ENTREPRENEURSHIP, VCS & QUANTUM VENTURES

William Hurley

You have to back up though.

Robert Hansen

Oh, you want to go before? Okay.

William Hurley

Well, the reason is because everybody has revisionist history. And I like to be super transparent with how I got to where I’m at.

Robert Hansen

Sure. Go ahead.

William Hurley

There were advantages. I was working at Apple. I started answering the phones, ended up in R&D, went to IBM, all those things. But in the late ‘90s right before the 2000 crash, I joined some guys at a startup as CTO. And it failed.

I’m still best friends with the founder to this day. It was awesome, and it failed for a variety of reasons. But I bounced back and forth between 2000 and 2010 when I launched Chaotic Moon, from large company to startup to large company to startup.

When I was at a startup, they would always bitch and moan about large companies and they can't get anything done and the bureaucracy. The large companies would bitch and moan about, “These startups have no plan, and they can't stick to a schedule.”

I spent 10 years bouncing back and forth architecting a new system that I was going to use to start the first company that I could say, truly, “I founded this company. I had the idea, it was a concept.” all of that. Because I can't say that before Chaotic Moon. And to pull that together and say, “Here's the best of both worlds.”

It turned out it was extremely advantageous to that career. So it's nice that I could come in here and be like or any of the famous people would be like, “Yeah, about 1,000 every time.” It's amazing. But there is a method to the madness, and there is an advantage.

That advantage was being able to not focus my career on one area. I did security, mobile, enterprise, software, I did system management stuff, whatever. And then not being able to focus on, “I'm just going to work at a big company.”

I could take the big company, save up some of that money, go take a risk on a startup. It goes up, I go back to where the money is, working at a big company. So you have 10 years of what I would say is almost like a beta test before Chaotic Moon was started. And I think that's really important.

Mike Erwin, who was one of my co-founders in Chaotic Moon, we worked at a couple of startups along that journey. So you also had this kind of, “Okay, you're starting your first startup with somebody that you've known.” I met Mike in late ‘93, early ‘94 at Apple.

We were working at Symbian together, we already had 10 years of experience together. When we did Chaotic Moon, that was 16 years of experience together. So there's advantages to that.

I hate these founder dating things. It's like, “I'm going to go and sit down and meet somebody. And yeah, we're going to found a company.” Yeah, it doesn't work that way.

There's been a lot of success but not without a lot of pain and trial and tribulation, and all of that stuff still happened. It just happened in a lab environment, if you will, before I said, “Okay, now we're going to go out. And I'm going to say, ‘I've got an idea.’”

I called Mike and said, “Hey, we did this iPhone DevCamp thing in 2006 with Raven Zachary, Chris Messina, and all these guys. It was amazing. And Dom Sagolla, the whole crew. Now, four years later, I think we should start a mobile company.” You know what I mean?

It’s a little bit different from the inside than it appears to be on the outside. It was just like, “Oh, we were doing an interview with Robert. We decided to start a company, and people gave us money. Then customers bought it. It was awesome. And now we're rich.” Which is how most people tell their story. It didn't work that way at all.

Robert Hansen

You did get acquired by Accenture, which was quite an accomplishment. Then you went on to do Honest Dollar with a friend of yours, Henry Yoshida.

William Hurley

Well, we had one in between.

Robert Hansen

I didn't know.

William Hurley

Chaotic Moon spun out a company called Team Chaos that was housed inside of Chaotic Moon that was acquired by Zynga.

Robert Hansen

No, I didn't know.

William Hurley

I call it the best year of my entrepreneurial career because we launched Honest Dollar with Henry in March of 2015 at South By. Then in March 2016 went on CNBC and said, “I work at Goldman Sachs now.” And that was awesome.

Robert Hansen

Because it got acquired, for those who are not following that.

William Hurley

The June after, we had the transaction of Chaotic Moon and the transaction of Team Chaos. So it's three hits in basically roughly a year's time period, which was awesome.

Robert Hansen

That's amazing.

William Hurley

By the way, not because of me. Startups are teams, and there's a whole bunch of people that deserve credit for each one of those transactions.

Robert Hansen

Goldman Sachs bought it. Now it’s Marcus Invest, is what I'm told.

William Hurley

Yes, it is part of the Marcus team.

Robert Hansen

Okay. All right.

William Hurley

It’s been fully assimilated. Double work.

Robert Hansen

Yes, and you're out. You're no longer part of that. Now you're doing Strangeworks amongst other things, which we'll get to.

William Hurley

Biggest mistake.

Robert Hansen

You think so?

William Hurley

This is the failure one. No, just kidding. Pam calls it my sci-fi company. She's like, “After this, no more sci-fi company.” She got the mobile stuff. She gets gaming, obviously, fine hands. This is like, “Hey, there could be multiple dimensions. And time crystals could be used to build a qubit.” She's like, “Yeah, no more of that.”

Robert Hansen

But yet you did it. You decided to start another company, which is interesting for a couple of reasons. We'll get to it in a second. And then you also started Ecliptic Capital.

William Hurley

Joined it, technically. I'm the GP, and I think Mike would count me as a co-founder. But I'm always very clear that Ecliptic Capital was Mike's vision for a long time. He was looking for a partner, and he invited me just like I invited him to Chaotic or whatever.

It's super exciting because it doesn't work like a fund. It's structured differently. Everybody says, “Oh, we'll fund it first. We're founder-friendly.” They're not. I will rag on VCs for however long, two or three hours. I could go off for a while.

I'm really excited to do that. But I always make sure that that’s been Mike's dream literally since I met him at Apple.

Robert Hansen

Okay, why don't you do that real quick? Why shouldn't people work with traditional VCs?

William Hurley

Well, because, A, there's a lot of sources of non-dilutive capital, always good for entrepreneurs. B, most people don't know what they're doing. It's not the fault of the venture capitalist. But you have “men are from Mars and women are from Venus” or whatever analogy you want to use.

Well, that would mean VCs are from some galaxy that James Webb just discovered yesterday. And entrepreneurs are on some other opposite end of the spectrum. It's because I hear both sides complain about each other all the time.

VCs get frustrated with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs get frustrated with VCs. Let me tell you why. It’s because entrepreneurs don't do due diligence on who they're asking for money. And VCs, for the most part, aren't really great at diligence.

They're good at calling other people who they think can do diligence who are busy and they're like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” But if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to raise a million dollars and you go to a fund that writes five to 10 million dollar checks, they're going to tell you that, in most cases, you're not going to hear it.

You're like, “I'm getting this million dollars.” They don't write a check or you don't even fit their model. There was never going to be a check there. And they'll talk to you because remember, VCs have a product.

There's this myth that VCs, venture capitalists are out there, and they're just going and blowing and handing out money and building unicorns. They're raising money every day, just like you are as an entrepreneur, except their product is different and special and unique. Because their product is you.

Why don't they sign NDAs? So they can have all of those decks. Somebody goes to the Texas Teachers Retirement union or CalPERS or whoever they're getting money from, I say, “We’ll raise a new fund of billions of dollars.” And they go, “Well, right now, we're really interested in blockchain or whatever. Look at all of this deal flow we have.” so they can get that money. That's how those materials are used, in many cases.

Robert Hansen

Also, you might come back and need $5 million from them someday.

William Hurley

Right, so they're going to talk to you.

Robert Hansen

You're never going to say no.

William Hurley

Whose fault is that? Is that the VC’s fault? It’s not the VC’s fault. At the same time, we're entering this new era in venture capital. This is why I'm excited about Ecliptic and what Mike has done there because for the last 20 years, we've invested in Instagrams and TikToks and stuff that, let's be honest, is super entertaining but has very little social value. In fact, it probably has a negative effect on society.

Now, you're seeing investments in the SpaceX’s and biotech companies, biohacking companies, robotics companies. This is a cycle from what used to be enterprise/consumer, enterprise consumer. It’s now deep tech consumer.

As we move into this, VCs are, in some cases, woefully unprepared to evaluate some of these things. Look, I'm GP with Mike at Ecliptic. We're super smart, and we have a lot of experience. But if you came to us with a fusion reactor or whatever, we'd have to go study up on it. Mike might, but we don't know enough about that to really do that.

You've just got this imbalance that's constantly there between the entrepreneur and the VC. Part of it is because people aren't transparent enough. A VC doesn't want to say something upsetting to you in a meeting because they want maybe to get the deal. You don't want to say anything to upset them because you want to get the deal.

There needs to be what I call philosophy of data not drama. Entrepreneurs need to be able to stand up for themselves and say, “I don't really know that this is a cultural fit. I don't know that we have a plan.”

Robert Hansen

Actually, I have a really quick anecdote about this. I was attempting to raise money for a company that I hadn't actually got off the ground. I was just talking to people about it, “What do you think?”

One of the meetings I took with a VC could not have possibly gone worse. He had no idea what I was talking about. So I was trying to educate him on something called search engine optimization, SEO. And he had never heard the word before. So I explained what it was.

I'd explain why it's important because he didn't really understand that. Then by the end of the meeting, he decided he was an expert in it. And he had all these things he wanted to tell me about it. None of those things were true, by the way, to the point where my business partner at the time was like, “I think I'm going to hit this guy.”

William Hurley

That is what an entrepreneur equivalent is on the VC side. Let's be honest, there's good VCs and bad VCs. And there's good entrepreneurs and bad entrepreneurs. You can't stereotype, “All VCs are going to do that in a meeting.”

Now, in hindsight, I think we both agree you would have said, “Hey, we have three quick, gating questions for you. Have you heard of SEO? Do you know what it is?” And he'd say, “Oh, no, I've never heard of it. It's really interesting.” You're like, “Oh, that's awesome. Go learn from someone else.”

This is the thing I spent a lot of my time now trying to get entrepreneurs to do, like, “Go and do due diligence. You can't ask a fund that writes a $50 million check for $5 million. And you can't ask that fund that writes $500,000 checks for $5 million. You have to know who you're going to and what you’re asking.”

It is well within the right of an entrepreneur to say, “Hey, who on your team is your SEO expert or your quantum expert?” And if they don't have one, maybe there's not a match. You move on. You go, and you cycle through them.

That's a no harm, no foul situation. I don't see any problem with that on either side of that equation. But your example is great. So my response to you would be, “SEO, huh? Try pitching quantum computing.”

Robert Hansen

Yeah. Well, fortunately, I know what we're talking about. Now that you're on the other side of the fence, you will now get to vet other people's ideas. You know a lot of what it takes to get other people to give you money. But what about the other side?

Now you get to see all these pitch decks and these presentations. What are the kinds of things that you look for? You don't tell me your thesis.

William Hurley

My personal thesis is time. Whenever I get an email from an entrepreneur and it says, “The round is closing on Friday. We'd love to fit you in”. No, it's not. I’ll see them, but the round won’t still be closing on Friday.

I see through the entrepreneurial bullshit, which is a good advantage. But everybody looks at a startup in a different way when they think about writing a check. Some people want to know the TAM of the market. And some people want to know the founder's history.

When you're trading on the stock market, every advertisement on CNBC says a past performance is no indicator of future success. Yet, that's what we do as investors like, “This guy sold two. He's got to be good for the third one.” Eventually, something breaks.

Say, you sold a finance company, Goldman Sachs. And now you're going to do a sci-fi quantum company. That’s probably the one that breaks. On a serious note, I try to look, and it sounds so weird, but deep into the person's soul.

Entrepreneurship is, as Mike has said for years, about use it up, wear it out, make do or do without. And it's rough. Startups don't like significant others; boyfriends, girlfriends, partners or hobbies or having a life or health issues. It does not matter. It becomes an entity on its own.

I think about the worst situation I can imagine for this company, that this person is pitching. I think about, what happens to them in that situation? And how do they respond when that happens? Because it will happen.

If you're uncomfortable with telling employees, “Hey, you're not going to get paid. But in two weeks, you should get paychecks.” You probably shouldn't be running a company.

A story that a lot of people don't know is that I lost a lot of money when I joined a startup. My first one I invested in, I ended up moving out to Las Vegas to break into casinos, which was paying pretty good but not super well because penetration testing back then was-

Robert Hansen

Apparently, you were not doing it right.

William Hurley

Yeah. Well, I didn't keep any of the money. Las Vegas gaming commission is not so big, and you’ll be like, “So I keep 20%.” But when I was at Symbian, I had a Subaru WRX. I had not paid the car payment in months, because I couldn't.

The repo guy would drive through the parking lot of the building we were in every day looking for that car. I parked it several blocks away. Mike would pick me up in the morning, and he would take me into the office. If that makes you uncomfortable, you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur.

People say that's too harsh. It's too aggressive. It's not. You will have issues when your family doesn't see you enough. You’ll have issues when employees think that you don't have the right guidance for where it's going because things aren't just magically working out.

