Howie Liu: belief

Transcript context

…I think people don't talk enough about this how if someone starts a company that's an idea they have they're excited about, it takes off and then you're stuck on that for a long time, and then even if things are pushed in a direction you're not as excited about. This point about just remembering what you actually love about it and coming back to that is so important because that's the only way to keep doing this for a long time. I think that's so true, and to me that's why there's always been a difference between entrepreneurs who love the act of building a product or the business, too, versus those who saw a just purely business or financial opportunity that they felt like they couldn't pass up exploiting or going after. Look, no knock on people who are more the latter, and there's entire industries where it's all just about alpha generation. You can go into the private equity business and so on, and it's just purely it's rationally about how do I find the alpha? I think that some of the best companies, product central companies, at least in my opinion, are run by those people who actually just love the product. I think you get a feel for that from some of the AI companies like Sam, I think genuinely just loves working on AI. If he could spend a hundred percent of his time on just being close to the AI and the research, I mean, he would and he's even said as much. Ranging to like Brian's with Airbnb, it's pretty clear that people like this are not motivated like... Airbnb was not founded because like, "Oh my God, we want to make a lot of money off this arbitrage opportunity against hotels." They just needed to pay their rent.…

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