Not everybody has to work on the big problems, but if nobody does, they don't get solved.
Our best and brightest must conceive of themselves as stewards of our society and confront the critical challenges of our time. It's the best bet for our society, for entrepreneurs, and for the investors who believe in them.
Private equity investors are an integral part of the economy and should be celebrated for making our country wealthier.
I was really lucky about two things about my life as a kid: I had awesome parents, and I had awesome peers.
Our family is very, very competitive. But it's a fun and inspiring sort of competitive. It makes you proud of what you do and makes you want to work hard and do all your homework so you can win.
For me, seed investing isn't just a good return area but a big part of how we network in Silicon Valley. A lot of our best deals have come from being active in the seed stage.
Basically, I think society functions thanks to how certain key industries work - government, finance, healthcare, education, energy. Pretty much all of these have a huge impact on everything else.
I believe we live in a positive sum world and wealth isn't just taken or moved around; it's mostly created.
If our society was a lot wealthier, I think we'd also probably have better education systems - this is pretty intuitive, I think, to make as a claim.
The degree to which society creates wealth, I think, is largely determined by government and financial systems.
I think I was really lucky to work as a little kid at PayPal, grew up in the Valley as a coder.
Keeping government running really well, to me, is incredibly important.
Engineering talent is the most precious resource for any technology company - Palantir and Addepar are successful first and foremost because of their top tech cultures, and the same is true for our best portfolio companies at 8VC.
Creating efficiencies in private markets is a huge win for the economy.
I work 110-hour weeks.
I'm always investing and building things at the same time.
There will be trillions of dollars under Addepar. You will have tons of money and information flowing through it.
If you can make finance more functional, make it a tiny percent better, you create a great deal of resources, which you can use for other things like education and healthcare.
I think that the culture at Stanford really shapes how you view the world, and you get a lot more out of an entrepreneurial mindset.
Being able to access that Stanford alumni network was huge - I actually interned at PayPal while I was at Stanford and learned a lot. Being in that environment and learning about it as a student was really fun.