Hundreds and hundreds of issues pop up in a startup. It's extremely difficult. Pressure Cooker. So if you have a lot of anxiety or whatever, it might not be the thing for you to do. It's a very uncomfortable thing to do if you're doing it the way you have to do it when you're starting off.

Obviously, you get an exit or you get some great funding or whatever. All these things change. But it's like, how much do you believe in that idea? Are you willing to believe in that idea enough to live in that Subaru that the repo guys are looking for every day?

Are you willing to take the chance to be like, ”I'm selling my house to put the money in to pay paychecks for the company because I believe in this idea enough.” That level of commitment, that's what I want to see. Because even if they don't know anything about what they're doing, even if I've never done it before, I believe in that person.

That person has a very high tolerance to risk that is willing to be consumed by their idea and become part of their idea. That's very attractive to me. Now, at Ecliptic we have a bunch of great partners; Mike Boyle, Mike Millard, Jim Puckett, Adam Lipman, of course, who was at Chaotic and I love to death.

What makes it strongest? Everybody has their own philosophy and their view. So when you look at it across all of those and you find somebody that I like, Mike likes, Adam likes, Boyle likes, Puckett likes, Varun likes, too, that's an amazing opportunity.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. I've definitely run across a number of CEOs who, on the surface, might look pretty unethical with the way they handle business. Because it is a lot of that. It's like, “Well, I'll pay you next week. I'll pay you next week.” And it's just one of those.

But if you actually get to know them, they have every intention of paying you back. Every intention. They really want to do what they're saying.

William Hurley

If they're not paying themselves and nobody else is getting paid, if there's an equality to the drama and the horrible treat, then that makes sense. But you know what, people need to get paid. They need to be taken care of. And that's why working at a startup, not even founding one, isn't necessarily for everybody.

Robert Hansen

I've ended up bailing out my friends just to make sure their employees got paid.

William Hurley

It’s from the goodness of your heart.

Robert Hansen

It actually is. And I don't feel bad about those moments because I know that there were 10 or so people who really needed that money. That wasn't going to the founder, that was going to people’s kids and whatever.

I actually do agree. I think one of the investment thesis that I've seen, and that I actually involved in my recent company, their thesis was effectively, “If this group of people has done it before, that's your question, have you had some success so I know I'm not investing in some random person? But the second one is, did they not make any money? Because if they don't make any money, they're very hungry. And they're not going to mess it up twice.

William Hurley

I think that's a very valuable perspective. But to add to that, would you say they didn't make money? Just to be honest, they failed.

Robert Hansen

One way.

William Hurley

Failure is not only an amazing motivator, but it is the best teacher. I have failed. I fail weekly. It's like good teams fight, and it's not about whether you fight or not. It's about how you fight and how you resolve a fight and how everybody moves in the same direction afterwards.

From what you just said, it's not that you failed, it's how did you process and handle that failure? Where's that driving you to? What did you learn from that that you can bring into your new venture and say, “Okay, I've made these mistakes before.”

Hiring being one of the biggest points of people failing because when somebody asks you, “How big is your company?” How do you answer? Every time you will say, “We are 30 people. We’re 14 people at Strangeworks. We're 100 people.”

In software, I'm always like, “That is a horrible wave.” Your software can be like, “We're 250 people.” It’s like, what do they do? Software has one job, to eliminate complexity. And the most complex part of the startup is people.

Robert Hansen

I think our company was eight people at the end.

William Hurley

Yeah, see, that's also something that's attractive. If somebody tells me, “I don't think we're ever going to get more than 30 people.” I like that. But also, when I ask a founder, “How big is your company?” And they talk about it in another perspective and say, “Well, that's a great question. I don't think people is a good indicator that we use per employee revenue.” or whatever other metric, I love hearing about those.

I've heard some pretty weird metrics, but I still respect them. I like that they're looking at it from a standpoint of like, “You're looking at it wrong.” It doesn't matter how many people here are writing code. It matters how many customers we have or how many deals we are doing or whatever.

Robert Hansen

Where it’s 200 today, but it'll be 200 a year from now, too. We're not growing like, “This is what we need. This is exactly the biggest it’s going to get.”

William Hurley

I think it's very hard for founders to say that to investors because investors have to have some milestones, every quarter that they report back to their LPs on these investments, and there's nothing wrong with that.

In an early stage startup, it's not going to be revenue where they're going to be like, “Here's how many commits they did.” That's irrelevant data. Back when you and I first met, there was a situation where software managers would say, “Oh, well, there’s how many commits?” There's 25 commits.

What does that have to do with making the code function better? How you look at these things and how you judge them and what metrics you use are going to be individual things. What I do isn't what everybody should do or wants to do.

You could go out to California and say some of the stuff I'm saying and people be like, “Get out of here.” Maybe somebody likes it. Or go to New York or whatever. But you have to come up with your own way to run it. Sure, read a book, gather the data, do the stuff. But you have to run it at the end of the day.

You as a founder, Robert, are the sole responsible party for whether the startup fails or whether it succeeds or whether it just muddles along.

Robert Hansen

Here we are with my new startup, The RSnake Show.

William Hurley

I'm just saying. This is true. You’re not the only one. There's always this blame game when a company doesn't work out, “Oh, the founder, that vision was too big. They weren't experienced CEOs.” There's a million excuses I’ve heard.

At the end of the day, everything that happens at Strangeworks is my responsibility. If I have to fire someone, maybe I didn’t do a good job of hiring.

Robert Hansen

That's actually the defense against this as a team. Sure, it's a team. Obviously, you're not doing it all by yourself. But if you mess up, it's not going to work.

William Hurley

That's right. Look, it's a team. What you're saying absolutely has merit. But think about it this way. It's a team, but somebody has to step up and be like, “I'm the responsible party.” And that's the founder. That's your number one job.

My job as a founder and my job as CEO, which is a job that is filled by one of two types of people, in my experience, complete narcissistic assholes. And people like me that try to trick their co-founder. I hope David's watching right through the camera.

He is a very handsome Latino man, and I think he would make a phenomenal CEO of Strangeworks. People like me are trying to trick other people into taking the job. We literally did rock, paper, scissors. And we're like, “Oh, you’re CEO.”

The thing is, it's a team. But you have to have that person that you point to because the world wants to talk to the CEO or the founder or whatever. The buck stops here. It has to be that way. If somebody is hired and I have to fire them, it's my fault because maybe I didn't hire them right.

Maybe they were fired not because of their fault. Maybe they weren't set up for success in the job. If somebody leaves, same thing. If you get funding or you don't get funding or whatever, at the end of the day, all of those things fall on my shoulders from the responsibility thing. But the credit goes to the team because I'm not doing those things alone.

It's just like you're the named party in a lawsuit. You're the one that has to be there. Startups are a team sport all the way. But every team needs a captain or quarterback or whatever.

Robert Hansen

Someone with veto rights effectively.

William Hurley

There's owners. Well, here's the way I like to do it. I like to do very transparent companies. I like to do almost a democratic process, I agree. But at the end of the day, if the team can't decide, someone has to make a decision.

At the end of the day, if there's a doubt or there's not enough ideas, who's responsible for getting it? Even if you get the team together and get it from them or whatever, somebody has to handle all of the crap.

Robert Hansen

Yes. I feel like as a founder, you get to make one or two decisions. You either get to decide to exit yourself, that's what you're saying about your co-founder here, or you just continue. A lot of people are very egotistical about continuing.

They want to be the leader of this company forever, no matter how big this gets, “A billion dollars, I'm going to be the leader of the company.” And occasionally that happens. Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, is still running it years later. Or Theranos.

William Hurley

There’s a lot of good and bad examples there.

Robert Hansen

I personally took a different tack. I was the founder of the technology. But did I really want to deal with fundraising? Did I really want to deal with the sales aspect of it? I don't think so.

In that particular case, in that company, I'd prefer to let someone else run that piece of it. Circle all of these responsibilities, those are yours. You go run with those things. And it was great.

I could focus more directly on what was going on under the hood, and that's where my expertise was anyway in that particular project. But something like this, obviously, I want to run it. And I am definitely held accountable. So if I produce bad content, if I produce something or-

William Hurley

Like this episode right here.

Robert Hansen

This exact episode, exactly, where we say something that should have been edited out. But Chris doesn't do his job for whatever reason and I don't catch it, ultimately, I'm responsible.

William Hurley

Look, you're absolutely right. I was never CEO of Chaotic Moon. Did I lose any credibility by that?

Robert Hansen

Certainly not.

William Hurley

I don't think so. Did I care? No. Ben came in, did a great job at a whole bunch of stuff. Mike was able to do operations. I was able to do the vision that you build mind control, skateboards and teaser drones and whatever crap.

Startups are a team sport. You cannot do it alone. However, as a founder, especially if you’re in a CEO role, you should strive to learn from the people that you work for. And when I say that, I mean that because you're underneath them not above them.

Everything you can about their jobs, “You should have check-ins.” If they are developers, you should be like, “Hey, you're moving to a graph database. That's cool. I don't know anything about them.”

Learning is not only good for the culture of the startup, it's good for you. Because you will be in a meeting where you're pitching a VC, and they bring in a tech expert. All of a sudden, they ask you a question.

Sometimes they don't need you to be an expert. They just need you to be like, “Oh, we're using a Golang in this way with whatever.” If you don't know those things, all of a sudden, you lose credibility as a leader and as a team if your tech guy was in another meeting or whatever.

You work for these people, you learn from these people, you incorporate what they're doing. I see the CEO as the sum of an equation, where all of the variables are the people in the different roles in the company. That's what makes or breaks me being a leader.

If I have a bad CTO, that affects me in how people see me and how they see the company. If I had a bad this, a bad that, it's an equation. And the CEO is the result of an amazing team. Not the other way.

Robert Hansen

How do you find the right culture fit? People are allergic to that term as if you're going to cut people out who don't match your culture. That's not at all what I'm saying here. And I think you know what I mean.

How do you find people who will work with your team? What do you look for in an engineer or whatever?

William Hurley

Sales person. I do it differently, and a lot of VCs don't like how I do it. The average time working together at Strangeworks is 10 years. The company is four years old. Justin Evans was around Chaotic Moon, but we weren't lucky enough to hire him. He was leading technical development at Honest Dollar.

Steve Gibson was at Honest Dollar. David was around Chaotic Moon and Honest Dollar. I think you find those people that are almost friendships like you and I have. So those are the people that you try to bring in first.

Culture is a really tricky thing, and it's really hard to manage. And culture never scales. It just doesn't. You get to 1,000 people, and you still have a culture, that's awesome.

You tell me a company with 300,000 employees has this amazing culture. I tell you they're full of shit. There's a bunch of people that work there that would be like, “Bullshit.” But culture is really hard.

The thing I do, and it's hard to do, is that we have a very high bar to get into Strangeworks. And every employee interviews everybody else for cultural fit, if nothing else.

Robert Hansen

That also keeps your numbers low. No one can handle that many interviews.

William Hurley

It's not about quantity. It's about quality. The way we keep those numbers low is to check it out. And we're still developing the process. This is, by no means, perfect at all.

Robert Hansen

But it doesn't scale to 3,000 employees.

William Hurley

It might. I've been challenged. I've been working off and on for the last couple years at Lugdunum center for entrepreneurship at the Sloan School MIT.

One of the things I'm wanting to approach Deena on, she's going to murder me. She's like, “You should approach me on a lot of other things I want first. But it’s this idea of doing a long, multi-year study around culturing companies as they scale.

It doesn't mean that you're going to interview every candidate. That's not how we do it. The dev team wants to hire a new developer. You've got seven, nine people on that team. They went through 200 resumes, then they went down to 100, then 50.

Then at around 20-30, they start doing a little committee thing that they're doing internally. But the rest of the company meets the one that they absolutely are set on hiring from a cultural perspective. Or maybe the two. Does that make sense?

Robert Hansen

Not so sure how a 3000-person Zoom call is going to go.

William Hurley

No, but that's not how it works. Think about it. You have different ways of interviewing people. People don't have to be present to be interviewed because we're not really talking about interviewing with culture, are we? Let's be honest. I’m not judging.

Robert Hansen

Maybe.

William Hurley

You just focus on the cultural stuff. The smaller team within that 3000-person team, a team of 100, they can do that. And remember, this ties directly to my philosophy that I learned at Apple, tiger teams.

If you have a team of more than seven, nine, 10 people writing code, when you get to hear about these software teams, “We have 100 people working on this project.” It's like, “Wow, it is full of bugs and security issues. It doesn't work that way.”

These small groups of 3000-person companies, to me, are a bunch of seven to 20-person teams. So they're going to interview everything. And yeah, 3,000, everybody couldn't do it. But there are methods of self-selection. There are methods of looking at these things and judging them from different perspectives.

At 3000, would it work to have every person talk to 3000 people to get a job? Obviously not. Can you have 300 Zoom calls with way too many people on? You're right. But if you're doing the job right, that cultural fit isn't the end result like we're doing it now. It’s the first thing.

