Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
thomas tull founder of legendary
entertainment known for producing
blockbusters like batman's dark knight
trilogy the hangover franchise godzilla
inception jurassic world 300 and many
more he runs telco which is an
investment company that focuses
on how artificial intelligence can
revolutionize large industries he is
part owner of the pittsburgh steelers
he's the guitarist for the band ghost
hounds that tours with the rolling
stones
but most importantly he's humble down to
earth and someone who has quickly become
a mentor and friend
this is the lex friedman podcast to
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in the description and now here's my
conversation with thomas tall
in 2004 you founded legendary
entertainment known for producing
blockbusters like
batman's dark knight trilogy that
includes batman begins dark night and
dark night rises
the hangover franchise godzilla
inception jurassic world 300 and the
list goes on it's just some of the
biggest movies in history
what does it take to make an epic movie
like that or what does it take to make
it happen from start to finish
well
look i i've been enamored with movies
since i was a kid as a fan and i think
what you need
is to is to be able to tell a great
story
and if you're going to tell a great
story
you need a great director
you got to start with a fantastic script
um that
you know is able to take some of these
iconic characters that we did
and put your own stamp on it while still
respecting uh the mythology
and uh i had zero experience in movies
and television before i started
legendary so it was it was a very
interesting trip
total luck uh that uh
we had the opportunity to make five
movies at the time with chris nolan who
turned out to be one of the greatest
filmmakers of all time
but it's uh each one is its own little
startup company uh and i don't think
there's any formula
to get there but i know that if you
don't have a great director and a great
script if you don't have that foundation
it's hard to pull off who's the ceo of
that little start-up company companies
the the director who would you say kind
of defines the success or the failure of
a movie well
when you build a big movie like that
it's an enormous effort
360 degrees i mean from digital
effects
certainly the actors i mean if you have
an amazing script an amazing director
but you don't believe anybody playing
the parts that's a problem so the reason
i think it was
so difficult to pull off is always used
to say you start with a stack
of papers with words on it called a
script
bring that to life
and you're asking an audience to believe
in everything that you're trying to
put out there and you've got a cast
that even if they're immensely talented
individually they have to mesh together
they have to have chemistry together
um
and you know the director is kind of the
general on the the battlefield but
if you have a strong producer who's very
hands-on but it truly to me is each one
had its own
story in its own sort of
how it came to be and why it why it
worked or didn't work
so you said you were new to the industry
but you did a lot of revolutionary
things with legendary
so at that time and now what is the uh
the good the bad and ugly of the
business of filmmaking
what what are some interesting holes
that you were able to or like problems
that you were able to fix
what problems still exist that can still
be solved
well
look the the business has changed so
radically since 2004.
when i started legendary dvds were still
a cash cow
so you know
that's how how far things have come
but i i would say a couple of things the
reason that i started it from a business
perspective
was at the time it was a 30 billion
dollar industry and there was no
institutional capital around
the movie business and i was fascinated
by that because almost every other
category that you look at of that size
has institutional capital private equity
etc is kind of a cottage industry set up
around it
and i was
perplexed and fascinated that that
didn't occur and the way the movie
business worked was unlike any business
i'd ever
looked at before so
after kind of convincing myself
that you could actually make money if
you were disciplined and had the right
approach
uh you know went out raised the money
from the capital markets markets which
was uh herculean still maybe the hardest
thing i've ever
done in my career
to walk around and say look i have no
experience
i've never done this before but you know
and the second thing being very
fortunate at the time
was able to partner up with warner
brothers
warner's at the time was run by a man
named alan horn
who besides being creative is also a
harvard mba so really understood what i
wanted to do
um and alan you know was just an
absolute gentleman someone that i still
look up to to these to this day
after warner brothers he went and ran
disney
with their run
you know between marvel and star wars
and everything and
so between
uh alan being responsible for harry
potter the dark knight stuff and then on
to all the disney stuff he probably had
as great a career as anyone i've ever
heard of
in the movie business
so
my first focus was around sort of two
concepts global worldwide large
tentpole films and franchises
and then the business aspect of being
bringing long-term
institutional capital to bear i'm going
to ask you dumb questions which is uh
part of the style i guess
but just for people who don't know uh
including me
what is institutional what is capital
what is institutional capital what is
equity what is private equity got it
okay well so
if um if you're starting a company
and
you go around to a bunch of your
successful friends and say hey you
should invest in my company well that
that's sort of uh that's great and it's
capital but it's not
getting money from fidelity or tea row
or
you know a sovereign wealth fund or an
endowment fund from a university that
has large pools of organized capital
that has a long
term point of view on your business
so if you get money from
your neighbor who's a successful dentist
next year
the dentist may say hey
times are hard i need my money back
if you're partners with you know
fidelity or morgan stanley or any of
