Generated Transcript

[00:00:16] David Hornik
Well, it has been a while since we’ve done VentureCast. I am David Hornik of August Capital.

[00:00:21] Howard Hartenbaum
And this is Howard Hartenbaum, also from.

[00:00:23] Hunter Walk
August Capital, and Hunter Walk from Google.

[00:00:28] David Hornik
Nicely done, Hunter. We didn’t really prime him for that, you know.

[00:00:31] Howard Hartenbaum
I thought you were going to introduce him.

[00:00:33] Hunter Walk
I’m a quick study.

[00:00:36] David Hornik
This is the thing. Like in one of those worksheets. Apparently you only need two examples to get the pattern, which is good. My kids are working on that. I could introduce Hunter. So am I, am I a friend?

[00:00:48] Hunter Walk
Donnie Brasco. Am I a friend of ours or a friend of yours?

[00:00:51] David Hornik
That’s right. You’re no friend. You’re just a visitor. Is Hunter our second ever? No, he’s our third ever. Because remember we had those Y Combinator guys on? We had a meeting with them and then we forced them to do Venture Cast.

[00:01:05] Hunter Walk
I’m trying to follow in Clavier’s footsteps. It’s sort of like hosting Saturday Night Live. He’s like the Alec Baldwin.

[00:01:09] David Hornik
He is the Alec Baldwin. But you can do better. You can be the what’s his face from the Facebook movie.

[00:01:15] Hunter Walk
Jesse Eisenberg.

[00:01:16] David Hornik
No, no, no, the who played Justin Timberlake? Played Sean. Yeah, Justin Timberlake. You’re gonna be the Justin Timberlake. Come on down to Venture Capital World.

[00:01:28] Hunter Walk
I’m uncomfortable already.

[00:01:30] David Hornik
Well, then we’ve suc. So Hunter, you are from Google. You run product at YouTube.

[00:01:40] Hunter Walk
I’ve been at YouTube for a while. Came over after the acquisition was at Google. Before that, working on AdSense. Long and storied past.

[00:01:47] David Hornik
So you were a monetization guy. You came over to ruin all our videos?

[00:01:51] Hunter Walk
I came to spend all the money that I had made for Google on bandwidth.

[00:01:54] Howard Hartenbaum
Yes.

[00:01:54] David Hornik
Excellent. Right.

[00:01:55] Howard Hartenbaum
So when I’m watching a video and that little pop up ad comes up and disturbs me in the middle of video. Is that your fault?

[00:02:01] Hunter Walk
No, no, no. I ran the consumer team.

[00:02:03] Howard Hartenbaum
I was going to pummel you.

[00:02:04] Hunter Walk
We partnered to figure all that out. YouTube, it’s been amazing. It was only 65 people when it was acquired a few years ago and there were all the questions about how big could it get. And now I think we’re playing not just a game around sort of online video, but as every screen is going to be connected to the cloud. We are the world’s living room, David.

[00:02:25] David Hornik
You and I. Oh, you mean YouTube.

[00:02:27] Hunter Walk
Come sit on the couch with me. Let’s watch some tv.

[00:02:31] David Hornik
You and I had this great conversation a while ago that I’m gonna revisit where I said to You. Not that I would know, but why is it that porn video sites have preview in their thumbnails and normal video sites like, you know, YouTube do not?

[00:02:48] Howard Hartenbaum
So you don’t get shocked.

[00:02:49] David Hornik
And you said to me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think that’s what you said.

[00:02:56] Hunter Walk
I’m unfamiliar with those features you’re thinking of. People have commented that, you know, there’s. You don’t necessarily need to see the forward thumbnails in a Lady Gaga video, but, you know, on other types of videos, you might want to know what’s coming up.

[00:03:09] David Hornik
Gotcha. So you think it’s more relevant to.

[00:03:11] Hunter Walk
See you didn’t pick up on the what’s coming up double entendre.

[00:03:14] David Hornik
Very, very nice. That is shameful.

[00:03:16] Hunter Walk
I’m only gonna lob so many softballs.

[00:03:18] Howard Hartenbaum
So seeing you here today, Hunter, reminds me of a company that I saw yesterday called Botsquare, which you may never have heard of. And what they are a piece of software that you put on your computer that turns on your webcam and watches what you’re doing. And you can now. And the demo he gave me was YouTube, where you’re watching YouTube and you put your hand up in a palm and it stops it. And you put your hand up in a palm and it starts it. And you put your thumb to the right and it speeds it up and you put your thumb to the left and it speeds it down. And it’s just really interesting.

[00:03:50] Hunter Walk
There’s no hardware connect for everybody else.

[00:03:53] Howard Hartenbaum
Connect with no infrared, no hardware, just sensors. And maybe you should meet that guy. What do you think?

[00:03:59] Hunter Walk
I’ve heard lots of different things. Some people say webcams are going to look at your emotion and see whether you’re smart.

[00:04:05] Howard Hartenbaum
He does that too.

[00:04:06] Hunter Walk
Yeah, see? So I don’t know if I want to be watched.

[00:04:09] Howard Hartenbaum
So do you think people would.

[00:04:11] David Hornik
I’ll look away then.

[00:04:11] Hunter Walk
Yeah. It’s a freemium model.

[00:04:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Do you think people would want to be able to control easily by just raising their hand?

[00:04:18] Hunter Walk
I don’t know so much in front of their computer, but maybe in a sort of larger monitor type of scenario. Obviously, we’ve seen lots of applications connect to certainly, I think one of the most revolutionary technologies of the last year or two and a lot of applications outside of sort of the traditional gaming space.

[00:04:34] David Hornik
So before Google, you were at Second.

[00:04:38] Hunter Walk
Life when we met.

[00:04:40] David Hornik
That was when we met, you know, how we met. Do you remember how we met? Do you remember? Because it’s important to me that you remember.

[00:04:46] Howard Hartenbaum
Jesus this is like you got to remember your anniversary with your wife.

[00:04:51] David Hornik
Exactly. No. Do you have any idea how we met?

[00:04:54] Hunter Walk
Refresh.

[00:04:55] David Hornik
Refresh. Hunter and I met. This is when I probably should have invested in LinkedIn. Hunter and I met through LinkedIn because I was trying to. I was doing due diligence on a company. And so I said, oh, this LinkedIn thing, maybe I don’t know anyone at this particular company who might know this guy. And so I went on LinkedIn and plugged in the company to see. And then you came up as one step away from me. And so I sent a message to you saying, hey, I’m looking at this thing. Do you mind getting on the phone? And. And we got. And we talked for a little bit about this particular guy. I don’t have actually no recollection what the company was or whatever. But then we talked for like another half hour and then we had breakfast and then that was sort of, you know. And then we did labor versus Right.

[00:05:37] Hunter Walk
That led to the magic. Well, there were two. I remember one of those breakfasts. There were two ideas raised. We only executed on one. The one we executed on was of course the labor versus capital dodgeball entrepreneurs versus venture capitalists.

[00:05:49] David Hornik
Yes.