I don't give a shit how good you are at coding. I don't care how good you are at business development. If you don't function within the team, within the family we've built, already that's a rejection. So it's almost like it reverses as you get smaller. Everybody talks to them and culture is the last thing, bigger.

You start with culture, and then you let the team look at the ramifications of a certain code, can they do this? Can they do that?

Robert Hansen

One of my friends, this is only for technical use, at least the way he designed it. He could probably expand it to do other things. But he basically had these games he would set up.

They were extremely technical games, multi-phase extremely difficult to break into things and find things and code things. And there's just an incredibly complex layering thing that you had to go through. But no, he just made it a game. Just put it out there and just say, “Hey, anyone tried to break this game?”

William Hurley

There's been several companies that have built games. Look, the army has paid game developers to build games for people to play. Then they’ll be like, “This person thinks strategically.” You can do those things.

I guess that's the point. At 3000 people, you're not scaling the same process of 3000 people. You're creating new processes of self-selection and self-driving awareness into things.

Let's use that game as an example. I take a game like that about some quantum mechanics thing and get it on the PlayStation, and 100,000 people play it. I'm watching from the data, once you win stuff, these are the three people.

The other thing is I prefer to target people rather than to take resumes. Obviously, we take resumes. We always have to. You need to do that. But if I had my preference, I would really look at people out in the field and say, “Wow, that person who’s just on stage is about us. I want to learn more about them.” And study them before I almost approach them for a job.

I'm hiring somebody in a lead science position right now. Every candidate I have right now is a candidate that I have been watching and following that I'm targeting. Same thing with our advisory board. I'm not just saying, “Hey, we need an advisory board. Can the VCs bring people?”

I'm like, “No, I know exactly the rules I want.” I know the people from over my career that would be the best at that. I know a lot of them are going to say no, but I'm going to take their recommendation a lot differently than I would some blind resume or whatever.

It’s incredibly complex. Look, we're going to make mistakes in it. We're going to make missteps. And not everything scales. But again, it's more about the end result in the methodology and the philosophy than it is about a process-oriented thing.

I think people don't spend enough time on culture. I think people don't spend enough time on things like diversity in the right standpoint. Cognitive diversity is super important. Well, where does that come from? We look different and think different. We’re brought up different or live different or whatever. That's how you get cognitive diversity.

There's this balance and all of those things that need to be met, especially in the early days of the startup because it's important to have that foundation. But above that series A, Series B where we've got some market success, it's starting to take off.

Robert Hansen

I think we're witnessing something very strange that I have never seen in my life.

William Hurley

Damn, I thought you were going to say, “I think that we’re out of time.” We're still going?

Robert Hansen

No, we have a lot of time.

William Hurley

Oh god.

Robert Hansen

We can quit anytime you want.

William Hurley

I’m just kidding.

Robert Hansen

Throw in the towel. Do you have a towel?

William Hurley

Nobody's going to watch a 10-hour podcast, but let’s do it.

Robert Hansen

Did Chris give you his towel? No towel. All right, you're in it then.

William Hurley

I’m stuck.

Robert Hansen

I don't think I've seen this in my lifetime, this massive change in valuation that just happened in the last two months or so. I remember I was just sitting there talking to a couple of friends. And they're like, “Oh yeah, well, we can't do XYZ because the valuations have all been chopped by about three to five times.”

I'm like, “Wait, what just happened? Where was I when all this was happening?” And then I talked to somebody else maybe two hours later, a completely different situation like, “Yeah, well, since evaluations are getting crushed right now.”

By the end of the day, I’d probably talked to three or four different people. And not even about this, it just randomly came up. The entire industry just all got the memo on the same day like, “Yeah, we're just not paying any money for this anymore.”

William Hurley

They didn't get the memo. They wrote the memo. And it is directly hypocritical of VCs that you can go to their Twitter accounts and see a year ago them saying, “Grow and spend and big rounds and do stuff.”

Then now they're like, “Listen, it's going to be hard times. What are you going to do?” I’d be like, “Yeah, but you guys got to figure out the way.” Valuation is not value. Period.

Robert Hansen

Until the check clears.

William Hurley

Valuations are driven off of very basic financial engineering that is set on expectations of historical interactions. For example, when we did our first round, what do you give up in a seed round? 20%? Pretty easy. 15% to 50% depending.

But 20% is about what I think would be right. They know I know it. I know they know it. How much money did I need? $4 million? How do we do a valuation? We backed into it. 416, 20 best. Those numbers are made up. Anybody that's a CEO or a startup founder that believes in those numbers, they're fucking dumb.

A CEO’s job, by the way, is not to raise money. It's to make money. Until you're making money, when you make money, Mike Irwin, Mike Boris, they can tell you exactly what you're worth and exactly what you could be worth if they could do it. Until you do that, it's like a game of imagination. You're just wandering out blindly.

By the way, doing that is what led to this dip. These valuations didn't fall. These companies just got appropriately valued. There's a huge difference in that. There's a huge difference in a market collapsing, and people going, “Wait a second. You're worth $3 billion. But if we fire sold all the assets you have now, you only have $20 million in assets and revenues.” That's just reality. That's just reality.

Yes, we can interpret it as a big market collapse and all this other stuff. It's not. It's just things fell back to Earth to where they should be. Now people, because of the economic downturn we're in, because of these things, no longer can be so willy-nilly with the numbers.

Robert Hansen

What do you think is going to happen? My prediction is, in my little world of security, there's probably maybe a little over 1000 different security companies. I bet next to half of them go out of business in the next two years.

William Hurley

A million people out of jobs in high-tech by the end of Q1 2023. I think we're going to be halfway there by December. I think it gets worse.

Robert Hansen

Which means that if you're hiring, now is an awesome time to pick up amazing talent.

William Hurley

It's going to be even more awesome especially if you're in an industry like me. Quantum computing where a lot of companies are already in their series, C, D, G, M rounds. Those employees have been diluted to shit. I don't know why they're there anyway. They're going to leave. That's not slamming at the quantum companies. I'm just saying two separate things.

I'm in a small industry. There's probably 300 people in the world that matter. There's probably a couple 1000 people that work in the industry. If you're in an industry that has that dynamic, and you have this funding cycle. Not picking on anybody in quantum. But you have people that have long rounds, then, yeah, there's going to be a lot of opportunity. The problem with where we are at is that we all knew we were headed here but nobody talked about it.

Robert Hansen

I was blindsided. I did not see it coming along.

William Hurley

I was not. I mean, you just go on Twitter. You can go on Twitter and see conversations with me and Adam Loewy. Adam Loewy, a great personal injury attorney here in town. We used to live in the same building with friends. Awesome guy but always on Twitter. He's like, “Oh, we really know the economic downturn is coming.” He always poked fun at me in Texas.

Robert Hansen

That I saw coming but not the slash of valuations.

William Hurley

But why not? Because this is the thing. Now, I could be wrong on this. There are a million people that will disagree with me. Okay. But people seem to think that the private pools of capital and the public markets are two separate entities. They aren't. Just the way they think Bitcoin is, cryptocurrencies are. What happened in the crash? Market this. Cryptocurrency is almost following it.

We are in a global economy whether you want to admit it or not. All of these forms of capital are now tied together. PE funds are buying houses in Austin. Think of the ramifications on a number of levels, you know what I mean? They’re buying them everywhere. In fact a huge percentage of the houses being bought in the market are being bought by corporate entities. Not by people.

A huge amount of the money going into the stock market isn't by companies. It's by retail investors. It’s by people sitting there thinking they're a day trader or whatever. Everything's mixed in and mashed in together in this amalgam of madness that we should all have seen the valuations. I mean, name a company that…

Robert Hansen

I probably won’t do that.

William Hurley

But we can. We can. Only one. Robinhood. Met Vlad a couple times. They were doing all solid. Great. Great team. Laid off 23% of their employees yesterday. Paid 100 million dollar fine. None of that was predictable. You couldn't look at the assets they have. I mean in a finance company.

Robert Hansen

That one makes a lot more sense. Because obviously people are putting less money in the market. That's how they make their bread and butter by trades and having an awful lot of money on their balance sheet that they can loan out. That makes a lot of sense.

William Hurley

Keep going through there. If you would name one, we should have seen the value. Look. Go to TechCrunch and find any article that says, “Company raises 400 million on a two and a half billion dollar valuation.” Then find somebody there and say, “How much revenue do you make?” “I make, oh man, we make 50 million a year.” I have bad news for you. You're not worth $4 billion. That's just reality.

For me with the economic downturn, which we both saw coming. But the startup downturn, I mean, yes, 100%. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I'll never forget one of the hardest moments of my entrepreneurial career. I was at a company that was failing. One person left. Another person left. I ended up being interim CEO which is basically a guy who will turn the lights up. I panicked. I called Mike, my friend and the greatest entrepreneur I knew at the time. I was like, “I need you to come over.”

He came over to the offices over in Westlake. He said, “Alright, what do we need to do?”

“Well, we got a million dollars in the company. I’ve got to figure out how I can get out now up to this.” He said, “Did you buy this table or you rented this table? He started going through everything. He started writing it all out on the board. I'm going to be pretty close in the numbers. I think what he said was something effective. He spends all his time on the board.

He's asked me these questions, the software, the patents, the license. You are worth about $147,360.12. I almost had a coronary. But that is how you value a company. Tesla’s worth more than General Motors? I don't think so. We sold everything that those companies had. Clearly, there's a difference. Revenue. Number of vehicles. Counting all of these things.

Robert Hansen

Patents

William Hurley

That's right. All of it. We should have all seen the valuation crash coming. It is ridiculous. I guarantee you the people making the valuations, the people doing the big money moves, they knew it was coming.

Robert Hansen

I did know it was coming with regard to housing. That was one I did see coming as well. I knew for a fact that was going to occur. But yeah, I definitely was surprised to see the startup community get hit. Mostly because I just thought the PE community would protect them. I thought they would say, “No, no, no, we're going to artificially keep these high because there's so much money to be made.”

William Hurley

You listen to Ray Dalio? Because I think he said they're thinking the PE funds around this time this year are going to lose something like 40-70% of their value. They couldn’t protect themselves. Everybody's going to be in a bad… look at the housing market in China and all the ghost cities. The China birth policy led to more boys than girls. There's a huge competition for wives. How do you do that? I have four condos.

Using that part of The Big Short with the stripper. She goes, “On all my houses?” How many houses do you have? I’ve got five loans. There's a lot of people like that in China. That housing market is starting to collapse. Those ghost cities, all that stuff's going to come to bear. People are like, “Oh, screw China.” You don't think that's going to affect us? That is nuts. We live in a global economy. All of these things are so intertwined.

People talk about a war with China. Maybe. I mean also you're going to go to war with your biggest customer. You know what I mean? It's like things are not like they've ever been in the history of the world before. These valuations were out of hand. They were ridiculous. I talked about this because it pissed me off to see. I'd have friends that were like, “We just did this great deal. We just raised $20 million on a $500 million dollar valuation.”

You are screwing your company. You're screwed. You can't accelerate the valuation, accelerate a startup like that. They have a natural path that they work out. There's a reason that they're run lean, and this and that. All those things. You can’t get around those rules. Because what happens when you get that money?

Robert Hansen

You can. It's just called a Kamikaze business model. Just burn all the cash as fast as possible.

William Hurley

It's Russian roulette. Click. We made it. Click. We made it. Boom, we're dead. That's the truth. I was not a fan of the high valuations. Not that I don't think companies shouldn't be highly valued. I just think they should be highly valued on some metric that is based in reality. It isn't like, well, I have to. Because what plays into these high valuations? The last round.

Once you did a high valuation, all the people that just invested in you aren't going to improve it unless it's higher. They need a markup. You get into this self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to exactly where we're at. We should have all seen it coming. It's ridiculous that the venture capitalists didn't see it coming. It's ridiculous that the entrepreneurs took the valuations.

I mean, you can't bitch about it. You knew it wasn't right when you took it. But you looked at your personal wealth gain in that equation. That's the wrong way to run a company. That's the wrong way to look at a company.

Robert Hansen

Intellectual property is another one of those that is going to be a strangely available commodity. Because a lot of these companies are going to get sold for pennies. But they did have intellectual property. Maybe there was even a good intellectual property buried in there. I think it's going to be a bit of a fire sale about different patents.

But out of curiosity, where do you stand on having a patent? Either before, or start the company then get your patent? Or even have patents at all? Where do you stand on that?

William Hurley

You’re going to hate this answer. I think most startups are just stupid for making patents. I'll tell you why. Well, they can't use them. You shouldn't have things you can't use at a startup. Here's the deal. You have a patent. That patent is worth about $525,000. I know this because if you go back, there was a study about 10 years ago. They looked at every acquisition. They divided the acquisition number by the number of patents. It came out to about 525,000. There was definitely a theory.

