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Larry Page and Sergey Brin with Vinod Khosla [video]

153 points by martinesko36 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
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anmol 12y ago
Plug: I'm one of the founders of Ginger.io, the healthcare company Larry, Sergey & Vinod mention. We're doing some really interesting things in healthcare and sensor data-- deploying across a varity of healthcare systems and driving interventions, and the best part is having a real impact on people's lives. If you'd like to learn more, shoot us an email at hello@ginger.io or see our Join-Us page.
jackaltman 12y ago
I love that these guys think of 4 years as short term and 20 years as long term. Young companies often set up this dichotomy as a couple months vs. a couple years, which just isn't enough. Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have over public incumbents that have quarterly expectations, but it's usually not taken advantage of. Not just on founders obviously, whole startup ecosystem fuels this.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have over public incumbents that have quarterly expectations" I completely disagree. If a public company has a poor quarter their stock price might fall a bit and shareholders might get pissed off. If a startup has a bad quarter that could be enough to put it out of business. Startups can't ignore the long-term but naturally all new businesses live day-to-day, especially when relying on venture capital and not a reliable revenue stream.
  - jackaltman 12y ago
    I thought about this more and I think you're right. Some companies do become very short term focused when they go public, but when you not longer have to worry about short term survival you can plan much farther out in the future.
- PeterGriffin 12y ago
  > "I love that these guys think of 4 years as short term and 20 years as long term. Young companies often set up this dichotomy as a couple months vs. a couple years, which just isn't enough." You can think 20 years ahead, you can have your guesses, your vision, maybe also a cheesy vaporware "concept video" to prop up your PR. None of this speaks about how your company truly operates. Because a modern tech company can't really execute 20 years ahead. 20 years is an eternity in technology. In 20 years the world will be nothing like what you thought it would be, and everything you thought would be cool to build up to would already be obsolete. I've been thinking about Google X's "moonshot" efforts, can those efforts succeed? Their self-driving cars. Not impossible, but they move too slow. They're thinking like a giant corporation now, where getting up in the morning and putting their pants on takes 4 years. Big carmakers have been playing with electric cars for decades. They were thinking "long-term". But it took Tesla to wake them up, and show them that their long-term vision is possible now. And that's how it's with Google as well. Far more likely a hungry, angry, scrappy startup will eat their lunch. Someone who's not happy to imagine what it'd be like 20 years forward. When you don't have a proven business model and a few billion dollars in the bank, you don't have time to think 20 years ahead. You want to have the future now, and you'll work your heart out to deliver it.
  - msabalau 12y ago
    Mostly true for startups, and nearly all other businesses. At the same time, knowing that the type of speech recognition they wanted to build wouldn't be possible for a long time, the Bakers thought, and then executed in decades. Contract work, government work, whatever it took to build a bridge to the future they envisioned. And I can't see any definite reason to count Google because they are big. Being big didn't stop them from grabbing the majority of the smartphone market, or from teeing up so that most of the next billion people who will have a smartphone as their computer will have an android phone. One can make the case that they sometimes move too quickly--is there any reason why Glass couldn't have come out after Android Wear?
    - gress 12y ago
      Google hasn't 'grabbed the majority of smartphone share'. They sell no smartphones themselves and they license software components that are used in less than half of smartphones. [edit: as usual, a factually correct counterpoint to the marketing spin about Android gets downvoted]
- pcrh 12y ago
  >Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have This seems unlikely, given the financial insecurity associated with startups. One example of long term thinking would be military procurement and similar. It takes a decade at least to develop a new weapons platform, which is then deployed for several more decades. One example that comes to mind, and that might appeal to HN readers, is the fact that the technology in the space shuttle was mostly developed in the 1970's and only decommissioned circa 2011.
randomfool 12y ago
"it's amazing when the business people take over how rational they get focused on short term revenue and lose the long term vision"- on why Excite management was having difficulty buying PageRank for $350k (or $1.6m, not entirely clear). I think this is a problem at a number of established tech companies as the management layer evolves.
- sumedh 12y ago
  > on why Excite management was having difficulty buying PageRank The big money was in portals not search during those days. If I am not mistaken even the Google founders initially had no idea how to monetize it.
mentaat 12y ago
can anyone summarize the conversation?
andrewtbham 12y ago
Here are a bunch of tweets with some highlights. Scroll down to july 3rd https://twitter.com/khoslaventures https://twitter.com/khoslaventures
kumarm 12y ago
I personally loved Khosla's company building Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCoBgC_n1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCoBgC_n1Q
ykumar6 12y ago
It's interesting how not even the founders of Google can come to a consensus on what technology is doing to jobs Larry Page thinks most people will be part-time employed or not employed at all since human needs are fixed. Sergey thinks human needs are endless, and jobs creation will always happen. Perhaps no one really knows the answer.
- psbp 12y ago
  I think Sergey was walking Larry's answer back in order to not seem so radical.
mullingitover 12y ago
Khosla is an absolute scumbag.[1] Really disappointed to see Larry and Sergey hanging out with this guy. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/its-privacy-vs-the-people-in-the-battle-for-martins-beach.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/its-privacy-vs-the-peop...
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turingbook 12y ago
The transcript: http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google-co-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google-co-f...