[00:05:50] Hunter Walk
Small number of injuries each year. The other one was at the height of Valley Wag. We talked about doing Valley Thief, which was going to be. Because we kept finding ourselves in large homes of notable people and with the urge to steal something and then post pictures and taunt them about, hey, John Doar, I have your toothbrush. I think you’d come from something at Heidi’s house in the Tahitian backyard. And we were talking about things we could take.

[00:06:15] David Hornik
Exactly, exactly. Curious that we never. Although I’m pretty sure you got the URL.

[00:06:20] Hunter Walk
At one point I was going to ask, what’s the statute of limitations on minor theft? I can’t talk anymore.

[00:06:26] Howard Hartenbaum
For all those people who’ve had Hunter and David visiting your house and were missing things afterwards, look no farther than the large box in David’s office.

[00:06:35] David Hornik
I have no box. What are you talking about? Yeah, that was.

[00:06:39] Howard Hartenbaum
Never fear, Rocket Lawyer is coming.

[00:06:44] David Hornik
No, I think that our conversation quickly went. We moved from like business, etc. To. To your storied past at the Conan show.

[00:06:55] Hunter Walk
Yes.

[00:06:57] David Hornik
What was your involvement with Conan o’? Brien? I think this is important.

[00:07:00] Hunter Walk
Well, I tell you so. In undergrad I was multi platform before it was hip and cool. I was sports editor of the paper and started doing a local cable access TV show. And I enjoyed that so much, being on Camera. Dozens of people who watched me that I felt like, boy, if that’s the minor leagues, I gotta try out the majors.

[00:07:21] David Hornik
By the way, that’s perfect. Warm up for VentureCast, where dozens of people and our mothers will listen to this particular show.

[00:07:30] Hunter Walk
And so I called up some folks I knew at NBC I was during my senior year of college. They said, I want to come. I want to come work on Saturday Night Live. They said, you cannot work on Saturday Night Live. But we’ll give you two choices. You can work on Donahue, which folks remember Phil Donahue, big at the time afternoon show, or this new talk show, Conan, Late Night with Conan. Brian, it’s on at 1:30 in the morning. Not many people are watching. In fact, we’re not sure if you come and work here. We’re not even sure it will last the entire season. And me, being a lover of the underdog, decided to go work on Conan. So, yeah, so I worked my senior year. I commuted into the city three days a week, New York City, and worked in the research group for celebrity guests. I researched them, I wrote interview questions, and sometimes I even pre interviewed them. It was my, my first startup.

[00:08:18] David Hornik
Nice.

[00:08:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Yes.

[00:08:19] David Hornik
So you’re the one who, you know when, hey, so you know Lady Gaga, I understand that you are the godmother to blah, blah, blah.

[00:08:28] Hunter Walk
That was you going, yes, except unfortunately at this time, it was not sort of. We weren’t getting the A guests or the B guests. You were kind of getting more of the C guests. So it wasn’t so much. Lady Gaga goes. Hey, Al Roker, what can you tell us about Web?

[00:08:40] David Hornik
Congratulations on keeping that weight off.

[00:08:41] Hunter Walk
Yes. I had some highlights during that year. John Lithgow threw a shoe at me, but on purpose. Yeah, it was out of love.

[00:08:49] David Hornik
Out of love, yeah. All right.

[00:08:50] Hunter Walk
Howard, don’t take your shoe off.

[00:08:52] David Hornik
Yeah, put that back.

[00:08:53] Hunter Walk
Put that back on.

[00:08:54] David Hornik
That’s so good. So. So did you become friendly with Conan? I mean, you know, I was.

[00:09:00] Howard Hartenbaum
Call him today. Will he remember you?

[00:09:01] Hunter Walk
He would not remember me. I doubt he would remember me.

[00:09:03] Howard Hartenbaum
I will get black meal.

[00:09:04] Hunter Walk
He can’t. Cannot. My only claim to fame was that of the, you know, sort of interns, I was the one closest to his height because he is a gargantuan man. And so every once in a while, if they needed, you know, somebody to stand in, stand into, like, you know, is this chandelier gonna smack Conan in the head when we, when we release it? I got to stand on the stand on the Hunter. Yeah.

[00:09:25] Howard Hartenbaum
And bring your helmet.

[00:09:26] Hunter Walk
Exactly.

[00:09:27] Howard Hartenbaum
How tall are you?

[00:09:28] Hunter Walk
You know, six three. Maybe a little bit higher if I’ve let the, the hair grow out the wavy locks.

[00:09:36] David Hornik
6 3.

[00:09:36] Hunter Walk
He should be investing Fletcher. Well, I’m gonna. Yeah, I’m go upstairs after this and talk to the benchmark guys.

[00:09:43] Howard Hartenbaum
I think I’ll fuck up to Bill.

[00:09:44] Hunter Walk
Gurley, meet their height requirements.

[00:09:45] David Hornik
You should go join benchmark because frankly, they’ve had a couple of short hires recently. Kind of average sized men. And so they’re dragging down the average quite a bit. It’s kind of pathetic really, you know, Kohler, come on, what is he like? Just a normal.

[00:09:58] Hunter Walk
They’ve got a long term plan. They’re gonna settle that in the second round. The eugenics. We’ll figure it out.

[00:10:03] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s the investment strategy.

[00:10:04] Hunter Walk
We just have to mate him with somebody taller.

[00:10:07] David Hornik
Well, he’s got to hang out at Stanford. Basketball. Howard’s looking at us like, are we gonna get to anything? Should we talk about. I think we should talk about Steve Jobs immediately. So anyone who thinks like, does this have anything to do with venture capital or technology?

[00:10:23] Howard Hartenbaum
No. When the two of us are here, I tend to talk a lot more, but with three, if I over talk, it’ll just be noise. So I’ll just let you guys banter about until you’re tired and then I’ll stick in.

[00:10:33] David Hornik
Silly Howard, we never get tired. So you don’t want to talk about Steve Jobs? I mean, he’s just stepped down. Remember when he was the CEO of that company, Apple?

[00:10:44] Howard Hartenbaum
So I went to Bentonville, Arkansas to visit my sister who’s a corporate lawyer at Walmart this summer. And we went to the Walmart museum, which was where one of the original five and ten dime stores is. And inside they have all this neat information and videos, interviews and stuff. And one of, one of the videos ahead, that’s pretty cool, is George H.W. bush giving an award to Sam Walton and calling him a national hero. You know, Steve Jobs. I think that Obama should get up and call Steve Jobs a national hero.

[00:11:20] David Hornik
So here’s the thing that I agree. Like he’s, you know, is there any. Are you a fan of Steve Jobs?

[00:11:26] Hunter Walk
I was gonna say, do I have to take the.

[00:11:28] David Hornik
You do.

[00:11:29] Hunter Walk
Is this the Oxford debate? Terrible man. Terrible man.