That doesn't mean patents can be worth more or less. That doesn't mean you have some golden patent. But in general, startups waste a lot of time and a lot of money. Prosecuting a patent is hard. It takes your tech team time. It takes your business team time. It takes your lawyer's time. Your lawyers are expensive. You always have outside lawyers.

You spend all this money to get this patent that is too easy for me as a large company to say, “I'm violating that patent. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do? You're going to sue me? Great. Let's go to East Texas where Samsan built a fucking ice rink for the locals because they're on the juries. By the way, I have a million patents in my portfolio. We're going to set that court date for 2030. See you then. Oh, by the way, there's an injunction on you to not do your product until then.”

Patents are also bad. Because patents are the way I reverse engineer your product. Thanks for laying it all out for me dumbass. Intellectual property isn't just about patents.

Robert Hansen

You have patents. You clearly believe there is some utility.

William Hurley

I have patents at IBM. I was a Master Inventor. What do you think my job was? You have something here and they have something here. I put something right in the middle. Now we create a patent pool.

Robert Hansen

Are you saying that it only works if you are big enough to prosecute them?

William Hurley

It only works if you have the resources to prosecute and execute them, and defend them. For Strangeworks, no patents yet. Now we're getting a Series A which we'll announce between now and the New Year. Because I got the first money in January and waited till June to tell everyone. Probably going to do the same thing again.

I knew exactly what my patents are. I've thought about those patents for three years. I have thought about that IP portfolio obviously. But there's value at the right time. Now, I have enough money to execute them without it being damaging business. I'm going to have enough team to work on them to support the lawyers in writing them.

I could still be in the situation I just described where an IBM or Microsoft says, “Hey, we think everybody should.” Because they have so many patents on so much stuff. The patent world I think is the biggest mess. I think a lot of examiners do their best to evaluate things. Let me ask you a question. Because recently a group we're a part of run by Paul Stivers, basically a quantum coalition was working with the patent department, I think still is, to get examiners who could evaluate quantum patterns.

Magic question. How many examiners do you think at the patent office right now today can legitimately evaluate the novelty of quantum mechanics? Because I'm going to tell you right now, the number is…

Robert Hansen

Maybe just one.

William Hurley

Maybe three to five.

Robert Hansen

You think it’s that many?

William Hurley

I mean maybe but it's not everybody. But that's my point, that the patent system is broken. It's just broken.

Robert Hansen

I had a very similar thing about some of the esoteric security things that I was patenting ages ago. I mean, you spend all your time educating them. They do not know what you're talking about when you start. Eventually, they'll pick it up.

William Hurley

It's become less educating nowadays and more selling. Convincing. I mean convince you that this is right. But you look at it and you say, look, that doesn't mean patents are useless. It means patents like everything else in the lifetime of a startup have a right time and a right place with the right resources to do them.

By the way, trade secret, pretty great. It's a really great way. One of the best ways to protect an idea, don't fucking tell anybody about it. It works amazing. It's what I've done with a lot of ideas for the last four years. Who knows them? Me. Maybe Justin. Maybe somebody else. Nobody's going to be building those.

Robert Hansen

I’ll hack into your phone. I’ll figure it out.

William Hurley

We don’t text. Only in-person meetings in a room with white noise that was shaded. But seriously, we will do patents at the right time. If you have a patent and you use that to raise money on, I think that's a horrible strategy. Just admit where you're at. Startups when they're starting out, you're not funding anything more than a person and an idea. Maybe they've got some code. Maybe some startups get customers depending on the area.

But when we're talking the deep tech stuff. Getting patents assigned from a university that could be interesting. Not writing patents yourself. But say you're a quantum company. You work with universities. You get a license to IP or license from CERN or Los Alamos or Xerox or whoever. That could be very useful because now you've got those patents, and a right to some. But you also have somebody who has a financial interest in the patent you're using who also has a big patent library.

I'm not a patent lawyer. I'm not giving legal advice. I'm just saying I've seen so many startups raise $4 million, and spend $500,000 of it to make an IP. You’re most likely, 99% of those cases, never going to see any money on that. It's certainly not going to keep you from going out of business.

Robert Hansen

What about education? What do you feel about founders who don't have formal education, or employees?

William Hurley

I love them. I don't have formal education.

Robert Hansen

Me neither.

William Hurley

I think we're great. I was just going to say you and I are those guys. But that also doesn't mean there’s a problem with formal education. I tend to find that people without formal education can be a lot hungrier than the people who have it. Because they grew up differently. They don't have it for a reason. They're a little hungry. I think hunger is super, super important.

If you're a startup founder and you're not hungry every day, if you don't wake up every day and you're going to destroy the fucking world and make this company work, then maybe that's when you should quit. Shut it down or leave. It's not just about monopoly. Going to a new startup. Time to make the donuts. There’s a word for that. Now I’m old. Nobody's going to know that.

But it's about that passion and that drive. You don't have a formal education. I don't care. I care about creativity. I care about ingenuity. I care about how inventive you are. I care really about what kind of person you are. Because I do believe that much like Michael Jordan being the greatest basketball player ever, Tiger Woods playing golf or whatever it is, everybody is genetically disposed to be better at some things than they are at others than other people are.

The entrepreneurship is almost damn near a gene. You've got the drive. It's cultural. How you're brought up. This and that. How hungry you are. All that. But I think at the baseline, some people don't have anxiety, don't get it easy, and are very high risk people. Those people are going to make it through the really tough times a lot easier than people who are prone to anxiety. That doesn't mean that those people can't do it. It just means this is going to be easier.

What does that mean? Out of 100% of the capacity, 80% of it is being anxious about the trouble they're going through. It's only 20% going into the business. But if somebody is really comfortable with high risk environments. They don't get very anxious easily. They have 20% of anxiety. 80% of it is going into business. I just think it’s really important that it doesn't matter what your education is, your lack of education, or whatever.

It matters, who are you as a person? More importantly than anything, a person with a PhD and a person with a high school diploma can have the same level of belief and conviction in the idea they're trying to get me to fund, or me to work at, or participate in, or advise. That's perfectly fine. That's what it's about. It's about passion. It's about the drive.

The education will help you get funding. You get a PhD in something. I'm telling you there's a ton of VCs who absolutely love that. Why? Here's where it matters. Because they can run an investment committee memo. That investment committee memo is, ‘Here's all the reasons I think I’ll be a safe bet.’

Then when it goes wrong, nine times out 10, it will be like, “Hey, man, you invested in a guy with a PhD who invented the field who had this great team and these patents from the university.” I mean, I literally boiled all the risk out of the deal I could. Which is their job is to boil risk out of the deal for their LPs, for the money they invest on their behalf. But does it affect you? Yes. Do I care about it? I could give two shits.

Robert Hansen

It's funny you mentioned that. I spent a lot of time talking with very large companies that do M&A. Some of the software I built is actually strangely useful for that. You can do snapshots of their environments over time. Then if you see sudden rapid increases in their environment after you leak out to them that you're potentially shopping them or whatever. You're like, well, what just changed?

Well, they just added a whole bunch of machines that look like customers that aren't really customers. Or it goes down. It's like, oh, they just got rid of a bunch of porn and gambling sites. That's really how they make their money. You can identify corporate malfeasance from the public internet. That's pretty hilarious.

William Hurley

That’s super, super profitable. I mean, you saw the OnlyFans MasterCard thing. MasterCard was like, “Porn? No way.” Have you seen that Collegehumor thing? The CEO’s, he's on the phone. He's like, “Look, look. Conservatively, how much of our platform is porn? 90%?”

You have that thing where MasterCard said, “Look, we’ve got to take a stance here.” I think Visa did too. Several credit card companies not paying. MasterCard said, “Hey, we aren’t going to be processing your porn transactions.” How long did that last? I think it was like a week and a half maybe.

They’re like, “You know what, we’ve got to treat everybody equally. Okay, we're big on equality. If porn is your business and you're doing hundreds of millions of dollars that works for us. We’ve got to help you out.” But it's interesting. All of these things. I think the thing is, that we're saying, this whole conversation is, there is no right or wrong. There's no this is the way you build a startup or you have to have an education or without. There is no right or wrong.

Robert Hansen

Yes. But there are still things that can make you more successful.

William Hurley

It depends on the environment.

Robert Hansen

Okay. But what would you say to somebody listening who wants to start a startup and just hasn't started it? It's an idea. It's a germ in their head. Or even a previous version of yourself. Go back. Unwind the tape 20 years or so? What would you have told a younger version of yourself, a piece of advice that would have made a big difference for you?

William Hurley

I'm going to paraphrase something I learned from Tom Bishop when I first got promoted to manager at BMC. He took me to lunch. He asked me a question that has been a splinter in my mind to this day. I'll change it from what he said to be appropriate for this conversation. Stealing it Tom.

Do you want to be a founder or do you want to do what founders do? Because those are two extremely different things. You want a founder on your business card. You want your mom to be proud. You want to be in the local business journal and be like, “I started a company.”

Or do you want to be up at four in the morning? Do you want to deal with an employee that was key to you that just got pregnant or found out they had cancer? Or do you want to deal with the fact that you found out somebody has a drug habit, or this or that, or all the other horrible things that can go on? Which one of those do you want to do?

Because I spent a lot of time just openly wanting to be that guy, and not realizing that the people that profess to be those guys aren't. That we're putting value into heroes that aren't heroes at all. They're not villains. But they're just people doing it wrong. It is different and so much more wholesome and nurturing to me to be valued by an employee that works for me, rather than I won CEO of the Year, or whatever bullshit, or the VCs really like me.

That's what's important. I didn't always have that perspective when I was young. 100%. When I joined the first startup, I was like everybody's getting rich. I read Fast Company. I was like, “Wow, this is how it works.”

Robert Hansen

Red Herring. I read a lot of Red Herring.

William Hurley

When Red Herring was out. We both read a ton of Red Herring. What did Red Herring make you think? Wow. Startup people are so cool. They look cool. They're fashionable. They’re rich. There's a picture of him on a private jet. They said you can get into that just like anybody else. There was a time in my life where I was like, not like, I'm going to get rich. But I was like, this is so cool. I'm going to be like them. Instead of saying, “Who am I?” Know thyself. That's the first step to being a founder.

Do you want to start a company? Awesome. Here's my recommendations for everybody who wants to start a company. Get off your ass and go start your fucking company. Don't quit your job. Don't ask an investor for a million dollars so you can still get a 150k year salary. Eat ramen noodles. Work nights and weekends. Bust your ass. Make your partner mad at you because you're not spending enough time. Do it the right way. Do it as young as possible.

You see all these kids that are afraid to start a company because they have no experience. Are you kidding? You can still live with your parents. It's the greatest time to be entrepreneurial. When you're in your 20s, you'd be like, “Mom, Dad, I'm starting a company. I need to just come back into the room.” That's amazing. But just go do it. The key to doing it, know yourself.

Here's how I like to describe building a startup. Building a startup is like building a puzzle. Here's the mistake everybody makes when they're building a puzzle. How do you build a puzzle? Everybody starts with the edges and then they fill it in. Random patches of blocks and stuff in the picture that looks together.

I always tell people building startups is like building a puzzle except you start with one piece. That piece is you. You put it on the table. You build from the middle out. You say, I don't have this shade or this thing, and that's finance. Boom, here's the person I'm hiring for that. You know what, I need somebody more technically brilliant than me. Boom, that's your CTO. You build out from that. Those people build out from that. That builds an amazing picture. Because again, startups are a team sport.

Robert Hansen

I think, like you, I probably have had a number of very high highs and a number of extremely hard lows. I'll just give one example of mine. My company, many companies ago now, totally exploded on me. It was during the financial bust in the 2008 mortgage crisis. I remember I was standing out on Wall Street at a big bank. I was like, “How are things going?”

He looks out the window. He's like, “They're going out of business. They're going out of business. They're going out of business. They might be okay. They're going out of business.”

I'm in a bank. I'm like, “How are you guys doing?”

He’s like, “Oh, probably be okay. But we're not buying anything from you for a while.” I just looked at our books. I'm like, holy crap, we are not going to be making anything probably for six months to eight months minimum. We had about six months of cash. The math didn't work out. In practice, it probably would be closer to a year because you do the work then at six months, a couple…

William Hurley

They’ll pay you in 120 days. Net 120.

Robert Hansen

Exactly. There was just no way we were going to make it. I had to fire myself. That part wasn't that bad despite what it might seem like. Actually, the mechanics of actually getting rid of myself and having the guy who's currently running actually still run it. That wasn't that bad. But the part that was really bad is going back and talking to everybody about it. That just tore me up. I think I had spent so much time. I think so many people had so much faith in me.