these institutions
they have the capital and the
wherewithal
uh to to say okay i'm looking at this
over the next five to ten years
and i thought there was an opportunity
to bring that type of capital
to the to the movie business
uh to to be patient and the benefit of
that patient so it's long term
you have to deal with fewer parties and
they would do much larger investments
so what what are the benefits what are
the sort of the challenges of that kind
of investment well i think the benefits
in some ways are there professionals who
are largely dispassionate right it's
like look if you're hitting the numbers
you told me and you're hitting your plan
great
um and the other the other thing that
always
was interesting to me about the movie
business
is if i'm investing in an artificial
intelligence company or a chipset
company or something like that
a lot of the institutions don't have the
technical expertise to really truly
grasp
what's being done so they don't you know
other than good business practices
they're not offering every little
opinion the movies and television are
completely approachable
meaning everybody has an opinion
so
you know whether it's i think you guys
chose the wrong actor for that or why
did you do that move it's it's
so it invites a lot more
sort of second guessing and things like
that so that was always uh
one of the idiosyncrasies of the
business that i thought was uh
you know was interesting
um and and then
when you talk about private equity
versus public equity if you're a public
company where the companies can
are traded you want to buy microsoft
shares you just go to your broker
go on td ameritrade and buy them if on
the other hand uh you're talking about
private equity that's
uh institutions or individuals investing
in private companies um so thus the if
you have pools of capital that mostly
invest in private equity deals that
that's how you how you'd think about it
it's difficult to make those happen
because it's individuals you have to
sort of
what have dinners and
agree so it's much less
it's a much more human much less
mechanical i would say
yeah now and again massive difference
between large private equity
shops who are professionalized and in
the same category that i mentioned
earlier
uh versus private individuals
who are wealthy or whatever but again
it's it's much more individualized when
you're going
uh to people who like your idea and just
say i'd like to invest in this is there
is that
from all the kinds of investments you've
seen
what do you think is the most conducive
to creating
works of genius
whether that's in technology ai space or
whether that's in movies sure so
creating something special in this world
i would say a couple of things
enough money
that whatever endeavor
you you're you're going into
that you're not
so nervous about the edges right if my
if i have a hundred dollars to spend and
i'm i think i can create a perpetual
motion machine or something for 104
i can't do it because they're all over
me about the budget so i would say
making sure that you have enough capital
making sure that that capital is patient
enough
so that it's you know if you're going to
do things that are extraordinary
it takes some time
and you're going to break stuff
right you're going to make mistakes
you're going to have a whole bunch of
film on the cutting room floor so to
speak or if you're in the lab you're
going to have a whole bunch of broken
stuff
and i also think it's very important at
the beginning
and i always try to do this with
companies i invest in or buy
is make sure that you have a
philosophical
and somewhat mechanical alignment with
the management team
so that
going in
you both understand hey this is how we
think about this problem or this company
this is what we feel like our culture is
this is what our goal is and these are
the metrics by which we'll agree to
measure them by
because
if you don't have that shared
you know hey we're going to take this
journey
then i think that's where people get
upset disappointed etc
what about
this is a weird question but constraints
so this is both for filmmaking and
investment
do you think more money is always better
no
so i
i like constraints a lot
it's like constraints
and almost like a desperation and
deadlines are uh
catalysts for creativity for uh for
productivity for sort of uh innovation
so can you can you kind of speak to that
sure as an investor as a creator like
what's uh what's the right balance here
well i i think if you're focused on a
particular problem or a company or a
thesis is if you have that focus
and you feel like i have unlimited
resources
or renewable resources so there's really
there's no
leverage in the situation
right there's no
if i fail at this i'll just go get more
money
right i'll just go
i i think that's a hard way to be
resilient
uh and and to think of new ways to solve
problems
um
so i think
capitalizing things just
you know to the nth degree
does create some problems so i think
there's that perfect blend of
don't starve the oxygen to the point
where you make short-term decisions or
non-strategic or thoughtful decisions
because you got to pay the rent and on
the other hand
you you can't have it be like this
you know everlasting gobstopper of
whatever you want will just keep flowing
the cash because that doesn't create any
friction points
that i think um do
result in in works of genius in in
things that uh
you know
that that are transformative and
one of the things that is interesting to
me
about society sort of
writ large is
i think that when you go through hard
times
and you have to do things that are
uncomfortable and you don't want to do
them
because you're tired because you're
that in some ways builds up that you're
comfortable being uncomfortable
muscle
and i i sometimes think we're losing
that a little bit and you you can't sort
of paint with a wide brush but
um
you know i i that's that's one of the
things that i kind of
observe and and hope that we don't
go that way i i do think challenge and
discomfort are a kind of gift
because uh like overcoming that it's
like uh from from every perspective from
a human perspective it's a source of
happiness and fulfillment overcoming
challenge but from a business
perspective