[00:11:33] David Hornik
I never liked him. And I’m all about Android. No, what, what my wife said to me was, look, I think it’s. These are all great stories and all, but it sort of feels like immemorial as opposed to just, you know, he was so. He’s Such an important figure that the fact that he merely. Fact that he’s stepping down. There are all these kind of tributes to, to Steve.

[00:11:55] Howard Hartenbaum
I think Obama should come and give him an award.

[00:11:58] David Hornik
Well, he certainly has been.

[00:12:00] Howard Hartenbaum
Jobs creates jobs. He’s an awesome guy.

[00:12:05] David Hornik
Speaking of jobs creation, I agree with that. And actually I was at an all hands meeting for say, media the other day and I think there were 150 people in the room or 170 people in the room. There were another just as many on a video link or whatever. And then earlier I’d been at Splunk and you know, when, when we funded these companies, there were three people and now they’re 300. That’s the stuff that should be happening. Like we should fund more companies. That’s my.

[00:12:35] Hunter Walk
Is that the segue to be like, well, what companies have you funded recently, David?

[00:12:38] David Hornik
No, wasn’t really.

[00:12:39] Howard Hartenbaum
We’re not done talking about Jobs yet.

[00:12:41] David Hornik
I’m happy to talk about that, but I’m just saying, like, you know, but.

[00:12:45] Howard Hartenbaum
Think, I mean, think of how impressive Jobs is. Ten years ago we had lost. We, the US Manufacturers had lost in the global phone war. I mean, Koreans and Japanese and Nokia and Sony Ericsson, we were so far behind on everything. And now the iPhone is just the leader. Android is coming up. It’s getting there. But I mean, compared to the rest of the world, oh, the Americans missed it on movies, mobile phones, we just missed it.

[00:13:14] Hunter Walk
We don’t have much of an international audience. Huh. No offense to our Asian friends.

[00:13:19] David Hornik
Not anymore.

[00:13:20] Hunter Walk
Whoever we have, I think, I mean, from my perspective, obviously the products are a story, the profits are a story, but what’s the inspiration to the next generation of entrepreneurs? I mean, this week, Y Combinator Demo Day, 500 Startups, Demo Day. I think if you go and talk to those young founders and ask them who is their business inspiration. I gotta believe Jobs comes up first or second off of everybody’s lips, right?

[00:13:43] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s right.

[00:13:44] Hunter Walk
The greatest trick Steve Jobs ever pulled was creating the next 10,000 Steve jobs.

[00:13:50] Howard Hartenbaum
There was an article I saw on the web today that the tagline was something like, Marc Benioff says I gave Steve Jobs the name App Store just for some good advice from him.

[00:14:05] David Hornik
Wow, Benioff’s good. It’s like the story’s about me. Steve Jobs steps down as CEO.

[00:14:12] Hunter Walk
Hashtag humblebrag.

[00:14:15] David Hornik
Let’s come up with some other humble brags.

[00:14:17] Hunter Walk
Those are good.

[00:14:19] David Hornik
I was quoted today in a story about Steve Jobs. I was having a little bit of an email back and forth with a reporter. And I guess these things are always.

[00:14:29] Hunter Walk
On the gun high school paper is.

[00:14:33] David Hornik
This is, you know, bigger than that. And I had said that the question that was posed to me was, do you think now that these senior execs as Steve Jobs is leaving, do you think that they’ll, that some of them will leave? And I said, you know, it’s possible, but I think it’s pretty unlikely. They’ve been around a long time, it’s a tight knit group. But more and more importantly, you know, they may have the opportunity to make bigger decisions or more decisions independent of Steve. And that of course was the quote I got which made me sound like I was being a jerk about Steve Jobs. Which I wasn’t mean. I was just saying like they might be.

[00:15:05] Howard Hartenbaum
But don’t worry, all 84 of our listeners will know you’re in the right now.

[00:15:08] David Hornik
Yeah, thank you. I’m glad we clarified that. We’re up to 84, apparently people coming in the middle. They’re coming in the middle. So by the way, so I was judging this thing. So Intuit has a bunch of online services now. So they have QuickBooks Online, etc. And they’ve created an app platform to allow you to go build to the Intuit network. And so they had a competition, a very cool competition, which was the app competition, where a bunch of people competed, submitted their apps as the best app for the Intuit platform. And then they had a day long program where each of the finalists showed their thing and then, and I was a judge, I was there saying, you know, these are great solutions for the app platform, et cetera. It was a little bit tricky, I have to say, because one of the competitors was Bill.com, which is one of our portfolio companies I’m very close to. And so I had to abstain, accuse.

[00:16:04] Hunter Walk
Yourself from the room during the discussion.

[00:16:06] David Hornik
And they won, which made me, you know, like, oh, hornig. But I, you know, actually it was like 12 angry men, except your uncle is on the jury and he’s not allowed to vote. You know, you have to like, so 11 angry man and a guy who’s not allowed to say anything. But anyway, I was, you’re wondering the relevance of this. I’m getting to it patiently.

[00:16:25] Hunter Walk
Did I mention Bill.com portfolio company one.

[00:16:31] Howard Hartenbaum
Shameless plug.

[00:16:32] David Hornik
So I, so I was judging this thing and I was after, at a break, I was chatting with some guy and he said to me, hey, you’re the guy who does VentureCast. I said, yeah. He said, oh, I’M a fan of venturecast. When are you gonna do another? I said, I’ve run out. I’ve gotten so tired of not having a new venture cast, I’ve gone back to listening to old ones, which I.

[00:16:55] Hunter Walk
Thought, like, because there’s nuances you don’t get the first time around.

[00:17:00] David Hornik
Yeah, what a phenomenon.

[00:17:01] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s like, my buddy who’s one of the developers at Skype, the original developers, lives in Estonia and sends me an email a couple months ago saying, you know, I disagree with what you guys are talking about on venture cast. You should talk about this. And I’m like, you’re listening to this.

[00:17:17] David Hornik
So again, back to Steve Jobs, right? Pre I. You know, the Apple. Apple, you know, iPhone and itunes and itunes distribution, there’s just no chance. Right. But it’s on itunes. Right? So when a new episode shows up and you sync your phone. Boom, you get it and then you go, oh, good, hooray, there’s a new venture cast.

[00:17:40] Hunter Walk
I get to see the graphic with the disembodied floating heads.

[00:17:44] David Hornik
Exactly.

[00:17:45] Howard Hartenbaum
With me. Stuck it in the back somehow. Like, how do we use this same picture and chop your head off and stick it in the back?

[00:17:50] David Hornik
You have no business. You have no business on this show at all.

[00:17:53] Howard Hartenbaum
I know. That’s why it’s called the David Hornig.

[00:17:55] David Hornik
Show with Hunter Walk.

[00:17:58] Hunter Walk
So attempting the segue. So Jobs has created some amazing stuff. What’s some other amazing products you’ve seen this summer, David?

[00:18:05] David Hornik
That’s your segue. Clearly, Hunter hasn’t been on this show long enough. Other great products I just told you about.

[00:18:12] Howard Hartenbaum
What was it? Bot square, where people can wave their hands and make their videos.