I spent time explaining how this was going to work, why it's good and why we're so much better than everybody else. All those things were still true. Except it was a consulting company that only had six months of cash. I could not predict a huge market crash. I had no crystal ball. Especially at that point, I really wasn't paying attention to markets at all. But I had to go around and tell my parents and business partners on a different level, and other people around town and friends.

I just realized two things. Number one, I had treated everybody like they were a commodity up to that point. Which is a huge mistake. I really, really, highly recommend anyone listening. Do not treat people like this. But I had. When I looked around town, I'm like, I don't know that we're really friends. I think I've been treating them like a transaction. But also, I just felt like an enormous failure suddenly. This had been my ship and I had just steered it right into the rocks. That was rough. I came out

William Hurley

Because half of what you said, just being blunt as we always are with each other. It sounds like your ego got bruised. Fuck your Ego. If you have an ego and you don't check it in the door when you're doing a startup, you are so screwed. So screwed. That's what I'm saying.

When I was young I was like, oh, I'm just here now and I'm working with these guys. I'm going to be the CTO of this startup under my shell. But when it failed, what helped me and helped propel my career, for some reason I was so accustomed to failure.

Robert Hansen

How did you get there?

William Hurley

Because whether I was honest with you or not. When I was young, I was honest with myself. I was objective. This is a failure. But I didn't want to hide it. I wanted to embrace it for some reason. I guess I grew up with the whole live and learn, and tough lessons. I grew up in a military family. For some reason I embraced it. Then over time I was able to. A lot of people are like, “Oh, well, now that you've had all these exits and stuff, it's easy to say all this.” That's not why.

The amount of money in the checking account is not what allows me to be more open or transparent. It's that I started doing it more and more. I started doing it with more and more difficult things to admit about myself. More and more difficult situations that I had steered myself into the rocks. Because of that and because I know myself in that objectivity as I will be open about it.

Being open about it is what drove my career. People love authenticity. They love people that are genuine. As I would say, I really fucked that up. They would say, “Hurley, nobody would say that.” That's cool. Talk about it. The more I talked about it, the easier it got to talk about. Almost like therapy. The more I talked about it, the easier it got to talk about, the more aware I became of, “Hey, am I headed down that path again, or this path or that path?”

I started making these minor adjustments and moving myself forward. Success isn't what allows me to be so nonchalant about being an entrepreneur. It's being through the trials and tribulations. Being okay with the things that I fucked up. Being okay with the places I failed. I had to go to people years later, and I make this a practice and say, "I'm sorry. I was wrong." Like, “I don't give a shit.” Yeah, but I give a shit."

Robert Hansen

It’s rough. It’s cathartic. I had my highs. They're not the highs that most people would expect. It wasn't the day the check cleared. I was sitting in the middle seat in cargo class on my phone.

William Hurley

As all good entrepreneurs do. You can get the cargo seats?

Robert Hansen

They wouldn't let me get in the basement. Down with the dogs. No, that wasn't it. Clearly that wasn't it. It was memorable because of how shady that moment actually was. It was more just like, finally. The actual highs were much smaller and almost hard to quantify. Even talk about. Those moments when someone would touch your product and just really get it. Interesting.

William Hurley

You just got up on stage at a conference and talked about your product. Three people out of 3000 are lined up. They’re like, “Whoa, that's so cool.” You're like, “Oh my God. Some random strangers think it is cool.” I totally get that. Honestly, when we sold Honest Dollar to Goldman Sachs, it wasn't like, we're victorious. It was like phew.

There's a great line in one of the old Star Trek movies that was sampled by Information Society in 1994. ‘I want to know what you're thinking,’ song. Anyway, you can go listen to it on Spotify. But the sample starts off with Jim McCoy. He says, “Well, it's worked so far, but we're not out yet.” That's a great philosophy to have running a startup. That is an amazing philosophy. Then when you make that transaction, it's not like woo-hoo. It's like phew. There’s a big difference.

Robert Hansen

The car is going across the finish line with one wheel, and it's on flames.

William Hurley

As you jump out of the door with all of the safety.

Robert Hansen

You’re jumping out. It explodes. Everyone's cheering. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't quite that dramatic. But it certainly felt more like that than a big massive celebration with balloons and ticker-tape parade.

William Hurley

We celebrated the sale of Honest Dollar a year after the sale of Honest Dollar as a team. We all went to Vegas. That's when we were like, about a year later, “Okay, now we believe it. Now it’s be real. We didn't celebrate.” We all went to Vegas and saw Tiesto, ate fancy dinners and did all of that stuff.

I think it takes about six months to a year for an honest, genuine entrepreneur after success to be able to be like, I can accept this as a success.

Robert Hansen

As soon as the reps and warranties insurance is back in. You haven’t been sued in a year. You are like yay.

William Hurley

The claw backs are gone and the stuff. You're exactly right. People don’t think like that. People are like, whoa, they sold that company for a billion dollars. I see this a lot in a lot of cities. I see it in our city. You see a lot of companies sold for a billion dollars. Here's what other entrepreneurs think, "They have a billion dollars. They live in the W and they have a Ferrari, or they bought a place at the Estonian. They got a McLaren or whatever the case is."

Here's the reality. They started the company seven years ago. They've been through six funding rounds somehow. In that time the founder and the management team now own 7% of the company. So it's not a billion dollars. This is the biggest thing wrong with entrepreneurial culture. It’s this need to look successful to other people. Who gives a shit? Do you go home and sleep at night? Are you happy? Your wife happy with you? You get time to spend with your kids. You do all the important stuff. That's important. Who gives a shit?

I mean, I dressed up for the interview. This is a new shirt. I drove my Tesla Model Y, not a freaking McLaren or whatever. But this is the thing. It is like we just have our priorities in the wrong place. If you want to be that person that you saw in that magazine, you are already setting yourself up for failure. Because that story in that magazine is not real. None of these entrepreneurial stories I've read.

I would challenge anyone to bring me an entrepreneurial story, a history. Elon is a great example. Awesome. Everybody loves him. The richest guy in the world. But for years, people have been like, well, when Elon founded Tesla. Yeah, he didn't found Tesla. There was already a guy building rockets that he found. That's a great talent, what he does. That's not on him.

That's on a community of people that we idolize these entrepreneurs to almost the extent of harming them and us. It's not cool. Why can't it just be like, you built a business that makes $4 million a year? You're my superhero. Oh, by the way you only give up 20% of it. Holy shit. The most successful person I know.

It's like compound interest. It's like, wow, that's impressive. You sold a company for $50 million? Great. You'd be shocked at how many thousands of people have done that. There needs to be an honesty in entrepreneurship. There needs to be honesty in investing.

Robert Hansen

I remember one time you and I talked. You were saying something and asked me a question. What would you say if you started a startup and after four years you'd made a couple of million dollars? I’m like, “That sounds like a pretty good deal.”

William Hurley

That’s why I liked you. Because I always tell people, look, start a company with 100 grand and sell it for 2 million. If you and your co-founder sell for 2 million. You have to give 10% of it away for that 100 Grand. $200,000. That's $1.8 million. Think about that for a second.

Robert Hansen

It’s a pretty good deal.

William Hurley

Do you know what $900,000 would do to most people's life and lifestyle and debt situation? It's a fucking miracle. Why do we frown on that as venture capitalists? Why do we frown on that as entrepreneurs? Here's why venture capitalists will get mad at me. You want to know?

Robert Hansen

Because they want to 100x. That's why.

William Hurley

They want all those ridiculous things. But it's a little different. I think entrepreneurs should sell the company as early in the company's lifecycle as possible. Here's why. Because they own more. Because that money goes to them and it goes to the employees. People get mad. We didn't raise money for several companies we've done. Raise 3 million for Honest Dollar. Sold in a year. You know how much of the company we gave away? A lot. You know how much that enriched everybody's lives? A ton.

Being successful is not about this large amount of money you've made. It's about the amount of money in direct proportion to what you were before. Build. I make 150,000 a year as a software engineer. I started a company. I took 100 grand. I sold it for a million in 2 years. I got $900,000. Now, I paid my house off. I mean not in Austin. Other mythical cities. Thanks California. I pay my house off. I've got no debt.

That's the freedom we started the conversation with. Fuck you money isn't $100 million or a billion dollars or whatever. One of my friends Casey King has been a great friend and mentor. I worked with him in Apple R&D way back in the late 90s. He wrote an article about this. I bet if you Google Casey King fuck you money, it probably comes up. He wrote a great article about, ‘What is fuck you money?’

Its calculation. It’s what do I need? The way I look at it, he may have other stuff in that article, but what do I need to not have debt? To have the freedom to not have to go to work. To let my mind be free to come up with the next idea. To be able to fund myself in a small studio like this. To build it up. What about that? That's where it's at. Fuck you money isn’t $100 million. Fuck you money for most people's probably about a million bucks.

They buy a house or pay off house. They don't have car payments. They have $400,000 in the bank. Say, I'm going to pay myself $100,000 a year. Really easy to do when you don't have a car payment, a house payment. Live great and still go to movies and take your family out and everything. You say, “I'm going to do that for three years. I'm going to take $100,000 and invest it in my idea.” That's fuck you money. That's freedom.

I guess we are just delusional. We idolize all the wrong things instead of doing the things that are really going to impact your life as an entrepreneur and your family's life. Et cetera, Et cetera. It's really not that hard. Most companies are sold for about 70 million bucks. Holy shit. Can you imagine starting a company and three years later selling it for 70 million bucks, and you still own 60, 70, 80% of the company. You literally don't ever have to work a day again in your life.

Robert Hansen

Unless you choose to do so.

William Hurley

That's right. That's being an entrepreneur. It's not about money. It's not about power. It's not about being in the magazines or the websites. It's about freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. That's the absolute most valuable thing to me that people get out of being entrepreneurs. Those people who said they want to go start their own company. That's why they should be starting it.

You don't need to make a $100 million company to be richer than you've ever dreamed. Because I guarantee you, it really rolls off the tongue. It's a unicorn. It’s a billion dollar valuation. This is that. I challenge anybody listening. I drop a million dollars in 90% or more of the listers’ accounts tonight, their world just changed like they won the fucking billion dollar lottery last week.

It takes so much less to move so much further than people ever want to admit because of the ego. Because I'm not doing it for my life. I'm doing it compared to your life. That is a dangerous path that leads to destruction at least. I've had friends that have committed suicide. I've seen marriages break up. I've seen relationships breaking. It just puts you on a bad path.

You should be working for your freedom. Maybe freedom for me is X million a year. Maybe freedom for somebody else is 250,000 a year. If I had that for three years, I could do whatever I want to be amazing. Maybe freedom for somebody else is van life or living in Costa Rica. Hey, I'm going to move to Puerto Rico, save on taxes, and start a little business there.

Everybody's personal requirements are different. But we homogenized them and throw them all. We're like, here's the way that you should be. If you didn't sell for $100 million dollars then you failed as a company. Bullshit.

Robert Hansen

Very much Keeping Up with the Joneses. I've seen a number of tricks that VCs pull. It's not just VCs. It's anybody with cash pull. One of the dirtiest ones, it just happens frequently unfortunately. Somebody will have a burn rate. They're losing money over time. Just starting up it makes sense. One or two customers. Just getting their feet underneath them. But their burn rate will put them out to, let's say October.

Around June, July, they're like, “Well, we better get on this. We're running low.” They talked to VCs. The VC is like, “Yeah, this sounds great. We just had some due diligence, blah, blah. We'll get back to you in a week or two.” Everybody's out. It's summertime. Everyone's taking vacations because that's what they do.

William Hurley

That’s true though. There's a few months a year where you're not getting funded.

Robert Hansen

But they don't necessarily know that. They're like, okay. But they're like, “Oh, but we're good for it. Yeah, we're in on this. We're going to do something with you guys. Obviously, we're not going to let you fail. You're part of our investment portfolio, blah, blah, blah.” A couple of months go by. Now it's August. Late August. Maybe even September.

They're like, “Oh, yeah. Well, we just had a couple of questions. Now that we're back, there's a bunch of stuff on our roster we got to go through. But would you mind answering some of these questions we had.” They answer these questions. Another week or so goes by. Now they're starting to sweat it. Now they're down to the last couple of paychecks. That is all they got in the bank.

“Oh, yeah, okay. We're definitely in it. Here are the terms we want. What do you guys think?” There's a couple of terms in there that are just wonky and messed up. Obviously, no one would ever agree to these terms. Which pushes it out another week or two while you're fighting that out with the legal team. Now you're just out of money.

William Hurley

A lot of companies go out of business raising money.

Robert Hansen

Well, it's not just that. They, at that point will take whatever deal is in front of them. Because they've been given this…

William Hurley

You’re not wrong. But I want to come back to, I'm as equally critical of entrepreneurs as I am of VCs. I've seen this one happen a lot. I put this one on the entrepreneurs and not the VCs. I'll explain why.

