Matt Mochary: preference

Transcript context

…Give folks a little bit of background on you who aren't so familiar with you, and just to help understand a little bit of a how you got so wise. Can you give folks just kind of a brief overview of some of the wonderful things you've done in your career, maybe some of the folks you've worked with and how you got to what you do now? Right on. I've had a very varied career. I started a company back in internet 1.0 called Totality, which was a good financial outcome. Then I went and just had fun for a long time and then I went and did social good and helped ex-convicts get and keep a job by becoming truck drivers. All that was super fun, but I realized I missed my peers and I wanted to get back into the tech world, but I didn't want to start a company because a company is a lot of work and the end result is you make a lot of money, but I didn't need money. And so I thought, how could I get in the tech world and not actually have to do the hard work? Oh, I could be a coach. I could coach people and then I just get to do the fun stuff and advise them and then they have to do the hard work. And so I looked around and thought, well how could I do that because I'm not a coach and so why would anyone listen to me? Then someone told me that there were students at Stanford that had started companies but no one would coach them. They couldn't get into YC because YC doesn't accept students. So, I went and started coaching them and it was super fun and very successful and then they started recommending me up the food chain and eventually, I met folks like Naval Ravikant and Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong and they recommended me around to the rest of the tech community, and ended up coaching some of the CEOs and the leaders of the biggest tech companies and biggest tech investment firms. It's been a ton of fun and for me, I do things for joy and each and every one of these interactions has been massively joyful for me and the people I coach become my really close friends, so it's all very selfish on my part. I feel you on a lot of that. I also tried to explore starting a company again and similarly decided this is way too much stress and work, what else can I do instead? And that's what led to the work I do now, which I love.…

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