[00:18:15] Hunter Walk
Stuff clearly made an impression.

[00:18:16] Howard Hartenbaum
I thought it was pretty neat because I’m too lazy to reach over and touch the keyboard.

[00:18:21] Hunter Walk
But it’s like being at an auction. You scratch your nose and all of a sudden you’ve moved to the next video.

[00:18:24] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s right.

[00:18:27] David Hornik
Right. Don’t look away. We just so you know, as you say, we just ted y Combinator demo day, which is now. It’s just a.

[00:18:38] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s doubled in size.

[00:18:40] David Hornik
Was it 64, 63 companies, 63 companies.

[00:18:43] Howard Hartenbaum
Two and a half minute slugs. They all have their nice little T shirts on, and they all start saying, here’s who we are, here’s why we’re great. Here’s when we launch, here’s how fast we’re going, and the three things you need to remember is.

[00:18:55] David Hornik
That’s right, I have the list here. I’m only getting it because it tells me what’s off the record. Like, whatever you do, don’t mention Bloop, Bloop, Bloop.com.

[00:19:06] Howard Hartenbaum
Basically, it’s a list of 63 companies that are all misspelled words.

[00:19:11] David Hornik
So Howard tells me, here’s what happened again. I’m gonna clear the air with the 82 people or whoever who are still listening. Maybe we’re down to 74 at this point. So I’m at demo day and I had forgotten this off the record thing. And one of the. One of the founders of one of these companies said that we specialize in winning or awesome or something. You know, something pithy. And so I tweet, how can you not invest in Company X? They specialize in awesome or whatever it was that was the whole tweet. And then I checked back a second later, and there’s a handful of these posts. One Tweet, someone tweets, HA McClure. Dave McClure says, Company X specializes in this. And David Hornik says, what Company X is. So now we know. And then someone else says, hornick, the thing’s off the record. Pay attention, you idiot. You know, and so there’s all the back and forth about what? Oh, we found something. And I was like, oh, my God, I didn’t even think about it. Plus, I didn’t say anything about the company, but I did say its name. I’d mentioned its name. It’s so. So then at the break, I went to the. To one of the founders of the company to apologize. I found him and I said, look, I’m really sorry. I made a mistake. And he said, I saw that. And he was pissed, totally pissed. And I was like, yeah, you know, like I said, it was mistake. I’m glad I didn’t say whatever. And he said, go delete that tweet. All right, dude, no problem. So then I went back to my seat and I. Not only did I delete the tweet, but then I tweeted to all of the guys who retweeted or commented on I screwed up. Do me a favor, remove the thing, whatever. And shockingly, everybody did. Boom, boom, boom. All gone, right?

[00:20:59] Hunter Walk
And they say civility on the web is dead.

[00:21:02] David Hornik
Exactly. That was my feeling. In fact, you know, it was so cordial and nice, like, oh, sure thing, David. Whatever. So then I emailed because they’re a.

[00:21:11] Howard Hartenbaum
Fan of yours from the.

[00:21:12] David Hornik
So, yeah, exactly. Email Jessica and Paul apologizing and saying, it’s cleaned up. And then I go back to the same founder and say, Hey, I just wanted to let you know, again, I’m sorry. And I got it cleaned up. And he said, I saw that. Still angry. Then I had like.

[00:21:29] Howard Hartenbaum
And so I go the next day.

[00:21:30] David Hornik
Yeah, right.

[00:21:31] Howard Hartenbaum
And I’m in. I’m listening into the following day and there’s. There must been 250 people in the room. How many do you think?

[00:21:38] David Hornik
Yeah, probably 250 a day.

[00:21:40] Howard Hartenbaum
And Paul gets up at the very beginning and he goes. And there will be absolutely no tweeting about the companies that say they’re not public yet. Especially you. Dave McClure and David Hornik called us out.

[00:21:53] Hunter Walk
Name recognition, just what you want.

[00:21:55] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s exactly what we wanted.

[00:21:57] David Hornik
Unbelievable. So let me just say this.

[00:21:59] Howard Hartenbaum
I invited them to come stay at the Ahwahnee Hotel, Paul and Jessica, and hang on, come to dinner with us. But to kind of say sorry for your mess up.

[00:22:07] David Hornik
I can’t believe you’re like bribing them. Apologize again. It wasn’t, it was serious. It was a minor infraction. But here’s what I have to say and I want your opinions on this. I happen to think that stealth is total.

[00:22:20] Howard Hartenbaum
That you can’t get up in front of 250 people and give a pitch and expect it to be.

[00:22:25] David Hornik
Well, no, but even if you could, like, I think they have every right. If they tell me not to tweet it, that I shouldn’t, I was just an idiot. So I don’t have a problem with that. I just think that the idea of stealth companies is idiocy, particularly in the consumer space. Like, if it works, it’s gonna go. If it doesn’t, you know, you just go execute on the thing you’re working on. Being in stealth is not, doesn’t. Doesn’t make any sense. But I don’t know, Hunter, you gotta look like.

[00:22:51] Hunter Walk
I guess I’d say there’s a period of time where I think it’s fine to not want to disclose fully what you’re working on. I think when you combine that though, with broader investing, PR or marketing, that’s where. That’s the intersection that’s crossing a Rubicon. But I think there’s businesses where, look, starting out early and I think you see this in a lot of the companies, maybe even the majority of small consumer startups now, they rather get out there with a one or two feature product and start getting feedback rather than develop behind a curtain and release something that’s fully functional. And so I think where that decision used to be about tipping competitors and looking at the market space. Now I think you just have to step back and say, am I going to be better off with early feedback from users? And if so, there’s not a whole lot of advantage to being stealth anymore.

[00:23:46] Howard Hartenbaum
But some of these, they launch it and then they’re still stealth.

[00:23:50] David Hornik
Yeah, well, they launch it under different names or under little verticals or whatever.

[00:23:54] Hunter Walk
Yeah, starting a company is hard. It doesn’t seem like making it harder by having to obscure domains.

[00:24:00] David Hornik
And now my obfuscation trick, startup forensics.

[00:24:03] Hunter Walk
We can go into the whois records and trace backwards.

[00:24:07] David Hornik
So I have to apologize to aisle 50 for 7 second delay. Actually, aisle 50 is on the record and I enjoy their business. So there.

[00:24:20] Howard Hartenbaum
Are we done with jobs or can we talk about Tim Cook?

[00:24:23] David Hornik
Tim Cook? Yeah. No, I think we can.

[00:24:25] Howard Hartenbaum
He’s got some big shoes to fill, but he’s a pretty awesome guy.

[00:24:28] David Hornik
Yeah, no Tim Cook. So I think he’s done a great job and we know he’s been doing a ton of, you know, a ton. And so I was talking to Howard and Hunter earlier and I was reading an article this morning that said that Tim Cook is now the most powerful gay man in business. And there was a whole back and forth about whether this was an appropriate discussion, like whether it’s even appropriate to mention that he’s gay or not. And it’s not, you know, and whether he even says he’s gay, you know, but.