Robert Hansen

It's both.

William Hurley

Not necessarily. I'll tell you why. Because the VC is not responsible for funding your company. You are. Period. What happens is, you have an entrepreneur that waits too long. By the way, I wait long as a matter of principle. I'm like, we're running right to the edge. Then we're going to go over the edge and there's another edge. Now we'll do it. There's plenty of people who know me, maybe work for me who are like, “That's you.”

But the thing is that's a miscommunication. Let me explain. I'm your partner that is representing you at the fund. We made the investment two years ago. Now you're coming to me. I'm super excited about you. We go on that summer break and we come back. One of our principals died. We added three new partners. The investment committee went from 10 to 15. I can't alone write you that check in almost any VC. I can have three, four, or five, or 10 other people.

Those questions or things are coming from people who aren't associated with the business. Now, here's where it's on the VC. It was my job as a partner to be pimping the shit out of you the entire time. When that happens, it means I didn't. Which means now I made you a promise. “Hey, of course we're in. I've been watching you for the last two years. When the board is meeting this is great.” But I get to my partner's alley. “Yeah. Tell us about the business. What about this?” Maybe they like the original deal I did, blah, blah, blah, the new partners don't like.

So I think you can't just be like, oh, the VC’s evil. Those situations happen and where an entrepreneur pushes too close to the limit. And a VC internally isn't keeping it like “Man, I'm so sad about Robert’s company.”

Robert Hansen

I'm positive that version of that story happens, absolutely sure.

William Hurley

Are there other opportunistic people? 100%.

Robert Hansen

They say it's going to happen, It's going to happen. It's definitely happening. It's happening. It's happening. And finally they get docks and the docks are messed up. And then it's literally another week.

William Hurley

I’ll give you a second story. There's multiple scenarios. You're 100% right. I tell you my second, that, to me, is the most popular scenario. Is the partner didn't do their job in keeping you in the limelight. So then the other partner is like, “Where are they? And how is this?

And wait, didn't they say in their pitch they're going to have revenue in a year. And it's been three years,” and all those questions. Here's another way it happens. This happens a lot. What happened to venture capitalists in the last 10 years? They multiplied. Why?

Because you and I started a fund, we're on an American waterfall, and we sold our first deal, told the LPs we're going to be doing it for 10 years. We can take two and 20. And then we made the first deal and all of a sudden, we made $10 million and I think you're an asshole.

So we leave. And that happened over and over and over and over. That's why most LPs now want a European waterfall. They want a waterfall on where I'm investing, and you don't get a payout, you sell a billion dollar company, you guys aren't seeing the money unless you're here at the end of that 10 years that you promised me.

So because of that, because of that proliferation of investors, micro funds and all those we got to re label everything. Now, I'm a VC and I invested in you, and I'm raising a fund. So I didn't really plan to follow on capital, I didn't have enough dry powder.

I'm never going to tell you that. And I do want to invest, my heart in the right place. I want to make this happen.

Robert Hansen

You don’t want to lose your investment.

William Hurley

I don't want to lose my investment and I'm raising money. But I'm never going to tell you, “Robert, it's going to happen. But I'm pitching somebody for $100 million and I need that to happen,” you're never going to hear that.

That's the lack of transparency I talk about being so important. And then there's multiple others, the one you're talking about definitely exists. But I think it's an exception, not the rule, which is there are loan sharks in every financial community, and they're in the startup investment community too.

They will play you right to the end and say, Now that you have nowhere else to go, I will make you an offer you literally can't refuse, like a fucking mobster and 100% I agree that happens. I just think that all of those three situations we just described the entrepreneur looked the same.

Robert Hansen

You're dealing with the same.

William Hurley

Issues are completely different dynamics. And one rule doesn't apply to all. Absolutely there's the legit. I've had people do that to me. I've had negotiations where I said, “So what are you doing?” I said, “well, then I'll just go without,” I've pushed it so close to the limit.

Now, as I get successful, absolutely. I've had conversations with people where I said, “Well, if you do that, well, then then I'll just fund it.” For some reason, a lot of investors hate entrepreneurs putting their own money in or that have the ability to put their own money it.

They shy away from them. A because they've been around the block and can't take advantage of them, that’s the loan shark people. B because they're trouble for the other situation we did where you’re out raising, and you're like, “I'm not raising this guy could just dupe me.”

C, because the first situation you see the partner didn't represent you, it's like, “Man, I don't want my partners to meet this person. Can they know what the hell they're doing?” They're going to be like, fuck it, I'll fund it.

Robert Hansen

Give yourself another board

William Hurley

Or whatever. Or you come up with some crazy rules. You go, “That’s weird, we need $2 million. I'm going to put it in since you're not giving me what you promised. Except now I'm going to put it in and I'm going to cram down or I'm going to do this or that.” those things will turn.

So every situation is different. I actually think I've been considering this. I'm going to pitch this idea a lot. So I got a startup idea. I have no time. Tons of people want me to talk to them for some stupid reason. These are misled psychopaths, they want advice from me.

Robert Hansen

I will count myself amongst them.

William Hurley

I've tried to help and I don't do a good job. I'm helping a health startup right now, a couple of them because about a year and a half ago, I had a couple of friends started coming to commit suicide. At the same time, I run into these couple of mental health startups.

One is this woman Julia's company called Speakers One, really interesting thing, a box thing. There's Michael and Nate over at schmooze II, which is awesome app for, hey, let's keep your mental health.

I liked them because both of those have a philosophy, that is especially Julie's philosophy, which is if you have liver disease, nobody goes, “Oh, my God, I don't hang out with you. You got cancer?” No, your brains is an organ too, mental issues, they're a disease, just like any other disease, but they have a stigma with them.

I haven't been as much help to either of these guys. They will tell you that this fantastic help, haven’t been as much help as I could be. Because I don't have time, I don't have everything.

Robert Hansen

You’re spread thin.

William Hurley

So what do you have to do? I'm working on is not spreading myself thin, my wife keeps telling me about this all the time. But I think I have a plan on intake. And here's what it is, I'm going to build a new Hurley.com. And I'm going to coin this term entrepreneurial therapist, because what I've realized in helping all these people, you don't really need me to help you solve the problem.

You need someone to listen that can tell you it's okay for you to solve that problem the way you're going to do it. So I'm thinking that there should be this whole new industry of people who have been successful entrepreneurs or even built or wherever they can be like, “Man, I also had my car repossessed or turned into the bank.”

Because we're lacking that. We try to do it with the startup communities, but then that stuff we talked about in the magazines comes into play. So nobody in any of those conversations has ever said… it's never been like an AA meeting like, “Hi, my name is Hurley. Man, have I fucked up.” everything's always like, it's going great. a little bit of problems raising money, or it's a little slow, or they describe it in every other way, except for reality.

My rule, and I tell this when I gave my first talk at Legatum, I told the students, when an entrepreneur tells me it's going great. I know they are lying to me, or themselves, both of us. Because I can't look back on any of my startups, especially the successful ones that I've started and be like, wow, it was awesome.

I had an idea, I got with the RSnake, and we started a company and people gave us money, built the product in no time, people bought it, we’re rich. It doesn't work that way. So I think there's this need for almost entrepreneurial therapist position.

Robert Hansen

Are you picturing many people in this or just you one on one, or?

William Hurley

I think it's a one on one thing, because I think people won't talk in front of a lot of people.

Robert Hansen

Yes, it’s what I would think.

William Hurley

I think they need confidence. I actually think venture capital firms, it'd be great if they had one. And it's the person at the venture capital fund who can't tell the partners, although they don't communicate that stuff.

They're there to listen to understand, and maybe help guide things a little bit. But entrepreneurs, when they're down, when they're desperate, lack one thing, more than all other things. It's not money or team, or motivation or anything, it's confidence.

Indecision can kill a startup faster than anything else. You don't want to decide too fast, I'm not talking about moving fast and breaking things. I think that's stupid. But when in a problem, the problem you described earlier, let's use your example where I really need this money, and I've taken too long, you have to be able to say, “Hey, investor, I really appreciate that you're excited about it.

But I've got to go to other people, I can't invest my time in you, because you're not writing a check, which is the only thing I need you to do. I don't need to change in terms of stuff that just says you're in, write a check. That's what I need.”

I think that's super, super relevant to this exchange, in this conversation, people listen to you because the word is not friend, or mentor, or therapist, or pal or buddy or anything, the word is investor.

They do not work for your startup, they will never work for your startup. They will all tell you fantasy stories about how useful they can be to get leverage of the resources here, there. 95% of them will never do any of that. And there are those that do, I want to be fair.

There are others that have built a great reputation. The word is not friend. It's not power. It's not a co-founder, it's investor. They should be treated as such. That means with respect, but on a short leash when it comes to the conversations that you described. Because they have the luxury of time, and you don't.

Robert Hansen

If you're doing something that they really like, they should be absolutely all over you to put money into you as quickly as possible, because they don't want you going somewhere else. So if you're not getting those sort of warm fuzzies from them, not just this will be great. Let's talk next week, but I need to schedule a meeting right now.

William Hurley

I'm mentoring a few people in quantum startups right now and there's one of them, really young guy. I love him, Fil, you know who I'm talking about, no, I'm just teasing. It's Fil with an f sorry, but I'm mentoring.

I always tell him, they're like, “Oh, I talked to this investor, I did this or that.” And the investor has great intentions, and they love them. And like I said, four or five quantum startups I'm working with are in the same situation. They're like, “I heard from a guy and he said, he loves our idea.” It’s like, “did he write a check?” because if he didn't write a check…

Robert Hansen

Funny story about this.

William Hurley

Who gives a shit whether he loves your idea or not?

Robert Hansen

So I came to you before we had actually funded… before we built the Bit Discovery, which is the company that recently got acquired. And I told you, oh, we could do insurance modeling or something, you’re like, “You need to come and pitch me that idea, as soon as possible.”

I hadn't actually thought of it as an idea to pitch, it was more just like a here's a use case or whatever. Got me off my ass and within one week, we had five meetings, I think scheduled, one got cancelled because there was some sexual abuse issue.

It just blew up on their side. So we had four meetings that actually ended up happening. Out of those, we got to offer letters, within two days of having the meeting. I think we closed about a week or so later, maybe two weeks later. That's fast.

William Hurley

Super-fast.

Robert Hansen

Unheard of fast. But that just shows when you have an idea that people really like, they're going to force their way in like, here's the term sheet as quickly as possible.

William Hurley

At that stage too, because at that startup seed stage that you were at, okay, and I remember this very clearly, what did you have? You had some code, an idea and your guys, there's not a lot of diligence at a startup.

Like if you have a VC that's like, we need to know about the, dude, there's two of us, we wrote some code, and it does this, like that's what you're investing in. do a background check. I don't know what else you could really do.

So it should move somewhat fast. Now, I also believe for me personally as an investor, and you know this from that time too, time aim is the greatest diligence tool I can have. Because I know that most of these startups, they're going to be different in six months, and different in a year, a different year and a half, and my money is going to be just as good now as it is then.

If I'm really looking to drive them, I may not be the right money now. They might need a quick check, they might need something that either I don't want to provide or willing to provide or can't provide. And that's okay. And I was super, super happy for you. But you're right, you didn't have, you aren’t like, “Hey, everybody, I'm on the street with a flipping sign, look at Bit Discovery.”

People were like, “Fuck, that's cool. I'm going to put money in it.” You know what I'm saying?

Robert Hansen

Yes.

William Hurley

That's exactly the point.

Robert Hansen

Thank you, by the way, I wouldn’t have gotten off my ass to go even make that pitch.

William Hurley

I think you would have, I think we have a lot of mutual friends, Matt, or somebody would have said the same thing. So you have a great community of people around you. So you would have got there.

The point is, that's super important. They vote with their dollars. If they're not given dollars, they're not saying they love your product. They're saying, you're really awesome kid. I think you're smart. And that's cool.

But the way you know if the VC or investor likes you, is if they write a check. And the way they really liked you as they wrote a check under pretty vanilla documents that are really fair terms.

Robert Hansen

Yep. Get a good lawyer. A very good lawyer.

William Hurley

An expensive one. It's worth it.

Robert Hansen

So we have made it less than halfway through some questions that I have for you.

William Hurley

The lighting round.

Robert Hansen

We could go quick if you want or we could stop now.

William Hurley

No, let's do a lightning round.

Robert Hansen

Okay. All right.

William Hurley

I don't even know where I'm at, or why. I had a black bag done over my head.

Robert Hansen

Up here. That's how we do on RSnake show.

William Hurley

Again, when you come in. Let's walk it through your question.

Robert Hansen

Fine. What's quantum physics?

William Hurley

Quantum Computing quantum mechanics?

Robert Hansen

What is it? What is it all? Explain it.

