AI that is working in conjunction with your therapist to help you with your anxiety, depression, etcetera. And that company is Brooklyn based and wonderful founding CEO Louis Woolwok, who's an old friend and colleague from M. And I, one way I think about that is that's one of my projects, right? So I have that.
{ 27:56 }
And then at any given time, Near Horizon has somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00 open projects. And my involvement with any one of them ebbs and flows as they need things. And so at any given time, a Near Horizon project, if they're deep into coding, they don't need my help. They don't want my help. I have a degree in computer science, but if I'm writing your code, you're in trouble. They're probably working very closely with Mike and then they move into fundraising mode or building their go to market strategy. And then I'm very, very involved. And so these things have been flow. And similarly with, with Jiminy. I mean, I'm, I'm very much involved with overarching strategy all the time. As far as being an individual contributor on various projects. That depends. And so I just have to sort of keep an eye on it. There's some juggling, you know, I, I'm also proud dad of two amazing girls. And so there's that too. I love my job, I love my family. It doesn't leave a lot of time for much else.
{ 29:00 }
So as discussed earlier, that guitar doesn't even have strings on it, let alone get played. I don't see my, my friends as often as I'd like to. But you know, that's, that's life. You make your choices. I, I, I love my family and I really enjoy my job and everything else. I kind of fit in around it when I can.
Speaker 1: { 29:21 }
So what's your view of the future for your kids? What are you going to advise them to study? Are you going to advise them to go to university or just start up a company?
Speaker 2: { 29:33 }
So it's a great question. I mean, first of all, my kids are young enough, they're 3:00 and 9:00 that whatever answer I have today will be irrelevant by the time they they're 18 and they're headed off to college if they are. I've never seen things changing so far. I mean, I lived through the Internet, Internet boom in 94. I mean, I started a consumer Internet company in 1994. I built a mobile company in 2002. This is so much faster.
{ 29:56 }
It's crazy how quickly things are changing and how extraordinarily powerful the AIS are now as essentially Co pilots for whatever white collar job you have to, to help you figure stuff out. You know, it's we're going to have the robot revolution too. It's going to take a few more years, but that will change the nature of, of pink collar and blue collar jobs too. So I, I honestly don't, I don't have any broad sweeping like, oh, these stay away from biotech, But you want to be here. I think the, the, the, the way I think about this is stay curious. The the one thing that you can, you know, you can learn how to learn. That's the most important thing you do in school. Yes, you can develop some very specific skills. Those skills may, may, may be obsolete very quickly, right?
{ 30:50 }
Nobody, I mean, go learn how to write software was like such a, it was a mantra for 30 years job security and like the world needs it and we don't have enough software engineers and Oh my God, the coding tools now are so good. The best engineers aren't going to lose their jobs. But it is true that the very best engineers are getting more and more and more efficient and can do a lot of work, one or two or three people. And so I don't know, is writing software for a living the right thing? I'm not sure I think that. But what I am confident is that staying curious, these are more like higher level things. Learn how to be present, learn how to be kind, learn how to be curious, learn how to learn. And I would say have enough background in all of the things to be able to stitch things together. Because I actually think that the specific skills the AI is going to get so good at that what humans the the value that humans are going to bring is often going to be sort of tying all the things together.
{ 31:54 }
And that is about knowing a little bit about music and a little bit about biology and a little bit about computer science and a little bit about history and a little bit about science and sort of the classic liberal arts education, which is probably contrarian. I know the Peter Thiel's of the world think we shouldn't bother with college at all, but there are many things I disagree with Peter Thiel on. So anyways, I I asked me again in nine years when my first one's ready for college.
Speaker 1: { 32:24 }
But so. So let's say you have a nephew who's 18.
Speaker 2: { 32:28 }
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: { 32:30 }
OK, what's your advice to him?
Speaker 2: { 32:33 }
You know, well, it's interesting because I have a nephew who's 19 and one who's 17 and I guess some of this would it like depends on the kid too, right? Like again, this is this goes back to stay curious and also follow your passions, right. So I suspect, for example, for the 17 year old who's growing up in Ithaca and may well go to Cornell, because that's what the top kids at high school all do.