i see like if something is really
difficult
to me it's also a sign that most others
would or many others would fail at this
point
so like it's a feature it's nice that
something is difficult when
when people tell you that something is
impossible i love that because it's like
all right well then that's what a lot of
people would believe
and that gives you an opportunity to be
the person who shows it's not impossible
and you of course you might be wrong but
if you're not wrong you have the
opportunity to stand out so going
through that hardship taking those big
risks is going to really pay off so like
discomfort
is a
it's a feature not a bug
of both personal life it's just good for
life
but uh for business it seems like just
just good business sense
if something is hard it's probably a
good idea to do that
yeah because most others will fail
fun question i don't know if you can
answer this but uh what's the most
expensive movie you were involved with
to make and why was it
you don't have to say numbers but like
do is something stand out as being
exceptionally expensive and why this is
expensive um
i think jurassic world was pretty
expensive
work i mean worked out great
um
and uh that's like that's an epic film
by the way it it
look it's uh
it's it's one of my favorites they just
did an amazing job and frankly
the crazy thing about my life
is all the stuff that i loved as a kid
somehow came full circle back into my
adult life
and having the opportunity
while i was out there to
to develop a friendship with steven
spielberg
and then have have my name on the same
film as steven spielberg i mean that
that was
pretty surreal
um
so that was an expensive film um you
know dark knight rises was it was an
expensive film but again to me there's a
difference between expensive and
irresponsible
and expensive because the vision
warranted
and it turned out financially it
certainly did yeah with jurassic world
it's
i mean i can't imagine having those
meetings because like you have to create
so much and so much of it is obviously
not real you can't
bring dinosaurs in a
yeah
uh is that where a lot of the cost is is
in the
uh
you know the computer side of things
yeah those are generally pretty
massive components of uh of the budget
and especially if you're
doing it and inventing things yeah as
you go i mean jim cameron is one of
those
filmmakers who
you know is is designing the plane
as it's flying in such a brilliant way
and uh i you know i've got to know him
over the years and just in awe
of the way his brain works and uh so
yeah it's it's a big component
can you speak a little bit more to him
in terms of uh because you're such a
fascinating person
because you care a lot about technology
you care a lot about the cutting edge of
technology
so how does he a creator
a director
build the plane while it's flying like
what's the role of innovation in this
whole process
well um
so i never made a film with jim i'm just
a huge fan and got to know him
um and john landau his producing partner
and one of the things that just
fascinates me about jim is so he makes
titanic and there's a bunch of
underwater cameras and things that they
need that don't exist
so he goes and invents them
and
you know has a good grasp of engineering
and has not only the imagination but the
ability to lead a team to build them
i got to go down early when they were
shooting avatar
at a warehouse i think it was where they
were shooting and as they were
explaining to me
how they were capturing it and that they
could go back later because they created
the environment
it blew my mind and i said okay this is
truly
people talk about a a big leap this
certainly is one so
he has continued
to push the envelope
in terms of the art of the possible and
i i just think he's an incredible genius
in that way
again another hard question so you uh in
the realm of music care about story
storytelling
is there some aspect in which money
and beautiful graphics get in the way of
story
in filmmaking so if you think
um if you think about jurassic world
obviously that's an experience like any
other
like what do we what do you think about
the tension between
story experience and like visual
effects
well look
if you're using
big effect shots
and all kinds of tricks to cover over
the fact that you don't have a very
interesting story to tell
that's where i think it gets in the way
um
where i think you have these incredible
filmmakers we mentioned chris nolan and
jim cameron guillermo del toro
um
you know you could go on and on
of folks that
just see the world differently and use
technology
to enhance the storytelling right to
make you believe
uh differently
uh rather to to make you
not just suspend your disbelief but to
feel like you're immersed in it
um so i've certainly seen it done
expertly and i've seen it done poorly
uh you've talked about this a little bit
in the past
you kind of uh left
the the movie-making business at an
interesting time perhaps you saw the
changes
there's been a lot of excitement with
netflix with tv so the the role of film
in society has changed so
what do you think is the future of
movies versus tv like if you are as a
business person as a creator as a
consumer
as a technologist
or thinking about the next 10 20 years
what do you think is going to be the
the godfather the great
pieces that move us as a society in the
next 10 20 years this is going to be tv
is it going to be movie is it going to
be uh tick tock
uh clips
what is it
well
so i i and i think the other category
that i would add to that that will be
the next great medium is truly immersive
virtual reality
uh in which
new storytellers will emerge
especially when you can go into vr
and there's enough computing power
to sustain it
and to allow it to be social
and you know for you to have different
paths to go down
that'll be i think the next realm of
what storytelling and experience will
will look like so do you think a video
game kind of world or is it more movies
or is it more
social network or is it all the kind of
blending reality and gaming and movies
yeah i thought uh if you saw ready
player one which i loved the book and
and the movie was cool too
but you know that that's one version of
it right where you go in
now everybody's talking about the