[00:24:55] Howard Hartenbaum
And you can say Obama’s the first black president.

[00:24:58] David Hornik
Well, yeah, exactly. Right. So. But I have to say, like, here’s the thing. I’m involved in glaad. I think, you know, it’s trying to make the most of the, you know, gay representation or, you know, media representations of gay people. And so that there is a sense of, guess what, gay isn’t, you know, that we all know gay people, that gay this gay is not this thing that we should be pretending like, you know, oh, we’re going to hide it. So I think it’s great, I think it’s great that there’s finally a very important Fortune 500 CEO.

[00:25:32] Howard Hartenbaum
Fortune 500. It was the most valuable company in the world.

[00:25:35] Hunter Walk
Fortune 2.

[00:25:37] David Hornik
Fortune 2.

[00:25:38] Howard Hartenbaum
Between 1 and 2.

[00:25:39] David Hornik
Right. I don’t think that the Exxon CEO is getting. I don’t know. I don’t know.

[00:25:43] Hunter Walk
I’m just saying, who cares?

[00:25:45] David Hornik
So anyway, I just think it’s. I actually think from a. I think it’s a totally fine, appropriate thing to say. Hey, by the way, this is important. It’s good that, you know, that, that society can recognize that there are real, that there are great, valuable people who can be openly gay. So, you know, anyway, I think it’s.

[00:26:04] Hunter Walk
One of the, I think it’s one of those things where context matters sometimes in terms of how it’s said and why, why it’s being inserted in there. Right. If that’s, if that becomes the headline, you know, if his name gets extended to, you know, gay Tim Cook, you know, that that’s, that’s not needed.

[00:26:19] Howard Hartenbaum
But I do think that is not an uncommon name.

[00:26:23] David Hornik
Just.

[00:26:23] Hunter Walk
Yeah, like sir. But I mean, in general, role models are important. Right. And so when you have segments of the population, whether it be around ethnicity, religion, sexuality, whatever, who can look to folks who have succeeded in different ways and are similar to that individual, then great. I mean, yeah, I mean this is.

[00:26:44] David Hornik
This whole thing of, as you say, about people being inspired by Steve Jobs or whatever else. So I think it, I completely agree with you. You. There’s no need for it to become his new moniker. Right. That any more than it was before. But it’s just great to see more and more, more openly gay people who are involved in media and, and business and whatever else. So maybe we can move on because it’s still as we approach. Again, I’m a total soapbox. I understand that this is politic, maybe politics or whatever, but I actually think that it isn’t. This is like a human rights question. And as I watch this upcoming election and how gay rights is becoming this rallying cry, anti gay rights are becoming this rally cry for people. And I think this is just a human rights question. I don’t understand why it is that people think that it is acceptable to behave this way against a group of people based on a characteristic.

[00:27:38] Hunter Walk
Do you think the startup community is generally more accepting of diversity?

[00:27:43] David Hornik
Yeah, I mean, that’s an interesting question, right, because there’s all sorts of, oh, there are no women CEOs, oh, there are no African American CEOs, etc.

[00:27:50] Howard Hartenbaum
Or you know, we just invested in a woman CEO.

[00:27:53] David Hornik
I know, I’m very excited about that.

[00:27:54] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s stealth.

[00:27:56] David Hornik
That’s true. We’re not going to talk about it, but. So I don’t know, what do you think? I mean, I think as a community, it’s a very liberal community, but if you look at numbers, it’s an interesting question.

[00:28:04] Hunter Walk
Well, you like to think, I mean, a lot of the culture here is based on meritocracy and so you like to imagine that, hey, if you’ve got game, it doesn’t matter. You Know who you are, you can succeed. But you combine that with the fact that, you know, everybody’s still human. And I think it would be a little bit too pat ourselves on the back to imagine that there aren’t biases in our. In our interactions with one another.

[00:28:27] David Hornik
Yeah. I mean, please. The venture community is so white male oriented. It’s ridiculous. Right.

[00:28:33] Hunter Walk
Sometimes unintentional. Right. Like, I went to. I did undergrad at Vassar, and I went there because I grew up in a homogenous Jewish community where, you know, it was very much.

[00:28:42] David Hornik
Class of what?

[00:28:43] Howard Hartenbaum
She went there.

[00:28:44] Hunter Walk
Class of 95, I think.

[00:28:46] Howard Hartenbaum
What?

[00:28:46] Hunter Walk
Class of 95.

[00:28:47] Howard Hartenbaum
No, I think she’s a couple years.

[00:28:49] David Hornik
Younger than your class of 95.

[00:28:50] Hunter Walk
Yeah.

[00:28:52] David Hornik
You’re so mature.

[00:28:53] Hunter Walk
I thought you were gonna say you think of me so younger. But, like, I went to a place that was basically, you know, it was a female school. Right. And it was still, you know, 60, 40 female. And it was also a place where folks were asked to celebrate their diversity. And a lot of, you know, boy, when you’re 18, there’s people who are coming of age in a lot of different ways. And it was great to feel like. It’s great to feel like a minority. That’s why I joined the Women in management club when I did business school at Stanford.

[00:29:20] David Hornik
How did they feel about that, Hunter?

[00:29:21] Hunter Walk
I stayed out of the safe space discussions. I didn’t want to insert myself into places I shouldn’t be. But, you know, my.

[00:29:26] Howard Hartenbaum
You were just trying to get a girlfriend.

[00:29:28] Hunter Walk
That’s what everybody says, but it’s not true.

[00:29:29] David Hornik
I don’t think it’s true of Hunter. That’s the thing.

[00:29:31] Hunter Walk
They said their goal was to promote discovery between the genders. Well, how can you do that if you’re only one gender?

[00:29:37] David Hornik
That’s fair. Yeah.

[00:29:39] Howard Hartenbaum
So you call it dear.

[00:29:40] Hunter Walk
They also did cool hats and T shirts.

[00:29:45] David Hornik
No, I think it’s. I think it’s an interesting. I think it’s a challenging question. Right. Because I run a conference, I have this every year where I try and engage more women to come to the conference. The problem is that, you know, senior executive, entrepreneurial types who are women have lots of people drawing on their time because there are fewer of them. And lots of people want to have more women. Right. And so, you know, you don’t want to say, oh, you know, but I need more women. You got to come. And the reality is that you. You only invite people who you would want to be involved and engaged in the. In that particular activity. And so, you know, it’s just, It’s a challenge of numbers. But I think it’s worth us continuing to. To fight it and be. And pay attention to it.

[00:30:26] Hunter Walk
I think it’s almost better to. It’s almost better to answer that question. No, we are not, you know, more unbiased than the rest of the world because that will keep us, you know, alert rather than assume that it’s a solved problem.

[00:30:38] David Hornik
Right? Yeah. Well, it’s certainly not a solved problem. So I don’t know. Anyway, it’s interesting, but putting aside whether or not putting aside Tim Cook’s sexuality, which I raised, of course, you know, I think that the senior execs at Apple are really smart, really successful folks and that we got a bunch of innovation coming. And it. And I. And I hope that’s the case because frankly, my house is so full of Apple products, I just. I wouldn’t even know what to do. Where would I shop?