{ 32:58 }
And I know his parents would love that. I think that the, you know, he's interested in STEM stuff and it's it's just because the AI is getting very good at coding and good at getting good at engineering and can help you understand, you know, is an essential tool and most of the most interesting biological work that's happening today doesn't mean that we don't need people working in STEM. I mean, I think like go study biology, study chemistry, study math, you know, study CSI, think it still makes a lot of sense. In fact, I would argue in some ways, you know, ML is going to lead to an explosion and understanding and knowledge in places where we haven't had it before biology. So I think one of those places I do, if I'm going to somebody's going to pin me down and say like where should they look? I do think that like if you think about the the essential problems of the world combined with things that are super interesting.
{ 33:58 }
So biology, chemistry and their intersection with AI is fascinating because it leads into things like biotech in ways that we make people healthier and also climate tech and the ways we're going to try to save the planet. And so, you know, I think that's it. It's a great and we need it, right? So we need it. It's interesting you can work on things that have meaning with a capital. MI would probably be encouraging of that kind of work.
Speaker 1: { 34:25 }
Just very specific question, what's the copilot that you guys use the the most when you're developing your prototypes? MVP.
Speaker 2: { 34:34 }
So it depends. So prototype if we're if if especially like the non-technical type of like we're just vibe coding. Lovable seems to have risen to the top of everyone's list. Pod's not bad either for the real engineers doing real work. They all seem to use Cursor. Cursor seems to have one, as best I can tell. I mean, it's early, right?
{ 34:56 }
And you know, Open AI just had their transaction, so we'll see what happens. But but yes, as of right now it seems to be Cursor.
Speaker 1: { 35:03 }
So what? How do you think the CE OS of all the companies that make all the old fashioned stuff like clothing, food, medicine feeling at the moment?
Speaker 2: { 35:16 }
Unsettled.
Speaker 1: { 35:18 }
Yeah. What would you recommend they do?
Speaker 2: { 35:21 }
Well, I mean, yeah, so some of this is they're probably feeling unsettled in part because of macro stuff that has nothing to do with AI and tariffs and disrespect for the rule of law and chaotic, deeply corrupt governments around the world. But beyond that, AI is unsettling. I mean I think that the, I heard, I was at a conference last week and I heard a very interesting and good suggestion from one of the general partners at A at a Seattle based venture studio.
{ 35:55 }
They tell all and they have maybe 50 companies in their portfolio that are sort of have graduated are successful businesses at this point going concerns. They have, you know, quarterly board meetings with these companies and they asked their CE OS to present in the second slide right after the executive summary, the second slide of the board deck every quarter. What are the new things that we are doing with AI that we weren't doing last quarter? Because one of the ways I think about this, you can take pick a old school non-technical business making clothes, right? And I would, I don't know know much about making clothes, but like making clothes involves buying stuff, sewing and manufacturing stuff, selling stuff, distributing stuff. It also involves hiring people. It involves marketing for your services. Every one of those things has a, has a stack, right? So however it is that you are selling things. So you're, you're, you're go to market like we have.
{ 36:55 }
This is our business development process that we have with the people who are going to buy our clothes, whether they're finished or not finished, right? AI can improve that. This is how we hire people. AI can improve that. By the way, AI is also making all of these things worse. So bad actors are using AI to make hiring people more difficult because there is a tremendous amount of of sort of fraudulent candidates who are showing up in interview processes, right? And people who are wearing their headphones and have an AI agent coaching them through interviews, right? And there's all sorts of stuff that like so in many of these things are sort of an AI arms race between like the bad actors and the good actors. Anyways, I guess the way the way I think about this is you may think you're in a industry that is not quite as impacted by AI as something that's like pure tech, but the companies that'll win. I mean, it's the same thing happened with the Internet, right? Like, well, actually it's funny we brought up clothes. I'll, I'll tell you a funny example.
{ 37:58 }
In 1996, I had Co founded one of the first web agencies in the entire world. It was called Small World software. It was spun out of our fantasy sports business in 1995 and we made dynamic websites back when that was very hard to do. I mean, you there was no cookie, there was no client side cookies. Saving state on a website was impossible. I mean, it was like there was all sorts of interesting technical challenges. Anyways, somebody came to us and and wanted us to build something called text trade.com, which was in retrospect, the first business to business exchange in the history of the world. So at the time, the way you bought, if you made clothes like the way you bought your woolens to make your sweaters, whatever it was, you literally like people got on the phone and they would call the brokers that they knew, oh, I need 10,000 yards of medium quality woolens that are, you know, blue and purple. Oh, I got some on a ship outside of India. I'll get them to right.