metaverse and all that but you go into a
world that's fully rendered
as yourself and you interact with that
world the other side of it is to go in
somewhere between being a passive
observer but being able to move around
your point of view and experiences
which i think is interesting
and then i think another another
adventure so to speak i could think of
is
a blend of video games so there's a
mission right there's a there's
obstacles there's everything and you
move through it
but it's immersive and it tells a story
at the same time and that's why i think
you're going to see
new amazing storytellers
that we don't know yet
that understand how to innovate and how
to make you feel something in in that
environment
and to your earlier point you know i
saw probably around 2015
when netflix decided to
be bold put out house of cards
put out all the episodes
leave you in charge of the pace at which
you would view them
uh which i thought was was great
that was a gutsy move yes it was and i
can't tell you around hollywood anybody
that says that everybody thought it was
a great idea is not being truthful
because
everybody i talked to said this is
they're idiots right they're what do
they know about movie making and tv
and
what i saw happening
was if you look at what netflix pulled
off and they realized that there isn't
really a moat around the studios
you really could make stuff
um
and really good stuff and so they
started to create their own content
that pulled in
amazon which pulled in google through
youtube and and then you had hulu then
you had
disney deciding that they're gonna have
disney plus and the next thing you know
you have some of the the biggest
companies with the largest balance
sheets on the planet
uh being in the creative business
that's you know if you're an independent
that's that's bringing a knife to a gun
fight to be sure
and so
you know i thought that was interesting
the other thing that it used to be that
movies were where the big things
happened and television was sort of
it was small screen different experience
and you had something like game of
thrones come out
which was not only on the same
epic level visually and storytelling
wise but had the budget to be able to do
it
and now
i think you're you're seeing um
you're seeing uh
all kinds of
different storytelling
taking place
and i also like that it's you're not
pigeonholed into
a time like you got two hours to tell
the story
you can do a three-part mini series a
five-part mini-series you can do
television that's
you know all kinds of different format
and that i think is uh
it
allows creators to do a lot more
interesting things
it is also interesting to consider the
role of companies that enable that like
the capital that enables that you know
without netflix you wouldn't an hbo you
wouldn't have
um some of these epic shows and so for
if we're thinking about the virtual
reality world that you're talking about
it's interesting to consider who will
enable that you know now like you said
facebook is talking about meta and
metaverse
but it's unclear that just having money
is enough
netflix did a lot of really
revolutionary stuff there's a
you know amazon has money there's a lot
of companies have money that don't quite
do as good of a job yet
at enabling creators of
um
creating revolutionary new content that
changes the the whole industry and
that's probably going to be the case
with virtual reality there there is a
lot of money needed to enable
experiences like in terms of compute
infrastructure
there needs to be a huge amount of money
there but you also need to somehow give
freedom to creators to have fun
to do their best work and at the same
time
like
provide the
the perfect amount of constraints all of
that together like however netflix makes
it happen they do a pretty good job
because it's a very constrained platform
but yet all the creators i've ever
talked to comedians and so on that work
with netflix are really happy because
they feel free
to create their work yeah and i think a
lot of times
you know companies are a letterhead but
it boils down to the people yeah and i
think um
i've known ted sarandos a long time who
who ran the studio at netflix and now
took over for reid
uh
running the company but ted
very smart talented guy and understood
early how to cultivate talent and
relationships with talent which is
important when you're dealing with
creative people
their motivations and their goals are
not always the same right they're not
always capitalistic
right and so in terms of being able to
communicate
with creative people uh that are not
always a to b to c
is is a talent and so i think they they
did a great job ted did a great job with
that early
um
you know but i i think that you're gonna
see
different formats i i i don't think
i mean going to a theater
to see a massive movie
on that screen in that format i is a
fundamentally different experience yeah
and i think you're gonna find movies uh
you know my old shop legendary just put
out dune which i thought was
phenomenal
um i uh you know we when we secured the
rights to dune years ago
it was
i was over the moon because it's i love
the book i i love the the entire world
um that uh that is dune
and that's a movie that i think you see
on the the big screen i think uh
when avatar 2 comes out i want to see
that
on a big screen but i think you're going
to see
a ton of content is obviously being
produced and it's not all going to go to
a theater going experience so you're
going to see
i think different versions of this over
the next five to 10 years
in case james cameron is listening to
this so he officially agreed to talk at
the time of on this podcast at the time
of avatar to release i'm just holding
you to that in this recorded
conversation
um also just super excited um both the
movie
and uh the director
there is something special about movies
you know they win oscars
they um
they're historic in nature there's
something about tv shows even when
they're epic like game of thrones
that they're forgotten much quicker
in history i don't know maybe that's
because we haven't had enough of them
but you know the de niro performances
and
you know the scorsese films all the
great films that kind of we think of uh