[00:31:10] Hunter Walk
Have they. Have they added the select all button to the Apple website yet? I just think they need that. Just send me one of everything. Thank you, sir.

[00:31:18] Howard Hartenbaum
$42,000 company where I will buy some. Something like, sight unseen. Just because, oh, the new one’s coming out and I’ll take it and every other product. I’m not that way.

[00:31:27] Hunter Walk
Right. There was the tweet, Steve Jobs announces retirement. All my friends just pre ordered retirement.

[00:31:32] David Hornik
I didn’t see that. That’s awesome. Exactly. I will pre order it. I’ll even wake up early for it. Yeah, no, and you know, I. Frankly, I do look forward to the next set of announcements. When are they coming? They’re coming soon. Right, Right. Don’t we have new ipods and new stuff coming soon?

[00:31:51] Hunter Walk
September, right.

[00:31:52] David Hornik
Yeah. I’m ready. I am ready.

[00:31:55] Howard Hartenbaum
I just got up to check and make sure the recorder was still running because one time we did this and 10 or 15 minutes into it, the batteries ran out. We bantered on for a good 45 minutes and then.

[00:32:05] David Hornik
It was a good conversation, though. I have replaced the batteries before this, Howard. I did. I had this internal.

[00:32:11] Howard Hartenbaum
We learned our lesson.

[00:32:12] David Hornik
I had an internal debate. How much does it cost for four AA batteries?

[00:32:16] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. And then how much does our time cost?

[00:32:18] David Hornik
How much was it worth? You know, just putting new batteries in and not worrying about it. That’s what I. That’s how I went. That’s how I rolled something.

[00:32:24] Hunter Walk
You deliberated over that was actually, believe.

[00:32:27] David Hornik
It or not, it really was like, I’m sure these batteries are still fine.

[00:32:31] Howard Hartenbaum
You said you were at Second Life before.

[00:32:33] Hunter Walk
Yes.

[00:32:34] Howard Hartenbaum
How are they Doing nowadays, I don’t hear about them all that much.

[00:32:37] Hunter Walk
Yeah, you know, I’m really curious. It was a great few years I was there. I was the first non engineer on the team. So I was there from sort of a garage in Hayes Valley through a few quarters after we launched the product. And it was one of those things that was, I mean, boy, this was 2000-2001-2002-2003. There wasn’t a whole lot of interesting stuff going on in general, let alone a team that was betting on a user created space with virtual goods and economy that required broadband access. I used to have debates with venture capitalists at the time as to whether residential broadband would be a reality or not, or it would just be something that was wired up in the enterprise. And so now, 10 years later, where are they? Most of the folks I was on the team with have since moved on to new ventures. Philip Rosedale, the founder, has a new company called Coffee and Power. Corey Andreka, who is cto, got Acqua hired by Facebook.

[00:33:30] David Hornik
What was that? Aqua hired.

[00:33:31] Hunter Walk
Aqua hired. Aqua hired.

[00:33:33] David Hornik
What does that mean?

[00:33:34] Hunter Walk
He and I haven’t heard.

[00:33:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Acquired.

[00:33:36] David Hornik
Oh, Aqua hired. Oh, he was part of some other thing.

[00:33:40] Hunter Walk
Two people, him and a buddy, but basically acquired him for the talent.

[00:33:43] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s a good one.

[00:33:44] Howard Hartenbaum
I’d never heard that before. That’s faster than you.

[00:33:48] Hunter Walk
But they brought a new. They have a new CEO in place. And I just saw an article, I think it was recently in launch that said they’re maybe doing as much as is $100 million a year in revenue. So without a lot of fanfare, you know, been profitable the last few years. I think the question ultimately for them. Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s two interesting questions. The first is sort of, you know, at what point does.

[00:34:10] Howard Hartenbaum
Where can I get a flying penis?

[00:34:13] David Hornik
That’s not the question.

[00:34:14] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m sorry.

[00:34:16] Hunter Walk
You know, there’s a healthy economy. It was actually just an article in the Journal a few weeks back. I was talking to, I think it was Jeff FOWLER at the TechCrunch party over here at August a few weeks back. And he was telling me the next day there was going to be on the front page of the Journal an article about second Life and was essentially an IP lawsuit. So when you create a virtual world with a real economy and a scripting language where people can build anything, you get a lot of interesting interactions. And this one was there was an entrepreneur who started building virtual animals, bunnies, horses, would release a sort of a different species every few months and would give the animals away, but you had to buy virtual food from her in order to keep the animal alive. Otherwise brilliant. Otherwise Emma would die. And she was being sued by somebody in a similar business who said that they. She ripped off, they were giving away.

[00:35:05] Howard Hartenbaum
The food and you had to buy the animals.

[00:35:08] Hunter Walk
Ripped off.

[00:35:08] David Hornik
The idea.

[00:35:09] Hunter Walk
Must have ripped out the idea. Maybe some of the code. But long story short, the. The judge was going to give. The judge gave an injunction that neither party could sell food until the case was heard.

[00:35:20] David Hornik
Oh, no.

[00:35:21] Hunter Walk
The horses and bunnies would have died. And in this case, what the reporter from the Journal was so excited about was that they did a dot drawing of a virtual horse on the front page. So Second Life is profitable, I think it’s sort of growing slowly. And then you have the question now, back when we started it, it was this question about, hey, are people who are. Are using the Sims, who are in these massively multiplayer worlds, who are using chat avatars, are they going to want to move into eventually a more immersive freeform space? And now I think you’ve really seen more folks like, that wasn’t farmville. I mean, it wasn’t Second Life. It was more like farmville that sort of turned into the mass market virtual space. And so now there’s the question about what next. I hear Second Life is working on a social space that’s maybe a little bit easier to use. Takes a lot of the same values, but might be able to scale quicker and stuff. Yeah, I have some stock sitting around somewhere, so I wish them the best.

[00:36:16] David Hornik
Yeah, do well.

[00:36:17] Hunter Walk
Do well. That was my first company after grad school and it really introduced me into sort of the. There’s sort of opportunistic entrepreneurism which is, we all agree there’s something here. Now you have to go get there before the competition. You have to create value. And then there’s this evangelical entrepreneur, which is like, you might be crazy, you know, but you might be right. And your goal is to sort of figure out which. And I certainly put that project in that camp. We had people. I mean, we were stealth for a little while, but we had people who would walk up. I mean, we were literally in this Hayes Valley, this alleyway in an old auto body garage sandwiched between an illegal paint shop, like, you know, paint cars, and this place called Dark Garden that sold corset and fetish wear, which in some ways was like a perfect metaphor for what the world, what we were building. But we’d have people knock. We’d have people knock on the door and say, I’ve heard what you’re doing. It’s time for me to join you. And these are like smart engineers. It’s time for me to join, you know, people with real jobs. And between that and sort of reading sort of the founding of Google, you know, especially as we get into this noisy period again where there’s a lot of hiring and people write the story about Perks and the 27 inch monitor. Here’s why you should come work here. I mean, the competitive advantage in attracting smart people is working on something that matters, working on hard problems. And sometimes I look at a lot of the, you know, the things that are starting and they’re interesting and they’ll create value, but I don’t know if they’re. I don’t know if they’re hard problems.