{ 38:57 }
Literally, like this was how the industry worked before the Internet. And then these two entrepreneurs came to us with this terrific idea, like, we'll build this marketplace. There's people who need to buy this stuff and people need to sell it. And we'll make a database and make a ways for people to sort and write and solve for this problem. And they did. And I think the business was quite successful. Well, they weren't technical and it was a deeply untechnical business, but by using the Internet before their competitors, they had a massive advantage. And I think the same thing will happen with, you know, AI tooling of every part of these businesses. And I don't care if, you know, you're manufacturing toilet seats or you are, you know, stitching clothes together or working on software tools, AI is going to change everything.
{ 39:48 }
And the, the CE OS would be, well, I think it'd be, it'd be in their best interest to have a practice like I described or like Yep, every quarter as my second slide in my board deck, I'm going to list the four new initiatives that we have put in place that make our company better at what we do that are AI driven.
Speaker 1: { 40:09 }
Yeah, because I feel like what's happened with Amazon and Omni channel is just like the pre tremors before the really big earthquake, which is, you know, robots and agents doing shopping for us and.
Speaker 2: { 40:26 }
I mean, agentic agentic AI is coming. I mean, there's, you know, people are figuring out what the what the API hooks look like and, and people worry about the agents won't always make the right choice. Well, humans don't always make the right choice either. And anything right now where you have an admin, it's like if I was so lucky as to be able to afford an admin to do this thing for me, right?
{ 40:53 }
Those tasks are mostly going to BAI agents in the next few years and there'll be some pain, but it's coming.
Speaker 1: { 41:03 }
Well, this has been really good, Mark, and there's tons of other things I'd like to talk to you about, but what I've noticed is the shorter my episodes are, the more people watch. I wonder I, I, I, I will wrap up, but I do want to give you a chance to. Is there anything more that we should have, I should have asked you about the the businesses that you're running at the moment that we should we.
Speaker 2: { 41:26 }
Should no I, I, I think it's been a wonderful conversation. It's great to see you after all these years.
Speaker 1: { 41:30 }
And I like life.
Speaker 2: { 41:32 }
I'll say this, I love that you've kept the podcast going as an excuse to stay curious about the world. This goes back to what I said earlier about, you know, advice for my nephews or nieces, stay curious or my kids, you know, stay curious and sort of you want to have a broad range of competencies because the world is is changing really quickly. And I love it as somebody who gets to work in that space. I, I, I love what I do for a living.
{ 41:59 }
I love waking up every day and learning. It doesn't mean it doesn't scare me. I think that the the pace of AI changes.
Speaker 1: { 42:04 }
Well, let me ask you that. What? Yeah. What is your P doom? What's your probability that it's all going to end horribly? And and I'm talking about with AI, not the.
Speaker 2: { 42:12 }
Current yeah, so I don't so I don't like the the Gen. AI is going to want to kill us all. Sorry, Hal, I can't do that. Yeah, sorry, Dave. I can't do that. Sort of how ending doesn't worry me very much. I I the thing that worries me are other humans, but super powered humans, right. Humans. Whenever we invent a new powerful technology, there are asymmetrical uses for it. And the good news is the last time this happened was something that was incredibly devastating with like nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons happen to be something that require uranium, enriched uranium. And so non state actors can't really make an atomic bomb, thank God. And so we've been able to contain that.
{ 42:58 }
Despite that, we still came very, very close many, many times, too many times to having nuclear disaster. I worry a lot about what AI does both in terms of ability to make terrible bio weapons or develop other forms of, if not true mass destruction, mass chaos destruction technologies that are relatively autonomous and very cheap. And I mean, you look what's happening in the war in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia is like that war is being fought by $300 drones, right? The the $10 million tanks have become irrelevant and and while yay for the Ukrainians, it's terrifying in terms of what that means for asymmetrical actors in the future. I worry it just as much about dissing misinformation.
{ 43:51 }
And in a world where there are a lot of bad actors who, who want you to not believe anything and not to trust anything. And the algorithms are so good at capturing our attention and understand exactly how to manipulate human psychology and all the rest of it. I mean, we've already been, we've been feeling this since 2016 and it's only getting worse. I, I, I would argue that, you know, most of the political instability we feel in the world right now. And even though it's like a Steven Pinkerish way, most of the things for most of the world are better by far than they ever have been, right? People living longer, more people and freedom, more democracy, more education, more women's rights, less slavery, less right things better, better, better. People feel more and more out of sorts. And a lot of that is dissing misinformation and AI has made that problem much worse. And I think we're going to see everything from like AI driven fraud anyways. And you know, the veneer of human civilization is only so thick.