throughout the generations that define
generations are films
is that um is that just old school
thinking is that always going to be the
case i mean look to me
going in a darkened theater with a bunch
of strangers and the lights go down
and you go on this journey
there is something special and magical
about that
and i think
movies have been a part of our cultural
fabric
forever and for some reason hollywood
in america
was you know uniquely
positioned uh to do a great job with it
right and not that there aren't great
foreign movies but
far and away american movies you know
are dominate the not only the world
market but
you know and so whatever it is that we
do well or hollywood does well
um
you know there's there's something in
the water apparently but i i agree that
i love movies and i will you know for
the rest of my days
it's it's interesting how creators can
move back and forth now
as well that used to be a complete no-no
you're either a movie guy or you're a
person or a
you know or you're a tv director and
that's that but those lines have
completely uh blurred
and they're also blurring i mean they're
blurring all kinds of lines like they're
they're moving to tick tock and
instagram and like i know right now it
seems ridiculous
to consider that these like
one minute things
could be considered even in the same
realm creatively
as a film but maybe that changes over
time too maybe experiences can
completely become fluid in terms of
their
size as long as they have some
deep lasting impact on you as a human
being
as a consumer look
to me
the whole thing is about
either the moving image or even
sometimes a picture
will bring out an emotion a reaction
something so
you know short form is harder because
you have less time to set things up and
all that but i'm sure there will be
short videos and creators that come up
with things and if a moving image
can get a reaction out of you and make
you feel a certain way and stay with you
or inspire you
well that that to me is just the next
evolution of
whatever it's going to be between humans
and cameras etc
see i think that's why we've talked
offline about this that's why i love
robots as i think there's certain things
in the short form with robots that
immediately can bring out a feeling in
people
there's something about
our consideration of our own
intelligence of our own consciousness of
all
the fears and hopes and the beautiful
things about human nature the dark
things about human nature that somehow
especially lego robots bring out because
we have both a fear and excitement
towards that are these going to be our
overlords our gods
that overtake humanity are these going
to be
things
like horses or something like that
something that empower humanity like you
don't know what to make sense of it
that's why they're super exciting i
agree speaking of robots and film uh
you've gone into traditional industries
and disrupted them quite a few times
was there is there a system for deciding
which industry is right for disruption
when you
look at the world and see
what are the big problems
you would like to solve
uh do you have a system of how you see
which problems to solve how do you
look at the world
yeah well on the business side of that
um so i have a holding company called
tulco very imaginatively named
and part of that is literally every name
ever is now taken registered and all
that stuff
um so
we're a holding company what's a holding
company so instead of being a fund that
has money flowing in and out of it and
you know there's what's called a vintage
year i raise capital and i agree to
invest that capital for so long and then
i give it back to you which i sometimes
creates artificial time pressures and
things like that a holding company is
more
permanent capital
so the idea was behind telco
was to buy
almost always whole companies or
majority stakes with great management
teams
in spaces that did not traditionally
have a lot of innovation
and to have our labs group who were data
scientists ai practitioners
you know
engineers machine learning etc and to be
able to bring
that wherewithal to that company so to
provide them with the right capital
and to provide them with access to
technology that would be hard to
individually recruit
uh for that company so i would say
that
the thesis was to look for industries
that were large enough that hadn't
traditionally had access to that type of
technology or innovation and to try to
look for companies
that not only
uh looked that part but had management
teams
that embraced this and wanted to take
that kind of journey yeah there is quite
a few industries like that but that
finding
the industries
and uh the management pair because like
those industries often have a lot of old
school folks who don't
it takes quite a bit of work for them to
leap into technology i work quite a bit
with the autonomous vehicles
and just the automotive industry
depending on the company there's old
school folks it's like detroit thinking
versus like uh what do you call it i
don't know
california thinking
well
you have to i think you have to look at
the nexus of two things there one is
just
plain old human behavior if i am
uncomfortable
and i this isn't
a comfort zone for me and it's not
something i have as a field of expertise
i'm gonna shy away from that right
especially if i'm successful and i feel
good about myself and it's a big
successful company or person or whatever
it might be
and the second thing is
that especially if you're a public
company and you're being weighed and
measured every quarter
you are rewarding the managers of that
company
to hit metrics and to be reliable and to
say hey i'm counting quarter to quarter
that you're going to deliver what you
say
it's difficult to say you know what
everybody for the next two years i
wouldn't count on our financial
projections at all because we're going
to reinvent what we're doing
it's going to work in the work in the
long run and you're going to see that
this was a really smart investment five
to seven years from now
that's not the way capitalism is
currently wired generally right and a
lot of so again if you reward
managers with yearly bonuses and stock
options based and tied to
stock price and all these other things
you know and then ask them to go break