William Hurley

In 1927, I'll be producer soon. In 1927, Einstein and Irving and Schrodinger and all these physicists you knew about got together and took work that had been done a few years before what was called the 5th Solvay Conference and they came up with basically this idea of quantum mechanics.

Fast forward to 1980, a guy named Richard Feynman and again, in Benioff did work and Benioff, I think did the first work on it, came up with the idea of using electron and atomic particles as a bit to calculate.

They wrote a very prominent white paper that I think everybody should read, that basically is on the computer as a physical system. And the information is a physical thing. And by the way, getting into this has changed my view on all the companies. I already thought digital transformation was bullshit.

But now I'm like, actually, there's no such thing as digital. If you look down on the processor, there's little things that represent that information is physical. Very world changing for me to look at from that perspective.

Robert Hansen

Very microscopic way of looking at the world.

William Hurley

So fast forward to, the Ant Man movie, and you learn that all quantum people just put the word quantum in front of everything. But seriously, what you have is you now have today, we started in 2017, Strangeworks started as a Linux Foundation project.

But nobody wanted to work together, so I built a company. But you now have these quantum computers. How do these computers work? Well, they work by taking things like superposition and entanglement and teleportation and take a salt out and blow it up, pull off electrons, cool it down, almost absolute zero.

It looks like a Bloch sphere and it rotates. Think of a coin. I take a coin heads up on the table, so when tails up, it's a zero, that's classical computing. Can only be one of those two things in that position. Take the same point of flipping in the air.

Once at the top of that spin, is it a one or zero? Is it heads or tails? It's in a quantum superposition of some probability of a one or zero and just like Schrodinger’s famous experiment with a cat, thought experiment. Even put a cat in a box, there are people I met who were like, “that's horrible, what a horrible person.” No, he never actually put a cat in a box.

Robert Hansen

I think he was actually using it as a joke. What could do this.

William Hurley

You catch a coin like a coin toss, you flip it over, it collapses into a state, and that's a one. So why is this important? Because if you have four bits, you have 16 outcomes, and a classical computer can be in any one of those outcomes at that moment in time.

But if you have four qubits, you can have all 16 outcomes at the same time. So the world that this is about to unlock, I don't care about better drug discovery, I care about eradicating disease. I don't care about new battery technology and chemistry.

I care about completely new forms of travel we’ve never even imagined. I'm in the Strangeworks, not to use quantum computing to solve the problems of today, but to take advantage of the opportunities of tomorrow, there will be a post quantum world.

I think the Industrial Revolution, the Information Revolution, the Quantum Revolution, Quantum Sensing, Quantum Computing, all the Quantum Communications, all of these things are about to come to bear on our world.

I'm spending my life running around evangelizing it on Capitol Hill and the enterprise that everybody likes, it's coming, it's coming. And I'm not the only one. There's a whole community of us out there doing it. And there aren't a whole lot of people listening. One day, it's going to be. Will it break up RSA encryption? 100% it will.

Also there used to be this thing called the Enigma machine, it was the top of the game, nobody uses them anymore. So that's how security works. Threatened remediation is always in the intertwining dance. But quantum computing is taking this world of quantum mechanics and applying it to solve problems.

Robert Hansen

What’s a practical application?

William Hurley

Oh, there's a ton. Prosco just did a great paper on true quantum advantage. I think they use about 40 qubits. And there are about 1300 experiments, for learning experiments. And they show that there's an actual event, we're starting to get proof points.

Up until now, it's been very overhyped, and whatever. Practical application, anything molecular, material science, pharmaceutical, stuff like that, practical application. Any problem in where you add a few inputs and the evaluation time, the time it takes a computer to start running your program, and to give you an answer soars.

Traveling salesperson is the one everybody likes to use the most. I have a laptop computer. We want to go to 14 cities together. I will write us a little script on the most optimized path. We will get a couple of 1000 secs.

Robert Hansen

Which is basically brute force.

William Hurley

That's right, I take that same problem and I go from 14 cities to 22. Okay, a difference of eight, that same laptop takes 3,4, 5000 years to get to that same answer. There are problems like that in solving cancer, in new materials for the Supersonics, in all of these things.

That's where these things are going to be amazing. And they're not going to be used alone. And that's one thing that sets Strangeworks apart is, we see it as this whole new world of nontraditional compute, exotic compute, next gen advanced, whatever you want to call it.

There'll be amorphic and neuromorphic, there'll be analog compute, there'll be quantum, there'll be DNA base compute that you and I have talked about remember over drinks before. And we want to basically have the infrastructure to make all of this available, and at the fingertips of as many people as possible.

Robert Hansen

How do you do that? What mechanism? Do you have software?

William Hurley

Software platform, yes. It’s a pure software play. It's a pure software platform that allows us to take all of the complexity of the machines, and obfuscate it from someone and have them focus on the science that they're trying to do on the problem they're trying to solve.

That's important, because in the early days of computing, you had to be an electrical engineer to program a computer, because you have to understand the flow of electricity between the gates. On the early days of quantum computing, you better be a physicist or have physicists sitting beside you. Because it's really, really hard.

Robert Hansen

A quantum computer might help.

William Hurley

Well, the new version of the Strangeworks software comes out in September. And it'll be an open platform, people can come in and use just like the last version. And right now on that platform, or when I left 55 compute endpoints that you could touch, live, maybe another 30 that were in some state of decoherence, or whatever.

This is happening. And this is really happening and why do you need a quantity? you said why do you need it? Here's the way I like to say it. And Howard Stern, head of computational sciences at Jensen now. He told me this years ago, when I started, he was at another company.

He said, “I used to go from New York to San Francisco. By wagon, and it took weeks, some of your party died. Maybe somebody got eaten, whatever. And then we got the rail system.”

It takes like four to six days. But no matter how far you go, okay, the wagon is like an abacus. Think of the rail system like computers we have today. You reach an ocean and an ocean of computational complexity. and we need your plane.

Did planes get rid of trains? No. No more than cars get rid of... So this isn't going to replace everything. It's going to interweave and fit and advance. I see it as an augmentation to computing and computational sciences, things that we've never dreamed of.

Robert Hansen

So do you think this is going to get miniaturized and be put on cell phones? Or do you think it's all…

William Hurley

I'm not going to be the idiot CEO of IBM like, “There's room for maybe four computers in the whole world.” Who knows? This is the best thing about it, we don't know.

Can you do cold atoms? Can you do room temperature Quantum Computing? Yes. So the ion trap guys do and there's a lot of people doing that. Will it be miniaturized? There are people who have said we wouldn’t have a desktop computer in five years. About three years into that, still waiting?

I would imagine a prototype by now. But who knows? But will it affect everybody? Yes. Your family and friends and everybody will have better search results from Google because of Grover's search algorithm run on a quantum computer over mass information, more relevant search results,

Your text, autocomplete will be better, because the AI that will be doing it will be able to apply quantum principles of quantum inspired stuff. So will it affect everyone? 100% especially in finance and pharma and material science.

Robert Hansen

What about breaking classical encryption?

William Hurley

100% going to happen.. It's not as if it's a when.

Robert Hansen

When is it?

William Hurley

By the way, today or yesterday I guess technically, an article came out on post quantum encryption, which I still believe is 90% using Fudd to raise money, and somebody broke it. One of our peers on a laptop, I broke it on this crappy laptop.

Robert Hansen

Psych. Is that right? The Psych algorithm?

William Hurley

Yes. But will it break encryption? Yes. Should you care? No. Because guess what's going to happen, you're going to have quantum communications, we're using entanglement, to where I have a channel communication with you that if you observe it, the act of you observing, it destroys all of it.

will have a quantum internet in our lifetime. I say 2035. There's already a test in Chicago and Europe and everywhere. This stuff works. Is it refined? No. Let’s think about it, we're moving from advanced research to applied research.

Where are we in that arc? We're somewhere in the middle of that arc of advanced research to applied research. Nobody knows for sure. But we're a few breakthroughs on noise, a few breakthroughs on this thing.

And by the way, IBM is going to release a 433 cubic computer, they have that today. Next year, 1000, something we do 1000 and a million in the next few years. As we get more of those qubits under control, we can use those computers to solve the problem of those computers.

So unlike from the 19 60s, 50s, and 60s in integrated circuits development, all the foundational stuff that was built today, we're going to see the curve advance much further.

Robert Hansen

So what do you think that's going to do for things like browsers and Bitcoin and all these things that rely on classical encryption? Think they're all going to have to be forklift upgraded?

William Hurley

Yes. And it's okay because we've done that before. We have the knowledge of that. And there's tons of people who are like, “look, I remember when we made…” I talked to Tim Berners Lee and Bob Metcalf about this a few months ago.

Tim was in town and Bob put together a little dinner for some people. And it was like we never intended for spam with email, it's like the law of unintended consequences. That's okay. We now have, I believe, an extremely responsible community.

My friend, Nick Ferera, RAQ, founded a group on quantum ethics. People are like, that's kind of ridiculous, is it? It sounds like maybe now's the right time to be thinking about the application of this power and the encryptions and all of these things.

Robert Hansen

Phishing paying refers to it as a super weapon.

William Hurley

So I think 100% can and will be weaponized. And that's probably the thing that keeps me up at night, because it won't be weaponized in the way that he says that it'll be weaponized. Strangeworks is weirdly mentioned in this new book by Brian Crouch, called The Upgrade.

In the book, this woman tries to solve a problem in China with these modified genetically engineered locusts and things go wrong and 200 million people are in a phantom famine and they die and the sun is later and whatever. And they talk about quantum computers.

What they need to do the thing they're going to do? Well, they need a computer and they say, oh, eight companies in the world make this hardware and Strangeworks is listed as one. And I'm really trying to figure out who Brian talked to you that found out about my secret hardware because I haven’t even told my wife yet.

But that's how it will be weaponized. It will be the result of the thing that we'll do in genetic engineering, in supersonic, hypersonic weapons and things like that. That's it will provide.

Robert Hansen

Not in the decryption aspect.

William Hurley

Sure. But who cares?

Robert Hansen

Financial markets might care.

William Hurley

No. here’s who should care, national security because a bunch of spies stole a bunch of secrets from the 80s and 90s and all and it's encrypted in crappy grid, that would be the first to fall. And countries you don't want to have a nuclear weapon might have one.

Robert Hansen

Maybe. But also a lot of them are using one time pads, especially during battleships or whatever, submarines, they're all one time pads.

William Hurley

I'm talking about stuff from the research labs. That doesn't need to be out in the wild. But it's so easy to look at quantum computing and this new quantum revolution that I'm basically saying I believe in and profess is going to happen in that light.

It's just as easy to look at in the light of, wow, what if cancer wasn't a thing? What if we could fix the environment? Fuck going to Mars. We go to Mars is like that scene in The Matrix. I finally found a way to classify our species, virus, use up all the resources and we move on to more.

Why not fix this planet?

Robert Hansen

Geo.

William Hurley

Sure, geoengineering, Terra Form Mars after we've fixed it. So why don't we get all the positive aspects of what this technology could potentially bring. And when I say that, I want to temper that with, I'm not trying to hype quantum computing. There are plenty of people out there doing it.

But I honestly in my heart and soul believe that it is one of the steps towards a completely new era for our species.

Robert Hansen

One of the things you said to me a couple of weeks back was decoherence is such a big problem that maybe some of the idea that I could go off and decrypt everything is just wildly overhyped.

William Hurley

Well, think about it. Right now, you can have circuits that take, let's say, three seconds to run, and the computer is only coherent for a fraction of a second. But the example I was giving you is, let's say that I could, I had a quantum computer right now, and I had an algorithm, I'm using Shor's algorithm, I can break the encryption.

Here's how it works in reality, I'd run it probably hits decoherence before the circuit runs, but let's say that it works. I now have your key, woohoo. Now I've got to go repeat that process over and over. And by the way, that would integrate this and then it did this and then it did that.

But I could decrypt one key that's really important. It could be earth shattering. So it's not that we shouldn't look at that as a threat. Is that the reality is everything you're reading in the press in my opinion about security and quantum is being put out there for one reason and that’s for people trying to do quantum security to raise money.

I think there is a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt that just isn't realistic in practical use. I would be more worried about somebody making a gene editing thing that only targets certain people who have beards and are losing hair and grain like you and I.

Robert Hansen

That might be a problem.

William Hurley

That’s a big problem. If you really want to worry, go read Brian Crotchet’s new book.

Robert Hansen

Screw this decryption thing, save the guys with no hair.

William Hurley

I'm just saying think about targeted weapons and things like that, there's a whole other world that you could be worried about. And here's the deal, everybody's so pessimistic. What about ways of helping people?

What about ways of making the planet better, making new forms, transferring, doing things, exploring the universe, all of these things are also something that a quantum computer could be a part of helping. It's not an end all be all solution, but it's super exciting.

Robert Hansen

So you helped Obama or was involved in getting Obama here for the DNC convention during SXSW 2006.

