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nerdtv-3-notes

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 7028 days AGO

NerdTV #3 w/ Bill Joy, transcript.

[create KPCB], Google, Sun, Genentech

John Doerr, Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Hawkins, Andy Bechtolsheim, Jim Clark, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Dean Kamen

On Intelligence

[create MIPS], IBM 801, Java, Unix

- 100m biz in 5yrs
- significant companies only
- vc is much harder then he thought it might be
- much more interesting too
- complete the team, few come in complete
- missing piece is often money, but more often: putting together the pieces
- guiding team to understand what they don't understand yet
- did cooking to finance graduate school, got fired by the intl house of pancakes (day before he would've been in the union)
- non-life-sci side of kp
- software, energy ventures
- passed the threshold: miniaturization allows phone as powerful as computer of a few years back
- computing becomes more invisible
- confluence of software with _all_ sciences
- nano is not really about scale
- we used to chip away (chiseling, carving ...), now: build up!
- kurzweil - computer 10000x as smart as a human being - possible? "if you look at those graphs, it appears to be"
- we don't know how humans are smart
- making a computer faster doesn't make it intelligent (but it can help)
- as marvellous as google is, it's not like interacting with an entity that "knows"
- kids are growing up faster than before!
- we're doing an experiment w/o precedent - uncontrolled
- oceans are getting more acidic - break down shells of the reefs
- economic forces drive us that way
- not practical to just wish it to change - people do whatever they want to do
- best thing: find a _profitable_ way to alter the course
- investments in: solar, wind, fuel cells
- not looking at the current class of politicians in this country to address those issues
- nostalgic of sun? no. 20yrs a long time. glad bechtolsheim is back at sun.
- 100k$ cheque to google - one of the best rates of return _ever_
- andy: great hardware designer, very perceptive of potential
- looking for practicality and passion, like kp
- in energy: first prototype in 1896, somewhat worked in 1950 ... - much longer timeframes
- leadership? e.g. java team - didn't have the original vision, but helped find a place, and they ended up somewhere
- don't know how to market it, who their first customers should be
- big vision: big circle - find successful place within that circle
- can't really lead, steer - guide - nudge, can't go too far out of their circle
- herd? no ...
- don't want: cats or buffalos (not farm animals), need something that stays within fences
- formative stage team size: number of people who can have lunch, 6 ... max 8
- one conversation
- 6 or less is optimal
- otherwise: slows you down, can't do the corrections & nudges any more, somebody has to be somewhere else, can't be there
- but if you're too small, perspective is not broad enough to solve the problems, eventually you need more people just to get the work done
- "patient as long as people listen" - even if they don't act on recommendations
- still a technologist? yes. but: not hacking code
- designing a sailboat now
- it's like an island
- opportunity to study energy efficiency (direct influence on quality of life)
- built at the same port jim clark's sailboat was built
- energy efficiency brings amenities (battery vs. generator)
- pre 9/11, answer to bioterrorism was: nobody has done it before - not a good approach
- if I had to start over and I couldn't be an investor, I'd do software again - web or (life) science
- real strength of the valley: crossplay between the people - an infrastructure to get problems solved
- you don't have to make the individual enterprises too large
- intelligence equally distributed
- for the moment: more entrepreneurial culture than elsewhere, strong legacy of silval
- no better environment _now_ for entr activities - could weaken over time if we don't continue to train the best and brightest
- immigration is not fun
- need to train more people in eng and science, dean kamen tries to get people more excited about science in school
- teachers aren't paid well, no investment in public education
- ireland - free college degrees, now: highest per-capita income in europe (chl: really?)
- here: opposite direction
- let have everyone a college education (clinton suggested that)
- stop spending money we don't have - overconsumption is an issue
- learning things would be a better pastime than just buying things
- yes, boat project is an indulgence (?)
- larry and sergey: great vision - to do good - fun to work with people like that
- open source: people can stand on each other's shoulders instead of each other's toes