stuff
that that's that's hard i think so
you're saying
like uh so
the uh the taco approach this the
private investment
is the best way or perhaps the only way
to enable this kind of long-term
innovation investment taking big risks
and investing in innovation well look we
certainly
are not by any means the only one doing
it i'm just saying that when you when
you think about big companies the more
successful you know that are in old line
businesses
and i hear people
sort of talk about well why can't they
just pivot they recognize they need to
be in the technology business well
because it's hard it's hard to steer a
ship and turn it that big and especially
if it's not part of your dna at that
company
so
you know i i just think that
what we tried to do is to
enable
management teams
that know where they want to go
and to be patient with capital and also
again bring bring innovation
um
to bear that that they have access to uh
but there's plenty of capital structures
doing
interesting things that's one of the
things i love about our country
this country innovates and this country
invents things and i'm
constantly in awe
of of just the
you know the human ability
uh to to innovate and to iterate um you
know i i get to hang around some
universities
uh including your old shop mit and it's
like i'm still there yeah still still
there still teaching they're still
teaching but that place is like hogwarts
i mean it's it's just uh
it's inspiring yeah right and and
certainly the the energy in silicon
valley which now austin texas where
we're sitting yeah uh has its own
incredible
ecosystem uh so that's that's one of the
things i i love about america
is the ability
and that really is i think in the
american dna to create things and invent
things
um and i i just i think that's
invigorating and i think that's even
bigger than capitalism sort of the
machine of how capitalism works that's
just human nature capitalism is just one
of the ways to sort of uh
make that human nature shine i suppose
but it's it's like you mentioned mit
you know
there's a drive there to invent to
innovate
that's um that's so
human that that human spirit to sort of
build something new
it's like that hopeful optimistic spirit
especially in the engineering space like
if you pay attention to the internet
like twitter and all that kind of stuff
intellectuals and so on there's a
cynicism
to when we talk about stuff
but there's an optimism to when we do
stuff and the the doing part when you
actually build things especially like
you care a lot about manufacturing too
like you actually build physical
products
that um that's where we truly shine
yeah
no question about it and i and i
you know i'm passionate about our
country making stuff again right doing
our own manufacturing
uh and and making sure that we don't
lose the ability not just to create
things
um
intellectually and do the world's
greatest blueprints but actually make
things
here actual factories yeah that's
exactly right how how do we how do we do
that how do we bring more
manufacturing to the united states
well there there's a company that i have
a
big personal investment in called
rebuild
uh with uh
some folks that all went through the mit
school years ago
there's a good friend of mine named jeff
wilke who used to be at amazon
and we all felt the same way that
you know america needed to make sure
that it didn't lose its edge in that way
so
it's uh it's a company that invests in
american
high-tech manufacturing
and i think the way that we do that is
provide capital
provide training
to me this is also fertile ground for
good sustainable high-paying jobs um and
you know we have to we have to make it
economically feasible to do that again
here in this country
uh and not to say to companies that
again are being weighed and measured
quarter by quarter hey this is three
times as expensive to do it here but you
should do it here
we need to innovate and and we need to
create processes and and
companies and opportunity that balance
that equation
and i think as we saw during the
pandemic
you know i don't think in this day and
age you can be an isolationist that
that doesn't make any sense to me but
being self-reliant and self-determinate
and making sure
that you
are never in a position as a nation
that we can't do basic things because
we're relying on supply chain in other
countries and whether it's
you know uh we're not friends anymore or
a natural disaster or a virus or
something pops up
i think those are
costs of doing business that we have to
put into the calculus
of
uh
being able to make things here there's
an extremely high cost to making supply
chain resilient that we really have to
consider and it's so
if you really consider that cost it
makes a lot of sense to invest
especially long term in building up
manufacturing in a way where like you're
making most of the stuff in one place
sort of uh
bringing it all
not all but as much in as possible and
um building it almost like from scratch
here in the united states i mean what
i guess the
your thought is with innovation
uh it's possible to sort of
revolutionize the way we do
manufacturing so reduce the amount of
supply chain stuff and like build stuff
from scratch like do a high-tech
manufacturing
so like
optimize all aspects of the
manufacturing all that kind of stuff
yeah and i think where technology
is the most efficient
uh is is the human machine interface
right it's not let's automate everything
and have nobody work anywhere i i
for a long time that's neither feasible
nor desirable
but where we can enhance
jobs
and
make that interface immensely productive
with the right training and so forth i
think that's a worthwhile endeavor and
something that's going to be important
to our country
yeah i mean you're
you know who you're talking to i love
human robot interaction human machine
interaction human ai interaction so what
do you think is the role of robotics in
this high-tech manufacturing
sort of like industrial robots robotic
arms all that kind of stuff um or even
even more complicated kind of robots
what do you think is the role of
robotics what do you think is the role
of ai in this manufacturing future
you're thinking about well robotics to
me is an extremely exciting field i