[00:37:42] David Hornik
Well, you know, I, I totally agree with that. Like, you know, but I also think that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a hard problem at. As long as it’s a heartfelt problem. So you had one that was both. It was actually really hard, but it was also something people are completely passionate about. I think there are things people are passionate about that aren’t that hard, but, you know, but they’re passionate about them and they’ll take a lot of work or they’ll take conviction or whatever else, but. But you should have one or the other, right? You have, you have to have some. Something other than the motivation to have the best snacks or, you know, or, or the best monitor. I just don’t think that’s a great way to create a sustainable business or sustainable culture because, you know, it’s been 10 years, right? I mean, 10 years is a long time and there’s some people, you know, so if you have people and you want them to stick around for 10 years, it’s got to be if they have to really mean it and be excited for a long period of time.

[00:38:38] Hunter Walk
Are there companies that you familiar with that you think have great cultures have done a wonderful job of.

[00:38:44] David Hornik
I mean, funny you should ask me that because I just blogged on it. Did we even. Did we talk about this beforehand? Are you like setting me up or is that just. I don’t even remember.

[00:38:53] Hunter Walk
I’m just that good.

[00:38:55] David Hornik
No, I actually just. I just.

[00:38:56] Howard Hartenbaum
You’re not one of those mind readers, are you? Man, I hate those.

[00:39:00] Hunter Walk
I knew that, but I’m bunch.

[00:39:04] David Hornik
That was good. I just finally blogged again for the first time in like a long time about company culture, about this idea of that company culture matters. And you Know, I referenced the two companies I referenced earlier, Splunk and Same Media, but just by way of reference. Right. I actually think, you know, part of the process of trying to invest in great companies is trying to figure out that if they are building cultures that are driven by entrepreneurs who, you know, great entrepreneurs who are going to inspire people to continue on for years.

[00:39:37] Hunter Walk
Right.

[00:39:37] David Hornik
And they’re very different. Right. So, you know, here’s Shameless, Shameless plug number seven or whatever. But I just funded a company called Rocket Lawyer, and, you know, for a decade, I avoided the law space as a VC because it seemed too ridiculous that you’d be a lawyer and then you go, you know, fund something in the law. But this company, Rocket Lawyer, was founded by a guy I used to work with, in fact, Venture Law Group, over a decade ago, a guy named Charlie Moore. And Charlie similarly had done a bunch of things in between being a lawyer and now. And then he was looking at where the world was and where the online legal world was and said, gee, this, you know, it’s not being done. Right. There’s a huge need for the streamlining of legal problems and allowing people to kind of walk through an online checkup and get the answers. But lawyers still have their purpose and they should be involved and engaged in the process. And so, you know, anyway, he started this company to help solve that problem. Go there and get incorporated or go and do a prenup or whatever. It’s a very, you know, and Charlie’s a great guy. And it’s a culture that very much reflects Charlie. Right. It’s not the kind of geeky, you know, a little bit edgy kind of culture of a second life or a splunk. And we’re solving hard problems. We are, you know, we’re. We’re guys who care about making these things easier for business or whatever. So I think culture isn’t about creating the culture. Like, oh, we need to create that particular culture. It’s about having a culture. That’s my rant.

[00:41:09] Howard Hartenbaum
And this morning I went to board meeting for Reputation, another recent investment of ours, and the founder there is really like a privacy freak. Okay? I said, another lawyer, by the way, another lawyer. And I was talking with somebody from the Wall Street Journal who called me, was asking questions about reputation, and she said, you know, he told me off the record. And I said, ah, I understand. So her comment being, you know, if you’re kind of really into privacy, you think, like, off the record, my actually work. But when you talk to people in the company, there they all kind of feel the same thing. They’re very excited about the business. But they’re all like, every conference room it says, did you erase the whiteboard? Did you throw out the garbage? Did you dump the trash that’s in the garbage? Are there any papers left on the table?

[00:41:59] Hunter Walk
Any sort of World War II propaganda style posters?

[00:42:01] Howard Hartenbaum
Loose, Listen. But the culture, they get a lot of press. So in the front of the building there’s tons of articles that are framed on the wall and people there are pretty excited and business is going in a great direction. They help protect your online privacy and remove your personal information from the web, which a lot of people seem to care about.

[00:42:22] David Hornik
Yeah, I think as I watched my teenage son post something stupid and then have his stupid friends post even stupider things and then have my wife yell at him and tell him to remove it.

[00:42:32] Hunter Walk
I was gonna say that’s an incredible similarity to your tweeting and retweeting issue. Apple doesn’t.

[00:42:40] David Hornik
Shut up, Hunter. I’m never invited back.

[00:42:42] Howard Hartenbaum
So Rocket Lawyer starts with an R and Reputation starts with an R. And my prior one was relay rides has two Rs. We’ll fund companies with Rs.

[00:42:52] David Hornik
That’s right, exactly.

[00:42:54] Howard Hartenbaum
Do you have an R company?

[00:42:56] Hunter Walk
The current fund is brought to you by the letters R.

[00:43:01] David Hornik
Exactly.

[00:43:01] Howard Hartenbaum
You could have my slot on this show forever.

[00:43:03] Hunter Walk
Yes, you’re in. I don’t have things in the portfolio to plug, but I’ll tell you what, you’re announcing these. The company’s recently funded. You know why I was aware of those? Because of Job Change Notifier. Have you used Job Change Notifier? No. Job Change Notifier is an app built on top of the LinkedIn API that will periodically send you emails of changes to job titles amongst your network in a way that’s much more frequent and digestible than I think the LinkedIn updates, because it also doesn’t include all the stuff that I don’t care about your interest. And it’s old and new VP of Blah. Old and new. So what’s beautiful about it?

[00:43:45] Howard Hartenbaum
Besides you’ve been joining Rocket Lawyer and Reputation or leaving Rocket Lawyer Reputation.

[00:43:50] David Hornik
Didn’t you add that you were bored?

[00:43:51] Hunter Walk
Right. You sort of changed your LinkedIn description. You add sort of the board you’re on and it shows. And so what you see is you see people obviously taking new roles. You also see people massaging what they call themselves. Right. Maybe Ninja is no longer the cool hip way. So Ninja is removed and now all of a sudden they’re customer service representative. Something else Right.

[00:44:12] David Hornik
Job Change Notifier.

[00:44:13] Hunter Walk
Job Change notifier. It’s great.

[00:44:14] David Hornik
I’m going to.

[00:44:15] Howard Hartenbaum
It was Chief Yahoo, and now it’s Chief Yahoo with an exclamation point.