William Hurley

I was very lucky, thanks to a good friend of my wife who called and said, "You want to host President in SX?" Okay sure. Oh shit. And we did a fundraiser while he was here downtown, it was awesome. And he is regardless of your political affiliation, if you met him, he's kind of what you see is what you get.

Robert Hansen

Yes, I have effectively no problem with anything he said during this presentation with one very notable difference, which actually jives with this conversation. He was basically saying that the government needs backdoors.

There's bad guys out there and we got to have them. Up to that point, I was just kind of listening to the audience everyone was like, applause after everything he is saying, and that one was like, wasn't quite crickets, but it was noticeably less.

But this is the kind of thing, you don't even need a backdoor, you now have the keys, literally. And you can do whatever you want with these encrypted payloads. Is this sort of the perfect as Xi Jinping said, weapon, but also effectively a backdoor, and all this classical encryption.

So you can read all of this, sometimes very sensitive, and sometimes just people's personal stuff that you might want to know. I think that there's a massive chilling effect once that starts becoming mainstream, I think people start hiding what they're doing in weird ways.

William Hurley

I think once it becomes mainstream, like the once it became if I'm looking back in the future that I see. It's too late, and it doesn't matter.

Robert Hansen

If that were true, the NSA wouldn't actually have all this old historical data,

William Hurley

We have an illusion. Privacy is a funny thing and most people an illusion of privacy. Great example, if you take the vaccine, they're going to track you. You have an iPhone. I guess what I'm saying is, yes, it's true. But I think privacy like security, like everything, evolves.

I gave a presentation at TEDx in Hollywood, called privacy primacy. Very disappointing presentation as I looked at the camera, because I wore no pinions. And nobody noticed until I put pants on. And I was like, that was the big thing.

I walked through privacy, starting with the first form of privacy, I got a fig leaf over my wee-wee. I want to do it all and I am more hopeful and optimistic. Also, I'm a very open, transparent person. So maybe I don't have as much respect for privacy as I should.

Like there's certain things I don’t give a shit if people know, it's not going to change, who cares if you know my password to my bank account, sure.

Robert Hansen

Well, certainly that it's funny. I ran into this billionaire one time and he was sitting on the couch. He had this little parade of people around him or just like, aawing and oohing over him. I had no idea who that person was at all. And he was talking all this, like, super, like, “I'm this, I'm that. And I don't care about privacy and whatever.”

I didn't know he was. So I'm like, “Give me your wallet.” And he's like, “What?” And he starts reaching for it like he might actually do it. And then he's like, “Wait, why?” I'm like, “Because I'm going to take out all the cards, every single thing in your wallet, I can take it, put it on front and back, I’ll put out to my 10s of 1000s of hacker friends on Twitter and I'm going to say this guy doesn't believe anything bad could happen to him at all.”

He put his hand back out of his pocket. And then he politely changed the topic and shut the fuck up. I do think privacy matters.

William Hurley

I'm not saying it doesn't matter. I think it'll evolve.

Robert Hansen

What does it evolve into?

William Hurley

Well, quantum internet is one of the most exciting things to me, because I think that will do more for privacy than anything because it will be really hard for you to hack you and I have an encrypted chat on a quantum internet, because the act of hacking it makes its decoherent, it’s gone.

So I actually think ice quantum is a big boon to privacy that we don't have today. And going back to your backdoor thing, we really have no backdoor on something that's using entanglement

Robert Hansen

So it's a double edged sword, is what you’re saying.

William Hurley

Exactly. I'm saying. I think it's a double edged sword. But I think the pro privacy side of that sword is sharper than the anti-privacy side. I just really do. I think it's going to be a boon to personal privacy. I've said this several times publicly.

I think privacy is just like security threatened remediation. Privacy is always going to be like sometimes it's not you, credit card company as a data leak and they leak your stuff. You've done everything to protect your stuff.

You can't do anything to protect the state of Texas from leaking your address and your driver's license. You don't have any control over that. Maybe in a quantum world, that's a lot harder, and that becomes a lot better.

Because the thing that people don't understand about privacy is it's usually not something you did that got your information out there. It's this big corporation and the state or the whatever. So I think these things will be a boon, I think it'd be helpful to privacy.

I hope to work and volunteer my time and whatever input I could give to anybody out there looking at saying, “Oh, how can quantum not be used to break encryption, but to create new forms of encryption, to create the quantum minute to do these things?”

I think it's fascinating. I think it's just too easy to be pessimistic about it. It's not that privacy doesn't matter, it’s that it'll evolve, things will change, the infrastructure will change, and hopefully, for the better.

Because at the end of the day, my business for me, is what you're willing to share and I don't require you to share everything, and I don't want to know everything.

Robert Hansen

It's a liability.

William Hurley

That's right. So I want people to have the ability to have their private photos of their weird fetish, or whatever.

Robert Hansen

It's not even that, I just to be clear, for those listening, not necessarily you, I think you understand this stuff better than most people. But a lot of people think my privacy is me, but my privacy is actually every single person relies on me to have their secrets.

William Hurley

100%.

Robert Hansen

So if you take me out, holy crap, you've taken a whole bunch of people out.

William Hurley

That goes back to that key example I gave. I only do one key at a time. But what if I did a really important key to somebody who had a whole lot of secrets?

Robert Hansen

Like the CAs, for instance, you could take out one CA and then you effectively have everybody's certificates.

William Hurley

Right. Thanks for putting that on the internet tonight RSnake.

Robert Hansen

So speaking of mentoring, so you were the official ambassador for CERN, and Society Foundation? Am I getting that right?

William

Yes.

Robert Hansen

What is that?

William Hurley

Means I have a really cool, really at CERN.ch email address that I used to taunt physicists to aid in this industry. Like, “Oh, no, I accidentally milled you from my CERN. Damn.” Look what it means is simple, I love a lot of the stuff going on at CERN.

And even though they get a billion dollars from the European Union, there are a lot of scientists from America, from all over the world who are there, I know a guy who has led bricks around an experiment, he has bucks fans, that he got at Walmart,

Maybe we could get a little better equipment. They are trying to get a lot of the technology, internet, things like that. There are things like that in there that aren't getting out. So my role is basically to try to help raise money for those scientists and those programs.

They have an amazing entrepreneurial program called SASP, the Southern Ontario Student Program, to try to take all of this deep tech and make it into cool companies. Sorry, Mark, fuck Facebook, fuck Instagram.

Robert Hansen

You don’t like the apps?

William Hurley

No, it's all the bullshit we've been investing in, it doesn't do anything. Let's invest in some master's student, or some PhD student that's working at CERN for six weeks looking at all the amazing technology, and they’re like, “I could use this to fix the energy crisis or cure the planet or do this stuff.” That's what it's about.

So it's a really nice title. I love it. It sounds a lot fancier than is. It’s really just me volunteering time and trying to get people and maybe if anybody in your audience is interested, email me at Hurley@CERN.ch. And let me know, do you know people that would donate to science?

The reason I wanted to do this is for the last probably six or seven years, we've been living in this kind of anti-intellectual, anti-science environment. There's a woman named Sherry Tenpenny, who caused a bunch of emails to come my way from crazy, radical, religious people.

Because she said, “Remember these words, quantum entanglement, because when you take that shot, that's what's happening on a physics level in your body. And they're entangling you with the Google credit score and the D matrix is literally almost a verbatim quote.” Okay, it's like shit.

Robert Hansen

I just felt my IQ drop a little bit.

William Hurley

It's not, that's okay. So they're not I see, being an ambassador in this role that was effectively made for you to have some way to participate in the organization, as me being able to give back to science.

I love that aspect of it. And people sometimes shout me with like, “Oh, we're raising money for this or that.” It's like, yes, they need it. “Hey, you like the internet? Wouldn't it be great to have something They'll say that is pretty cool?”

Somebody's got to help them pay their electric bill in their apartment or get them the equipment they need in the lab, or whatever the case is. We've spent too many years funding stupid shit, and not focused on science and deep tech and things that really move us forward as a society, forward as a species. You want to make the world a better place? It isn't going to be social media.

Robert Hansen

I also think that a lot of companies are too hyper focused on quarterly earnings.

William Hurley

All companies are too hyper focused on quarterly.

Robert Hansen

What are we doing? You're spending all your time focused on a couple of months from now, instead of the long game.

William Hurley

Causes them to be myopic, and it causes them to lose their way. 100%.

Robert Hansen

There's got to be a better way.

William Hurley

Maybe somebody will figure it out one sometime. There's a lot of people with different things, trying different experiments, it's very hard to point to a company that's not doing that or hasn't.

Robert Hansen

We're going to have to design something, Whurley. We’re just going to have to come up with a new type of reporting mechanism.

William Hurley

A lot of companies aren't even doing quarterly reports now. They're moving away from that. They're like, “we'll tell you once a year, we’ll tell you when the distributions out, whatever.”

That the world is changing anyway, but not for the better in some ways, maybe for the better, maybe if you did yearly reporting instead of quarterly reporting. That would be a great thing, the company will at least be looking four times as far into the future.

Robert Hansen

It would be great. So you're also the founder of the Equals, part of the United Nations, women's group?

William Hurley

Co-founded by Doreen Bogdan, amazing woman, who is part of the UNITU, we got the UNITU and the UN Women from Xillia, at the time together, to try to build an organization to help with getting more women involved in tech and deep science and stuff.

Robert Hansen

Wasn't it also largely about getting them online at all?

William Hurley

I was just going to say that. For some, but it went much deeper than that. In a lot of countries, women don't have access to the internet or information or whatever. So it could be because of infrastructure, it can be because of policy, it can be because a lot of things.

Robert Hansen

Or religion.

William Hurley

Religion, all of those things. they had this great vision for it, it's now Equals in tech, specifically, if you Google that, you'll find it very easily. And I still talk to Doreen all the time. And I still support where I can, but I haven't really done a lot on that in a while.

My desire there was to be the catalyst. It needed some funding and some networking and some stuff to help whatever I could to support it. I think it's really important. I'd love to see it expand.

Robert Hansen

How's it currently handling that? How's it doing that?

William Hurley

There's a lot of projects, I think it’s on equalsintech.org, I believe. But if you Google Equals in Tech, they have all on how they're aligning with the sustainability goals for the UN, they have all on how they're aligning with the programs, or the women's programs, they've taken all of these disparate, one of the ways it started.

And they still do that. I think some of the most valuable ways is to take all of these little women's groups, for example, that are spread all over the world, there's 13 here and 30 there and four there.

One of them has got a really good job on this and one of them and you get them sharing that. So they can build those organizations stronger across the board. But it does a lot of stuff. They have competitions for women entrepreneurs and tech.

They have funding mechanisms, they do a world of good, it's a really amazing program. And Doreen is very proud and should be very proud of that .

Robert Hansen

Get her on the podcast, what do you say?

William Hurley

I can introduce you at any moment.

Robert Hansen

Sounds great. So I think we've gone through there, you're a lot of time, I know you have other things you got going on. But where can people reach you other than CERN?

William Hurley

I'm really everywhere, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter, on everywhere, so super easy to find me. Really difficult to hear back from me. I learnt something from Ethan Goldstein. And when he was doing Nagios. Ethan would answer every mail.

But he'd answer him in the order they received and there's a lot of mails in front of you, might take a while. But I mean, to his credit, he would answer everything. I tried to do that. If you're pitching a startup, don't send it to me, just go straight to Encrypted Capital and send it to them because that's all I'm going to be able to do anyway.

If you want me to be on a board or advisory board, I don't do that. So don't reach out. If you're looking for me to invest in something I can't, because I do all my investments through Encrypted, because the way I store walnuts is how to do my investments.

You want to talk quantum computing, it’s at strangeworks.com

Robert Hansen

Are you hiring?

William Hurley

We are absolutely hiring. Like you said we haven't announced the series A but we're actively going to take the team from about 14 to 32. And what are we hiring in? Absolutely want quantum applications engineers, absolutely want you doing biz that sales, still interested, doing marketing and stuff like that, love to hear from you.

For engineers, we do a pretty good damn good job with that on our own. So I don't know that we can take a headcount or two and devote them to that kind of stuff. But yes, we're hiring, it's reason to find me, like you said, just realize what you're getting into, like 2500 LinkedIn messages a day.

Pretty much I'm almost at the point where I'm going to take some of the platforms and just have an auto responder that's like, “You will never hear back from me ever again. It happened to open your messages at the top and it said something really cool.”

Robert Hansen

That's how you know how to get in touch with him, just say the very first words are really. At least you know it came from the R snake show.

William Hurley

Absolutely, I would at least read it. I don’t know if I would replay but if it came from the show I will probably read it.

Robert Hansen

Really, thanks so much for coming on.

William Hurley

Thanks for having me. It was great talking to you.

Robert Hansen

Yes, me too. Thanks.