Keith Rabois
Entrepreneur, Investor and Partner at Khosla Ventures
Discussion
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
Hi. I’m Keith Rabois. I’m an entrepreneur and investor. I'm a general partner at Khosla Ventures. I also co-founded Opendoor, an online marketplace to help people instantly buy and sell their homes. I’ve worked at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide and Square, and I’ve invested in Teespring, Stripe, Palantir, AirBnB, YouTube and Yammer, among many others. I spend most of my time advising entrepreneurs on how to build businesses and have strong opinions about Stanford football. I started out as a lawyer but don’t recommend it. Ask me anything!
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Chris Olson
@topherolson · Director of Operations, AmplifyLA
Hey Keith! I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the future of Artificial Intelligence. In a sense all companies tech will probably be leveraging A.I. in some fashion, but any interesting things you are seeing in the space? Thanks!
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@topherolson I am a bit skeptical of AI for now. At least for a VC to invest.
Phil Nguyen
@p_ngu · The Daily Water Cooler + Vettery
Thanks for taking the time, @rabois. Love following you on Twitter and the fresh views you provide. What would you say is the most controversial tech-related belief you have right now that many people would disagree with?
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@p_ngu a) companies should IPO as soon as possible (less controversial now); b) machine learning startups are almost always a bad idea, c) the funding market for series A and Series B is radically different than even 6 months ago.
Phil Nguyen
@p_ngu · The Daily Water Cooler + Vettery
@rabois Great answers, thank you. Would love some additional thoughts on the machine learning comment if you have some time!
Sydney Liu
@sydney_liu_sl · Co-Founder of Commaful
@rabois
Thanks for doing this ama Keith!
What are the most clever, but less talked about growth hypotheses you've seen?
LinkedIn did viral growth really well through email invites, PayPal had that bot that asked to pay on eBay through PayPal and created a high demand, and reddit seeded the community and then grew through the community. Curious to see what else you've seen done well, especially ones that don't have obvious network effects
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@sydney_liu_sl I gave a full presentation on growth strategies at a Growth Conference Keynote in 2013. As a general matter, companies need to create a growth strategy that is innate to their value proposition, not copy another one from a successful company. (FYI SEO can be solid too for some companies, worked for yelp, LinkedIn). If the presentation is challenging to locate, I could repost it.
Sydney Liu
@sydney_liu_sl · Co-Founder of Commaful
@rabois @sydney_liu_sl Thanks Keith!! Can't find the video, but here's the notes: http://www.hacking-growth.com/gr... super insightful. Thanks for sharing
Daniel.
@danielrakh · iOS Developer & Designer
You've said numerous times that your unique skill is finding people who are not known but have the potential to be really great at their job. What's the best way those people can stand out to be noticed by people like you?
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@danielrakh Tweet. I have offered jobs to people solely based upon the caliber of their tweets. But fundamentally the key skill to succeed is not tweeting.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
1) There's a big obsession/bias with being a founder as opposed to an employee. Is that warranted? What frameworks should people use when deciding between the two, and is there a certain archetype that should be a founder vs early employee / founding team member?
2) How's your 3 point shot?
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@eriktorenberg Companies are built by a team, not a single person. We use the expression "the team you build is the company you build." People often over-value founders and under-value the key leaders in a company. A football coach is a solid metaphor. He adds a ton of value, but the players make the plays.
Brian Shultz
@brianlshultz
What uncommon traits or habits do you think are most important for jr level VCs?
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@brianlshultz either a differentiated network, which is rare, or differentiated insight, which is extraordinarily rare.
Kasperi Apell
@kasperiapell
Hello, Keith! Thanks for taking the time to do this. Do you have any systems or strategies to minimize office politics in a company?
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@kasperiapell radical transparency works best. provide everyone access to (virtually) all information. send meeting notes from every single meeting to the whole company, use Slack instead of email, full dashboards, share the entire Board deck with the entire company, etc.
Anthony Cafaro
@anthonycafaro · Designer, NYC
@rabois Who do you got in the Cowboys-Giants game this weekend? ;P
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@anthonycafaro well, if Tony were playing this would be easy. Without him and Dez, I am nervous.
neeharika sinha
@neeeharika · Google, Threadchannel
@rabois was switching careers that is moving from lawyer to tech world difficult for you? How do you recommend people from different industry make that jump into tech world?
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Keith Rabois
@rabois · Partner, Khosla Ventures
@neeeharika Fortunately, my first tech manager, Geoff Donaker was able to teach me a massive amount very quickly, with the exception of building elegant spreadsheets. But the biggest challenge is lawyers are trained, literally, to spot risks whereas entrepreneurs and investors need a wholly different mentality. I used to hate it when people could guess I was an ex-lawyer in meetings. But at some point, I shifted from conservative to risk-embracing and people became shocked to learn that I had practiced law. When I vist Judicata, they challenge me with Bar Review questions, fortunately, I am still a perfect 9-9.