[00:44:22] David Hornik
That’s cool, that API. See, the magic, the whole API thing, that strategy just may work. It’s crazy enough it just might work.

[00:44:29] Hunter Walk
The magic of services. Yes. Job change. No. Fire and Turntable are my two favorite things of the summer.

[00:44:34] David Hornik
That’s your latest.

[00:44:36] Hunter Walk
That’s what I remember summer of 2011 all about. Turntable and Job Change Notifier.

[00:44:41] David Hornik
Have you been in any particular room in Turntable? Are you lead dj of.

[00:44:47] Hunter Walk
I was in early 80s retro. I’ll tell you what I was in early. I saw what I think was Seth’s first tweet about it back in May, and I jumped in pretty quickly.

[00:44:54] David Hornik
Seth Goldstein.

[00:44:55] Hunter Walk
Seth Goldstein. And I was climbing up the boards, but then it got too popular.

[00:45:00] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:45:00] Hunter Walk
And now I am just still your basic avatar. I’m not a gorilla or Daft Punk guy.

[00:45:07] David Hornik
I probably learned about it through you, by the way, because you would be listening to something in a room or whatever, and it would appear on Facebook, and I’d be like, what in the world is it?

[00:45:15] Hunter Walk
Collaborative media.

[00:45:16] David Hornik
What?

[00:45:17] Hunter Walk
You know, collaborative media experiences are really interesting. This sort of the being able to watch YouTube videos and the Google hangouts. You know, media media wants to be social.

[00:45:27] David Hornik
That’s brought to you by Google. I saw Bradley Horowitz this morning at breakfast at that place, Joanie’s. So this here’s the thing. I have been. I have been to Joanie’s, like, every morning for forever. I think I checked this morning’s check in at. At Joni’s. I was my 154th check in at Joni’s. I have been competing with Irene Al who eats there in the morning. Irene. And Irene was the mayor two days ago. And is like, what? How? I can’t believe that happened. But I then checked in and I ousted her.

[00:46:03] Howard Hartenbaum
Then you came back for lunch and dinner.

[00:46:04] David Hornik
Well, she doesn’t know, so she was out. I’m the mayor. I’m thinking, that’s great. And then I must not have eaten there yesterday. And then I come today, and there’s Irene with the Bradley. And I’m there, and I check in, and she checks in, and neither of us is mayor. And. And what’s.

[00:46:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Wait, I’ll tell you who it was.

[00:46:19] David Hornik
Yeah, when you find out, I’ll tell you who he is. Because this young punk had the Pooh.

[00:46:25] Howard Hartenbaum
Norby. Yeah, that’s the guy. From every beat.

[00:46:29] David Hornik
He’s that guy. He’s a combinator guy. And he said to me, I’ve been fighting it out for mayor of Joni’s with you. This is a young, you know, like, entrepreneur from. What’s this guy?

[00:46:41] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s the guy I brought in the beginning, instead of different David.

[00:46:43] David Hornik
Yeah. So, anyway, I am. I am not the mayor of Jonies. Do you understand that? I am not.

[00:46:51] Hunter Walk
This obviously concerns you.

[00:46:53] David Hornik
That kid, does he give a.

[00:46:54] Hunter Walk
About his.

[00:46:55] David Hornik
His future in Silicon Valley? Because seriously, this is not good for him.

[00:47:00] Howard Hartenbaum
So I’m gonna send him a note that we’re not funding him because he ousted you as the mayor of Jones.

[00:47:06] Hunter Walk
I’m convinced that all these people use these, you know, the social media hacks to get the attention of venture capitalists who otherwise would be above the fray. I have too much email to open, but I’m obsessing over the fact that you’re checking into my location. I’m mayor of Joni’s, and nobody will take that away from me.

[00:47:21] David Hornik
That will teach me to go on vacation, though, by the way, because if I hadn’t gone on vacation, I was impervious to your. These young interlopers in my Joni’s, you know, world.

[00:47:32] Hunter Walk
Well, I’m glad. I’m glad to see you didn’t hire somebody. Have the associate run over to check you in every day.

[00:47:37] David Hornik
That’s what we should have had Sebastian do. Go check me in at Jony’s.

[00:47:42] Hunter Walk
It’s an internship.

[00:47:43] David Hornik
You learn a lot.

[00:47:43] Hunter Walk
Don’t worry.

[00:47:44] David Hornik
Get down to Joni’s. You never know who you’ll see there.

[00:47:46] Howard Hartenbaum
Walk my dog past Joni’s.

[00:47:48] David Hornik
This morning I saw. I saw Yen Lee. I saw the new VP Head of engineering for Groupon was here. I had breakfast with a Stanford CS professor named Jay Borenstein. It was a. It was a very exciting time at Joni’s this morning.

[00:48:02] Hunter Walk
Howard, you said you attach your phone to your dog. I saw somebody who attached their. Their Fitbit to their dog’s collar so that it could make the.

[00:48:10] Howard Hartenbaum
Wait a second. Don’t get me going on this, because I met those Fitbit guys at Series A, and I told them if they make this for dogs, I’ll fund them.

[00:48:18] David Hornik
Seriously, I.

[00:48:19] Howard Hartenbaum
Seriously. Because I said people who are pet owners, dog owners in particular, want to make sure their dogs are getting walked and getting enough exercise and the kids are playing with them. Whatever. I don’t care if I’m healthy or not or you’re healthy or not. I care that my dog is getting walked, and they looked at me and they said, nobody will ever do that. And you just told me I’m right for the second time this year.

[00:48:41] David Hornik
That’s not really what Hunter said. I just, you know, I mean, I don’t want to call you out or anything, but look, I’m flexible.

[00:48:46] Howard Hartenbaum
I can hear it the way I wanted it.

[00:48:48] David Hornik
Sure. Yeah, that’s right. Hunter was entirely fine.

[00:48:51] Hunter Walk
I love you both equally.

[00:48:54] David Hornik
All right, you’re invited back. Howard, do we have anything else we had planned to talk about?

[00:49:00] Howard Hartenbaum
We were thinking about talking about near field communications. It’s kind of dry right now, so.

[00:49:07] David Hornik
I was gonna say, I think it’s gonna. We’re like 50 minutes in. Oh, it’s Mary. Hi, Mary.

[00:49:11] Hunter Walk
Can you do me a favor?

[00:49:13] David Hornik
You’re on our podcast, by the way. Can you go to the Dish right now?

[00:49:17] Hunter Walk
Because Renee is there.

[00:49:18] David Hornik
Mary needs me to go to the Dish right now.

[00:49:21] Hunter Walk
And we’re wrapping up another episode of. Well, that brings us to an end.

[00:49:25] David Hornik
Well, thank you so much. This has been David Hornik from August.

[00:49:29] Howard Hartenbaum
Capital, Howard Hardenbaum from August Capital, and.

[00:49:32] Hunter Walk
Our special guest, Hunter Walk from Google.

[00:49:34] David Hornik
And we’ll be going to the Dish to walk with Renee Lacert from Bill.com. thank you for listening.