{ 44:59 }
And I so I worry about that a lot. The like the AI is going to kill us all. Like, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: { 45:06 }
OK, well that's one less thing to worry about. I was worrying about all the other things as well, so you've made me feel a bit better. Question of three songs that have meaning for you, and looks like from your slightly startled expression that I didn't.
Speaker 2: { 45:21 }
No, not startled actually. You, you, you included that in the e-mail. I'm just trying to think about which ones to lead with. I have I I've it doesn't really.
Speaker 1: { 45:30 }
Matter, to be honest, it doesn't. It's like we're not going to hold you to this when you get shot off to the desert island or up to Mars. So but it's just sort of what you feel that that you want to talk about in terms of the the the meaning to you, the the meaning is the most important thing as opposed to the right songs and.
Speaker 2: { 45:49 }
So let's see, I'm a big Radiohead fan, have been for forever. They have a song called Fake Plastic Trees, which I have always loved.
{ 45:57 }
I feel like something about Thom Yorke's haunting voice combined with a song about somebody living an inauthentic life has always been very important to me. Because I think, at least in my my life and my career, I've tried very hard to be authentic. And that's an effort I think for everyone, right? Not just follow the herd. And certainly that that would be one song that would make my list of greatest songs ever written and something sort of important to me.
Speaker 1: { 46:27 }
I love that choice. Yeah. Because it's sort of more about your philosophy than a particular incident or or person. I think he's just come out with another album. I I.
Speaker 2: { 46:35 }
Think I think that's right. I think that's right. I have small children. So I now completely fallen out of like what's actually happening with music at this point in my life is probably my a good second choice would probably be the wheels on the bus because I've listened to that roughly 10,000 times in the last three years. And whether I'm singing it to my now 3 year old or we've been playing it.
Speaker 1: { 46:58 }
So you have a three-year old I.
Speaker 2: { 46:59 }
Do I have a three-year old and a nine year old? So actually, although at this point there's now much more Taylor Swift in my life than Wheels on the Bus because the 9 year old has managed to convert the three-year old into a Swifty. So there's that.
Speaker 1: { 47:13 }
I've done the same. I went, I went to a Taylor Swift concert, which I never thought I'd do, and I was really pleased I did. And I I've, I've kind of gone over to the light side or whatever side she's on.
Speaker 2: { 47:24 }
Yes, exactly, And I guess the third one, I mean, Bruce Springsteen has probably been my my single favorite artist of all time, most influential gone to see the boss six or seven times live if and if I have to pick a song. I mean, Thunder Rd. is hard to Thunder Rd. is hard to argue with, especially as you get a little bit older and realize that the wisdom in the like life isn't perfect. Not everything's going to work out the way you want it to, but you should try to make the best of what you have.
{ 47:57 }
So there would be my those are there's there's my three choices. Probably nobody's ever come to you with Thunder Roads and Radiohead and.
Speaker 1: { 48:06 }
The wheels on.
Speaker 2: { 48:06 }
The wheels. The wheels on the bus.
Speaker 1: { 48:07 }
Wheels on the Bus is the first time we've had a lot of David Bowie over the years, Space Odyssey and and Queen, and that's never Wheels on the Bus. There you go, Bruce Springsteen. Interesting. So he is, I, I like him for many reasons. He's quite candid about his and authentic about his own struggles with mental health, which is, you know, always endears me to people when you feel like they're being open, especially when people admire them and you feel like they can set the trend. He did a stage show. Did you ever get to see a stage show? He was like talking and playing.
Speaker 2: { 48:44 }
I did not. I did not. I'd moved away from New York by the time that happened and you know, life gets busy while you're making other plans to go on another musical hero so.
Speaker 1: { 48:56 }
OK, Well, those are great choices.
{ 48:58 }
Thanks for indulging us with with that and and thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: { 49:03 }
Fantastic Steve. So, so good to see you and look forward to seeing seeing the final product.
Speaker 1: { 49:09 }
So that was Mark, very informative, also inspirational. Great to see someone that's actually designed their life and seems to have got a balance that they're happy with. I want to thank you for listening all watching as long as you have. Getting to the end is unusual and shows some stamina, fortitude and attention span which is unusual. I also want to thank Aaron Hallock who edits this and Sierra Walden who helps get the episode out. For those of you that are interested then this is the album I've been listening to this week. It is of course the The White Album from The Beatles.
{ 49:58 }
One of their best, their only studio double album and just an amazing piece of work. I highly recommend it if you have been. Thanks for listening and stay safe and enjoy the journey.
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