don't have the same expertise that you
do i have an adjacency but not the depth
of knowledge
um
have never really delved deeply into it
or made investments in it but i think
what's exciting about it is everything
from
doing jobs that are very dangerous for
humans
um
enhancing the human experience
when you look at really repetitive labor
things that
you know
it might take away a job but is it a
good job for that that person is you
know spending 30 years doing something
highly repetitious is that
is that a good experience in life
so i think um and then when you think
about everything from military
applications
uh
you know rescue we're already seeing a
bunch of those things and then
just lastly when you talk about that
human interaction with robots when you
start to have
the combination so you have some level
of intelligence and interaction
i mean
that's why we always love the droids in
star wars right i mean it's uh
it it's it's exciting it captures the
imagination
um
and i i think look
many many hours and
have been spent on debating artificial
intelligence
and the the ramifications if things go
sideways and so forth
um and i think those are all
you know those are appropriate
conversations to be having
ai is happening uh i think it's actually
happening slower than most people
realize
um
because there are tasks that humans do
every minute of every day
standing up without losing your sense of
balance i mean these are really hard
things
but i think
there's enough
investment both in private industry as
well as nation states now on artificial
intelligence that it is coming
so both in the software space in the
digital space
and in the physical space so we talked
about manufacturing so industrial
robotics
is very true that even in the factory
even the tasks that you think are
pretty um
basic
you know the amount of small
intuitive decisions that humans make is
quite incredible so we have to be kind
of explicit about saying which tasks are
actually really hard and humans are just
really good at them
and uh so
on and on the flip side in the digital
space was the social networks of
recommender systems with all kinds of
like personal assistants in terms of
voice
voice based ai systems all of that
there's
opportunities there to find niches where
ai can really have
a transformative effects
i think one of the
places that really haven't
this is where like you're worried to say
stupid things but i believe this very
much
that um
when we have ai systems in the home
currently you have somebody like alexa
and google home and so on they're kind
of
very basic servants
they tell you about the weather they can
play some music they can turn the lights
on and off all the kind of like smart
home stuff
i think there's a lot of value in
systems that
form relationships with us in the way
that pets do dogs
and cats
i don't know
just for people who have cats cats don't
care about you they they really don't
they don't form any kind of relationship
i don't know why you have a relationship
with them it's one way anyway
sorry to throw some shade i'm just
kidding by the way that's a basic kind
of connection you have with another
living being
then there's also just friends you have
you have different levels of friends
acquaintances you have lifelong friends
all that that that friendship you have
i really believe that there is some
aspect of the human experience
that
is deeply enriched by interacting with
other beings
and for
systems computing systems artificial
intelligence systems in our
world to have the capability to engage
in some of that i think is not just an
opportunity to
to to uh help people grow become better
people but it's also just a good
business opportunity too and that hasn't
really been explored enough so that to
me is really
that's a whole exciting space that i
think
will enable better industrial
industrial robotics it will it it will
empower a better facebook
a better social network a competitor to
facebook that overthrows facebook so
it'll it'll create better technologies
that uh currently don't have that human
robot interaction touch so
i don't know that's super exciting to me
but that that has to deal with the mess
of
human nature
the the the reason that most robotics
people and ai people stay away from
humans
they stay away from the human robot
interaction problem it's because humans
are complicated they're messy they're
hard to control
they're hard to
predict stuff about they're hard to make
sense of or like test repeatedly because
one human can be drastically different
from another human and so for to deal
with that as the robotics problem is
super hard
and so one of the questions
is uh
which problems can you remove the human
from consideration when you're trying to
solve the problem so like elon musk is
an example of somebody who believes
autonomous driving we can remove the
human from consideration we can solve
autonomous driving as a robotics problem
it's staying lane
when there's a red light you stop at a
red light
you know if there is humans in the
picture like pedestrians
that's a ballistics problem
it's just treat them as a moving object
that has uh was with like 90 probability
keeps moving in the way they were in the
past few seconds with some smaller
probability that might stop or turn like
just do some basic models about them and
you'll be able to do just fine so i i
tend to believe that
even driving
has to consider the full messiness of
humans the dance the game theoretic
dance of chicken that we all do
when
we jaywalk we look at the car
is that car that car doesn't that driver
doesn't have the guts to murder me so
i'm going to walk in front of it and not
look at the car we do that kind of dance
and ai systems need to be able to play
the uh um
uh do that kind of dance
in telco
there's the the labs
so there's a data science component the
ai component so
how do they go into a company
and help revolutionize that industry
well there's different examples so
one of our companies figs makes
healthcare workwear
started by these two brilliant women
and you know
early days
helping to build the platform and
recruit and
make sure that the the everything that
we did at the company
uh embraced technology and at the same
time they were obsessive about their