153 points by martinesko36 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

anmol 12y ago

Plug: I'm one of the founders of Ginger.io, the healthcare company Larry, Sergey & Vinod mention. We're doing some really interesting things in healthcare and sensor data-- deploying across a varity of healthcare systems and driving interventions, and the best part is having a real impact on people's lives. If you'd like to learn more, shoot us an email at hello@ginger.io or see our Join-Us page.

jackaltman 12y ago

I love that these guys think of 4 years as short term and 20 years as long term. Young companies often set up this dichotomy as a couple months vs. a couple years, which just isn't enough. Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have over public incumbents that have quarterly expectations, but it's usually not taken advantage of. Not just on founders obviously, whole startup ecosystem fuels this.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have over public incumbents that have quarterly expectations" I completely disagree. If a public company has a poor quarter their stock price might fall a bit and shareholders might get pissed off. If a startup has a bad quarter that could be enough to put it out of business. Startups can't ignore the long-term but naturally all new businesses live day-to-day, especially when relying on venture capital and not a reliable revenue stream.
- jackaltman 12y ago
  I thought about this more and I think you're right. Some companies do become very short term focused when they go public, but when you not longer have to worry about short term survival you can plan much farther out in the future.
PeterGriffin 12y ago
> "I love that these guys think of 4 years as short term and 20 years as long term. Young companies often set up this dichotomy as a couple months vs. a couple years, which just isn't enough." You can think 20 years ahead, you can have your guesses, your vision, maybe also a cheesy vaporware "concept video" to prop up your PR. None of this speaks about how your company truly operates. Because a modern tech company can't really execute 20 years ahead. 20 years is an eternity in technology. In 20 years the world will be nothing like what you thought it would be, and everything you thought would be cool to build up to would already be obsolete. I've been thinking about Google X's "moonshot" efforts, can those efforts succeed? Their self-driving cars. Not impossible, but they move too slow. They're thinking like a giant corporation now, where getting up in the morning and putting their pants on takes 4 years. Big carmakers have been playing with electric cars for decades. They were thinking "long-term". But it took Tesla to wake them up, and show them that their long-term vision is possible now. And that's how it's with Google as well. Far more likely a hungry, angry, scrappy startup will eat their lunch. Someone who's not happy to imagine what it'd be like 20 years forward. When you don't have a proven business model and a few billion dollars in the bank, you don't have time to think 20 years ahead. You want to have the future now, and you'll work your heart out to deliver it.
- msabalau 12y ago
  Mostly true for startups, and nearly all other businesses. At the same time, knowing that the type of speech recognition they wanted to build wouldn't be possible for a long time, the Bakers thought, and then executed in decades. Contract work, government work, whatever it took to build a bridge to the future they envisioned. And I can't see any definite reason to count Google because they are big. Being big didn't stop them from grabbing the majority of the smartphone market, or from teeing up so that most of the next billion people who will have a smartphone as their computer will have an android phone. One can make the case that they sometimes move too quickly--is there any reason why Glass couldn't have come out after Android Wear?
  - gress 12y ago
    Google hasn't 'grabbed the majority of smartphone share'. They sell no smartphones themselves and they license software components that are used in less than half of smartphones. [edit: as usual, a factually correct counterpoint to the marketing spin about Android gets downvoted]
pcrh 12y ago
>Long term thinking is a big potential advantage startups have This seems unlikely, given the financial insecurity associated with startups. One example of long term thinking would be military procurement and similar. It takes a decade at least to develop a new weapons platform, which is then deployed for several more decades. One example that comes to mind, and that might appeal to HN readers, is the fact that the technology in the space shuttle was mostly developed in the 1970's and only decommissioned circa 2011.

randomfool 12y ago

"it's amazing when the business people take over how rational they get focused on short term revenue and lose the long term vision"- on why Excite management was having difficulty buying PageRank for $350k (or $1.6m, not entirely clear). I think this is a problem at a number of established tech companies as the management layer evolves.

sumedh 12y ago
> on why Excite management was having difficulty buying PageRank The big money was in portals not search during those days. If I am not mistaken even the Google founders initially had no idea how to monetize it.

mentaat 12y ago

can anyone summarize the conversation?

andrewtbham 12y ago

Here are a bunch of tweets with some highlights. Scroll down to july 3rd https://twitter.com/khoslaventures https://twitter.com/khoslaventures

kumarm 12y ago

I personally loved Khosla's company building Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCoBgC_n1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCoBgC_n1Q

ykumar6 12y ago

It's interesting how not even the founders of Google can come to a consensus on what technology is doing to jobs Larry Page thinks most people will be part-time employed or not employed at all since human needs are fixed. Sergey thinks human needs are endless, and jobs creation will always happen. Perhaps no one really knows the answer.

psbp 12y ago
I think Sergey was walking Larry's answer back in order to not seem so radical.

mullingitover 12y ago

Khosla is an absolute scumbag.[1] Really disappointed to see Larry and Sergey hanging out with this guy. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/its-privacy-vs-the-people-in-the-battle-for-martins-beach.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/its-privacy-vs-the-peop...

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turingbook 12y ago

The transcript: http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google-co-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google-co-f...