customer which is
you know doctors nurses healthcare
workers who are putting it on the line
every day and obsessive about their
product and when you have those two
things come together
you know you you get the result that
that uh that we did at figgs
um
we have a company called akasher which
it's ai
lab and base is down here in austin
texas
it was uh an insurance one of the
largest insurance brokers in the world
and uh
you know we
did a deal with them and sold some of
our
our insurance holdings that was
completely ai driven
and in that case you basically put the
team inside the company right because
it's it's a massive
company with all and we've gone into all
kinds of things
um
so it just depends on the different uh
situations but the the biggest thing was
just to make sure whatever the company
needed
uh they had access to the talent
sometimes we'd build it sometimes we'd
help recruit for it you know how thing
in technology it's whatever works right
there's there's no
one way to do things um well echo sure
is really dif uh is really interesting
as an example so insurance is a
fascinating space it sounds like
very ripe still for disruption across
the board
so how do you it seems like a lot of the
disruption has to do with
like uh
almost the first dumb step of we've been
using mostly paper
like it's not digitized
you have to basically convert uh create
a uh infrastructure in a framework where
like everybody is using the same digital
system like databases and just organize
the data that it seems like that's a
huge leap that basically can
revolutionize major industries that
still hasn't been done insurance is
obviously the great example of that and
one of the things that struck me uh the
the founder ceo of actual is a guy named
greg williams they're out of grand
rapids michigan and as we were looking
at expanding our footprint and insurance
i met with a lot of
insurance executives and they would talk
about technology but greg
uh
truly understood the power of what would
happen across actuarial sciences
you know you know predictive analytics
and and using machine learning
to really run every aspect of your
business and then automating
a lot of the just the back office
tedious steps and as you said one of the
things that was great for us
they already had um
a data collection
system and department so that so it was
much easier to pivot
um and you know i'm very excited about
the future of that company it's uh
you know they're
doing some pretty innovative uh
groundbreaking things and
those are the things that i like doing
right is that um
yes i i want to make money just you know
that that's what that is but at the same
time
what did you do with your time on earth
right did you do anything to leave any
kind of mark that
you know you did anything
interesting i i can only speak for
myself there are many more ways
to measure one's life and i can only
speak about how i think about things
um you know i grew up poor in upstate
new york
with a single mom and watched her work a
couple jobs and
you know had to
from a young age
you know shovel snow and mow lawns and
do all kinds of things to help her
picture make sure the lights weren't
turned off uh in our little place and
so that's just something that i've
always been driven towards
and um
you know i just i have a really eclectic
tastes and interests
and um
you know it's just it's just been an
interesting journey so help be part of
and help enable
some
cool new creations across the board like
film
music
ai
manufacturing
just you know insurance all the specific
uh
industries that you disrupted yeah uh
small tangent
back to your childhood
with your mom
any uh memories kind of
stand out stick with you as um
as something that helped define who you
are as a man
yeah even though
you know uh the university and college
experience was not part of the the
family tree
um
and we had no connections i didn't
understand i didn't know what a trust
fund was or prep school i didn't know
what any of that was
um
but
my mom from a young age would always say
you know you're going to go to college
there's no
you know if you choose to and and i
think from a young age that was just an
expectation
um that that i had and that she
instilled and the work ethic i watched
her
and then my my grandmother was uh
was a janitor a cleaning lady in a
hospital for 50 years
and then
i i remember there were times of
you know i'm probably 10 years old it's
freezing cold out and if i don't go out
and shovel six driveways
we don't have enough money to pay the
bill so
i don't know i'm not a psychologist so i
don't know how that manifests itself
in my life today
but i think
the grit
to say i'm not in the mood to do this i
don't want to do this but that's the
work that needs to be done and
no excuses
not i'm a victim and i'm going to sit
around and talk about no it is what it
is and you have to get done what you
need to get done
and again i think it's uh
you can never fully put yourself in
someone else's shoes or experience so i
don't know what that is or feels like
but for me
though those were two i think formative
things
um that that were important in my
childhood so that that's pretty the
reality of life like that is pretty
humbling
you still
you've been so exceptionally successful
that it's easy to get
soft now
how do you get uh
humbled these days
by getting up
you know you know i i think um
for me personally
trying to push the envelope
and being weighed and measured right
that's why i always love sports too
there's a scoreboard
and you know i'm a huge believer in
opportunity
meritocracy
all those things that i i think are
ideals that we want to uh aspire to
and i think that um
there's a lot of things i'm involved
with right now that
i just want to see if i can do it i want
to see if
you know if
and and you know my own little mantra is
cause the outcome
right as much as you can
and at the same time have the humility
and not to have the hubris or arrogance
to say i'm always going to cause the
outcome because you'll get your ass
kicked pretty quickly and and humbled
the world in the universe is a big place
with forces
you know beyond
uh
but i think um
you know i also think a lot about being
intellectually honest which
when i do